Lutheran Guilt

Sex and the Divinity Student

Sin Boldly!
  • “When Her Pom-Poms Fly”

    “When Her Pom-Poms Fly”

    Autumn has arrived. “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,” as Keats put it. It also marks the return of America’s secular religion, football. And I suppose it could be said that the priestesses of this religion are prancing on the sidelines in outfits that expose a tantalizing amount of skin, gyrating their taut bodies.

    A reality show about the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders is titled America’s Sweethearts, which implies that these particular priestesses are vestals. The squad does market itself with a cloying wholesomeness designed, as one critic suggests, to appeal to a Southern evangelical subculture. The cheerleaders’ off-field behavior is strictly controlled (fraternizing with the players is verboten) to preserve their clean-cut image. One of the show’s stars striving to make the team was a cute sorority girl engaged to her college boyfriend who earnestly says, “I hope they look at me and see Jesus.”

    Seeing her in her skin-tight white hotpants, sexy white cowboy boots, and knotted blue blouse that reveals her cleavage, I doubt that the first thing that comes to mind is the carpenter from Nazareth. Her dance routines evoke for one journalist (and former cheerleader) the thought “that girl is freaky. As in: in bed.” Admiring video of her in action, I was struck about how her moves on the field weren’t far removed from those of a stripper on stage.

    That’s because the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders have always been about sex. Introduced in the early 1970s (around the same time Deep Throat introduced “porno chic” into the culture), they brought bare midriffs, cleavage, and suggestive leg kicks to the staid National Football League. One of their foundresses was a former model who explicitly wanted sexy uniforms and dancing. Their come-hither looks and seductive winks were captured on camera in “honey shots” broadcast on network television (the brainchild of a self-admittedly perverted ABC Sports director). Some preachers condemned the revealing outfits. Feminists bemoaned their sexual objectification. Most other teams in the league soon copied them, but the Cowboys cheerleaders were the gold standard of gridiron titillation.

    By the end of the Seventies, their latent sexuality predictably turned pornographic. In the December 1978 issue of Playboy, five former Cowboys cheerleaders untied their blouses for a feature entitled “NFL Cheerleaders Bare All!” That same year, Bambi Woods (the nom de porn of a young woman who had unsuccessfully auditioned to be a Cowboys cheerleader in real life) starred in Debbie Does Dallas, in which an aspiring “Texas Cowgirl” fucks her way onto the squad. (The Cowboys sued the film’s distributors for trademark infringement: “In the movie’s final scene Debbie dons a uniform strikingly similar to that worn by the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and for approximately twelve minutes of film footage engages in various sex acts while clad or partially clad in the uniform.”)

    Meanwhile two members of the Denver Broncos’ “Pony Express” also showed off their pom-poms in Playboy. The squad was disbanded after some of the cheerleaders were discovered to have been engaging in prostitution.

  • Luscious Buttocks

    Venus Callipyge (“Venus of the Beautiful Buttocks”), 1st/2nd century BCE, Naples

    Speaking of luscious buttocks….

    She turned around and playfully rubbed her behind against my crotch. She felt my throbbing cock through my pants.

    “Follow me,” she said with a mischievous smile.

    I followed her upstairs, admiring her derrière as it swayed in her black dress.

    She unbuttoned my shirt and gave me a very sensual kiss. She took off her dress and pulled down her panties.

    “Just fuck me already.”

    I bent her over the bed. As prepared to take her from behind, I admired the view of her heart-shaped ass, accentuated by the ribbon tattoo around her waist.

    In front of her large mirror, I entered her. I could see her look back at me and moan. I slid deeper inside her. After some gentle thrusts, I noticed her moans grew louder.

    “Harder! Faster!”

    I increased my tempo. She pushed herself back onto me, her round but firm rear bouncing off my pelvis. The view from behind was phenomenal as I slammed into her.

    Her cries grew louder, and she began to shake. I felt her muscles contract. She screamed for me to come inside her.

    Then I erupted.

  • “These celestial delights”

    On the cusp of the seventeenth century, a Neapolitan apothecary found himself before the Inquisition. The matter at hand was the forbidden fruit that got Adam and Eve expelled from Eden. Was it a fig? A pear? An apple? The apothecary applied a more figurative interpretation:

    “An apple? Adam fucked Eve in the ass, and that’s why they were rejected from Paradise.”

    Auguste Rodin, Eve Eating the Apple (c. 1885), National Gallery of Art

    Umberto Grassi in his unusual book What God Kept for Himself: Atheism, Sodomy, and Radical Dissent in Renaissance Italy documents religious dissenters (which included both avowed libertines and professed friars) on trial for heresy who testified before Inquisitors that the original sin was Adam sodomizing Eve. “[P]reachers did not say this from the pulpit out of decency,” one defendant said, but the evidence can be deduced from the text. A French philosopher observed, “The apple which tempted our first father was the symbol of the rear parts of the woman, which very well represents an apple split in half.” As another more bluntly put it, “Adam’s apple was Eve’s butt.” This led to the conclusion, according to one of the accused, that Adam sinned by “sticking [his penis] into her ass” instead of “putting it into her cunt.” The Dutch scholar Hadriaan Beverland in his book On Original Sin (which has been called “perhaps the kinkiest work of philosophy to have been published in modern Europe”) described Eve’s behavior in more detail:

    She is in heat, desirous, obtrusive, and promiscuous….[T]he little virgin…contemplates the very desirable extended tree stem, apt and pleasing to her sex….[She] rouses his very innocent member with her wanton hand and flattering words….[Eve] turned around and on hands and knees, had awkwardly presented her narrow asshole….

    Implicit in this exegesis was a critique of the clerical establishment that exalted celibacy (sex within the confines of marriage was tolerated for those incapable of continence) during the Counter-Reformation. A Venetian noble tied his belief that Eve was sodomized in Eden to his advocacy of the abolition of priestly celibacy. In Renaissance burlesque poetry and novellas, it was suggested that the Church condemned anal sex simply because its pleasures were so sublime. “These celestial delights are hidden…under a curtain of horror in order not to give them in abundance to anyone,” one satirist wrote. In Sicily, one accused heretic told the Inquisition that he tried to persuade a woman reluctant to engage in anal sex with him by assuring her that the act was worthy of being consummated on the altars of Rome.

    The Inquisitors were not unaware of the implication that taboo sex acts were not only social and moral transgressions, but gateways to doubt. One frisky friar was recorded as testifying that he “valued more knowing carnally a woman…than the whole paradise together.” Sodomy, in particular, opens up vistas that occlude religious belief. A courtesan in one Renaissance work says, “A pair of luscious buttocks can accomplish more than all that the philosophers, astrologists, alchemists and necromancers have ever wrought.” In another text we learn, “From the mixing of the cunt, prick and ass, knowledge of fucking and buggery follows, and thus scientia is enlarged.” One of the dissenters was on trial for his belief in both lapsarian sodomy and Copernican heliocentrism. The “glamorous celebration of sexual debauchery,” in Beverland’s words, announced the death of God. Historian Alec Ryrie, who has studied early modern atheism, admits that “instinctive, inarticulate, intuitive reasons” can be foundational for unbelief.

    Such as the rapturous sight of a pair of luscious buttocks.

  • Sexvangelicals

    Sexvangelicals

    The culture that brought us Girls Gone Wild, ashleymadison.com, and The Ethical Slut, according to one sociologist, helped make religion obsolete.

    According to Christian Smith in Why Religion Went Obsolete: The Demise of Traditional Faith in America, the United States in the early 21st century has experienced a dramatic decline in religiosity. A number of sociocultural factors account for what another academic calls “the great dechurching”: a loss in confidence in societal institutions, including organized religion (exacerbated by innumerable scandals); a hyperindividualism that loosens social bonds; a reaction against the religious fanaticism unleashed on 9/11; the influence of the New Atheism. But sex also played a role.

    American culture experienced a “third sexual revolution” starting in the late 1990s, marked by what Smith calls the “three D’s: diversification, democratization, and ‘de-shaming’ of previously objectionable sexual behaviors.” Most notable was the increasing acceptance of nonmonogamy, as manifested in explorations of polyamory (and more crudely in the enjoyment of “fuck buddies”). This sexual revolution was enabled by the digital revolution, which made pornography easily accessible, facilitated the arrangement of sexual encounters through websites and apps, and exposed people to “alternative” sexual subcultures and practices. The “sex-positivity” movement embraced by third-wave feminism provided a theoretical framework in which a young female college student could market herself as a “sugar baby” and still style herself as a progressive. BDSM kink went mainstream. Smith quotes the typical views of Millennials who grew up in this milieu:

    • “I don’t think hooking up, porn, sex in the media is bad.”
    • “Traditional views [on sex] are unrealistic.”
    • “Sex is great. Almost everybody fucks.”

    Religious cultures that espoused traditional views were in trouble, especially “purity culture.” “Evangelical purity campaigns like ‘True Love Waits’ looked preposterous in comparison,” Smith archly writes. They also had the unintended result of producing a good number of “exvangelicals.” For them “the religion of their youth was a source of manipulation, shame, repression, sexual double standards, obsession with virginity, negative views of bodies….Purity culture being so interwoven with the Christianity that they knew meant for them that rejecting the former often required abandoning the latter as well.” Non-evangelicals were also put off by this sexual puritanism.

    As one prominent evangelical commentator put it, “people leave the church because they want to gratify the flesh with abandon” and “pursue the sexual hedonism” traditional religion condemns. Exvangelical memoirs have populated the shelves of bookstores in recent years, and their complaints about purity culture do read like thinly veiled justifications for fleshly gratification. (An online article is entitled “An Exvangelical Guide to Having a Threesome.”) Some are merely revealing behavior that evangelical culture seeks to conceal. Christianity Today a few years ago featured this headline: “More Evangelical Women Have Had Sex With Women Than You Might Think.” The accompanying article noted, “Seventeen percent of evangelical women between the ages of 15 and 44 have had sex with another woman, according to data gathered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” Others apostatize to learn the ways of the secular flesh.

    “Christine” was in a young adults group I facilitated a few years ago. Sweet and cheerful, she was a social worker. (I confess to being smitten with her girlish voice, curly hair, and heart-shaped derrière.) She was new to a liturgical tradition, and her evangelical roots were evident. (When I referred to a reading in the lectionary, she didn’t understand my reference.) I distinctly recall her expression of horror at the thought that a potential boyfriend could have watched porn.

    I hadn’t thought of Christine in quite a while, but I was surprised when I discovered that she contributed to a blog extolling “secular sex.” One entry reviewed the merits of various butt plugs.

    She had joined the ranks of the sexvangelicals.

  • Bad Teacher

    Bad Teacher

    Perusing the news, I discovered this story:

    A 25-year old Georgia teacher is facing charges that she had sex with two students and sent explicit images to four others….The now-suspended teacher, who was also a football operations manager, allegedly romped with a boy in his car at a golf course — just a day after she’s accused of having sex with another student in a classroom closet and in a Hummer. She is also accused of sexting other teens about the sex acts she fantasized over — even using a sex toy during video calls with at least two teens under 16. She allegedly also sent nudes to a girl and encouraged her to watch Fifty Shades of Grey.

    The educator taught biology and certainly evidenced a keen interest in both male and female anatomy and the mechanics of sexual reproduction. The story concluded on this note:

    She graduated from Liberty University, a private evangelical Christian school linked with the Southern Baptist Convention, where students are expected “to abstain from sexual activity outside of a biblically ordained marriage.”

    (The same Liberty University whose former president was forced to resign after it was revealed that he enjoyed watching his wife have sex with a pool boy.)

    Such behavior certainly isn’t confined to the “godless” public schools I was shielded from. Here is far from extensive list of the female teachers in religious schools who provided hands-on sex education:

    • A 34-year-old English teacher at a private Christian school dedicated to preparing “godly leaders” was recently arrested for “taking indecent liberties” with one of her students.
    • A married 35-year-old math teacher at a school founded to provide “traditional Christian education” had sex with two of her male students. (She was caught after one of them showed off the topless photos she had sent him on Snapchat to a classmate.)
    • A 34-year-old director of student leadership at a Christian high school also sent nude photos over Snapchat to a female student, engaged in phone sex with her, then had sex with the student in her van on numerous occasions.
    • A 42-year-old teacher (and mother of four) who taught at a Catholic high school was caught having sex in a car with a 17-year-old student after having sex with a 16-year-old boy at her home and in the press box of the school’s football field.
    • A Christian school in Georgia was forced to close after a 15-year old student repeatedly had sex with two of his female teachers.

    Then there was the teacher at a Bible camp who had carnal knowledge of a 13-year-old boy she met at camp. (She regularly picked him up after school for sexual encounters.)

    She demonstrated to her pupil one of the biblical senses of the Hebrew word yāda` (“to know”).

    And there was the middle school teacher who, as a volunteer at a Baptist church in Little Rock, AK (where Bill Clinton was once a congregant), sent naked photos of herself to a 15-year old boy daily but only went as far as performing oral sex on him numerous times. She refrained from engaging in intercourse “in order for [him] to stay pure.”

    Your lips are like a scarlet thread, and your mouth is lovely.
    Song of Songs 4:3

    As in the cases of the lusty Bible camp teacher and church volunteer-fellatrix, many of these teachers are pretty hot, the stuff of a 13-year old boy’s wet dream. Such was the case with “Miss Miller,” my eighth grade English teacher. With with her unruly blonde hair and flowing skirts, she was unusually Bohemian for my Christian school. But that may have added to her appeal. I couldn’t articulate it at the time, but there was something unmistakably erotic about her. (And despite her modest attire, I definitely noticed her rack.) By this time I was already initiated into purity culture, so I felt great shame at the not infrequent erections I sported in her class. (I also hoped she didn’t spot the bulges protruding from my slacks.) I knew precious little about sex, but my adolescent imagination entertained fantasies about committing the sin of fornication on top of a naked Miss Miller.

  • “What is it about a schoolgirl?”

    Let me ask you something, gentlemen.

    What is it that gives a schoolgirl her special innocence?

    Her sweet fragrance? Fresh flowers? Light as a spring rain?…

    Or is it her firm young flesh inviting your every caress, enticing you to…

    explore her deepest and most private secrets.

    Well gentlemen, I’m gonna let you decide that one for yourselves.

    The DJ in Exotica (1994)

    She was in front of me in line at the coffee shop. Her long red hair was tied in a ponytail. The words “NOTRE DAME ACADEMY” embroidered on her blue sweater bulged from her chest. Sheer white socks. A short pleated plaid skirt. She ended up sitting at the table in front of mine, where she was joined by her blonde-haired friend wearing the same plaid skirt. At one point she stretched out her smooth, taut legs, her skirt scandalously (and tantalizingly) short.

    I wondered what kinds of things she likes to do after Mass.

    In the film Exotica, one of the strip club’s performers (Mia Kirshner) appears on stage dressed as a Catholic schoolgirl—white shirt, tie, short plaid skirt, black stockings, black Mary Jane shoes. The club’s DJ introduces her as a “sassy bit of jailbait.” She seductively dances to Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows,” flashing her white panties beneath her skirt. To one patron she unbuttons her shirt and bares her breasts.

    “What is it about a schoolgirl?”

    Perhaps nothing fuels men’s fantasies more than a little plaid skirt.

    The Catholic Girl’s Guide to Sex

    “There is something powerfully erotic about Catholic schoolgirl uniforms,” Glenn O’Brien writes in a book of photographs of a young model clad (scantily) in such an outfit. According to one critic, “The plaid skirt of a Catholic school girl is an icon of flirtatious innocence, coupling as it does the generous exposure of toned, nubile flesh with the presumption of a pious virgin’s sexual purity. It is, frankly, the closest that organized religion has ever come to immanentizing the eschaton.” Another guy says, “The combination of their forbidden status and those sexy plaid-skirt uniforms is enough to give any man with a pulse an erection.” One former exotic dancer remembers, “By far the most requested look was the quintessential Catholic schoolgirl with the short plaid skirt and white top.” I’ve had sex with more than one escort wearing a plaid skirt.

    One feminist scholar who once taught at an all-girls Catholic high school writes that her memories of her time there are comprised of “visions of girls in blue and white plaid skirts…the uniform selected out of the desire for girls to become scholars and stay virgins.” Not many of them stay virgins, of course. “I lost my virginity with a Catholic girl,” one writer attests of his teenage initiation into sex. “There is more sweat and desperation in their lovemaking than the public school girls.” Despite the prospect of incurring the penalty of mortal sin (“going all the way” means going to Hell), a Catholic girl will “spread her legs like the Red Sea” when she gets the chance. Chalk it up to sexual repression. For one former Catholic school student, sex education consisted of learning that “prayer is, in fact, every Catholic girl’s first line of defense against semen.” That was too much for the parents of one of her classmates, who enrolled her in an even stricter Catholic school. “That girl eventually went on to become an escort in Las Vegas,” she notes. (I will confirm that a disproportionate number of the call girls I’ve had the pleasure of knowing were raised Catholic.)

  • The Horny Time

    The Horny Time

    After a bitter winter comes the welcome arrival of spring. Daffodils sprout from the earth. Azelea bloom on branches.

    And in the warmth of the sun’s rays, lasses shed their clothes.

    Nubile creatures in short dresses expose their shapely legs. Tight shorts hug their asses. Their breasts bulge out of their tank tops.

    One tanned blonde coed (and her sizable chest) in particular captured my attention. I mentally stripped her of what little clothing she was wearing, then fantasized about spiriting her to a storage room and screwing her senseless.

    One journalist put it succinctly: “It’s the Horny Time.”

    The Horny Time is defined as “the period of time between early spring and late spring where everyone, everywhere wants to fuck and fuck a lot.” It has a venerable history. Ancient spring festivals (such as Beltane among the Celts) celebrated fertility with orgiastic rites. Maggie Wells captured the seasonal drive to copulate in her poem “Sonnet from the Groin”:

    Crazed with spring all I want to do is fuck....
    Oh! To be flying
    above a mattress, screaming not with hate
    but with throaty mating only trying
    for the peak and pinnacle of frolic....
    Time to bloom.

    So I carved out some time and called Joyce. “Natalie” was available. Joyce assured me that Natalie was an attractive college girl. And willing to please. I arranged an afternoon frolic.

    Upon entry to the apartment, she greeted me in a sheer red robe and her bra and panties. She immediately led me to the bedroom. Our chit-chat was brief. (She said she had been enrolled at a local Catholic college.) But I wasn’t there for conversation.

    She suggested that I “get comfortable” and lie on the bed. I quickly did. She removed her robe joined me on the bed. I kissed her neck before my mouth made its way down to her perky breasts. I didn’t waste any time in removing her panties. She conspicuously spread her legs. I got the hint. My mouth worked its way down her stomach to her shaved pubic region. With my fingers I spread her lips apart and my tongue darted into her pussy. I ate her out for some time before it was time for her to reciprocate. She massaged my balls before she took my cock in her mouth. She was a gifted fellatrix.

    She paused, then asked if I wanted some more or if we should “just get to it.” She slipped on a condom and moved on top of me, slowly lowering herself onto my cock. (She was tight.) She placed her hands on my chest and was soon vigorously riding me, the mattress squeaking at her exertions.

    “How would you like to come?”

    I wanted to take her from behind. We went at it doggy style (I admired her fabulous rear end as I pounded her from behind). I held out as long as I could before I unloaded.

    She retrieved a towel to clean me up. I put my clothes back on.

    “I hope you visit me again,” she said.

    I exited the apartment complex into the spring sunshine. As I walked along the tree-lined parkway, I caught sight of a scrumptious young blonde sashaying down the sidewalk in a short blue sundress. Her big breasts protruded from the top. The movement of her hips suggested sexual motion.

    I was already horny again.

  • “Turns Nice Girls Naughty”

    When I was an adolescent struggling with hormones and holiness, a body spray was heavily marketed to my demographic. “SPRAY MORE, GET MORE,” one tagline promised. The campaign wasn’t subtle. The executive behind it described it thusly: “It has this amazing effect that once you spray it on, any woman would fall for you.” The product’s fragrance, according to its website, “acts upon the female libido and stimulates the clothing-removal section of the female brain.” One early commercial presented an attractive blonde so overwhelmed by the scent on a male mannequin, she proceeded to essentially dry hump it. A print ad juxtaposed a can of spray and a pair of panties around a woman’s ankles. Other ads were similarly provocative.

    Bad Angel/Bad Angel
    “Bless me Father, for I have sinned….”
    “She took of its fruit and ate….and they knew that they were naked.”

    Then there was the commercial with the Mormon missionary who makes the hot, horny women in the neighborhood receptive to his solicitations. It’s unclear whether he proceeds to convert them or fuck them. (The shot of the hottie in a tight tank top holding a garden hose that suddenly spurts suggests the latter.)

    The sexless academics in women’s studies departments predictably condemned the campaign as sexist, but those commercials certainly reached their target audience. The premise is ridiculous, of course, but the thought that by spraying some heavily-scented deodorant on my gangly teen body I could make myself attractive to girls (who were both a mystery and an obsession) was compelling. The tension came from the fantasy of transforming the pure, virginal girls at my Christian school into “lust-crazed vixens.” (The “sluts” at the public high school were presumably easier to entice.)

  • Nerdy Girl

    “I want you to like me.”

    She sat on my lap; she undoubtedly felt my erection through my pants and the fabric of her black skirt. I untied her lacy top.

    “We can have a really good time….”

    I reached around her back and unclasped her bra, (size 38G!!!). She took off her bra. She asked me to feel how heavy her tits are. She straddled me as I fondled her breasts and sucked on her nipples (which were very responsive). I grabbed her ass, then slowly moved my hand underneath her skirt. My fingers traced the outline of her panties before probing her bush underneath. I started fingering her.

    Having been “entertained” by so many women, I’ve learned that there’s no stereotypical member of this profession. A self-described “nerdy girl,” she looked the part: thick glasses framed her plain Jane face. Her interests in sci-fi, anime, and Renaissance fairs also confirmed her description. She was a bit chubby, which wasn’t unwelcome since it contributed to the size of her big boobs. Our conversation was awkward. But ultimately I wasn’t there to converse.

    By now she had unzipped my pants and was playing with my cock, lubricated by my precum. She had earlier admitted to being submissive and eager to please. So she dropped to her knees before pulling down my pants. She made a joke about being a “headmaster.” I asked her to keep her glasses on. Her soft lips took me deep in her mouth. Soon her saliva was dripping onto my balls. She must have sensed that I was approaching orgasm. I wanted her to swallow my load. She sucked on the head of my cock, and I erupted in her mouth and on her lips. Some of my cum dripped off her chin.

    She placed a pad on the bed.

    “I’m a squirter,” she said.

    She lay back on the bed and spread her legs wide open. I found myself mesmerized by the sight of her hairy cunt. She squirmed and giggled as I went down on her. She hopped off the bed and reached for her Hitachi on the nightstand. She pleasured herself with it, squealing with delight, then…started squirting.

    After she cleaned up a bit, she told me, “Put me where you want me.”

    I had her lay back on the bed. She dabbed some lube between her breasts. I straddled her chest and furiously fucked her tits. She put on a condom, got on top, and started riding me slowly before accelerating her tempo, her ginormous tits swaying and bouncing in my face. I had her stand up and bend over the bed (she had a nicely-shaped ass). I grabbed onto her hips as I fucked her hard and fast. I didn’t take long for me to come again.

    We haltingly chatted in bed afterwards. She had previously worked as a barista. The alarm on her phone went off, signaling that our hour was up. We got dressed. After a hug (during which I groped her ass and boobs one last time), I made my way out.

  • Sex on Skates

    I overheard a conversation in a fast food establishment during the recently concluded Winter Olympics. Two guys expressed their admiration for female figure skaters. Or more precisely, admiration for their butts and crotches exposed in skimpy costumes on the ice. It was expressed crudely, but I certainly shared their admiration.

    As an adolescent struggling to remain “pure,” I remember being enraptured by the flexibility of one skater. It wasn’t so much her athleticism but the suggestiveness of her poses (legs spread). And the sight of her exposed crotch. My naivety about the female body heightened my fascination. It amounted to a display of naughty exhibitionism.

    A decade ago, The Globe and Mail came under intense criticism for printing on its front page a photo of a Canadian figure skater that prominently featured her crotch as she lifted her leg. Sour feminists complained that such photos sexually objectify female athletes and are a form of “upskirting” (defined as “the practice of making unauthorized photographs under a female’s skirt, capturing an image of her crotch area and underwear.“) My response is that any display of a nubile woman, her attractive body toned through athletic exertion and enhanced by a sexy costume, in which she teases an audience with tantalizing glimpses of her barely concealed private parts, is bound to attract male attention.

    Katarina Witt won two Olympic gold medals for the German Democratic Republic in the 1980s, but her fame didn’t derive from her technical mastery of her routines. Dubbed “the most beautiful face of socialism,” she flirted with the audience while skating in revealing costumes. Time magazine called her “Sex on Skates.” (After the Iron Curtin fell, it was discovered in the archives of the Stasi that an agent had listened in on Witt having sex with an American at an East German hotel. The agent noted with bureaucratic precision: “Sexual intercourse took place from 20.00 until 20.07.”) No longer bound by the constraints of socialism, she went on to capitalize on her sex appeal and appeared in Playboy sans costume.

    (Witt wasn’t the only ice skater whose sexual exploits were recorded. Tonya Harding’s sex tape was one of the best selling pornographic videos of the 1990s. I recently discovered it online and watched it – for research, of course. Her skill at riding cowgirl was impressive.)