So I get this email from a friend of a friend of someone who once slept with someone I went on a date with twice and then blocked because he said—without irony—that he was “really into Nietzsche but not into reading,” which is still, to this day, one of the most alarming sentences anyone has ever said to me out loud, and anyway, the email drops into my inbox, like this is a normal thing that happens in my life, and it says—very politely, very confidently—“We’d love for you to speak at our university’s Bodies & Boundaries conference. Your recent work on sexuality and reclamation has made waves,” and I read that sentence about five times, specifically the part about waves, because apparently I made waves, which is fascinating news to me considering that most of those so-called waves involved a piñata shaped like my ex’s emotional availability and a lot of pent-up feelings expressed through blunt force trauma, but sure, waves, absolutely, and of course I say yes, I don’t hesitate, I don’t clarify, I don’t ask follow-up questions like a responsible adult, because this is me and the word “conference” triggers something deeply primal in my ego, some feral part of my brain that goes, yes, you belong at a lectern, people should be listening to you, you have thoughts and they are important, and suddenly I’m pacing my apartment like an academic on a warpath, drafting my brilliance in the air, and I decide—very calmly, very rationally—to title my talk “Clitoral Cartographies: Rewriting the Erotic Narrative Through Rage, Lube, and Lighting Design,” because if you’re going to do something, you should do it with confidence and a colon, and I smile to myself, deeply pleased, because it’s interdisciplinary, which is conference code for “no one can stop me,” and I put together slides, actual slides, with bullet points and fonts I pretend to understand, and I include a diagram of the female pleasure center annotated with tiny rage quotes, because education should be honest, and a timeline of historical sexual repression illustrated with emojis, because clarity matters, and one extremely blurry photo of the Julian piñata, which I label “exorcism through papier-mâché,” because healing is visual, and somewhere along the way I even buy a blazer, a red one, which feels important, symbolic, deliberate, like I am making a statement, because red is blood and lust and also, conveniently, the university’s branding guidelines according to a PDF I skimmed once, and I stand in front of the mirror thinking, yes, this is it, this is my era, I am ready, or at least I think I’m ready, because nowhere in that email—nowhere, not even in the fine print of the attachment I absolutely did not open—did it say that the keynote speaker was a nun.

So I show up, which already feels like a minor miracle given my relationship to calendars and dread, hair tousled in that way that says I meant to do this even though the mirror knows the truth, outfit carefully calibrated to land somewhere between academic credibility and intellectual whore chic—structured enough to imply theory, soft enough to imply trouble—slides preloaded, clicker warm in my hand, confidence pitched at exactly the wrong level for a room full of people who might still believe in consequences, and I’m ushered into the lecture hall by a student named Dahlia, which is both her actual name and the name of someone who would absolutely be ushering speakers anywhere, and she smells like patchouli and reverence and finals week, and she leans in as we walk and whispers, like she’s passing along state secrets or last rites, “Sister Immaculata is so excited to meet you,” and there’s a pause in my brain right there, a tiny buffering wheel, because those are not words that usually arrive in that order, sister, Immaculata, excited, me, and then I see her, front row, full habit, no ironic layering, rosary hanging heavy in her hands like a medieval weapon designed specifically to bludgeon joy, face carved into that serene, disappointed expression you see in old paintings of saints who have absolutely Seen Some Things and did not approve, and she smiles at me, a small, precise smile, and I smile back because I am polite and also because I am terrified, and the air between us crackles with the spiritual equivalent of two cats circling each other on a burning fence, all stiff backs and unreadable intentions, and I take my place, clear my throat, start the lecture like a person who has done this before and survived, slide one clicks up and there it is, a hand-drawn vulva labeled like a Renaissance map, careful lines, poetic annotations, a geography of pleasure and power, slide two follows without hesitation—“Erotic Vengeance as Ritual Praxis”—and I can feel the room lean in, feel the shift as students decide yes, this is happening, this is worth being awake for, slide three lands—“Why Jesus Probably Would Have Pegged If He’d Known About It”—and I exhale sharply because once you’re there you might as well commit, and I glance, just briefly, at Sister Immaculata, who does not blink, not once, not even a micro-flinch, while the students are absolutely loving it, one of them taking notes so aggressively I worry their pen might achieve sentience and file a grievance, someone else mouthing “thank you” at me when I reference the clitoral network as a form of resistance, like I’ve just validated a thesis they’ve been carrying around in their ribcage for years, and I’m on fire, truly, that rare, intoxicating state where your mouth keeps up with your brain and your brain feels generous instead of cruel, and I’m moving through the argument, through history and bodies and language and reclamation, until I reach slide nine, which in hindsight should not have been titled “The Lingering Ghost of Patriarchal Penis Envy (And Why You Should Haunt It in Latex),” and I hear it before I see it, a small gasp, then a wheeze, and then Sister Immaculata raises her hand, slowly, deliberately, like she’s blessing the room or calling down weather, and I freeze, fully, clicker mid-air, because there are moments when time does that thing where it stretches and you can see all possible futures branching out like a bad decision tree, and she speaks very gently, voice smooth, almost kind, asking, “Do you believe the body is sacred, or simply performative?” and because I am Tallulah, because I am an idiot with a microphone and a dream and no sense of self-preservation when the spotlight is warm, I say yes, just yes, like it’s the most reasonable answer in the world, like the only answer, and the room holds its breath around it.

I should not have been invited onto that panel, and I knew it the second I sat down, lowering myself into one of those polite, treacherous chairs, arranging my face into something neutral while my entire body screamed that I was about to become a liability, because suddenly it’s me, Tallulah, seated shoulder to shoulder with Sister Immaculata—full habit, full composure, the kind of calm that suggests God personally proofread her thoughts—a queer medievalist named Brennan who says the word penis the way you’d say “recovered artifact from a problematic empire,” with academic tenderness and visible restraint, and a wellness influencer who has brought her own flax milk, set it carefully at her feet like an offering, and insisted on sitting cross-legged on the stage as though posture itself were a political stance, and I’m looking out at the audience thinking, yes, this is exactly the lineup you assemble right before something goes wrong. The moderator smiles the smile of someone who has already Googled everyone’s Wikipedia page and regrets nothing, and opens with a question so gentle it could bruise a peach: How do you reconcile erotic agency with institutional ethics?—and I’m inhaling, genuinely preparing to say something thoughtful, something that acknowledges nuance and history and power structures, when Sister Immaculata dives in with the grace of a swan landing on a lake, talking about embodied grace and dignity through modesty and the sanctity of spiritual union, and it is eloquent, and it is beautiful, and I can feel the room leaning toward her like sunflowers, and all the while I’m aware—acutely, painfully aware—that her answer is wildly incompatible with my last slide, which featured a silicone double-ender and a bell hooks quote in the same frame, and then suddenly it’s my turn, the microphone warm in my hand, the silence expectant in that way that always feels like a trap, and I hear myself say, very calmly, very clearly, as if this were the most reasonable conclusion in the world: Sex is sacred. So is rage. And sometimes the most spiritual thing a woman can do is come loudly and leave. The silence afterward is immediate and total, the kind that has weight to it, like snowfall or judgment, and then Brennan starts clapping—just Brennan, like they’re approving a controversial thesis defense—and the influencer begins to cry, real tears, shoulders shaking, as if I’ve unlocked something deep and tender and monetizable, and Sister Immaculata crosses herself so fast it’s practically defensive, like I’ve just summoned a demon using my uterus, and that’s when I realize we’ve passed the point of polite discourse and entered the aftermath. The Q&A begins, which is to say the students line up at the mic to either propose to me or ask for advice on starting their own revenge-themed art exhibition, and I answer what I can, nodding gravely like this is a normal Tuesday, until one brave girl—voice trembling, eyes bright—asks, Do you think God has a G-spot? and before I can even say Depends on the translation, Sister Immaculata stands up, removes her mic with ceremonial finality, and walks off the stage, and I watch her go, this neat, silent exit, and then I lean into the moderator’s microphone, lower my voice, and say, Well… that went better than expected, because at that point, honestly, what else is there to do.

Two days later—because consequences are nothing if not punctual—an email lands in my inbox, and I know before I even open it that this is not going to be a coupon or a survey or one of those fake “just circling back” things, because it’s from something called the Office of Academic Programming and Spiritual Partnerships, which is already a red flag the size of a cathedral banner, because no office with that many words in its name has ever, in the history of human administration, sent good news, and I’m holding my phone like it contains both validation and doom, like it might either tell me I’ve won an award or inform me that I am no longer welcome in several dimensions, and the subject line reads “Regarding Your Recent Lecture Engagement,” which is the academic equivalent of “we need to talk,” and I open it the way you open STD results after a festival—slow, braced, trying to remember what your insurance covers—and it starts with “Dear Ms. [Redacted],” which is already doing a lot of emotional work, because nothing says warmth like erasing a person mid-salutation, and then it thanks me, very politely, for my contribution to the “Bodies & Boundaries” symposium, because of course that’s what it was called, and then—here it comes—it says that while they recognize the value of diverse perspectives, several elements of my presentation were considered incompatible with their institutional ethos, and I have to pause there for a second, because “institutional ethos” is such a beautiful phrase for “you made us uncomfortable in public,” and then they get specific, because they always do, and they mention the use of anatomical props, explicit metaphors, and—this is my favorite part—the suggestion that Jesus may have been an experimental lover, which, according to them, caused considerable distress to their theological community, and I can practically hear the pearls being clutched through the screen, and then, with the kind of calm finality usually reserved for weather warnings and obituaries, they respectfully request that I refrain from applying to future events hosted by the university, its affiliates, or its ecclesiastical partners, which is a very long way of saying “please don’t come back, ever, not even accidentally,” and I scroll down because of course there’s more, because there is always more, and there’s a postscript—there’s always a postscript—that says, “Sister Immaculata would like her tote bag back,” and I just sit there for a moment, letting that land, because being banned is one thing, but being asked to return branded merchandise is somehow the most devastating part, and naturally—naturally—I framed the email, because what else are you supposed to do with a moment like that, and now it hangs above my desk next to the flyer for my first art show and a Polaroid of the Julian piñata mid-beheading, because every woman deserves a small shrine to the moments she said too much, wore red, and got politely excommunicated, and I lift my glass—because rituals matter—and I think, to Sister Immaculata, she may have walked out, but I will always think of her during foreplay.