Harry is a boy who was raised in Louisiana by God-fearing men in a Catholic school. They told him that masturbation should be thought of as self-harm, for it misused god's creation for pleasure instead of procreation. All his life, he tried to ignore any sexual urges he had, until around twelve-years-old, when he masturbated for the first time. He confessed for it, and proceeded to confess for every subsequent event, though he found himself unable to resist. Once when he was sixteen, he wished he could simply cut his penis off and live a life without temptation. It wasn't until he was nineteen that Harry was able to control his urges to masturbate by engaging in sexual activity with a girl named Yvonne. At first the two would be fully clothed and fondle one another, but soon it became weekly sex in their car. Though Harry was hesitant about it, he felt that at least he wasn't self-harming, and was using god's creation somewhat as it was intended. By this point, Harry would go weeks without confessing, afraid to admit that he engaged in premarital sex and that he had begun to not think of it as a sin. He and Yvonne broke things off, as she complained that all they ever did was sex, so soon their relationship ended. Janet, Harry's older sister, moved back into their parents' home after her marriage failed. She and her husband had become pregnant while she was still a teenager — and before they were married — so the church denied their application for a holy marriage because they expected it would end soon. When Janet and Harry are catch up, she tells him that she doesn't agree with the church's teachings about what sin is. She says that perhaps if her husband had decided to masturbate, she could still have a husband, rather than him cheating on her. Harry goes in to confess for the first time in six weeks, and tells the more lenient priest about his sins. He tells him how he's been masturbating and having premarital sex, and that worst of all, he doesn't believe either are sins. The father explains that some theological teachings are a bit backwards, and that some texts teach masturbation as a sin worse than rape because at least rape was borne out of natural instinct. The father recites a passage where god tells Christ that he doesn't wish to take humans out of the world, but rather that he keep them from evil. The next day, he takes Janet and her twin boys crabbing, and hopes that they don't suffer the same damages he did when he was their age.