Monday: I Learn That I am Dirty and Cheap


Welcome to Merryweather High. This week, our priorities are:

1. Good Citizenship

2. English Comprehension

3. Math Skills That You Will Remember and Need

4. Social Studies

5. Dead Frogs

6. The Foreign Language of Your Choosing

7. Volleying Balls

8. Your Maidenhead

Art has been deemed the least-important class, and so the week of chastity classes will replace it at the end of the day. Perhaps Mr. Freeman, when left to his own devices, will finally succumb to inanity. Perhaps my tree will miss me. Perhaps it will wither and die.


I shuffle inside a room with no number. Instead of the usual desks, there are chairs arranged in a semi-circle, and a table and a big box. Principal Principal occupies a corner. Rachel and Ivy are sitting together - this is startling. Heather sits in the front row, surrounded by Marthas. The best I can do is sit behind them and pretend that we're almost friends.

The chairs fill as the bell rings. A woman no one has ever seen before totters in on very high heels.

"Sex feels good!"

Everybody laughs.

She shouts it again. "Sex feels good! It always feels good! Come on, people, say it with me: Sex feels good!"

A few guys mutter the words in an aren't-we-clever kind of way, while most of the girls just look at their friends and giggle.

"Sex feels good." She picks up a stick of chalk. "But afterwards, you feel - " She writes the words across the board. "Dirty and cheap."

Dirty: Covered in dirt.

Cheap: That which doesn't cost very much. Ten minutes into the class, and Sexually Active Teens have become five-dollar hookers.

"Each time a sexually active person gives that most personal part of himself or herself away, that person can lose a sense of value and self-worth. It all comes down to self-respect."

Value: Cost or importance.

Worth: Value.

Respect: Good opinion of, admiration.

"Now, how many of you have been to parties? I mean real grown-up, high school parties?"

My eyes flick to Rachel. She turns to look at me and sneers as she raises her hand. Half of the class glances at me before it raises its hands.

"Then you know what can happen at these parties." Her letters flourish across the board. "Casual sex," she says as she writes. "Drinking. Hooking up."

You forgot Listening to Loud Music and The Smoking of the Green.

"Now, may I have a few volunteers? I need two boys and a girl."

Heather's hand shoots up and she's called to the front of the room. Ms. Sexpert also picks Mike and Joe. She digs into the big box and pulls out a roll of Scotch tape.

"Heather," she says, and loudly rips a long piece of tape from the roll. "This is your virtue."

Right up until the second syllable I thought she would say virginity. She and Heather awkwardly exchange the piece of tape.

"Now, let's say you want to marry Mike someday."

Hee-hee-hee, everyone laughs.

"But let's say you meet Joe first. The two of you have casual sex. What happens to your virtue? Heather, stick it onto Joe's arm."

Joe holds out his arm and Heather jams the tape across it.

"Now, pull it off."

Heather rips off the tape with a surprising amount of strength. Joe is in pain. He holds up his arm to show a line of hairless skin. But Heather's tape/virtue is what we're talking about.

"Now," says Dr. Ruth, "try to stick it onto Mike."

Heather giggles and Heather tries, but the Joe's-arm-hair-covered piece of tape just won't stick. It falls to the floor.

"You see?" asks Ms. ... wait, is she a teacher? Who exactly is she? "Heather's virtue is a dirty piece of tape lying on the floor."

A large wrapped phallus is taken from the box. Oh, it's a lollipop. Ms. Virginity gives it to Heather.

"Your lollipop is in pristine condition, but what would happen if you allowed it to be unwrapped by the wrong person? Joe, unwrap Heather's lollipop and give it a good suck."

Joe peels off the wrapper and does indeed give it a good suck. Really works it around in his mouth.

"Now, hand it over to Mike."

Repulsed Mike takes the dripping lollipop.

"Mike, do you want to suck it?"

Mike indicates that he does not want to suck it.

"You see? If you unwrap your lollipop before marriage, you turn it into..." She writes on the board: "Second-hand goods."

Second-hand: Something you would find at a garage sale for twenty-five cents.

Vintage: The same thing at a boutique for two hundred dollars.

Goods: Tangible property.

As the bell rings, I file out of the room, thinking about my tangible property.