[callout]This post is an excerpt from chapter 1 — “Chastity: A Better Sexual Ethic” — of my forthcoming book, Chastity Is For Lovers: Single, Happy, and (Still) a Virgin, (Ave Maria Press, 2014).[/callout]
I parked my Plymouth Neon in a dirt lot and skirted the rocks strewn atop it by taking a shortcut across a patch of grass.
My flip-flops finally smacked pavement when I reached the street between the parking lot and the Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute, a complex that covers the quiet, northwest corner of the University of South Florida’s Tampa campus.
I traipsed across a covered courtyard, where a handful of fellow grad students in the Department of Rehabilitation and Mental Health Counseling congregated at picnic tables. I walked into the building. Inside, the cold air eradicated all evidence of the late-afternoon heat from the mid-May sun outside. I took off my sunglasses and turned a couple of corners toward classroom 1636 for the first session of my human sexuality class.
I sat at the back of the room, plugged in my laptop,and pretended not to be nervous. The professor, Dr. Dae Sheridan—a young, spirited sex therapist—interrupted my anxiety by inviting the class to shout the names we know for sexual activity and for the body parts we associate with sex. Continue reading “An Excerpt from Chapter 1 of ‘Chastity is For Lovers’”