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"People wouldn't do it if there wasn't some good part, would they?" asked Ophelia, thinking critically and determined to stop seeming like such a little kid. "Like, if it was excruciatingly painful or something, no one would ever do it."

She glanced around the room nervously. Her tone indicated she was being pretty hypothetical about all this.

"We're not here to judge anyone based on what they have and haven't done, right?" she asked, glancing a bit hesitantly at Manny. She didn't think the other girl's revelation changed anything about how she saw her, but it was too soon to tell.

Then again Ophelia'd gone and kissed the first boy who'd asked, and she wasn't entirely sure she was proud of that anymore. At the very least, it was a private thing. She'd been embarrassed even telling Wisp about that. If they were going to be expected to be that open for the rest of this course, it was going to be absolute torture!

"People do all sorts of s**t," Chris said. "They like fighting, but I'm betting it hurts most. Football, soccer, rugby, I'm betting there's lots of broken bones in all of those, but they still do it. You can't just assume people won't do something just because it hurts."

"Uh, you're not givin' us sex as homework, right?" Iggy looked gently bemused, the blush caused by his fall long since passed as soon as he settled in beside Jace and pulled his legs beneath him Indian-style. "'Cause I'll just take the F then, Miss Lindy. Dad's made me swear that I'll only have meaningful sex."

"But full of what meaning?" Delilah again twisted in her recline to look over her shoulder at Iggy and Jace, sparing another brief glance at Wisp and Ophelia's pink faces. "Sex is just as much about metaphor as anything else sometimes." She paused then and looked thoughtful. "But metaphor or not, I'd say I prefer safety."

Chris was, by now, getting irritated that he had gotten Antony out of the class and not himself. He contemplated knocking himself up the back of the head, then realized it would probably hurt his tail more than it would his skull, so he said what was on his mind (as he was very apt to do.)

"What about emotional baggage?" he asked. "You can't tell me you don't get emotionally attached to the people you sleep with, especially when you're this young." (IE he didn't give a s**t about literature and sexual metaphors and never would.)

"When you have sex with someone you're trusting them with a lot, and if there's no sense of commitment it's like you're just giving yourself away. Hell, I can almost understand getting paid for it before I can understand sleeping around." Which was, to him, what it sounded like the teacher was telling them to do.

For some reason her comment cooled him down and he leaned back, his gold eyes gleaming and his hand slipping into his pocket. He hesitated for a moment, fingering a cigar, then pulled out a sucker, unwrapping it and popping it into his mouth.

A simple thought had kept him from losing his temper. If he failed high school it wouldn't mean s**t in the long run. "Sex, making love, ********, call it whatever makes you happy."

Antony stepped in about that time, still a bit pale but his eyes weren't quite as dilated. He would have gone home, but his Father had patted him on the back and said to not fall asleep.

"I don't think there's anything that says you have too," Manny said, glancing at the teacher for confirmation, "Delilah's right, it's personal. So if personally you don't want to, no one can make you." Though if they try, you kick their butts. The thought made her smile, Jace was the only one there that seemed well equipped to kick anybody's butt.

Casca tramped back in too, with every sign of suffering. He flopped back down on his beanbag chair just as his mother was saying, "That's the thing, ladies, sex is entirely your choice. Yours. You never owe anyone sex, you never give anyone sex if you don't want to, if you don't want to have sex there is nothing wrong with you and don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

She smiled at Manuela. "See, that's why I couldn't make sex homework," said Ms. Lindy, "I mean also that would be really creepy and skeezy, but that's not what this is about. I'm not saying, go out and have sex! -- but sex means different things to different people. Some of you will find it's very emotional, you're very attached. It's a big deal. Some of you will find you don't have that kind of connection, and that's fine too. There's only one rule, and that is -- never do anything you don't want to do, and never do anything someone else doesn't want to do. Okay, that's two rules. We'll talk about sex law too later, but that's a little weirder with you guys because most of you are under two years old."

If that wasn't bizarre enough. She looked at Chris, who looked curmudgeonly about the entire thing; Jace, who looked impatient; Manny and Delilah, who looked calm and zen both. Baffled Kisala. Slightly less baffled Iggy. Ophelia; Antony (who seemed less concussed), her son, no-longer-tittering Wisp --

"Okay, at this point I'm going to make you put condoms on bananas," she said. "Not because I think you guys are ever going to need to know how to put a condom on a banana, because it'll give you something to do with your hands as you discuss this out for the last quarter of the class, because this is a really embarrassing topic to try to meet somebody's eyes with. So. Before we start that, I'm really proud of you guys for discussing it like you have -- okay except Casca: have you got anything to contribute before we go on?"

"No," said her son, eyes closed, curls spread over the beanbag. "Because you are my mother."

"Just one statement. A question. Anything."

The gargoyle boy sighed so hard that it nearly sucked in passing objects. Obviously reciting as a specific plant, he droned: "What-about-gay-sex."

"I'm so glad you asked about that!" she said, enthused. "We'll go into gay sex specifically into one of the classes, but just letting you guys know that it is completely fine to be questioning your sexuality at the moment. It is natural. This room is a gay safe space, I want you all openminded. Some of you may not know that I personally identify as gay! If you want to ask me anything, I'm also the Rainbow Pride rep for the school. Thank you, Casca."

She got out a tub of bananas, huffing as she put it on the low table at the front. Then, jangling, she got out a tub of condoms. "Nurse's office and counsellor's office always supplies condoms, no questions asked," she said.

It was Jace who reached up first to grab a handful of condoms in one hand, and two bananas in the other. The redhead simply flopped down, peeled a banana, and started to eat it as she sniggered (and it sounded a bit phoned-in, like her heart wasn't in the snigger) over the condoms.