Sex Education
"I'll be back this evening," Bill promised, speaking into Laura's hair as they hugged goodbye.
"Mmhmm." She pulled away slowly, reluctantly, and nodded.
He looked at her, nodding briefly in return. "I'd better go, let you get ready for work."
Laura smiled. "We're doing sex education today," she said wryly.
Bill, already stepping away, stopped and grinned. "Well, you've just had a refresher course; you'll be fine."
"That's what you think." She rolled her eyes and put her hand on his shoulder to lean in for one last kiss. "Go," she told him then, giving him a little push.
Bill smiled, turned and ducked out of the tent.
Grabbing the papers off her desk and sitting on the still-rumpled bed, Laura looked at her lesson plan one more time. Today would be... interesting.
It wasn't the sex ed itself which was bothering her – she had taught it many times and had long ago gotten over the initial awkwardness every sex ed virgin experienced. It was the way she had had to rewrite the syllabus to fit life on New Caprica.
Contraception was the biggest issue. Two years ago she would have been talking about condoms, pills and a host of other options which were at best nearly impossible to obtain now. The question was which of the more readily available but less effective methods – methods she would have dismissed in the past as outdated and unreliable -- she should discuss, and more importantly which, if any, she should recommend to her adolescent students. The administration of course had essentially said they didn't give a frak when she had asked if they had an opinion on the matter, and most of the parents seemed to trust Laura's judgement more than their own. She wasn't quite sure whether to be flattered or terrified.
She had briefly, to her own chagrin, considered simply telling the students that none of the currently available choices of contraception were sufficiently reliable and to practice abstinence. It would be for their own protection, of course, but she knew her teenagers well enough to be sure that at least some of them would experiment no matter what she told them about the potential risks. No; she had to teach them to protect themselves as well as was possible under the circumstances.
She wasn't worried so much about pregnancy as about disease, though, and many of the most effective ways to avoid pregnancy did nothing to prevent infection. Sexually transmitted diseases were on the up; ailments which had been easily curable before the Cylon attack were now spreading due to the shortage of medication, and some of them could get unpleasant to say the least if left untreated.
Laura sighed. The thought of her students' youth being marred by dangers she at their age had thought obsolete was not a pleasant one.
Gathering and stacking her papers, Laura pushed her feet into her boots and went out into the chill air of the New Caprican morning.
She was, as usual, soon joined by first one student, then another, so by the time the school tent came into view around a muddy corner there were over a dozen children walking beside and behind her.
"We're gonna talk about sex today," she heard somebody say behind her back in a hushed voice. She heard Sally, a fourteen-year-old who could most accurately be described as 'sassy', snickering, and excited giggles and whispers were audible all around her.
Oh yes. Sex ed was never dull, that much was certain.
Laura unfastened the flap of the school tent and directed the students to push the desks and chairs into a circle. It was less crowded than usual, the parents of many of the youngest children especially having decided not to have them attend this particular day of lessons, and Laura wanted to keep everything as informal as possible. Sex was not something you could lecture about in front of a class of pubescent children if you expected much of it to sink in. Making them feel a part of a proper grown-up discussion had always seemed to Laura to work much better.
They gradually settled down, and Laura noted to herself who was sitting upright waiting curiously for her to begin and who was lounging nonchalantly on the desks or swinging their legs over the edges trying to look carefree, and mentally planned what kind of questions it might be prudent to ask of whom.
"So," Laura said without preamble, once a sufficient number of eyes had focussed on her. "What can you tell me about sex?"
As expected, this was at first greeted with a lot of blushing and staring at one's feet or hands with a classic 'don't pick me please don't pick me' expression. Also as expected, some brave soul eventually raised a hand, which inspired others and quickly resulted in a host of facts – as well as misinformation – being stated into a general cacophony, which Laura deftly but unobtrusively orchestrated.
In this manner they managed to cover basic reproductive biology fairly easily – eeew!s, screwed up faces and yes, it does sound a little repellent, doesn't its aside – and Laura steered the conversation towards the much-inner-conflict-inspiring topic of contraception.
"There's condoms," twelve-year old Simon ventured helpfully.
"Condoms, yes; what else?" Laura said, not wanting to get into explaining the current difficulty in obtaining condoms just yet.
"What do you use, Ms. R?" said Sally.
With any other student Laura would have been unfazed by this – however, a familiar tilt of Sally's head was just screaming out 'mischief!'. The question was what that mischief might be...
"Eww!" said Simon before Laura could respond. "Ms. Roslin doesn't have sex!"
"She does," Sally declared, playing to her audience now by leaning forward dramatically. "I saw Admiral Adama coming out of her tent this morning." She nodded knowingly.
A chorus of eeew!s went up as all eyes again turned to face Laura.
"Sally," Laura said firmly, "You're leaping to conclusions. The admiral and I had breakfast together, that's all." Gods, this wasn't part of the lesson plan...
"But he was buying breakfast from my mom when I was getting ready for school," piped up Jenny, one of the younger students here today.
Sally grinned smugly. "Also, he had his boots on the wrong feet," she said.
Curse you, Bill, Laura thought, hearing a silence which would under other circumstances be music to her ears as the entire class waited for her next words. Frak... You're going to have to admit it, Laura. There's no way to lie your way out of this one, not to the people you berate for lying about their homework... "Alright," she said eventually. "You got me."
The look on Sally's face reminded Laura an awful lot of Tom Zarek. She would have to ask her later if she'd ever thought of going into politics...
The rest of the students' expressions ranged from mild interest to glee to open-mouthed shock.
"So, what do you use with Admiral Adama?" Sally ploughed on, going back to her initial question.
No going back now, Laura thought. Might as well just be honest. "Nothing," she replied. "I'm too old to become pregnant, and we've both been screened for diseases."
Sally seemed a little disappointed in this answer, and Laura felt momentarily triumphant. No, Laura, she berated herself, you shouldn't try to score points against your students...
But then another student piped up, "Do you do... other things with him?"
"Things like what?" Laura asked, though she had a feeling she knew very well what.
"She means blowjobs," Sally put in.
The student in question went bright red, which was the only reason that Laura herself managed not to. "Thank you, Sally," she said, using this second of filled silence to compose a response in her head. "We do everything that responsible adults normally do in a healthy relationship," she told them.
"That means yes," Sally translated for the class at large.
There was a silence as the students digested this piece of information, and Laura was about to open her mouth and direct the conversation in a less... specific direction when the girl who had asked the question said, "What's it like?"
Oh, Gods, Laura thought, as the students once again looked at her with an interest which at any other time would have been more than welcome. This is going to be a long day...
Walking home later that afternoon, Laura went over the day's lessons in her head and tried to decide whether she had just given the worst or best sex education class in her life.
They had covered everything she had set out to cover in her lesson plan, it was true, just... well, just using the specific example of her and Admiral Adama. A case study, as it were. She wasn't quite sure yet how she felt about having divulged details of her entire sex life to her students, but she was reasonably certain that they had grasped all the important information she had wanted to convey to them. Even the contraception issue had been discussed once Laura had discovered that they would pay attention if she used sentence constructions like, If I could still get pregnant, the admiral and I would...
What Bill would think of it all was, of course, another matter.
"You what?" Bill said incredulously, when they were sitting on her bed sharing a bowl of noodles that evening.
"I had to," Laura protested. "They caught me out, Bill, there was no way to deny it. And then they just wouldn't listen unless I used you and me as a specific example..." She grimaced apologetically.
He shook his head, seemingly unable to say anything further. Laura took the last of the noodles from the bowl and scooted closer to him, holding them up to his mouth as she leaned her chin on his shoulder and looked at him apologetically.
He let her feed them to him, which was hopefully a sign of forgiveness, and chewed appreciatively while she planted kisses on his cheek and neck.
"At least you get to go back and hide away on your spaceship," she said when he moved to put the bowl on the table before pulling her into his lap. "I've got to see these people every day for the rest of... Hmm..." She responded to Bill kissing her on the lips, probably to shut her up. "Sorry," she murmured.
"Mmph." Bill made a dismissive noise and started to unbutton her heavy-duty sweater.
Laura reached for his buttons, but paused with her hands in mid-air. "Did you hear that?" she asked.
"Hear what?" Bill continued his unbuttoning unperturbed.
"Shh." Laura held up a hand. There it was again... "I'll be right back," she told him, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and going over to the tent's entrance. She stepped outside, trying to ignore the cold seeping through her socks from the frozen ground, and walked around to the side of the tent.
Four of her students were crouched there, ears to the fabric of the wall, hands over their mouths to stifle their giggles. They all looked up when she cleared her throat, staring at her in sudden terror.
Laura put her hands on her hips and said in her most stern, schoolmistress voice, "Scoot."
The students looked at each other and then, as one, scrambled to their feet. "Yes, Ms. Roslin." – "Sorry Ms. Roslin!"
She looked at them pointedly and they took off into the dark, hopefully heading home but more likely to get up to more mischief elsewhere. Still, Laura went back inside satisfied.
Later, lying next to Bill after doing several of the things her students had asked her about, she felt even more satisfied. At least, she was until she once again heard the sound of a stifled giggle from somewhere close outside her tent.
"Bill," she said, snuggling closer to him. "Next time you leave my tent, make sure your boots are on the right feet, will you?"
The End