Reflections from Richard Cranium: St. Mary's Sex Drive

By Richard Cranium

Religion - the opiate of the masses according to Marx. It represents the best and worst in humanity through charity and war.

In some cases, charitable wars.

In the most Christian sense, it can be more charity than conflict as in the case of the Episcopal Church where charity represents the ongoing war to make humanity better. Here, in a humble and friendly environment, the study and application of the Christian faith yields an active participation within the church’s community. Food drives, soup kitchens, fund raisers, and bake sales are all voluntarily conducted with the proceeds given back to the community to improve their spiritual, emotional, and physical wellbeing. One such drive was planned and conducted with the most noble of intentions by St. Mary’s Episcopal Church to which I am a parishioner. Unfortunately, something went quite awry, and the community never looked on the Church the same again.

As all church functions do, this one began with a call from the Rector (our Priest) for the parishioners to find a unique way to engage with and improve the local community. Due to an unusual rise in teen pregnancies sweeping through the closest neighborhoods to our Church, the Youth Minister, a middle-aged female named Janice Mills, decided an awareness campaign on sexual activities among minors would be a prudent way to answer the Rector’s call and address the rise in copulatory deviancy among the youth she had been charged to look after. The whole event would center around a group of tents in front of the chapel where stations would be established to address prophylactics, pregnancy concerns, the dangers of casual partners, what to expect when you’re a teenage mother, and financial awareness. To be honest, I am still not sure who decided on the name of the event, but a week later (once plans were solidified and roles were dictated to the vestry) a bold twenty-foot banner was hung across the front and rear doors of the church which read, “St. Mary’s Sex Drive” complete with dates and times for the event and a small sub-title below that read, “Come, sit, and spin a tale or two with us.”

As the weeks moved from conception to reality, there were some rumblings among the locals over the sign and what it was supposed to represent. Although most people simply laughed at the well-intentioned desire by the congregation, there were a few angry mothers who voiced their concerns to the front office. This sent queries to the Rector and his staff over a possible revision to the sign. A final decision was made the week before the event to remove the subtitle and replace it with a long white piece of tape which read in bold sharpie marker, “Join us for a deeper examination of the female anatomy.” Of course the tape, being bought quickly at a local discount super-chain, gave way to the rain a few days after and began to peel off leaving the message as, “Come, sit, and spin the female anatomy.”

Needless to say, the calls increased.

These were the warning signs the vestry chose to lay in God’s hands believing that the event would yield more good than harm. The health of the community was seen as precedent, so Mrs. Mills and her Youth Group went to work on a clear Saturday morning in late October. Across the circle drive at the main entrance of the church stood blue tarped tents with white plastic tables underneath. Each table had a sign designating the service it would freely provide for the purpose of the event while a volunteer from the congregation sat behind it with a smile and specially made tee-shirt with “St. Mary’s Sex Drive” scrawled across their chest. Most of the volunteers were older members of the church who had been in monogamous relationships for decades and had the allusion that they understood the current culture of sexual exploits within the youth. Their experience of “marriage sex” gave them what they thought was the upper hand in a new battle that was being waged within the hidden corners of the neighborhood by the teenage citizenry.

Mr. and Mrs. Tom Bradford manned the “Life as a Teenage Mother” tent where they were prepared to explain the difficulties of raising a baby and the financial responsibilities that the baby would demand once it arrived. Mrs. Mills herself manned the prophylactic table where she had an assortment of bananas, cucumbers, and a water pistol prepared for demonstrating the proper use and function of a condom. Mr. Livingston and his teenage son manned the table that addressed the dangers of multiple casual partners complete with a small felt board where the elder Livingston had prepared small felt stick people to illustrate the spiderweb of partners a one-night stand would produce.

But the most interesting of the tables was the one anchored by Mrs. Sylvia Kincaid. Mrs. Kincaid was a forty-year prudish member of the church and community and had seen many youth come and go through her church. Her main job on this particular day was to offer an opportunity for any youth who wanted to confess their sexual transgressions to a matriarch of the community. It seemed, when she demanded the table and opportunity from Mrs. Mills, that it was one of those ideas that couldn’t hurt anyone. At least, Mrs. Mills thought, no teenager in their right mind would openly tell any kind of secrets to this woman much less a recounting of their sexual exploits. So, she relented to the senior member, and gave her the table.

As for myself, I was relegated to helping direct pedestrian traffic to the table of best interest along with the Rector and our Deacon. We were the first wave in what we felt would be a fantastic opportunity to interact with the local community as we moved into the holiday season and our busiest time at the church.

Activities began right at 9 am, and none of us were ready for the deluge of curiosity that crowded the half circle drive where we had set up camp. Within a half hour, it started to become clear that we were well outmatched for what we were trying to accomplish.

The first casualty was Mrs. Mills. In her first foray into demonstrating the proper technique of placing a condom onto a cucumber, she fell victim to the packaging and wrestled relentlessly with the packet as it would not tear. Although the three young boys who were present for this display stumbled into giggles over her inabilities to actually get to the condom, what they filmed was the cucumber she had placed in her mouth as she tried to open the packet. Once the packet succumbed to her frustration, her knowledge of when and where she was disappeared, and she proceeded to place the condom onto the cucumber while it still sat protruding from her mouth. Within ten minutes there was a TikTok video of the event. By 3 pm, it had 2 million views.

Mr. Livingston was next to fall. The night before, the elder Livingston had drank a bit too much of his favorite rye while eating an enormous amount of tacos laced with Old El Paso and Texas Pete. Suffice it to say, he made many trips to the men’s room located just within the doors of the sanctuary where he left his 15-year-old heir to man a booth about hookup culture. At one point, on his return, Livingston was astonished to see his precious felt stick figures in compromising positions as his son was explaining what he thought he could do for the teenage girl who stood watching on in clear curiosity and abject desire. Mr. Livingston rescued his stick figures and admonished the boy for what he had done. The boy, however, had already accomplished what he had set out to do and scored the girl’s number along with 6 others Mr. Livingston had the unfortunate luck of not intervening with.

The Bradford’s fought the battle of explaining to pregnant and new mothers that they were not there to help them with their applications for family assistance, while the Rector and Deacon kept having to chase young boys down who were stealing condoms only to return manned with water bombs ready to explode against the cars parked in the adjacent parking lot.

During all of this, however, the real drama was unfolding with Mrs. Sylvia Kincaid. At the height of the chaos, shortly before noon, a young lady who had been labeled as a lose player at her local high school had come in earnest to find a way to correct her deviant ways and mend her reputation. When she first sat down across from the stern Kincaid, she asked quietly what she needed to do to make things right. After a stern lecture about the negatives of sleeping around all “willy nilly,” the girl, almost in tears, asked if she should confess her transgressions before the old Kincaid. Sylvia agreed, and the girl, after a deep breath, began her tale.

What happened next was the complete and utter dismantling of the spiritual strength that Sylvia Kincaid projected. The girl began with her first sexual encounter in fifth grade with a boy from another class across the hall. The fact that she couldn’t be too sure of penetration did not matter to the shocked matriarch as she admonished the girl before asking if that was the only time with that boy. The girl, caught off guard by the question, relented, “oh, no Mrs. Kincaid. We did it again in 7th, 9th, 10th, and 11th grade. We even did it last week.” Trying to put the puzzle together, Kincaid asked if this was her only partner. The girl quietly shook her head.

By the time she had gotten to her exploits in the 6th grade, Mrs. Kincaid had waved our Deacon over for backup. By the time she was describing the first few months of 9th grade, we were all concerned that communion would be needed for Sylvia. By 11th grade, Kincaid was fully replaced by the Deacon and Rector while myself and Mrs. Mills led Mrs. Kincaid into the chapel where we were able to help her lay down and recuperate. By the time the whole ordeal was over, the girl had converted to our faith and was discussing her plans for her future. She had found what she had been looking for, and was excited to find a community that she could engage with and participate in.

Mrs. Kincaid, however, was never the same.  

The scheduled time for closing down was originally 5 pm. By 2 pm it was painfully obvious that the event was a complete and utter failure save the young lady who met with Mrs. Kincaid. The first act of attempting to end the shit show was taking down the signs which was accomplished rather quickly by the assistant to the Rector and Choir Master who worked at breakneck speed to kill the bleeding. By 2:30 pm we had most of the tents taken down and tables emptied for breakdown. By 3 pm, the church was empty as we all fled to our homes to hide.

The next day, the local paper pronounced on page 5 that the event was a striking success in accomplishing how the community didn’t really need to know about sexual matters and the church itself learned a bit more than it probably wanted to. Within the congregation, the event was never mentioned with more than a low hanging head and a quiet, “The Drive” as its only acknowledgement. But what we learned most that day had nothing to do with the community or our misguided belief that we could save the community from teen pregnancy. No, what we learned is that in the midst of the most insane chaos that we ourselves created and fostered, there is always at least one person who genuinely wanted to reach out and change their path.

That was the success of St. Mary’s Sex Drive.