Sex Ed Threatened in Poland

I was brainwashed in middle school; it’s only getting worse.

Poland, 2004. “Puberty,” I read in my middle-school biology textbook, “is a time of overwhelming and confusing sexual desires. To manage the impulses of this perilous life-stage, we recommend filling your schedule with as many extracurriculars as possible. That way, you’ll fall asleep as soon as your head touches the pillow, safe from temptation.”¹

The textbook was mistaken; no number of extracurriculars was enough. Facedown on my bed in the dead of night, I was never too exhausted to feel my body. The more forbidden it was, the louder the call, and so I let myself believe my body’s fiction: that this was only pleasure, that what felt so good couldn’t be so wrong. That in the privacy of my bedroom, I could do whatever I pleased; no one would ever know, so no one would get hurt. Against the evidence of every past experience, my body urged that this road was heading somewhere beautiful, towards bliss greater even than what I felt now.

I loved this imaginary world while it lasted, and so I stretched out the act until I could no longer hold it, until the final contraction brought me back to the real world, until with that final gasp I would realize: I had sinned again.