Member-only story
A Middle School Lesson on Sex and Shame
Girls, Puberty, and the Unwanted Attention of Men
The lesson ends a few minutes before the bell is set to release us to our next class, so the teacher tells us to select a book from his small library.
He is a dynamic and outspoken man, our middle school social studies teacher — a “real character,” my parents say. With a bandana jauntily tied around his neck, he jumps on our desks in his cowboy boots when he wants our attention. It works — he has our full attention. We are at once in awe and terrified of him, eager to earn his approval. His opinion of us matters; it is obvious if one is in his esteem or considered to be ridiculous.
I don’t really know the girls with whom I am sitting. We are in seventh grade, which is when our junior high school begins, bringing the town’s four elementary schools together into one charmless brick box. We are quiet girls, less eager for our teacher’s approval than to go unnoticed by him, to slip quietly under the radar where we will be neither vilified nor glorified.
I select a book for my group, which though heavy and imperious-looking is The Book of Lists. Expecting to be thumbing through dry reference books on world wars, we are delighted by the trivia we find instead: lists of which celebrities fell in love on movie sets and the…
