Sex Education in the Bible Belt

The Rube and the Carnies and the Naked Lady

(Memoir Excerpt © 2019 Steve Russell)

Sex at the movies was usually in the many films loosely based on Biblical stories. The first female nipple I ever saw on the screen was on one of those dancing girls who always managed to show up in Biblical epics. The Princess Theater showed the Brigitte Bardot vehicle, And God Created Woman, from which the kids of my age only heard whispered rumors about Bardot’s backside because we were not allowed to buy tickets.

There was more sex education in the theater than on the screen. I remember sitting down close to the front once and hearing some stir behind me. I turned about to see the scion of one of the swell Bristow families applying himself vigorously to giving a blow job to one of his equals. As his head bobbed up and down, I overheard something about his having lost a bet.

Another time, in the balcony, I chanced to see one of the high school seniors with a date, his hand deeply down the back of her pants. Attention gotten, I sat down and watched him unhook her bra. I wondered if such wonders would be in store for me some day.

It seemed so unlikely at the time. My only lesson in post-pubescent female anatomy came as I left the octopus ride brought by one of the traveling carnivals that did a stand in Bristow every year and caught the bally. Or, I should say the bally caught me.