Yesterday, I was thinking about an incident that took place when I was a teenager--when I was a sophomore in high school, if memory serves. I was thinking about it because (1) it encapsulates in one vignette everything I have ever come to associate with religion and sexuality (for better or worse :)) and (2) it constitutes one of the formative experiences I had as a teenager with women and with sexuality.

I was 15, if I recall, and church for me was one of those drudgeries that came with the fact that I still lived with my parents and did not (at that point) have a driver's license. I belonged to a Mennonite denomination, and while our church did not fit the stereotype of the horse and buggy, the plain farm clothes, and the pacifism people usually associate with Mennonites as a result of seeing films like The Witness (btw, The Witness is set within an Amish community, not a Mennonite community, and the Amish certainly do not see themselves as Mennonites), this congregation had all the charm one would expect a rural white congregation with a conservative bent to have. We stood up, sang a few hymns, bowed our heads as the leadership prayed, and sat for 30-45 minutes for a sermon that, in many cases, was utterly forgettable.

At this point in my life, I had begun to develop an avid interest in the occult, as Christianity was proving (in my opinion back then) to be a farcical religion of hypocrites and hateful people without truth and without power. I was rather angry with the world, I was angry with myself, and I was angry at a God who seemed much like the Christians I was around most of the time . . . full of rules, regulations, and "do rights" but not much else. As a result, I tended to drown out whatever was going on during Sunday morning services with my latest ideas for a short story or novel, or the neat new things I was learning about spirituality and mysticism outside the Christian world.

This Sunday morning, however, was different.

I sat in the balcony--my first mistake. I had discovered a few weeks earlier that most of the "cool" teenagers sat in the balcony of the church (largely to talk to each other during the service), so I made my way up the stairs to the balcony, as I had many Sundays before, thinking I was going to get some camaraderie, gossip, or something to make the whole ordeal worthwhile.

I sat down in one of the folding chairs the church staff had placed in the balcony (which did not contain pews), one row in front of several other high school students (some of whom went to my school). As the sermon began, I settled back in my chair for another long snoozer--one of the guys behind me was cavorting with his girlfriend, who was visiting the church for the first time. Around me, there was more small talk, whispered so that people below the balcony couldn't hear the high school students' disregard of the sermon and overall aspects of having to attend church against their will.

At some point--I'm not sure when it was--I felt a foot on my lower back side, pressing against it.

I was irritated. After all, if someone wanted to make himself more comfortable by putting his feet on the chair in front of him, he was welcome to it, as far as I was concerned. Putting a foot on another teenager's back side, however, is a challenge, and one not to be made lightly.

I brushed the foot aside and sat back, occupying my thoughts with the nightmares and exquisitely dark fantasies inside me. :)

That is when it began.

Suddenly I felt a girl's high-heeled shoe pressing against my side. It was a slow, rhythmic motion, and it was not the absent-minded thump of a foot on someone's back. It continued steadily, the foot slowly traveling around my side.

It was at once exploitative and exciting. I felt a rush inside me at the thought of a girl giving me this kind of attention--and a revulsion at the way that my feelings and desires were being toyed with. I heard the laughter of the high school kids behind me as the activity progressed--and I instantly knew that the culprit was the girl who had come along with her boyfriend to my church for the first time.

I was being invaded, violated--and I liked it.

On it continued, through the rest of the sermon, through the benedictory prayer, and through the benediction itself. The laughter continued, the high-heeled foot continued to travel over my thigh, and I continued to feel a unique mixture of shame and pleasure. At the service's end, I stood up, turned, and caught the assailant with my eyes.

I was at a loss then for how to react (what teenager ever isn't at a loss for how to react to anything?), and in an attempt to appear casual and collected, I said to her, "Were you trying to tell me something?"

All I got from her was a blank stare as she edged past me toward the stairs.

It would be unfair of me to categorize this experience as a defining one in my sexual or religious orientation--but it did, I think, serve to reinforce the "truths" I held to be self-evident at the time:

1. No one who says he is Christian really is one.

2. Church is a place of spiritual and emotional violence and manipulation.

3. Women are not to be trusted. Their only goal is to provoke your most sensitive feelings so they can humiliate you in front of others.

To be honest, these are not maxims I have deviated from very significantly over the past 20 years (especially #3). I still find it hard to trust Christians, Christian organizations, and women.

However, things are changing, and with the passing of each new day, it becomes possible for me to envision a time when I trust freely again.