For some reason I get philosophical when I'm having sex. Today was no different. The guy's name was Tony, and he had just put several inches of his righteously hard male anatomy right where it would do us both the most good. While he was laboring away, making both of us very happy, my mind started to wander.

Boys don't understand this. Sure, as the crisis approaches all other thoughts leave my head and I concentrate on what's going on, how good it feels, and how it's going to feel really good in just a few minutes more, but before that wonderful moment my mind takes off on the most amazing tangents. Today was no different.

A couple of hours before I'd read that 'girls want romance, and have to settle for sex, while boys want it the other way around.' I don't know what planet that woman was from, but it sure couldn't have been this one. I'd settle for sex every time. I didn't have much romance going on in my life—moving to Center from Three Valleys had put a stop to that part of my life—but the sex was good enough to make me forget all of that. Besides, I was only 16. I knew romance would come along a little later in life.

Maybe it was the way I was brought up. Every girl in Three Valleys, starting when she's 13, gets immersed in sex. You're touching and exploring yourself when you're 13, learning to get yourself off when you're 14, and doing it with boys when you turn 15. We even have classes for it in high school. And that's what I was in, Sex Ed, and Tony and I were 'getting acquainted' like everyone did on the first couple of days of the school term.

We lived in an apartment complex on the north side of Center, the biggest city around, You can't live there unless you're from Three Valleys or Seaside. It has everything people from Three Valleys was used to: a water complex, gardens, rooftop areas, and so on. The people from Seaside can even go nude all of the time wherever they want, well, except for the lobby and halls below their floors.

That extends to school. We all attend a regular school in Center, but at the end of the day we were bussed back to the complex for Sex Ed. If this seems a little strange, as if they're having us have sex just for the sake of it, well, that was part of my philosophical question.

About then Tony began demanding more and more of my attention. I was liking what he was doing, and I began to get a lot more into what was happening. I'd been moving anyway, a girl can do that on autopilot for a bit, but now I'd hooked my ankles against the back of his thighs and pulled myself up on him even as he thrust down. Whatever deep thoughts I'd been forming were shoved to the back of my mind for some other time. Right now there was a growing ball of sensation in my middle. I tried to hold it back, but it couldn't be denied. All too soon I lost control.

I spent in one glorious straining moment. Everything focused on my middle, and I was sweptr away by my climax.

Tony wasn't quite there yet, which was really good for me. He'd sensed my climax, and that made him speed up. That got me going again; there's nothing like a climax to get you ready for the next one. When he got there I was on the brink of another one, and together we really rocked. When he finished he leaned down and kissed me.

I don't believe the woman who wrote that article had never kissed a boy while just coming down off of a blinding climax. Tony's arms were around me, his dick was still hard and deep inside me, and I was practically melting up into his body. That's when a kiss is so deep, so meaningful, so passionate that it can't be described, as if you could describe a kiss anyway. For a short time we melded our bodies and souls.

One of the differences between doing it at the apartment complex in Center, and doing it in school in Three Valleys is that back home condoms were mandatory, but not here. That wasn't because they provided an extra layer of protection against disease—sexual diseases don't exist in Three Valleys—or to prevent conception, not with the conception control we used. The reason is a lot more practical. School condoms in Three Valleys are used to make clean-up afterward a lot easier. That might be true. When we were done here we'd go back to our apartments; back in Three Valleys we'd have the rest of the school day to get through because there, Sex Ed didn't come at the end of the day. It was a regular class, just like Math or English.

Eventually Tony pulled out. His poor cock, now reduced to 'dick' status, hung straight down. It looked red and wet, and the helmet-shaped head had bits of white here and there. Some girls like to lick a guy clean afterwards. Me, I'm more interested in the rest of his body, and want to cuddle, and that's what we did.

One of the peculiarities about sex is that a guy looks and acts like he's been wiped out. A girl is usually charged up and full of energy, unless she's been partying all night, in which case she's probably tired, too, but not for the same reason. With guys it's a physiological thing. Their bodies only have so much semen stored away, and getting tired keeps them from hurting themselves by trying to do too much.

In any case Tony put his arms around me, pulled me next to him spoon-fashion, and we relaxed. I could have done with another go-round, but apparently that was it for today. So after a few minutes I got up and began gathering my clothes.

There were 40 of us in class, and we ranged from those just starting out to those who had been at this a while. I dropped a kiss on Tony's cheek as a thank you, and then followed the other girls as we carried our clothes out to the pool. This is a feature in every town in Three Valleys. You have everything from a deep pool for the divers and serious swimmers, to a splash area for the littlest kids. Everyone's nude, of course, and we all catch a few rays, do some swimming, and just relax.

Today it was a little more complicated than that. The roof was closed. Center is not that far from the ice sheet that covers most of North America. The weather outside ranged from bitter cold in the winter, to warm and balmy with bouts of cool air in the summer. We had a roof over the area between the buildings to hold off the bad weather. Today was one of those typical spring days. It wasn't a howling blizzard in the outside world, but we'd gotten several inches of snow the night before, and it looked like we'd get more tonight. But we were inside, it was warm, and we could frolic in the water as much as we wanted.

I waded into the pool to clean up. I didn't do any swimming. Instead I dried off, pulled on my skirt and top so I was minimally decent and wouldn't shock any outsiders, and went back to the apartment I shared with my folks and my siblings.

"Hi, dear," Mother said when I came in the front door.

"Hi, back," I replied. "I've got a date tonight. Won't be here for dinner."

"That's right, you told me before. Anyone I know?"

"I met him at school. A whole bunch of us are going downtown to see the Parade of Lights. We're supposed to be back about the middle of the evening."

She nodded. "All right, but don't forget you still have to do your homework."

As if I could forget that. "I should have time to finish it when we get back."

"All right. Have fun."

It's customary for a girl to wear a skirt or dress, but there are limits, like when it's 10º outside with a foot of snow. Even the most fashionable girl wears pants on evenings like that. I changed, gave Mom and Dad a kiss, and went down to the lobby to wait for my date.

The Festival of Lights was a lot of fun, and we all went for a wagon ride afterward, then stood around a fire and ate sandwiches and drank hot cocoa. I'd no sooner gotten home than I was changed into something a little more girl-appropriate given the weather, a couple of layers of flannel and my heavy robe with socks and slippers.

The lights and wagon ride were the major topic at school the next day. A couple of guys had kissed a few girls, and so of course we had to dissect that in every way possible. For the average teenage girl the only thing more fun than shopping was gossiping about our friends. The one thing we didn't talk about, at least those of us from Three Valleys, was who we'd had sex with the day before. We'd learned a long time before that some things aren't discussed where outsiders can hear them.

The weather had moderated a bit, so a few brave souls tried not wearing slacks under the skirts of their school uniforms, but most of us were a lot more sensible. I couldn't wait to get out of those things. Part of it is custom, part habit. I was a girl, I wore a skirt. Boys wore pants. Oh, there were times a proper young lady wore long pants, but only when necessity drove her to it. Besides, I had nice legs and liked showing them off.

Of course after Sex Ed, while we were all at the pool, we talked about who we'd had sex with, and passed along things that would help the next girl. By then we'd seen the 'rotation' of who we'd be with next; Alan was going to be my partner the next day, and I learned that he wasn't so long as he was thick. And he liked to kiss and suck a girl's breasts as they did it. He also liked short, choppy strokes. I like long ones, but a short guy can seem long if he takes his time. That, apparently, wasn't Alan's way. But a girl can adapt to anything if she has fair warning.

I, in turn, told how Erick, my partner that day, curved up when he was hard, and he liked to sort of swivel his hips when thrusting. That was important news for Janice, the girl who'd be with him the next day. I don't think guys do this. I think they're into the 'me big he-man' and thump their chests. Guys are individualistic, while us girls knew we had to stick together, even if we did compete against each other. I think this was a leftover from the hunter-gatherer days.

That was what I'd concluded earlier that day as Erick and I made each other happy. The woman who claimed girls wanted romance, but had to settle for sex obviously didn't know many teenage girls. Sex was new and exciting, and we'd take all of it we could get. Romance existed in fairy tales and novels, which were pretty much the same thing. That happened to older girls, ones in their 20s when they were contemplating a family. After all, even the most star struck girl knew that an awful lot happened after the electric spark jumped between a couple as they gazed into each others' eyes.

Teenagers get obsessed with sex because it's new and our bodies and hormones are clamoring at us. The human race has developed a few strategies for dealing with this problem. First, clamp the lid down and find other outlets. Some cultures try that form of repression. Others introduce a host of alternatives, dancing being the one people like the best. Some cultures "care", but only nominally. Teenagers get out from adult supervision and go wild. This leads to a lot of problems, pregnancy being only the most obvious one. In Three Valleys they do their best to give kids the emotional underpinnings they'll need, and then dump them headlong into the world of sex. I think it's significant that kids and adults in Three Valleys have far fewer sexual problems than anywhere else.

I kept such conclusions to myself. Erick had been very pleasant indeed, a guy I'd gladly hop into bed with again if given half the chance. One of the things I liked about him was the way he moved. I could see between our bodies, which I didn't always get to do. Despite what some people think, a girl can't actually see it go in; that part of your body is one of those places that a girl just can't quite see unless she's incredibly limber. Of course we see it in our imagination, and we feel what's going on there. Someone said a girls' brain was the most important sex organ of all, and her imagination filled in what our eyes couldn't.

Of course with Erick, I could see quite a bit. His dick grew out of his nest of hair looking like the exposed root of a tree, but without the bark. It was a little darker color than the rest of his body—a lot of boys are that way—and was wet from my moisture. It felt a lot thicker than it looked, and when he reared slightly as he thrust, it scraped some awfully sensitive nerves in my channel. I'd earlier sucked him so he came in my mouth, so now, as he peaked, I could just imagine his white fluid spurting out of the dark hole in the tip.

That's the mechanical side of sex. He also fit his arms around me, nestled his body against mine, and gave me something solid to cling to when my own time came. I felt safe and protected, and if the price for that was giving him a place to come, I wasn't going to complain. That was a choice every girl that I knew would make every day.

That was then. Now his dick hung down, knocking against his legs as he walked. His balls acted as sort of a cushion for his dick, adjusting as his legs brushed them. I'd heard girls in school wonder how guys could walk with a dick hanging between their legs. That wasn't a mystery to any girl from Three Valleys. I thought they pictured a guy's dick in the same place as their channel: squarely between their legs. It really wasn't where they thought it was, and as they walked it just sort of got bumped out of the way.

Erick and I shared a knowing smile the next day in school, and Candy, who was not from Three Valleys, shot a look at me.

"A new boyfriend?"

I shook my head. "Not really. We got to talking yesterday, and he had some funny things to say." Yeah, thinks like "Ooh," "Ahh," and "Coming!" I wasn't much better. My half of the conversation was probably filled with, "Oh, that's good," the ever popular "Harder!" and, very likely, "I'm coming!" and an appreciative groan when he did. Not exactly scintillating conversation, but certainly heartfelt and impassioned. Besides, sometimes it isn't what you say so much as when you say it.

Candy gave me a funny look. "Why do I think there's more to it than that?"

"We are not boyfriend and girlfriend," I said. "He is kind of cute, though."

"Okay, almost boyfriend and girlfriend," she said. "I bet you will be before long."

I knew Erick was seeing a girl from Seaside named Kirsten, but I decided not to share that. I'd even seen them together holding hands at the pool just after Sex Ed—kids from Seaside didn't have that class, but had a different one instead. And before anyone wonders how a couple could be a couple when one of them was having sex with other people, that's just the way it was in Three Valleys. You could get jealous, a few people did, but after a while you realized that was a no-win situation for everyone. Nobody 'owned' anyone.

In one way I felt sorry for the kids from Seaside. They were nudists, that whole county was nudist country from the falls at Upper & Lower to the coast, but they were as straitlaced as could be. They very much had a no-touching rule. I'd wondered what guys did. I suppose it was like us in grade school and junior high: you could see everything at the pool, and after a while it just wasn't important. But still, when you're a teenager you get these hormonal overloads. A guy saw a girl, and could get an erection from just breathing wrong, or if she breathed wrong, or if the wind shifted. It was a fact of life. The body's desire to mate with a member of the opposite sex is pretty strong during the teenage years.

Kirsten was pretty enough, and shortly after Candy had asked me, I saw her in class. She was my height, but skinnier and blonde. In her case it was partly the effects of salt water and sun, but she was a natural blonde, complete down to the thin tuft of hair at the base of her tummy. Of course I couldn't tell Candy about that, she'd ask how I knew.

Girls in Seaside might trim a little down there—they always do if their hair gets onto their legs—but they don't shave it off. Kirsten's hair was so thin she might as well have. But that was her decision, not mine. She did have the glowing skin tones of someone who was healthy, and the all over tan from spending a lot of time in the sun without any clothes getting in the way. One of the things people in Seaside do is take care of is their skin. The first ones to settle here had all looked like mahogany, but now everyone gooped themselves up in sunscreen. They'd learned that it was far healthier to do that than to suffer through the consequences of not using it.

Today Kirsten was wearing the school uniform: black pleated skirt, white blouse, knee-high white stockings and a red scarf around the neck. She made it look a lot better than it did on me. We nodded politely to each other, sort of like ships passing and blowing their whistles at each other.

Candy followed Kirsten with her eyes. "She could have every guy following her with their tongues hanging out," she said. "Instead she blows them off as if they were nothing."

"To each their own," I quoted.

"Or something like that." Candy shifted her purse to her other shoulder. "Going to the school play tomorrow night?"

"Yeah. Jeremy Robinson asked me."

"Let me know if it's any good. Tam Samuelson wants to take me. If it isn't any good I'll persuade him that we should see a movie."

When he picked me up, Jeremy commented on my flushed cheeks. I couldn't tell him that Nate Phillips had given me a very good reason for flushed cheeks, something that was 7 to 8" long, and as hard as an iron bar. He had a lot of endurance, and so Sex Ed class ran a little over, well, a lot over. We were the only ones in the classroom at the end, and I was working on number four—it's amazing how most girls in Three Valleys are multi-orgasmic—and he was laboring away on number two. Class ran over so much that it was fortunate I'd brought my date clothes with me.

The rest of the school year was like that. I'd sort of started dating Jeremy, but I was also seeing Travis, a guy living at the complex. I got my dates confused, and it led to one of those messes that's kind of funny afterwards, but not during.

Travis and I had gone to a movie at the complex. Since my sister was on some weekend thing with school where they traveled up to the ice sheet, I had the bedroom to myself. After the date I invited Travis in, and we spent the night. No big deal, that's fairly common after a date or two. After all, you've already had sex with him; Three Valleys is one of the few places where you can have sex with someone before dating them.

We certainly had a fun time, and we got up late because we didn't get all that much sleep. He tried to prove that he was inexhaustible, and I tried the same thing. I think I won, but maybe the honors were even. I awoke in a tangle of arms and legs. I was lying across Travis' nice firm body, and my hair and the bed were a mess. I had some definite ideas about how to greet the morning, and was just starting to wake Travis up when my mom tapped on the bedroom door.

"That boy you've been seeing from school just called," she said. "Didn't you say something about doing something today with him?"

I tried to blink the sleep out of my eyes. "Uh, yeah, maybe." I sort of dimly recalled something like that. The weather had moderated a lot, and Jeremy had asked me out. My mind was on something else: Travis' dick was just a few inches away and just begging to be sucked.

"I've got him on the phone," my too helpful mother added.

I didn't say something unladylike, but I certainly thought it. I found my robe and followed her into the living room. I felt grungy, my hair was a disaster, and I knew I smelled. Fortunately they don't have picture phones or smell phones or stuff like that. I settled at the table, composed myself, and tried to sound cheerful.

"Hello?"

"Hi! It's Jeremy. You ready?"

"Uh, I'll be a few minutes."

"Okay. See you in a few."

I plucked a strand of my hair and looked at it. There was no hope for it, I headed for the bathroom. At least we weren't going out on Sunday. Shelley Minor was having a sleepover party on Saturday night, Travis and I were going, and I didn't want to miss it. You don't make plans for anything on the day after a sleepover party because you're too wiped out.

I managed to get through my morning ablutions and greet Jeremy in the lobby. I'd said goodbye to Travis, and thanked him for showing me a good time, so at least that came off pretty well. It'd been a high-calorie, sloppy thank you, and a promise of the fun we'd have at the party.

I thought about that as Jeremy and I headed for breakfast and the ice rink. A sleepover party was real simple. You brought something to eat, everyone stood around munching and gossiping, and then everyone stripped off their clothes and had sex with everyone else. It lasted all night, and you usually slept where you dropped. People talk about 'the most fun you can have with your clothes on'. Well, a sleepover is the most fun you can have with your clothes off. There was always another partner, or if everyone was too tired, you sort of just hung out, fondled a few things, and was cool about it.

In Three Valleys they call them 'pool parties'. The story is that everyone's going to go swimming, which was why you had it at someone's house. There's a lot of water in the Three Valleys area, so a lot of people have pools at home. But that's just your excuse for getting naked. And while you're naked, you do what comes naturally.