Sometimes I almost envy people who had their adolescence and younger years during the nineteen fifties. Yes it was probably one of the the most puritan and restrictive times in recent history, but that is the point. Restriction creates appetite and seething need. Sex was a sin, so it tasted twice as sweet when finally consumed. It was a time of clandestine fumblings and stolen kisses, and when it was overwhelming joy for a young boy to get as far as feeling his girlfriend's breasts under her prim blouse.
In both Educating Anna and the book I am finishing now, a major character is a girl prevented by circumstances from having the sexual release she needs, and as a result are pressure cookers of erotic arousal which explode into life on the page when they are at last given their head.
A group of people for whom sex is supposed to be permanently off limits is nuns, and we tend to be fascinated them and their lives of tight celibacy. We tend to have one of two views of them, the first being that that their piety is just a front and that their long habits cover sheer stockings and open crotch panties and they spend their days and night behind the convent walls fucking and sucking each other. The alternative fantasy is that they are so frustrated by permanent erotic deprivation that their only sexual outlet is chastising the bare bottoms of any young sinner unfortunate enough to come under their jurisdiction. If that is a thought that turns you on, the following picture is just for you.
A good bit of psychological profiling there, Elizabeth. I was one of those who was "lucky" enough to go to a school run by spanking nuns in the 1950s. And the sister who was principal of the school did seem to take an unseemly relish in dishing out corporal punishment to miscreants who crossed her path, girls included. Of course, teachers also used the paddle for discipline. Was it the times, or the religion? Maybe a little of both.
ReplyDeleteI grew up then. Went to a Catholic school. A very stern but fairly attractive nun once caught a boy playing "pocket pool" in class and reached into his pocket to see what he was playing with. The look on her face was incomparable. Of course he was hauled over his desk for an immediate hard paddling with a wooden ruler while he still had a raging erection. That was the most obvious sex and discipline in her class but not the only. She frequently had bad boys stay behind after class to do punishment chores down in the convent basement.
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