Re: I SPY

[Louie Crew <lcrew@andromeda.rutgers.edu>]

One of my mother's classmates at Judson College became the Dean of Women at
Baylor.  When I was a freshman at Baylor in 1954, she told my mother that
Baylor was almost leading the nation in the number of female students going
home pregnant.  Some of the most vulnerable came from sheltered rural
baptist congregations, many of whom tended to believe anything that a
ministerial student would tell them.  One even reported that her boyfriend
told her that she was the new virgin Mary and he the Holy Ghost incarnate --
straight out of Chaucer's "Miller's Tale" though I doubt that he had read
it.

One of my "prayer mates" was a particularly attractive student preacher.  At
least three times a week he asked me to pray with him before and after a
date, usually with a different girl on each date. Beforehand we prayed that
he wouldn't slip and have sex with the date and afterwards we asked for
God's forgiveness for him for yielding. After a few weeks of this ritual, I
bowed out telling him that the prayers were not working because they were a
mockery:  "You need to stop implicating God in your refusal to manifest
personal responsibility."

It took me several more years to hold myself to the same standard regarding
my choice to live in the fearful closet, drooling secretly over such
spiritual nincompoots.

The preacher later became a very popular tent evanelist.

I love a line I remember from a book/or movie that I encountered while at
Baylor.  Interviewers asked a woman whether she had ever had sex with
someone after a Pentecostal meeting.  "Yes," she replied, "with the Holy
Ghost and with my boyfriend Willy."

"And which did you prefer," they asked.

"The Holy Ghost was great, but Willy was better," she replied.

Louie