Chapter 4: Nudity in the Health and Psych Classes

This particular Health and Psych class was an eleventh grade class, and Daan hadn’t had this group for P.E. class yet; they had a double-period P.E. class on Tuesdays and a single one Thursdays.

As he entered the classroom, Daan was still wondering how he’d handle the twenty-eight juniors in this class; he had been thinking about it all weekend, and now he decided to just go with his gut feelings. The classroom was a multipurpose room, so the arrangement of its furniture was flexible. That morning, he had asked one of the custodians to move and stack the room’s desk-chair combos at the side of the room and cover the floor with gym mats. When the kids arrived, they were surprised to see how the room was set up.

“All right, people, just come in. Put your bags and stuff along the walls or on the stacked chairs and find a place on a mat, two on a mat,” Daan instructed. “Class format will be a bit different today.”

It didn’t take long; in two minutes, everyone was seated and waiting expectantly.

“Last week we finished covering how medicine has finally overcome the scourge of sexually-transmitted diseases, or STDs, which meant that lots of people began to abandon the use of condoms to prevent disease transmission. But that’s a dangerous idea, since not every female is on the Shot; as you know, that’s the combo anti-disease and pregnancy immunization. So you know that condom use might still be important to protect you, especially if you have multiple partners. Condoms aren’t only to prevent babies—they prevent disease transmission too.”

He noticed that many of the kids were blushing and fidgeting nervously as they sat there listening.

“Now here’s the class setup change. Instructions have come from the state education department for high schools to conduct these Health and Psych classes with everyone naked—and that means everyone in here now,” Daan said as he stripped off his clothes to the sound of shrieks and exclamations from the students.

“Our class has shifted now from health to psychology and this week and next, we’ll be doing a unit on practical sex education. This week we’ll cover sexual arousal, and we’ll be doing this using a practical, rather than theoretical, or learning from books, approach. When you’ve gotten naked, sit next to your partner; you’ve no doubt seen that most of you have been partnered with one of the people that your class preference questionnaire asked you to list. We’re doing these exercises with partners; the exercises involve intimate contact, and I don’t care if you’ve chosen the same or opposite sex partner. But I might need to shuffle some of you around so everyone’s with someone they feel comfortable with. Listen up! I don’t see all of you stripping; let’s move it now.”

Just as in his P.E. classes, several girls were upset and crying. Two girls got up and rushed out of the room and two boys, apparently their partners, followed.

“I see that a few of your classmates decided that they can’t do this,” Daan commented. “Anyone else want to leave? I promise that you will probably enjoy the class. Anyone squeamish about the nudity?”

About nine kids raised their hands, more girls than boys.

“You want to try some of the activities with underwear on?” Daan asked. “Then you’ll see that there’s no danger in what we’ll be doing.”

Three of the reluctant boys just shrugged at that and began undressing fully, while three girls got down to their underwear. While the others were still undressing, Daan went to the fourth girl, Robin, who was sitting next to a boy, Jerome, who was whispering to her to please go along with the class.

“Would you be okay with being naked with Jerome and just staying right here with him?” Daan asked and she nodded slowly and tearfully, so Daan told Jerome to help her undress.

The last two girls didn’t have a boy- or girlfriend in the room—Daan hadn’t seen either interact with anyone in the class previously, so he decided to go with his instincts. He recalled that they hadn’t listed anyone on their preference forms either. He had noticed that the two girls had kept to themselves and had been quiet during the past year, but there wasn’t anything about their appearance or body language that would suggest that they had body-image issues. They were generically pretty teen girls with attractive shapes, from what he had seen when they were in their P.E. outfits. Daan’s senses told him that the two were very likely starved for affection because he had seen both looking longingly at some of the couples in this class. So he decided to just go for it, rely on his instincts.

All of the rest of the class members were naked now except for two girls and a boy; most were standing on their mats in pairs, looking around uncertainly, waiting for instructions. A few were sitting on their mats, talking quietly. He had no same-sex pairs, he noted.

Interesting; I would have thought that the counselors would have scheduled at least one female pair for this first class, he mused. Glad that didn’t happen because I can just do the hetero lesson. I also see couples that I never expected here—jeez, several nerds with popular girls? Gotta attribute the unusual partnering I see to all that team-building that we did.

There were an equal number of girls and boys here and that was by design; Daan knew. At the beginning of the spring term, the class compositions had been realigned as a result of the students’ completing a survey form asking about their fall-term P.E. experience. One of the questions asked was to list three classmates with whom they would be comfortable with as a partner in a course that explored sexual anatomy and where physical contact was involved. Of course Daan knew about the survey; he had a role in its design. There had been hints coming from the state about doing a practical sex-ed unit. And in cases where his class did have sets of same-sex couples, his lesson plan had a homosexual section too, but it wasn’t needed now.

“Sit down with your partners now,” Daan instructed, “Get comfortable with them while I talk to Sara and Amber.”

Quickly, first Daan went over to two boy-girl couples whom he had identified as being the most highly empathic in the class; he knew this from watching them in class and also during his P.E. class with them. There were also two solo boys, nothing special looking about them except that they were also somewhat shy. They were standing apart, nervously wringing their hands, while looking around.

Daan signaled the two “empathic” couples and the two solo boys to come over to him and he whispered some instructions to them. They all nodded and went over to the mat where the two weeping girls, Sara and Amber, still sat, and they all began talking together quietly. Then the six kids, following Daan’s instructions, knelt next to the two crying girls and in a mass of bodies, hands were held and stroked, kisses were given, hair and arms were caressed, backs were rubbed, and bodies were embraced, as the group gently undressed the girls. Less than two minutes had gone by.

Daan had gone up to the whiteboard at the room’s front. While he began writing a list of the body’s erogenous zones on the board, he watched the six kids working with Sara and Amber. In short, he had told the six to begin to gently seduce the two girls. He only asked that the solo boys should try to take the lead, each with one girl, and be supported by the others.

His idea worked as slowly, the girls allowed the others to undress them and the solo boys now had partners. Daan noted that the girls were holding onto their new partners’ hands so tightly that the boys winced a few times. But the other two couples didn’t leave the four no-longer-orphaned kids; they all remained sitting close with as much skin contact as possible. The two reluctant girls had been lulled into a sensory overload, as Daan had intended. He thought that if they had felt deprived of affection because of their shyness, giving them an overdose of physical affection would overwhelm their senses, and that’s what happened.

When Daan finished writing the list of the body’s erogenous areas on the whiteboard, he saw that all the couples had settled down and were talking quietly with each other.

Good, he thought, ice-breaking for some and everyone’s getting intimately introduced. But some are sitting close but others aren’t. Let’s do this, he decided, recalling a theater trick used by directors to help actors who hadn’t worked together before to connect before doing an intimate scene.

“All right, class, before we discuss the list on the board, let’s do this. Boys and girls, face each other and sit as close as you can to each other and boys, take your partner’s right hand in both of yours and caress it, stroke it all over, explore all of her fingers, its back, and palm. Allow your two hands to make love to her hand.”

After several minutes, he told the boys to do the girls’ left hand; then he had the girls do the boys’ hands. He heard a lot of sighing, gasping, and some faint giggling while this was going on. Then he called for attention to some disappointed groaning from the class.

“That felt nice, right?”

Everyone assented.

“Didn’t know that hands were an erogenous zone, did you?”