Chapter 8

Much to Sandy’s and Kenny’s relief, Barb and Josh decided to forego using live models for the classes on the Physiology of Sex. The kids were disappointed, naturally, because it had been rumored on both sides of the lake that their counselors might actually fuck right there in front of them. But the video they watched instead showed a guy getting an erection, and a girl with pubes getting hard nipples, engorged labia, flared nostrils and flushed skin. It was almost as good as the real thing because it showed close-ups. Everybody payed attention.

The high point of the class was a fluoroscopic video of a guy’s penis actually penetrating a girl’s vagina. You never see the actual guy or girl, but the moving x-ray shows his penis sliding in and out for maybe a minute before it pushes hard into her, the glans expands slightly, then ejaculates several shots of semen. While the video was professionally narrated and intended purely as a clinical demonstration, to the volatile teen mind, fucking is fucking, and it was hot enough that most of the guys grew boners and most of the girls got damp panties. They all had elevated cardiac and respiratory rates.

After that, Josh brought them back to the real world with a rather sobering talk about the effect of hormones like testosterone and estrogen on the human brain. It seems there are rafts of conflicting, hormone-influenced things going on in the pubescent brain that can often lead young people to make rather interesting choices. It’s called a biological imperative, a.k.a., sex drive. The need to breed can and will override rational thinking as often as not.

The conflict arises when nature (biology) is urging young folks to get together and make babies as soon as they’re physiologically able to produce sperm and eggs, while the societies in which they are growing up are preaching “NO, NO! Naughty, naughty! You must ignore all those nasty urges! Oh, and it’s not nice to masturbate, either, so, sorry, but you’ll just have to suffer through it until you get married!”

Unfortunately, it’s the kind of information that, even when explained in great detail as a part of the old the birds and bees talk, is unlikely to have enough impact on the teenage psyche to dissuade him or her from finding a way to do whatever they damn well please. The result? TA-DA! Kids doing dumb-ass things that sometimes get them hurt, often get them in trouble, and too often result in kids having more kids.

But what goes around comes around, and those kids who refused to listen to their older and wiser parental units will eventually suffer that very same grief and worry over their own kids.

It all has to do with how the brain develops in a growing young person. At the age of puberty, the brain is still a long way from being fully developed, even though those youthful bodies can, and often do, seem pretty far advance in growing adult characteristics: i.e., boobs, pubic hair, penises that ejaculate, etc., etc., etc.

The connection in the brain that runs from the area that comes up with an idea, and the area of the brain that mulls it over and considers the consequences of that idea, is incomplete. That means there is often a disconnect between a stupid idea and the ability of the kid to see that it’s a stupid idea.

When a kid does something incredibly dumb, and mom or dad asks them why in the world they would do such a thing, and then the kid shrugs and says, “I don’t know”, well, mom and dad rant and rave and just go nuts because they think the kid is just being a little shit and refusing to answer their perfectly reasonable questions. Not necessarily true, mom and dad! In all likelihood, the kid can’t explain why they did it because his or her brain hadn’t really considered the consequences before they carried out the act. Get it?

Now, add to that witches brew the effect of raging hormones. Even grown-up, otherwise intelligent and responsible men and women do the most incredibly, outrageously, nonsensically, stupid things when they’re in the throes of love and lust. Right? So, here’s a fourteen or fifteen-year-old kid who is subject to the very same hormonal upheavals, PLUS he or she has a brain that’s still in the developmental stages! Oops! Talk about your major stressors! Did someone mention high rates of suicide among teenagers?

Fortunately, at the insistence of his tutor, Kenny had read all about that stuff in books, and it was like a light came on in his brain. But hearing it again from Josh, a professional in the business, was still an eye-opener. He wondered how many parents out there even had a clue how their kids’ brains worked. How many kids get sent to bed without their supper, grounded for weeks, and in some extreme cases, beaten senseless, not knowing for sure what the hell just happened?

New parents most definitely should be issued an instruction manual.

During Josh’s presentation, Kenny spotted something going on from the back of the classroom and pointed it out to Sandy. Three or four of the kids were busy passing notes back and forth to each other. At first, he was tempted to collar them after class and admonish the guilty parties to pay attention, but then he thought, “Hey, school’s out, dude. This is summer camp. Let’em do their thing.”

If the kids were communicating, power to them. Connecting was not only a good thing, it was what the class was all about. Maybe all the sex talk was charging them up and generating the courage to explore possibilities, stirring up those hormones Josh had been talking about. Maybe it was best to just let nature take its course and provide what guidance might be useful along the way.

Nevertheless, they were fourteen-year-olds doing covert things, and therefore bore watching.

After class, Sandy got Kenny off to the side and asked him if he could meet her by the boathouse after lights out. This time she’d bring her sleeping bag and an air mattress, so they wouldn’t have to do a balancing act as they fucked each other silly.

Kenny grinned and nodded in the affirmative. He could hardly wait. And it was more than animal lust he was feeling.

As it happened, that particular night was to see a lot more action than either of them could have expected. A LOT more!

Kenny caught wind of something going on with the kids and the notes that evening after dinner. Back at the cabin, he saw three of the boys huddled together around Jackson’s bed, like they were involved in some deep, dark conspiracy. He might not have taken any notice if all the note-passing hadn’t already made him suspicious that they were probably up to something. The group of conspirators included J.J., Danny, and Jackson.

He thought it could be worth investigating, not so much for the purpose of busting them in the process of getting into some kind of mischief, but rather to see that no one got hurt. He was, after all, supposed to be the responsible adult. There was that thing Josh talked about that very day, the thing about kids not necessarily considering the consequences of their actions, although, Jackson seemed to Kenny to be a pretty level-headed kid. J.J. too. Danny, not so much. Too much of a prankster.