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Authors: Helen Fitzgerald
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would listen to them placing bets about whether or not I’d let their mate get a Cap’n Birdseye.
Even then she remained pretty protective of me. In fact, when she went to nursing school, and I went off with my rucksack, I really noticed the difference. There was no-one to stop me, so I went hell for leather, and now should anyone ask, I’d have to round my tally down to the nearest ten.
All these years later and Sarah was still looking out for me the way she had at Central Station. The only difference was that at sixteen I didn’t let anyone get past second base, but at thirty-three a home run was pretty much guaranteed.
My sexual awakening had occurred between the ages of fifteen and nineteen in seedy low-level train platforms (as above), in rusty sheds, in back lanesand in scout hall bathrooms. In each venue I would be a quivering mess, as I stopped the hand from going there, slapped the hand as it tried to go there, let the hand go a little bit nearer to there … Oh God!
I would pray in church afterwards, saying thirty-three or so Hail Marys, and later worrying that I should have rounded it off to an even number or added the odd Our Father. And this wasn’t even full-blown sex! These prayers were for ‘tweaking’ and ‘fingering’ – the first term referring to the rubbing of nipples to the point of rash, the second to the relentless prodding of teenage digits in all the wrong places. God knows, if I’d done the whole caboodle, I’d have been praying all day.
I don’t know when my Catholicism left me, but it did. Soon after, I stopped lying to Mum and Dad about going to mass, and eventually – just to make sure they knew I was really lapsed – I got pregnant to some fellow in a Tenerife toilet.
What I realise now is that Catholic guilt gave me the best sex of my life. I had at least five years of refusing to go the whole way with my devoted boyfriend. What I would do now to have someone like him work on me day in, day out, work and work and work! I will never find such attention, motivation and dedication again. And I will never feel such scintillating sinful guilt. When I think of that boy – his name was Stewart – I think of someone with incredible knuckles.
After I told my folks that not only did I not know what Father O’Flaherty said in his sermon last Sunday, but that Father O’Flaherty was probably sleeping with his housekeeper, and that I had no intention of going to mass ever again, I went through something of a moral revolution. I put guilt about sex in a box, wrapped it up, and threw it away. Instead of going to mass, I decided to do nice things on a Sunday, like bike-riding and shopping – and I banged away at pretty much anything, ever-skilled at not getting too close. I decided that I should not worry about being respected. Sex was sex was good and proper and I figured any guy who thought a girl should be respectable was a chauvinistic waste of space anyway.
*
As we walked from our idyllic lunch retreat towards Loch Lomond, I wondered if my moral revolution had been ill advised, if I’d gotten it all wrong. I was a single mother. I hadn’t had a long-term relationship since I’d split up with Stewart at nineteen, never having properly consummated our relationship. I was lonely as all hell. Would things have been different if I’d stayed respectable?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sarah had known for a long time that she and Kyle needed to get away, though her idea of ‘getting away’ was more along the lines of an all-inclusive bubble-wrapped five-star resort with hundreds of people in similar clothes. Her favourite holiday memory was of Dubai, where she and Kyle had been allocated their own private section of the swimming pool to lounge in all day. She had plenty of time of an evening to buff and fake-tan, and the risk of nail breakage was negligible.
Sarah’s therapist had suggested that she let Kyle take control a little more, but when Kyle told her he’d organised a walking trip
Even then she remained pretty protective of me. In fact, when she went to nursing school, and I went off with my rucksack, I really noticed the difference. There was no-one to stop me, so I went hell for leather, and now should anyone ask, I’d have to round my tally down to the nearest ten.
All these years later and Sarah was still looking out for me the way she had at Central Station. The only difference was that at sixteen I didn’t let anyone get past second base, but at thirty-three a home run was pretty much guaranteed.
My sexual awakening had occurred between the ages of fifteen and nineteen in seedy low-level train platforms (as above), in rusty sheds, in back lanesand in scout hall bathrooms. In each venue I would be a quivering mess, as I stopped the hand from going there, slapped the hand as it tried to go there, let the hand go a little bit nearer to there … Oh God!
I would pray in church afterwards, saying thirty-three or so Hail Marys, and later worrying that I should have rounded it off to an even number or added the odd Our Father. And this wasn’t even full-blown sex! These prayers were for ‘tweaking’ and ‘fingering’ – the first term referring to the rubbing of nipples to the point of rash, the second to the relentless prodding of teenage digits in all the wrong places. God knows, if I’d done the whole caboodle, I’d have been praying all day.
I don’t know when my Catholicism left me, but it did. Soon after, I stopped lying to Mum and Dad about going to mass, and eventually – just to make sure they knew I was really lapsed – I got pregnant to some fellow in a Tenerife toilet.
What I realise now is that Catholic guilt gave me the best sex of my life. I had at least five years of refusing to go the whole way with my devoted boyfriend. What I would do now to have someone like him work on me day in, day out, work and work and work! I will never find such attention, motivation and dedication again. And I will never feel such scintillating sinful guilt. When I think of that boy – his name was Stewart – I think of someone with incredible knuckles.
After I told my folks that not only did I not know what Father O’Flaherty said in his sermon last Sunday, but that Father O’Flaherty was probably sleeping with his housekeeper, and that I had no intention of going to mass ever again, I went through something of a moral revolution. I put guilt about sex in a box, wrapped it up, and threw it away. Instead of going to mass, I decided to do nice things on a Sunday, like bike-riding and shopping – and I banged away at pretty much anything, ever-skilled at not getting too close. I decided that I should not worry about being respected. Sex was sex was good and proper and I figured any guy who thought a girl should be respectable was a chauvinistic waste of space anyway.
*
As we walked from our idyllic lunch retreat towards Loch Lomond, I wondered if my moral revolution had been ill advised, if I’d gotten it all wrong. I was a single mother. I hadn’t had a long-term relationship since I’d split up with Stewart at nineteen, never having properly consummated our relationship. I was lonely as all hell. Would things have been different if I’d stayed respectable?
CHAPTER TWELVE
Sarah had known for a long time that she and Kyle needed to get away, though her idea of ‘getting away’ was more along the lines of an all-inclusive bubble-wrapped five-star resort with hundreds of people in similar clothes. Her favourite holiday memory was of Dubai, where she and Kyle had been allocated their own private section of the swimming pool to lounge in all day. She had plenty of time of an evening to buff and fake-tan, and the risk of nail breakage was negligible.
Sarah’s therapist had suggested that she let Kyle take control a little more, but when Kyle told her he’d organised a walking trip
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