We didn’t have classes in sex education when I attended a Catholic high school in the 1950s. We learned about it from more knowledgeable boys.  Not only was there no sex education, there was hardly any consummated sex.

    That is not to say we didn’t talk about sex, or dream of it, or plan ways of getting it. 

    We Catholic boys operated under strict rules and prohibitions taught by the priests and nuns: We were strictly to avoid "occasions of sin."  Those were entertainments and places where you knew you might be tempted to consider sexual sin as something pleasurable.

    Movies with suggestive scenes, of course, could be an occasion of sin. Pinup photos of scantly clad women were not to be ogled.  BUT if you  accidentally saw a girl in a bra in a magazine, no sin.  HOWEVER, if having turned the page, you should flip back it in order to lecherously gaze on that picture,  you were guilty of the sordid sin of lust.

    That was just the preliminaries. Intercourse outside of marriage was not only a very serious sin, only a little short of premeditated murder, but if you seduced a girl and awakened her sexual desires, you were responsible for all the sexual sins SHE would commit thereafter.  We had a lot of responsibilities and guilt.

    It was a common belief among we boys that females had little interest in sex and accepted it in marriage only out  of a sense of duty and a desire to have children.  Most of the girls we knew did little to disabuse us of that misconception.

    Teachings about sex were not much different than they are today.  We were taught that sex was intended only for marriage.  If you truly loved a girl you waited until then and you stayed with her and cared for her the rest of your life.  After the wedding, not only was the stain of sin and guilt removed, but it became a means of gaining grace in the sight of God. Sex wasn’t as free then as it is now, but I’m not sure we missed all that much.

    Our classes never went into details of what intercourse was. Matter of fact, some of the nuns didn’t seem to know what intercourse was, at least not in the sense we lewdly think of it.  A woman friend of mine told of going to high school at a boarding school run by nuns in that period.  The nuns, she said, thought of intercourse in its lesser used meaning of conversation between two individuals.  So, a posted sign in the lounge of the woman’s dorm stated: "Intercourse between men and women will be permitted in this lounge only between 7 and 10 p.m."

      At a high school reunion a few years ago, one of my female classmates, by then a grandmother, told me that when she was in high school "virgin" to her meant only the Virgin Mary. So, when a raunchy boy from a public high school asked her "Are you a virgin?" she shook her head, puzzled.  "Of course not.  Do you think I’m the Mother of God?"

    F--k was used as an expletive by boys and men, as it is today, even before we knew what it meant.  But it was rarely used in public or in a good home. It was a word used in men's’ bars, in the plant and in the army and navy.  It was never used on the stage or in movies and rarely in books.  It was never used by a gentleman before girls or women.

    Given that background, the following story, told to me by a gray-haired Catholic high school graduate, is credible:

    As a teenager, she gave a more sexual wise acquaintance — a public school girl — a lift in her car.

    "You know what I want right now?  A good f--k," said the girl.

    My friend wasn’t sure what she meant but she tried to be generous.

    "We’re coming to a drug store.  I’ll stop and buy you one."

    Many of high school companions were uncertain and highly imaginative about sexual matters. For instance, there were many arguments and bets made about where babies came out.  Many of us held to the theory that it came out of a woman’s belly button, that burst open on delivery day expelling the baby. The button was then sterilized and taped or sewn back together by doctors or midwives — that was why, in the movies, women assisting at births always called for buckets of hot water.

    That theory was particularly believable because my mother was shocked when women in the movies exposed their belly button.  It was wrong, she said, because that’s where babies were attached when they were born.

    Those were the days before sex was perfected.  (That didn’t happened until the late 1960s — in a workshop at Berkeley.) Since sex was still in its early, primitive stages, it’s not surprising that we were equally ignorant about the science behind conception.

    The basic matter of sex, whether a girl "put out"  was the major focus of our thoughts and conversations. Smoking was an almost certain sign.  If a girl smoked, she was being rebellious and was likely to be liberal in sexual matters.  Unfortunately, few of the Catholic girls we knew smoked.

    Dillworth, our expert on commercial sex, held that girls got muscular legs by screwing.  A girl with muscular legs was either an avid bicyclist or a whore.

       In high school my interest in girls was intense. I  was aroused looking at partly clothed female bodies.

  The local newspaper regularly printed pictures of well-endowed females in swim suits or shorts and tight fitting sweaters. 

    I was denied the front section of the paper where all the war news was printed. My mother believed it would be too upsetting for a young boy.

    Being denied a look at the war news was not that much of a concern to me. I was happy with the back sections.  That’s where Ernie Pyle and the girly photos were.  I cut the pictures out along with sizzling photos from the magazine ads so I could commit the sin of lust at my leisure.

       I hid the photos behind a large picture of the Virgin Mary hanging on the wall of my room. I saved so many that the back bulged.

    One day my mother came in my room to dust and search. She bumped the Virgin’s picture and the erotic clippings exploded from the back of portrait and cascaded down the wall onto the floor.

    My mother was horrified.  She gave me a few hard slaps, forbade me to see a movie or listen to the radio for a month and insisted that I make an Act of Contrition aloud immediately and go to confession as soon as possible.

    "We didn’t teach you immoral things like this," she observed.

    True enough.  Wickedness came naturally to me. The devil had me in his power.