Clearly this 'fast' is not only too little, too late, but is almost laughably tied to the symptom (the "All Is REALLY Well In Zion" cliche of SSRIs) rather than the cause (me).
What's more, is that I wasn't two hours into my day and half an hour into my calling, when my focus turned to a ravishing redhead (mid-twenties, about 5'9", slender, bright green eyes, cheekbones through the roof and an incendiary, Ginger Grant-like mane...in fact, she's not dissimilar to Tina Louise in her uncharted desert island prime) who was seated nearby, continually bending her head backwards as if she had a sore neck. I wondered, "Rough night?"Everyone with whom I associate in my calling has a temple recommend (now, whether they're fully-worthy True Believers or whether they're like me or worse, I can't tell you, but they're card-carriers, long story, just trust me on it), so I then wondered, "Do good Mormon girls have amazing sex? And I don't mean, 'Darling, thank you, that was so edifying,' sex. I mean, 'Wowwwww, I thought my brains were going to explode! Let's do that again! Now!!!' sex, and if so, do they do it without feeling dirty, or is there invariably a compromise of some kind?" And then I remembered hearing recently about a republished report by two B.Y.U. sociologists, in which nearly 60% of L.D.S. women claimed to have had premarital sex:
Fifty-eight percent of Mormon women admit to having sexual intercourse before marriage. Mormons have been slowly accommodating their behavior to the norms of the surrounding culture, yet these changes have scarcely been recognized by the LDS leadership, who still require premarital chastity. "No doubt, dramatic changes in sexual norms have . . . created a generation gap between leaders and the youth," said Tim Heaton, one of the sociologists who analyzed the sexual behavior and marital trends among Mormon women. "These trends coupled with some reluctance to discuss sexual issues openly could lead to an increasing discrepancy between official codes of conduct and actual behavior."
Noting that the report was from 1991, I wondered how much those numbers had changed (surely upwards) subsequently. I wondered--not for the first time--whether it was "worth it" for me to have made it to marriage sans coitus, if ~2/3 of the YW & RS-ers around me were knockin' boots at the time. I wondered what it would entail for a gal like that to hook up with a guy like me, and whether both of us would let the imminent shattering of homes and lives restrain us at the critical moment.
She gave her husband a playful peck on the cheek after we had dismissed. They seemed genuinely happy, or at least chipper enough, and I wondered about cause and effect, chicken and egg.
I was angry for most of the rest of the day. I seethed through my remaining meetings. I told my wife tonight that I hated being at church today, and that the most frustrating part was that I wasn't exactly sure why. (Which was true, at the time.) I wasn't repulsed by the doctrine. I like most of the people, some of them a great deal. But I was churning inside. Boiling. "Did you maybe start the day off wrong somehow and it just went downhill from there?" Bingo. Ginger. I didn't answer her.So anyway, I put nothing of value into my 'fast' and, not surprisingly, got nothing of value in return, other than extra appreciation for some sensational chicken parmigiano my wife pulled out of the oven this afternoon. This evening, I asked her, "Do whatever you want with your body and your brain. I'm not going to try to intervene there. But please don't do it while you're nursing. I'm sure everything and everyone will say it's safe, that there's no transfer, no risk. If you choose to take that stuff, great, do it, but please, please stop nursing first or take it when you've weaned him."
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