It’s been three years since I had my fallopian tubes removed (a.k.a. elective tubal saplingectomy surgery).
Other than the initial consultation with my doctor (she trusted me to make decisions about my body without question — shocking behavior), the process was unremarkable: a few hours in a hospital on the really good drugs, a few days of rest and taking it slow, and tiny twin incisions on my lower abdomen that, three years later, are almost gone. ¡Voila! A vision made real: no bebes, ever.
This summer, I went back to church.
Spirituality and religion were big questions in the early days of Skinny Black Girl. I was 24, a not-baptized, but regular service-attending Christian, coming to grips with not desiring marriage or children. Nor did I plan to stop fornicating. I didn’t just like sex. Sex was heady, powerful, an art form. I never felt more womanly than when losing myself in giving and receiving pleasure. I could channel aspects of my personality that otherwise lie dormant. Praise and worship were one thing, but nothing moved me in the spirit like the mind-body union of sex. When friends asked “So, what? You’re never gonna get married and just keep sleeping with people?” it haunted me every Sunday I refused to ask for deliverance from the flesh.
“We all have faults,” another friend said during one of my final showdowns, “but we try to change to be more like Jesus.”
“I don’t want to change to fit a religion,” I replied. “I need a religion that fits me.”
Continue reading
A Girl Named Rob 