Vulcan Sex Ed

by Weird Little Stories

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Spock switched off his tricorder. "The earthquake may yet deliver some aftershocks, but we are far enough from the epicenter that they are unlikely to be perceptible to us at this distance except through our instruments."

He looked at the collapsed walls that blocked the way out of the corridor they were currently occupying and added, "My tricorder readings indicate that the security of this facility is intact, so neither our communicators nor the transporter will function here. But the rubble around us is stable, so it is unlikely to shift further, and there are gaps in it that will admit sufficient oxygen for our needs, provided that we do not engage in heavy exercise."

"So we're safe," Kirk said, "but not going anywhere for the moment." He looked around him, then seated himself on the floor and leaned back against the intact wall. "Scotty knows where we are, and he'll look for us when we don't make our check in. But that's four hours from now, so we might as well get comfortable."

"Yeah," McCoy agreed. "Might as well take the load off." He sat down on the floor near Kirk and looked expectantly at Spock.

Spock slung his tricorder over his shoulder and seated himself across from the others.

Kirk smiled at his two friends. "Well, this just gives us a chance to catch up, a chance we have all too rarely on the ship." He turned to McCoy. "Didn't I hear that you'd gotten a message from your daughter recently? How's Joanna doing?"

McCoy brightened. "She's doing great, still at the top of her nursing school class and still passionate about her future profession."

He chuckled. "She's in the part of her nursing program where she's being trained to do educational outreach programs. One of the local schools had her come in and talk to the Sex Ed class — the 5th grade class where they're still at the age when kids think the opposite sex is 'yucky' — and she said explaining the biology of reproduction to them was hilarious, because they were all just barely managing not to stick their fingers in their ears and say, 'La, la, la, I can't hear you.'"

Kirk laughed. "It takes a very patient person to teach Sex Ed; Joanna should be glad she only had to do it once."

Spock's eyebrow showed his curiosity. "Why would it take more patience to teach Sex Education than to teach any other topic?"

Kirk smiled ruefully. "Vulcans may be different, but in humans, the young kids think sex is yucky, the younger teenagers are wildly embarrassed about the entire topic, and the older teenagers try to pretend they know it all already so as to impress the other teenagers."

Spock digested this. "I see." He shook his head. "You humans have the luxury of being able to afford ignorance of your sexuality; Vulcans are not so fortunate."

McCoy looked at Spock. "What are you talking about? You can't tell me Vulcans have Sex Ed!"

Spock inclined his head. "I do so tell you. Vulcans have a theoretical course on Vulcan sexuality at the age of seven and a practical course at the age of sixteen." He grimaced. "Any species afflicted with pon farr cannot allow the dissemination of sexual information to be as haphazard as it is among humans. When sex is literally a matter of life or death, the knowledge necessary for a successful sexual experience cannot be left to chance."

"A practical course?" McCoy looked aghast. "Don't tell me Vulcan children have sex with their teachers!"

"Of course not, Doctor," Spock snapped. "Vulcans are a civilized people, and sexual contact between adults and children is as much an anathema to us as it is to you."

McCoy looked as if there were a bad taste in his mouth. "I'm not sure I like having kids practice on each other much better."

Spock exhaled audibly. "Perhaps if you asked about the practical course instead of making assumptions, you could avoid unnecessary emotional distress."

Kirk spoke up. "Okay," he said mildly, "If Vulcan teenagers have sex neither with their teachers nor with one another, how DO they get practical experience?"

Spock spoke in his most patient tone. "Each student is issued two androids that have been designed especially as sexual instructors and practice objects."

Kirk blinked. "TWO androids? Why would you need two?"

"One male and one female," Spock said in the long-suffering voice he used when he thought something should be completely obvious, even to a human.

McCoy looked interested. "But if you're all telepathically linked to an opposite-sex child at the age of seven, why teach you how to have same-sex sex?"

Spock stiffened; clearly pon farr embarrassed him, although mere sex did not. "During the early stages of pon farr, one must try to reach one's mate if at all possible. But sometimes this is NOT possible, and during the later stages of pon farr, the direction of the drive changes, from the inaccessible mate to whomever is nearest. Sometimes this is a member of the same sex."

Kirk considered this. "I'm glad to hear that pon farr will allow you to save your life with whoever's handy. I guess by the time you're that far gone, male or female doesn't really matter."

Spock tilted his head to one side. "We do not have to be 'far gone' for gender to be irrelevant. It is partly because gender matters little to individual Vulcans that our parents arrange for us to be linked with an opposite-sex individual at an early age. Although Vulcan as a whole cannot withstand unlimited reproduction, each family desires to ensure that its line will continue; hence the linking of children."

McCoy scratched his head. "You mean Vulcans are all bisexual?"

"Vulcans do not have bodily-based sexual orientations, as humans do. As is common in telepathic species, we are far more interested in minds than in bodies, and it is a pattern of similarity and complementarity of minds that attracts us. The body in which that mind is housed makes little difference."

Kirk got an "aha" look on his face. "That's why you didn't want to go watch exotic dancers with me on Argelius!"

Spock inclined his head. "Correct. Although I am not unappreciative of dance as an art form, dance that is intended purely to produce sexual arousal does not appeal to Vulcans, since it is not primarily through the body that we are aroused."

McCoy hrmphed. "You mean it's wasted on you."

"That is a valid interpretation. Just as kash-taman would be wasted on you."

Kirk looked interested. "What's kash-taman?"

"The word translates literally as "mind dancing;" it is a telepathic art form in which a person displays the most characteristic elements of his or her mind to another in a series of rhythms and patterns. It is a very personal art form, generally used only with one's intimates."

Kirk smiled and opened his mouth, and Spock continued hurriedly. "I am sorry to say, Jim, that it is an art form that is only perceptible to another telepath; it is not something I can share with you, in spite of the depth of our friendship."

Kirk closed his mouth, then shrugged. "I guess I should have expected that."

McCoy pursued the Sex Ed topic, partly out of interest and partly to take Kirk's mind off of kash-taman. Let the captain think too long about something he wanted and couldn't have, and he'd start coming up with some hare-brained scheme or another. "I can see where pon farr means you'd need to know what to do, but I'm not sure why you have to have hands-on experience with sex. Why wouldn't book-learning be enough?"

Spock used his surely-this-is-obvious voice again. "The Vulcan educational system endeavors to ensure that its graduates will have not merely enough knowledge to survive pon farr but enough knowledge for a truly successful sexual encounter."

Kirk blinked. "Are you saying that Vulcan teachers want to make sure their students have good sex rather than bad sex?"

Spock raised a disapproving brow. "I fail to understand the human attitude towards sexuality. Optimum physical and mental health requires excellent nutrition, sufficient sleep, and adequate exercise, all of which humans acknowledge. Optimum physical and mental health also requires periodic sexual release, and yet humans behave as if this normal and predictable physical need were somehow shameful."

Kirk smiled. "I agree completely; human sexual norms are illogical, which is why I rarely follow them."

McCoy muttered under his breath but declined to speak more loudly when Kirk turned to look at him.

Kirk turned back to look at Spock. "Does that mean you have a partner on the ship?"

Spock pressed his lips together. "Negative. If I were solely the science officer, I could seek a partner among the command or engineering staff, but as first officer, everyone except yourself is under my command. If I were human, I could perhaps risk it, but given my difficulty interpreting human tone of voice and body language, I will not attempt to woo a likely candidate, only to find that the person in question experienced my suit as coercive."

Kirk smiled. "I should have known that you'd do the most ethical thing, whatever it was. But if regular sex is necessary for optimum health, yet you don't have a partner, what do you do?"

"I signed up for a doctorate in Vulcan sexuality, which ensured that I would have access to training androids that are programmed to teach the very highest level of skill."

McCoy rolled his eyes. "Trust you to think the solution was signing up for another damned degree! Couldn't you just use your good right hand, like lonely men all across the galaxy?"

Spock sighed. "As I have said before, Doctor, I am not a man. Masturbation is not a solution that is available to Vulcans, since a mental connection is necessary for satisfaction. Vulcan training androids, however, have a synthetic consciousness that interfaces with Vulcan telepathy in a satisfactory way."

Kirk looked at Spock. "You have a doctorate in sexuality?"

The Vulcan nodded. "Correct."

Kirk shook his head. "We can't let all that go to waste; we have to find you a girlfriend."

"Or boyfriend," McCoy added helpfully.

Spock asked, "And how would you look for someone whose mind possessed the necessary pattern of similarity and complementarity?"

Kirk opened his mouth and closed it again. He frowned.

McCoy looked sympathetically at Spock. "I always thought you were keeping yourself to yourself because you were stuck up, but that's not it at all, is it?"

Spock exhaled audibly. "It is not."

Kirk frowned. "It's a lot harder than either of us realized, to be a Vulcan on a ship full of humans."

Spock said, "I am equal to the task," and both of the humans knew him well enough to realize that this meant, "Harder than you can ever know."

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Author's Notes

1. I had intended this to be a sweet little light-hearted story, but somehow it got away from me and turned into "It's hard to be Spock." Sorry about that. :-) But then, I do think it IS hard to be Spock, for all that he is gloriously wonderful. (If you'd prefer a happier ending that has K/S, I've posted that version at the Kirk/Spock Archive.)

2. During that conversation in "Amok Time" about Vulcan biology, Spock seems embarrassed; he's clearly having a hard time. Many fans have taken this to mean that Vulcans are prudes who are embarrassed by sex, but I've always figured that Spock was embarrassed by the loss of logic during pon farr, not by sex. If it's not sex that embarrasses Spock, then he should be straightforward and matter-of-fact about it, the way he is about everything else.

When we see Spock seduce the Romulan Commander during "The Enterprise Incident," he seems to know exactly what to do; he plays her masterfully during that episode. And when he's romancing Leila in "This Side of Paradise" and Zarabeth in "All Our Yesterdays," he again seems to know exactly what to do.

But as far as we know, Spock is completely inexperienced at the time of "This Side of Paradise." So where did he get all these skills? That's where the idea for my take on Vulcan sexual education came from. Obviously, this isn't canon. :-)

3. Yes, it's been many months since I posted anything. If I utter the words "ultrasound," "biopsy," and "hysterectomy," perhaps you'll understand that I wasn't just dawdling... They got all the cancer, though, and I'm expected to make a full recovery. (Of course, I still have my usual suite of chronic health problems. *headdesk*)

4. Yes, I intend to finish "Practice Pon Farr"! After my long hiatus, I wanted to ease back into writing with something a bit lighter than that story. Thank you for all the kind and wonderful comments that people have left on it, and I'm very sorry that my bout of cancer has precluded my replying to them. But now that I'm well enough to write again, I figured you'd rather have a new story — even a slight little story like this one — than comment replies. :-)

5. I don't own Star Trek, and I make no money from the stories I write; everything here is just fans playing in the sandbox. If anything, I think I probably have more respect for the characters than Paramount does. :-)

6. I have a chronic illness that leaves me non-functional more days than not. I will try to respond to any new comments I receive; unfortunately, my good intentions are frequently thwarted by my poor health. (I do read them all with great attention, even when my health doesn't permit me to reply.)

7. I've made a Starfleet career for the computer game The Sims 3; you can get it at ModTheSims. As always at ModTheSims — and as always with my game mods — the career is completely free, though it does require both The Sims 3 and the Into the Future expansion pack to play it. (Please note that this is for The Sims 3, NOT for The Sims 4.)

8. Thanks for reading!

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