How I Was Raised to Think About Sex

God intended sex to happen between a man and a woman when they were married, in order to make children, my mother explained.

My mother’s sex talk was immediately reminiscent to the period talk, albeit this time it was her who initiated the conversation. I’ll never know why, at 6am one day before school, while drinking her morning cup of coffee, she thought to ask me if I knew what sex was.

We were sitting in the living room, where she never bothered with lights until after dinner. I didn’t mind the darkness, not being a morning person, but that morning I was even more grateful for its shroud.

I blushed as I faltered with an appropriate answer. I didn’t want to disappoint her with my already-acquired knowledge, but I also didn’t want her description of the process.

I settled on a mumbled “kind of,” through a mouthful of PopTart.

This prompted an explanation from her that wasn’t much more informative than what Jeremy Martin had told the recess crowd one day years before, gathered around the slide. But where Jeremy had been gregarious, almost crude in his description of a penis going into a vagina, my mother was devout.

God intended sex to happen between a man and a woman when they were married, in order to make children, my mother explained.

She switched from using the term “sex” to “making love.”

Her attempts at explaining how periods played into this realm fell flat as she skirted around the topic of ejaculation. She entirely avoided discussing pleasure, consent, or contraception.

She clearly had called one of her sisters later that morning, who must have informed her that my sex talk at twelve years old was well past overdue. In turn, she decided to bring up the subject at the dinner table to preemptively inform ten-year-old Byron and eight-year-old Molly, perhaps before a classmate could get to them.

My dad remained silent as my mother again emphasized abstinence and marriage.

Byron summed up my mother’s sermon with his usual candor, “Okay, Mom, we don’t want to talk about this with you when we’re eating.”

Molly giggled uncomfortably, looking confused about why she should care about this topic.

We kids all excused ourselves as soon as possible, leaving our mother feeling quite progressive as she settled into a decaf coffee and Weight-Watchers approved dessert with my dad.

I tried to blow the whole thing off, but this mindset would have some serious implications when it came to how I defined sex later in life.

What if there’s no love involved at all?

Does it count as sex if there’s no P in the V?

What is virginity — really, what actually “counts” as sex?