My Most Controversial Art Yet. Why?

I grew up smothered by religion. My father and both grandfathers were preachers. Sexual pleasure never came up in family conversations or sermons. To this day. And I’m 66 years old. 

Never will I forget, at around age eleven or twelve, waking up with wet white stuff covering my sheet. I had been dreaming about Mary Ann on Gilligan’s Island. We did not have television, but I saw the show once at my grandmother’s. I felt confused and wondered what to do about this situation. I also questioned if it was normal for this to happen. For some reason, embarrassment and shame swept over my being. I secretly cleaned it up, and nothing was ever said about it. 

A year or so later, while in the shower of our dilapidated mobile home, the stream hit my penis, and it felt good. Instinctively, I lay down and let the water hit my penis, and wow! Pleasure so intense I almost screamed, and again the mysterious white stuff erupted from my penis. I had no idea what had happened. But I dared not say anything about it.   Let’s just say that shower became my best friend.

If this is hard for some of you who are younger to believe, you must know that we had no television, were not allowed to go to the movies, and this was decades before the Internet. I finally got the courage to mention it to a guy at school, and he told me that’s how babies are made. I laughed and said, “That’s not true; my Dad told me he and Mom prayed for me, and that’s how I was born.”

A few short years later, as a man-child, I stood before an altar with a seventeen-year-old girl and was required to say vows that I did not fully understand. I had no accurate concept that the church and state were legally binding me to those oaths and to that girl for the rest of my life. Again, nobody had told us anything about sex. 

It took us three days to figure out how to consummate our marriage. We were both virgins, and she was terrified. At that time, I did not fully realize (and had not been told) that her home was rife with abuse. Her trauma about sex, fear of my larger-than-normal penis, and disgust at my enormous sex drive never abated. 

Somehow, we managed to carve out a thirty-two-year monogamous marriage and two children without ever being fully honest about our sexual needs. As the Internet and porn became accessible, I would try to assuage my aching and massive sexual needs with very innocent “porn” (women doing aerobics in thongs, topless beaches) only to get caught by her and told I was a pervert. My church said the same thing. Sex and pleasure were terrible and sinful. My lust, desires, and longings were abnormal. I did not love the Lord Jesus enough. I had not taken up the cross and denied myself. 

Once the kids were grown and out of the house and my wife had a successful career, I resigned from the ministry because sincere questions about my desires, longings, and religious inconsistencies went, at best, unanswered but more often condemned as sin. 

I knew I did not want to stay in the marriage, but I did not know how to dissolve it. I let our religious community intimidate me into staying in a relationship that was destined for failure. I hated her growing legalism, and she hated my expanding disbelief. Sex became non-existent. And so, unable or unwilling to contain my desires, I had a brief affair, felt guilty and confessed it without getting caught, and was branded a cheater. 

My entire virtuous life and faithfulness to my marriage, children, and ministry for over three decades were disregarded because of three months of “illicit” sexual pleasure over the space of the last five years of a desperately unhappy marriage. I was ghosted by my children and friends and am estranged from them now for thirteen years, having never been allowed to meet my grandchildren. That is on them now. I have begged forgiveness only to be ignored. 

My life and happiness is in my hands. And it has been the most fulfilling and joyous thirteen years of my life. Glorious sex, having my spouse tell me, “You are not a pervert; you are just made to have lots of sex.” Her understanding and encouragement for me to have tantric sex therapy have all been so healing. The religious trauma has not disappeared but is finally mending. 

That is a short version of the long story of why I created these two art pieces. They may seem controversial, but they are an honest expression of my life, longings, and hunger. And honesty was in short supply in my religious first life. If you choose to view them, I hope you will look at them through the window of my life and experience them with empathy rather than condemnation. For me, they have been cathartic to create and to struggle with.

These artworks are not for prudes, or if you consider works of art that combine sexuality with religion and God to be sacrilege.

Stigmata

Jesus and the Healer