One Time.at Band Camp

Except they’re called ‘retreated’. Tricky to describe, and I suppose there are two ways of looking at it. Here’s the Church’s view. 

“Retreat is a place where you can meditate, reflect and pray….a chance to get closer to God and discern His will for you, and how you may serve Him in your life.”

Here’s our view:

“ Retreat is a place where they batter you over the head with demands to enter the priesthood, or religious life. Every minute, of every day they lay a guilt trip on you unless you sign up to be a priest, monk or nun.” 

I went on one…and that only because my BFF was (forced) to go. You can maybe imagine a group of Catholic ‘mammy’s’ all clucking away together like a brood of aged hens. “Ah, sure, isn’t this our Mary’s fourth time at retreat? We’ve got great hopes for her.” Not my parents. They were too well bred and well mannered to say what they were thinking which was “Why the fuck would you want to do that?” They just paid, and away I went. Three weeks at St Cuthbert's.

I should think it’s long gone now, but St Cuthbert’s (known irreverently by us as “St C’s or St Cuntbert’s or Virgin’s Retreat) was run by the ever-present nuns. Only a priest was allowed in once a day for mass, and he, if they could have got away with it, would have been blindfolded at the gates.

I’m not going to bore you with a description of a day in the life there, suffice it to say there were lectures, meditations, prayer by the bucket load and ‘careers’ talks. The only upside was that we had to share a room…and I got my BFF. We were 15 at the time. I was a well-practiced masturbator, and so was she. (When I told her I was going to write this she asked not to be named, and I will respect that, so from now on she is Tara). Tara and I were housed in a cramped little room that used to be a nun’s cell in happier times when there were plenty of nuns in the world. We had rickety bunk beds, a table, and two prie dieus in case we felt the need for a rosary or two in the night. There was no sink or taps, and the ‘bathroom’ was down the hallway….and that, to say the least, was primitive. 

Oh there was also no door on our cell. 

First night there, itchy clits took control of us and we both whispered to each other that we wanted to be the first to wank in this place. “We’ll be the first to have a wank here in the last 150 years!” We giggled like the naughty schoolgirls we were, and spent the next half hour talking crudely about the nuns…especially the Mother Superior, Sister Eunice. “Sure, if she ever touched that wrinkled auld prune between her legs, she wouldn’t squirt, it’d be like a sandstorm in the feckin’ desert!” More badly suppressed giggles. And so it went on, getting cruder and cruder….typical teenage girls really. 

Now, we knew that our minder, a lovely sister called Sister Ann would be patrolling but even nuns need some sleep, and they would be up at some hideously early hour for the first service of their day. (I think they rose at 4:00 or something like that.) we wanted to wait until Sister Ann was asleep, then do our thing. It felt daring enough to do it a) together, and b) in a room with no door. The first night, we succeeded in having a very muted orgasm each, but for me, nothing close to the kind of cums I was capable of even then. 

Over the first week or so, I got more and more frustrated, and more and more daring. Well, daring for a 15 year old, anyway. One night, we had enjoyed our usual whispered, depraved conversation where we had made up jokes about the sex starved nuns and Tara said, “Hey, let’s explore!” Being out of bed was a no-no unless we were unwell. (The nuns used ‘unwell’ to mean sick or periods!…as if we’d tell them when we were on. We all knew, because word had got back, that the only sanitary protection they had consisted of a hideous belt type thing and massive pads with loops at either end….fuck that!) 

Anyway, a late night explore sounded fun, especially as we were in the regulation, ankle-length nightdress, and Tara and me being…well…Tara and me, you can be sure we had nothing on underneath. 

Ever been in a convent? No? Well, let me tell you. There’s a reason monks and nuns wear heavy, long robes/habits. Convents are fucking fridges….even in the height of summer. I’m talking nipple-stretchingly cold. And, since we both knew we weren’t wearing panties, Twat-wettingly as well as we tiptoed through the darkness, the only light being whatever moonlight could find it’s way in. 

If we were caught the worse that would happen is one of us would pretend we had stomach ache or something like that. We passed the open doors of three other cells, where our friends from school were and paused to listen at each, but there was no sign of hidden masturbation…and then we came to Sister Ann’s cell. Again, doorless. (Why, I wonder, were there no doors? Surely, if their discipline was sound, a nun would never dream of masturbating anyway. I guess it just serves to underline the Catholic church’s terror of all things sexual.) 

We had stopped and listened hard, but no sound came through the darkness beyond. We had just taken one step away when we heard, “huh….huuuuh……huuuh!” Very, very faintly, but equally unmistakable to us. We had heard each other cum..and some of our friends….we knew what a cum sounded like…and Sister Ann had definitely just rubbed one off. 

Silence. Utter, impenetrable silence. You do, after all, have to be awake to rub one off. Would she get up? If she was a squirter, she’d need the bathroom, and that mean she’d discover us outside her door, or in the corridor. Her bed creaked. Fuck! Then again. Stupidly, we were either side of her door, our backs to the stone walls, and our hearts beating like hammers. Not to mention a throbbing between our legs. 

Fortunately Sister Ann didn’t leave her cell, and we were able to get back to ours undiscovered, but we knew….oh boy, we knew. We were at ourselves before we had even pulled up the over-startched, scratchy sheets. I came first with Tara not far behind me. 

During our three weeks there, (two remaining) since we had zero interest in the attempted indoctrination, we decided to make a little chart, and see how many places we could get to and rub one off. Our list was:-

Garden

Chapel

Organ loft

Confessional (five extra points for that one…ten if a priest was present!) 

During a seminar (we were both able to cum in our panties during lessons at school..this would be in a more intimate atmosphere)

During mass. (Yes, I know….instant damnation.) 

We also worked out a scorecard for going without panties. Although they obviously disapproved, they did allow us to wear pretty much what we liked in the day. I suppose, to the elderly nuns who thought up this retreat, the devil only tempts good Catholic girls at night…and certainly, they came from an era when sex only happened at night with the lights off, and even then only when a child was desired. I don’t think the Mother Superior thought for a moment that we would even think of doing anything sexual during the packed days they had planned. So, our summer dresses, while looked upon disapprovingly because they showed mid thighs could be easily countered by carrying a rosary at all times. We would run the beads through our fingers as if we were using every spare moment to pray That brought smiles of approval. We looked like innocent little angels….angels with no panties, and wet twats, but angels nonetheless. 

It was a fabulous retreat really. After those frustrating first few days and nights, Tara and I really went for it. I knew the tell-tale signs of orgasm in her, and she knew them in me. We knew each other so well that I could tell the difference between her getting aroused and the moment she came. We covered our orgasms with sneezing, blaming hay fever. 

Looking back, I think that retreat was when Miss Brain gained the power over me that she has. Wandering in that convent garden at lunchtime, rosary in hand, thinking the most depraved thoughts, wearing no undies and squeezing my thighs together and cumming mainly through the power of imagery and thought certainly helped me…helps me…in later life. 

My best cum? Sitting on the lawn, legs stretched out and crossed in front of me, hands on the lawn behind me propping up my body, and my head tilted back. My mind picturing Sister Ann. She had gone to bed after her nightly patrol of us, and couldn’t sleep. In my mind, the devil she confronted daily was that she was attracted to girls…..to me in particular. I saw her in my mind’s eye unable to sleep. Reaching up under her nightdress before pulling it up, under the sheets and blankets until it was round her neck. Had anyone shone a candle into her cell she would have looked still clothed properly. She might have wriggled her underwear down and off. Even lying naked under the blankets made her breath come in short spasms, and then she thought of me in bed. Maybe she imagined me with my hand between my legs….perhaps she imagined my fingers glistening with wetness in the moonlight. Maybe she wondered what it would be like to suck my fingers and taste me…or, better still, suck my twat. Run her tongue up to my clit and poke it at my virgin hole. I hoped and imagined her making me cum into her mouth, and at the exact moment, she came in bed. 

All the time I was thinking this, I was squeezing my thighs rhythmically, imagining every stroke of her tongue. It took longer than usual, but I felt the inevitability of my orgasm build and build until, at the moment I replayed in my mind the “huh..huuuh” that I’d heard that night, I came onto the grass.

Both Tara and me went back home with some very ruined panties…so much so that my mum, when she opened my bag to get the laundry, took one look, turned her head to me with one eyebrow raised and a big smile on her face and said, “Well….no need to ask if you enjoyed retreat!” She knew precisely what I’d spent most of it doing…and loved me the more for it. Looking back, I should have trusted mum more earlier than I did. I was typical of girls my age…when I became sexual, I hid it from my parents - or thought I did - but mum knew….I’m sure she could have given you the date I first came in my panties. She, like all mums was there for me, and when I felt grown up enough to talk with her about sex, she and I spent hours in her den, sipping hot chocolate, and discussing literally everything. No subject was taboo, no thought I had produced even the faintest wrinkle of disapproval. Maybe I’ll tell you about some of these chats sometime. 

**

I am, I would hope, a realist. I don’t believe that many/most of our monks, nuns and priests are fully celibate…at least, I sure as hell hope not! Celibacy is a condition that suits some…but not many. For those upon whom it is forced, surely a good wank now and then is better than their sex drive making itself known as sexually abusing children, or beating them? (Yes, Christian Brothers…I’m looking at you…in BOTH categories.)  I know I’d be far more comfortable knowing my parish priest had a good wank now and then than have him eyeing up his altar servers. I don’t believe celibacy is a sacrifice to God. It’s good window dressing to call it that, and the so-called ‘logic’ that a man can’t serve God and have a family is ridiculous. 

I have seen nasty, tight-lipped, permanently angry Irish Catholic priests. They seem utterly humourless and they way they look at you is chilling - especially if you’re a girl. We had one, `Fr. Patrick who was unspeakably, well, evil is the only word I can use really. He hated girls…teenage girls in particular, and would often lambast us during confirmation classes about the ‘abuses of the body WE caused in men. Apparently, it was all our fault that men were attracted to us, and have “…impure thoughts and actions..with themselves, with each other, with YOU, or with some class of beast”. (Some class of beast????) He would become so animated, little droplets of spit would form in the corner of his mouth. WE were the reason there weren’t enough priests in the world….WE were the reason young men fell into sin….WE, were the reason young men interfered with themselves “ (or presumably the beasts he mentioned earlier)…just as Eve was the source of sin in the Garden of Eden, so young women are the cause of sin in the world today.” Well, me being me….”Father, surely it was the serpent who beguiled Eve in the garden….it was the serpent that brought sin-the notion of sin-into the garden…and wasn’t the serpent male?” Ever been thrown out of a confirmation class by an apoplectic priest? Write to me…I’ll tell you what it’s like! 

Looking back at this man, there was nothing wrong with him that a sex worker couldn’t have fixed for $20.