I would masturbate in my bed at night…my mother would often knock on my door:
“Nathan, I know what you are doing. Is that right in the eyes of the Lord?”
Ashamed, I’d fight a raging teenage erection…addicted to this feeling…I had to get off. But Mother was right, it was wrong! Why couldn’t I be righteous? Why couldn’t I follow His Way and be the man He wanted me to be? I couldn’t help it though…I had to finish. Now even more cautious, I’d bury myself into the sheets, slowly massaging myself…I promise this will be the last time Lord! As I finish, I roll over, exhausted.
The bathroom was across the hall from my room. The walls were thin and I could hear her every night crying in the shower:
“Oh Lord, I don’t know what to do anymore! My children have forsaken Your Word and reject me at every passing! I live in a house where no one respects me and my children deceive me!”
As my mother sobbed, continuing her watery flagellation, I prayed. I prayed for forgiveness. I prayed for peace for my Mother. I prayed to be a better son. I prayed to be a better man in the eyes of the Lord. I prayed for him to remove these despicable thoughts and to replace them with good things. I didn’t know I was gay back then. I just knew I was full of sin and deceit.
I masturbated every night. I prayed for forgiveness every night. My Mother cried every night.
Everybody does it. I knew how to do it; it’s programmed into every red-blooded American boy. I knew what to do. It started with the National Geographics. We had a bit of a collection in the past, and I would tear through every one, looking for a glimpse of human anatomy. There was no Internet, and Daddy never had any smut (that I could find). Mother was the spiritual post in the family, and she did a very good job of protecting my sister and me from the “evils” of the world. We were home-schooled, secular music and television both prohibited. Left with the one uncensored glimpse into the world, those pictures of burly bearded men in Russian saunas were the most erotic thing to me. Even to this day, it gets me off.
I was born gay, but I didn’t know this at 13. All I knew was what I was told: it was my Sin Nature…
Read the rest of this essay by Nathan Stang at Bilerico.com…