Drayer Baba’s prohibition on sex before marriage

Drayer Baba’s prohibition on sex before marriage governs, but does not eliminate, sexual intimacy between Sara and Henry Chinaski. In their early encounters, Sara invokes Drayer Baba to refuse intercourse while allowing extensive physical closeness; later, after repeated nights of similar contact, she initiates intercourse. The rule’s importance lies in this changing boundary: it acts first as a limit negotiated within the relationship and ultimately as a prohibition Sara herself sets aside.

The Rule and Its Authority

After drinking together, Sara offers Henry a place to sleep but explicitly excludes sex. When he asks why, she states that sex should not take place outside marriage and attributes the principle directly to Drayer Baba. Henry challenges the basis of her position, suggesting that God might be mistaken, but Sara answers that this is impossible. The exchange establishes that her refusal rests on religious certainty, not simply on uncertainty about Henry or a temporary lack of desire.

The rule is also framed as something Sara follows on behalf of a spiritual authority. Henry does not share her stated conviction, and his skepticism makes the disagreement plain; nevertheless, the encounter continues on terms that preserve the formal boundary against intercourse. The distinction between the stated prohibition and the intimacy permitted in practice becomes the rule’s central tension.

Intimacy Within the Boundary

That night, Sara and Henry kiss in bed. Henry regards her as an unusually good kisser and compares her favorably with Lydia, while also noting that each woman kisses differently. His attention to Sara’s kissing gives the encounter its own intimacy, even as his thoughts wander to other women, including Lydia and Katherine, who is asleep in Austin.

Sara then engages in sexual contact that stops short of intercourse. Henry describes her rubbing his penis against her vulva while he waits for her to permit penetration. He refrains from touching her genitals because he believes that doing so would offend Drayer Baba. The scene therefore presents the prohibition as selectively observed: intercourse remains forbidden, but close physical contact is allowed, and Henry adjusts his own actions around Sara’s stated religious limit.

The arrangement does not satisfy Henry. After the same pattern recurs in the morning, he decides that he does not want this kind of incomplete sexual encounter. Sara’s rule has thus shaped not only what the couple does but also Henry’s experience of their intimacy: he accepts the boundary for a time, yet finds its practical compromise frustrating.

A Boundary Repeated and Reversed

Later, the pattern returns after New Year’s Eve. Once Dinky and Janis have left, Sara and Henry go to bed and again begin with kissing and physical closeness. Henry recalls that their previous encounters had repeatedly followed the same course: Sara would touch him and rub him against her, but intercourse would not follow. The recurrence makes the prohibition more than a single refusal; it is a continuing structure in their relationship.

This time, however, Sara abruptly changes what happens. She takes hold of Henry and initiates intercourse, leaving him astonished. He responds, and the encounter ends with him climaxing. No marriage or change in Drayer Baba’s teaching is reported. The concrete change is Sara’s action: the practice that had repeatedly maintained the ban gives way when she chooses to cross it.

Significance

The rule operates less as a complete withdrawal from sexuality than as a line drawn around one specific act. Kissing and other intimate contact persist on one side of that line, while intercourse is first refused and later initiated by Sara. The contrast between the certainty of her explanation—that Drayer Baba does not believe in premarital sex—and the couple’s repeated physical negotiations reveals how a categorical doctrine is lived in uneven, changing ways.

Its reversal is significant because it comes through a change in conduct rather than a stated rejection of the belief. Sara’s earlier refusals, the repeated morning-after pattern, and her eventual initiation of intercourse mark distinct stages in the rule’s influence. The episode presents religious restraint as an active force in the relationship, but one whose practical limits are determined by the people who observe it.