My Dead Grandmother Watched Me Having Sex

Haunting myths I learned about sex from my Christian upbringing

Christianity can be scary! Not in the way that monsters are scary; it’s more ominous than that. Christianity shadows you…

I cut ties with the church long before I left my parent’s house, but certain biases — especially those related to my sexuality — followed me long after.

When I spent the first half of my twenties in one of the rainiest cities in the world, I became closely acquainted with the permeating black mold that haunts the poorly insulated downtown rentals.

If you’ve ever encountered it, you’ll know that it’s one of the most stubborn organisms to inhabit the planet: No matter what you do to remove it, it won’t go away:

Spray it down with toxic cleaners; it comes back. Paint over it; it still comes back. Remove the whole damn wall; it shows up on your ceiling.

It’s some freaky stuff!

Christianity is like black mold

You may denounce and decry, dismiss and diverge, but the spores of your childhood doctrines will stubbornly sprout and force their way back up to the surface nonetheless.

One concept I’ve struggled eradicate is that of my deceased relatives, especially my dad’s mother, watching me from heaven.

I was in fifth grade when I remember the idea taking shape. Walking home from a snow-sledding triple-date (…) my boyfriend and I stopped to kiss on the way.

Though I’d been smooching since before I was five, this was a real kiss. Not quite the French kind, it was more than a peck.

I knew I was bound to sin

I arrived home to find my grandmother sitting in the living room. As always, her hands were folded atop the embossed gold cross on her leather-bound bible.

— How was your evening, my girl? I hope you didn’t do anything I wouldn’t do! grandma squeaked.

As I mumbled something about playing with my friends, obviously omitting the kissing-part, a morbid thought hit me:

— Damn, she can’t be around much longer. I’m becoming a teenager and I will definitely sin!

I dreaded being a disappointment, and, sensing my burgeoning sexuality, there seemed no way around it: I’d already kissed a boy and knew with great certainty that this was just the faint beginnings of the slew of ungodliness that I was about to get myself into.

Then, an even more terrifying thought fell into my head:

— If she dies, she’ll watch it all from heaven!

Much like God himself, I believed angels to be all-seeing and omnipresent. I pictured grandma, bible in hand, peeking over a cloud to witness me, awkwardly undressing and giving my budding body over to some pimpled teenage boy.

I shrugged.

Thank God (!), the decision was out of my hands, and she passed a few years later — right at the cusp of my personal avalanche into the pits of damnation.

Your father watches, too!

— How do you feel about the fact that your father will be watching you from heaven when you lose your virginity?

Instead of saying something sweet and sympathetic, as most normal people would, my corrupted logic kicked in when I first met my friend Marta in middle school, and learned that she’d lost her father a few years back.

I still wonder why she spoke to me again, but can only assume she must have brushed it off as a sick joke.

Her hovering image persisted, but never stopped me from being a secret ‘bad girl’.

It was no joke to me though. While grandmother had never mentioned sex around me, she remained a looming embodiment of virtue.

She watched me through all of my awkward teenage experimentations, from my first drink and hit from a joint, through giggly nights of strip-poker and nervous online porn searches. She lurked in the background through rudimentary attempts at mutual manual sex and timid tries at fellatio.

She saw it all!

— Sorry, grandma, you’re not gonna like this, please look away…

I became equipped with ‘sin-bells’

Her hovering image persisted, but never stopped me from being a secret bad girl. I was simply grateful that, at the very least, she couldn’t rat me out to the rest of the family—not yet.

With her gaze on me, I continued, steadfast, down the path towards purgatory, doing my best to ignore the sin-bells that sounded whenever I encountered something that challenged my childhood creed.

I call them that; the little alarms that ring each time Satan approaches, apple in hand.

I spoke with the trees and the forest nymphs, with God and my imaginary friends, with angels and with the spirits in my self-made Ouija board — all with the same voice.

Perhaps it was my thrill-seeking, slightly rebellious nature that got me fired up, rather than fearful, whenever I defied my cultivated beliefs: I learned to tune out the bells, even when they ascended to a vociferous orchestra.

I fondly recall the first time I entered Berlin’s most infamous techno club over a decade ago: Scaling the colossal concrete stairs, past a monumental mural of Sodom and Gomorra, I thought: “These are the foregrounds to hell”. And, as I submerged myself into the ocean of half-naked bodies oscillating to the beat, far eclipsing the bell-orchestra, all I could think was “fuck yes — Look at me now, Grandma!”.

Once a witch…

Beyond my unruly leanings, I always had an inner-knowing that there was nothing wrong with the multifacetedness of my nature, despite what the church, or any of my relatives, tried to tell me.

I’ve been witchy since I can remember, and as a small girl, I smoothly oscillated between roles: Roaming the woods wearing long skirts; sticks and burdock adorning my hair, one moment, I’d sing at the front of the church choir the next.

Before I hit puberty, I spoke with the trees and the forest nymphs, with God and my imaginary friends, with angels and with the spirits in my self-made Ouija board—all with the same voice.

As I grew up further, the deeprooted hypocrisies of the church became progressively apparent. While I learned the bible to clearly state; “don’t judge, or you too will be judged” (Matthew 7:1), the Christians in my family must have missed that passage.

My Apostolic pastor-uncle undoubtedly fancied himself God-like and was quick to point a finger; my lesbian cousin was told she was a hellbound whore and my mother, too, would perish if she dared to leave my dad—which she did regardless.

I continued to see the cherry-picking of passages from the bible used as tools to stress whatever self-serving point the oppressors wanted to underscore.

I witnessed the upholding of outdated patriarchal standards as means to bridle female sexuality and smother any sign of revolt.

Twenty-five years since her passing, my grandmother and I have made our peace: Not only would I be vain to think, with all the stuff she could possibly be looking at from up there, that she’d have any concern for my comparably vapid vices, I no longer believe she’s judging me.

My grandmother was never the real issue

It was never she who loomed in the shadows, but patriarchy’s outdated attempts at muzzling the feminine spirit.

The image projected by my grandmother wasn’t created by her at all. She, too, had a straightjacket—a much tighter one than mine—pulled over her head since childhood, like her mother, and her mother’s mother before her.

It was never she who loomed in the shadows, but patriarchy’s outdated attempts at muzzling the feminine spirit.

The church is scared of my sexuality

The stifling of the divine feminine dates back to the very beginning of Christianity when the role of Mary Magdalen as Jesus’ lover and consort became bastardized and brushed under the rug.

The dismissal of Magdalen as a sinful woman and a whore partially birthed the indoctrinations of guilt, shame, and fear that brought us the age of Patriarchal dominance.

Personally, it was by fully connecting back to my own raw, uncurbed sexuality in my thirties and remembering my ‘inner knowing’—though what I can only describe as an awakening—that I finally found the cure for the ‘black mold’:

I didn’t just take down a wall, but built a whole new house for myself—one with room for all of me, including my ever-blossoming sexuality.

While the programmed ‘sin-bells’ go off occasionally, they’re now merely background buzz, and even a welcome reminder of how far I’ve come.

It might be a stretch, but nowadays, I like to imagine that grandma’s even a little proud, if she bothers to peek. I’m sure she sees that I’m not all that bad, but rather a bit badass for finally daring to break out of our puritan ancestral shackles.

Today, as I put on my stay-ups and pull up my over-knee boots to go to a ‘very sinful sex party’, I wink at her in the mirror: “What do you say, grandma?”.

— Fabulous! she squeaks back. Have a lovely evening, my girl—and please, do all the things that I wouldn’t do!