My Body Is a Book of Rules. Elissa Washuta
willingly, be contrite of heart, confess with the lips, and practice complete humility and fruitful satisfaction. 8.If you have to ask him if he enjoys giving you oral sex, then you have your answer: he doesn’t. He might enjoy it more if he knew you’d be going down on him in return. 9.Touch him “down there” just like this (see illustration), touch his nipples, don’t forget his sack, try out his nerve-packed pleasure button (ask first), use ice, blow, suck, not too cold, not too hot, put your thumb Q. My guy wants me to tie him up. Exactly what do I do once he’s bound to the bed? right on that and your index finger right over there, make an “S” motion, make a kissing motion, a whispering motion, try humming, try ninety degrees, forty-five, show him your body, make figure eights or circles with your hips, squeeze your PCs in rhythm, let him see you, smell good, look good, do your squats and lunges, lose your love handles, watch basketball with him, do your Kegels, smile, look like you’re having fun, make guacamole for the game but remember that a cup contains a whopping 367 calories, be as casual as possible, definitely don’t forget his sack. 10.Men want a woman who loves sex and isn’t afraid to sample new things. Men want you to be open to experimentation in the bedroom when they suggest it, but they don’t necessarily want you to initiate wilder moves. Proposing anything that may appear choreographed can give them the impression that you’ve tried doing that with lots of other guys. 11.God is love; has an unlimited capacity for love; loves all, even sinners; answers all prayers; forgives; beckons; never plays games; never plays rough; asks for faith; has no form that you can see or touch. Nothing you can do can make God stop loving you. 12.Know that you are only here for one thing: God created everything for man, but man in turn was created to serve and love God and to offer all creation back to him. 13.Have faith.
Sister Agnes, my sixth-grade teacher, shocked us into absorption and repentance. She told us she loved having her period because it was a gift from God. She projected hand-drawn fetuses onto the pulldown sheet over the blackboard. Every day of sixth-grade religion class, we took Bibles off a cart and readied ourselves for random Sword Drills (our Bibles being our swords in the fight against sin) during the lesson: she would call out a book, chapter, and verse, and we would look it up. The first to find the passage would read aloud. I desperately wanted to be fastest and read God’s words back to Him. I was good at learning and memorizing. I was afraid of judgment coming, first from the Lord, then from the men, and I did what I could to prepare myself. I studied and waited for the afterlife. My belief in Christ and the Virgin pressed against every fiber of my green plaid jumper as I grew.
When I was in grade school, my confessions always came out the same. Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. My last confession was a month ago. I fought with my brother and disobeyed my parents and I took the Lord’s name in vain. Penance: say some prayers. Absolved. I was generally honest in confession, but I never wanted to tell the priest that I made my Barbies have sex with each other (sometimes girl-on-girl, even) so I left that out. My last confession took place ten years ago. I have broken most of the commandments many times, as have most adults I know, but I haven’t killed, haven’t stolen, and in my mind this makes me a good person. But to God, I am not good.
The Old Testament bursts with a magic we had to accept as true. I learned to expect the formula: an angel appears, a child is born. This one must not cut his hair. He will save the Israelites. He plans a strategic marriage, part of the plan of the Lord, and is attacked by a lion on the way to propose. Of course he kills it; he is Samson. He flies into rages. He gives away his bride like a heifer. Hip and thigh, he slaughters the Philistines, kills more later with a donkey’s jawbone. Samson smites, Samson rules, Samson leads Israel.
And then another woman. This one wants to know his secret. Don’t they always, the people you get with? Want to know your secret, I mean, want to know what got you all fucked up and angry. Samson, stronger than I am, won’t tell. So Delilah binds him to the bed with bowstrings. But how can a woman like Delilah tie down a man like Samson? With her charms; that’s how she coaxes out his secret. She has a servant cut his hair. The Philistines burn out his eyes. When they enslave him, they emasculate him. Then his hair grows. He’s out for blood. He shakes the pillars of the temple and dies with the Philistines when it crumbles. God said to do it. Love thy neighbor? Slaughter thy neighbor. And what of Delilah? She did it for money. As good a reason as any. Temptress, snake, bitch. Whatever. She got paid. She got out alive.
Sister Agnes knew all the good prayers. A few times a week, she took us to the tiny in-school chapel to pray in place of a religion lesson. We would pray out loud together for a while, and then in silence. Sister said that already scripted prayers, like Hail Mary or Novenas, were the best, because whoever wrote them knew exactly what God wanted to hear. The Our Father was penned by Jesus himself, so you knew it was a real winner. I had a hard time staying conscious in that stuffy room, on my knees. One day I came so close to passing out, but I knew God would be displeased with me if I sat back. My best friend whispered, “Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. Like the Bush song.” I never quite passed out in there. Back then, God loved me so much.
The four great virgin martyrs of the early Church are Lucy, Agnes, Agatha, and Cecilia. I always pictured them as slender-faced women with flaxen hair, their bodies swallowed by yards of cloth, their tiny, crushable features lit up by circular halos stationed behind their heads. Each saint looked exactly like any other, and their stories were difficult to distinguish, too, each one blending astounding piety with unspeakable violence: repeated failures to chop off Cecilia’s head, the de-breasting of Agatha, the piercing of Lucy’s eyes with a fork. Agnes, at age twelve or thirteen, was dragged naked through the streets of Rome to a brothel,