Chapter 4: Lori and Bob

Bob walked Lori out and off the center grounds, out into the desert, which, for him, symbolized her sex life... a barren wasteland. The conference center, which represented everyone else's sex life, and was bright and modern and comfortable, was within sight, but "over there". He wanted her in an inhospitable place to begin their talk.

She was light on her feet, young, agile, and full of energy.

"What shall we talk about?" she asked, almost formally.

"I'd like to hear about you," said Bob. "Where you grew up, what your parents are like, if you had a dog, or another pet of some kind, who you felt close to... things like that," he said.

"Oh," she said, apprehensively. "That would be boring, probably."

"Not to me," said Bob. "I'm interested in you."

She cocked her head and looked at him. "Like a patient, you mean."

He shook his head. "Nope. As a young woman."

She stopped. "Why?" she asked.

Bob stopped too. "Well, let's see. You're a young and vibrant woman. You must be intelligent, because you're only twenty three and already a real teacher. You're pretty in a way that appeals to the man in me. How's that for starters?"

She seemed to be chewing on all that mentally.

"I'm not really a teacher," she said, almost sadly. "Not yet anyway. I mean I graduated, and I've been hired, but I've never even seen my classroom. They sent me to this seminar before I even reported for work. I thought I was going to teach Social Studies, not Sex Ed."

"That must be a scary thing," said Bob.

"Yes!" she said. "It is. I'm scared of lots of things."

"We can talk about those too," said Bob, "if you want to."

"I wouldn't know where to start," said Lori sadly. "I'm really glad I got away from my parents - they're scared of things too - but when I left, I saw such odd things..." She stopped, her mind whirling, unable to pick one of those strange things she'd seen to talk about. She thought back to what he'd said earlier.

"I had a dog back home," she said hopefully. "His name was Buster."

"Are you going to get another dog when you get settled?" asked Bob. "Or maybe go back and get Buster and bring him to your new home?"

She looked shocked. "I never even thought about that!" she said. "I could DO that... couldn't I?"

"You're an adult, out in the big wide world," said Bob. "You can make all kinds of choices now."

"I really CAN... can't I!" She looked astonished, somehow. Bob wondered how she'd ever made it through college. It had to have been a cloistered school of some sort, where she was protected.

"Where did you go to college?" he asked.

So she told him about her school, and how different it had been from home. That got her talking about home, and what that had been like. Through it all, Bob noticed she never said a word about sex.

"Can I ask you a personal question?" asked Bob.

She was more comfortable now, and they were walking again, though to no particular destination. "Sure," she chirped.

"You're going to teach sexual education, when you get to your new school. What was your own sexual education like?"

She threw up her hands.

"I don't know BEANS about sex!" she said heatedly. "My mother told me such horrid stories about what happens if you have sex that I was scared to death to even look at a boy. Not that there were any around. My school only had girls in it. Some of them went out with boys. They said they did things, but I didn't really believe them. At least, not until last night."

Bob decided not to ask her about what happened last night. She looked upset about it. It would come up later, he knew.

"Tell me what your mother said about sex," suggested Bob.

She did, at length, and that led to some of the things the girls in her college had talked about. She was obviously torn between being properly horrified, and curious. She stopped again, and looked at Bob, like she was afraid.

"If I tell you something... you won't make fun of me... will you?" she asked earnestly.

"Never," said Bob firmly.

"Last night... in my room... there was this TV show on. I never saw anything LIKE it before! There were all these people and they were naked and making movies and one of the women gave this man a BLOW job... right there in FRONT of EVERYBODY! I heard about them in school, and it sounded SO nasty... I didn't really believe anybody would DO that!" She looked confused. "But these people on the TV... they looked like they were having FUN!" She looked at him imploringly. "Until last night, I never in my whole LIFE saw a penis... and on the TV there must have been five or six of them, all at one time!"

"How did that make you feel?" asked Bob, keeping his face straight.

"Scared," she said instantly.

"Why?" asked Bob.

"I don't know. I got all these funny feelings in my body, like I was nervous or something. I wanted to get up and move around, but I couldn't take my eyes off the TV. I had to go, but I didn't want to miss anything. I almost peed my PANTS until I finally couldn't take it and went to the bathroom!"

Bob turned. It was about time to begin wandering back toward the center.

"Those feelings in your body," he said, "are caused by all kinds of hormones that your body makes, and releases. They're designed to help your body get ready to have sex."

"But I don't want to have sex!" she squealed. "Why would my body do that?"

"Remember that genetic imperative I was talking about?" he reminded her. "Man and woman were made, genetically speaking, to have sex. It's normal. What your mother was telling you was her attempt to protect you from having sex too soon in your life."

She looked at him, her eyes worried. "So, you're telling me my body wants to have sex?"

"Uh huh," he said. "But that doesn't mean you have to. Those feelings won't go away, but there are ways to handle them without actually having sex with somebody."

"You mean like the girls at school talked about... by... touching yourself." she said softly. "My mother said that will cause you to go insane."

Bob didn't laugh. "Sometimes you feel like you're going insane, but that's just hormones and emotions. Like when you were watching TV last night. All that energy you felt was just hormones and emotions, looking for an outlet. If it makes you feel any better, I've masturbated for years and years, and I don't think I went insane."

She stopped again, looking at him wide eyed. "Really? You do that?"

"Sure do," he said. "I don't have a special lady to help me with all my own emotions and hormones, so I have to take care of that myself."

She seemed to want to think about things, so Bob steered her toward the cafeteria. She didn't seem to mind the touch of his fingertips on her elbow, or the middle of her back, and she smiled and thanked him when he held the door open for her. He noticed that several of the other couples were already at dinner. The pairings he saw didn't surprise him too much, based on his earlier observations. He smiled at Crystal, but only got a steady stare back.

It was during the meal that Lori started talking again.

"You know, after I got to college I knew my mother was being a little paranoid about things. I don't know too much about my grandparents, or what they were like and all that, but in college they told us that we raise our kids like we were raised, because that's the only thing we know. I bet my grandparents told her all those things about how nasty sex is and all that."

"I suspect you're right about that," said Bob.

"And what I see now tells me that something is wrong. Her view of sex, and what I heard about in school and saw on TV just don't match. Somebody is wrong. I just don't know who."

Bob nodded. "Most kids get to experiment with members of the opposite sex, when they're young. They learn, like the rest of us, by trial and error. By the time they're your age, they've had their hearts broken a couple of times, but they have some idea of what it feels like to be in love. Most people your age have tried sex, in one way or another, and know how they feel about that too. The way you were raised didn't let you do any of those things, so I wouldn't feel too badly about being confused."

"So, what do I do?" she asked helplessly.

"Well, I think some experimentation is in order," said Bob. "You need to find you some nice young man, and get to know him. He'll probably be more experienced than you, so he'll want to go faster than you will, but if you communicate with him about that, you should be able to experiment with him and find out some of the things you missed when you were growing up."

She frowned. "But I won't even get to my new school for another month, and then I won't know anybody, and I'll be busy. I have to find a place to live, and open a bank account and all that. Then school sill start. The kids I have in my classes will have more experience than I do, at least according to you. I want to be a good teacher, but I'm afraid I'll be too stupid to do a good job, especially in sex ed!"

"You have the rest of your life to learn things," said Bob. "And they'll provide you with a curriculum for your classes. It won't be so bad. You've done fine so far, haven't you?"

"No!" she said vehemently. "I never even imagined people could be like they were on that TV show. I thought all sex was done in private, and only to make a baby. I didn't even think my parents HAD sex after I was born. Now I'm finding out my mother lied to me, and the world isn't like that at all!"

"Your mother didn't lie to you, exactly," said Bob, putting his fingertips on the top of her hand. "She just told you what she thought would protect you."

Lori was staring at his hand, touching hers. She didn't move her own, but she looked so intense that he almost moved his away. She looked up.

"One of the men... on that TV show. He was standing there, getting ready to have sex, and he was rubbing his penis. That's masturbating... right?"

"Yes," said Bob.

"Why would he do that, when he was about to have sex?"

"It feels good to rub your penis," said Bob. "That's why I do it. It just plain feels good. And if I do it correctly, I can have an orgasm, and all that sexual tension is released."

She stared at him. Until this very moment, had some man talked to her this frankly, she'd have screamed bloody murder. But Bob seemed so normal... so unthreatening.

"Instead of me waiting to find some man," she said, looking at him. "You could teach me."

Bob did move his hand then. "I don't think that's a good idea," he said softly.

She sat up straight. "Of course it is!" She actually wiggled in her seat. "You're older, and more experienced. You already know how scared I am about all this, and how stupid I am about sex. You're patient, and nice and I don't think I'd be so scared with you. I feel like I could communicate with you really easy!"

"Sweetheart," said Bob softly, "This is a big step you're talking about taking. Things happen very fast, even when you try to take them slowly. Sex can be overwhelming for someone like you. And we only have a week. You need to be able to stretch things out, and take months to get to know each other and move forward slowly."

"Nobody ever called me sweetheart before," said Lori. "That just proves how nice you are. You have to help me, Bob. I have so many questions, and there's so much I don't know, and I want to be a good teacher."

Bob gave it another try. "You don't have to be sexually experienced to be a good teacher."

"I know that, but I'd be a better teacher if I knew more than I do now." She looked at him with serious eyes. "Besides, you said I was attractive. Did you put me in the 'acceptable' group, or that other one you were talking about, where you're not interested in me after all?"

Bob just looked at her. What did he do now? He'd been interested in finding out more about her, because she seemed almost crippled by her innocence. His plan had been simply to loosen her up a little, to get her to look at the world as a place that had lots of options, and get her to think about some of them that she might not otherwise have contemplated seriously. She had already done that, taking a leap of a light year, instead of the small step forward he'd had in mind. He suddenly had an mental image of the future, if he denied her what she was asking. He saw her throwing herself at every man she met, trying to find one who would help her get experience. Most men would be happy to "help" her, and she'd be used and abused in the process.

Before he meant to say anything, he heard his voice say "OK." He jerked his thoughts back to the present. "I'll help you explore, but only a little bit. We can work on how to conduct yourself in social situations, without committing yourself too far, too fast. How's that?"

"We can start tonight!" she said excitedly. "What do we do first?"

Bob looked at her. She was wearing clothing that was gray and almost lumpy looking. "Dowdy" was the term applied to such clothing in an earlier day. Her hair had been washed, and pulled back, to lie behind her ears. Her braces gleamed in the light of the cafeteria.

"Let's go shopping," said Bob. "We'll get you a new outfit, and spend more time talking, like we were on a date."

She stood up, her meal forgotten. "OK, let's go," she said eagerly.

Bob drove her to Phoenix, to a mall. She'd been to malls with some of the girls in her college, and Bob found that she was a mysterious mixture of being both sadly out of date, and fully capable of negotiating the masses at the mall. He was reminded of the Tarzan story, where the young man was brought from the jungle, to the city, where his skills put him ahead of people in some situations, and his ignorance made him completely helpless in others.

She had no idea what kind of clothing to choose, even though there were people all around her dressed in all kinds of clothing. Bob helped her pick out a plum colored skirt, and a blouse with matching colors in a light floral design. He felt like everyone was staring at them when he took her to the lingerie section to pick out undergarments. She gravitated toward the basic, plain bras, and he encouraged her to move to the racier, sexier garments.