“Uh, Coach, uh, about that stuff we talked about in class Tuesday?” Brian said, clearly embarrassed about breaching the subject.

“What about it, Brian?” I’m not really a coach, just a junior high PE and Math teacher, but I organized the intramural ball games so kids that liked me called me ‘Coach’.

“I, ah, mean, uh, just how do you do it, anyway.”

“Yeah, Coach. How?” Jerry Ryan wanted the same answer. I had hired Jerry and Brian and two other eighth graders to help me clear the ivy from a hillside behind my house. My wife left a big plate of sandwiches and a cooler of lemonade in the barn and had then departed and left the men to their work.

Last Tuesday’s Health class had covered the very basics of reproduction as allowed to be taught in junior high in 1964. The class was only for boys and had covered anatomy and hormones and ova and sperm production, and had touched very vaguely on fertilization. There had been a question and answer session after the presentation, but very few of the kids were willing to risk asking a question that would betray their lack of knowledge about their favorite subject: Sex.

“Well, first of all,” I answered, looking at each boy and carefully measuring my words so as to not over stimulate them. I’d have to mop the floor if I told this group about the passion of foreplay and the heat and silky slickness of penetration. “You know how you’re talking to a girl or one touches you, or you see a picture or something?” I paused and made a fist with my right hand and motioned towards the floor with my bent index finger, then slowly straightened and raised the finger until it was pointing at an upwards angle. Each of the boys nodded in recognition. All were pubescent and knew about erections and manufactured orgasms, it was the other type that they were curious about. “Well, it’s sort of like that; you’re kissing a girl, maybe lying on a bed or something, and it starts happening. If she wants to do it too she’ll let you take her clothes off and then she’ll help you take yours’ off. After that, nature takes its course. She’ll know what to do and you’ll quickly figure it out. Just be sure and use a condom so you don’t get her pregnant, and never ever force her. No means just that. No.”

“Uh, what’s a condom?” One of the boys asked. I didn’t really want to go there; information like this should originate with the parents, but I gave them a brief description of what they were, how to use them, and where to obtain them, and I was ready to drop the subject all together when another boy spoke up.

“My cousin said that a blow job is the best thing there is. What’s that?”

“Ask your cousin.” I wasn’t about to go there; all four boys were squirming uncomfortably and were trying their best to conceal boners. Much more of this kind of talk and they’d all have some messy shorts. “Okay guys, let’s load up and I’ll take you home.”

I felt the first little tremor the next Wednesday. I overheard Brian talking with a buddy in the cafeteria. “I can’t go, Rob. I’m grounded.”

“How come?”

“I bought some, uh, you know, rubbers from the drug store and old nosey Mrs. Peterson saw me and called Mom. She confiscated them and chewed me out and made me tell her how I knew about them, and I’m grounded for a month.”

“Bummer,” the other boy said. Bummer indeed, I thought to myself.

By Friday the shit had hit the fan and I was summoned to appear before the principal and offer an explanation. “Just what are you teaching these kids anyway?” He asked.

“Just exactly what the lesson plan dictates,” I answered. “However, a few of the eighth graders were helping me last Saturday and I answered some of their questions in a sort of generic, non-specific way. Nothing graphic or what could be construed as erotic by any means.”

“Brian Jacob’s mother claims that you turned her darling little boy into a raging sex fiend.”

“Have you ever seen an eighth grader who wasn’t a raging sex fiend?” I countered.

“Only a few, and those are the ones I worry about.” The principal lightened up a little, then dropped the hammer. “Look, John, I hate this as much as you do, but the board has directed me to suspend you until we can interview each of the boys that were involved. Hopefully it’ll only be a couple of days.”

I named the other three boys and hoped for the best, but basically I was fucked. Situations like this rarely end in such a manner that the accused keeps his job. Popular teachers, like myself, are especially vulnerable to attack by other less respected teachers who envy my rapport with the students. Regardless of the outcome of the school board’s investigation the rumors would continue until I was effectively hounded out of the area, and even then it might be impossible for me to get anther teaching position. Shit! My only hope was that the four boys would remember exactly what had been said in the barn and would be honest about it in their testimony.

During the next couple of days I learned a lot of things: I had given the boys hands-on instruction in the art of masturbation, I had stripped down and shown them precisely how to install a condom, my wife and I had demonstrated intercourse, my wife and the four boys had explored the Kama Sutra, I had procured a prostitute for the boys, I had coerced four young girls into servicing the four boys, I had personally fellated each of them, and my favorite, that I had herded in several of my neighbor’s sheep for the boys’ amusement.

On Monday the principal called each of the four boys into his office and took their statements. I was allowed to listen, unseen, in another office as he questioned the boys individually. Each supported my statement that everything had been low-key and that no untoward behavior occurred. Brian Jacobs was last, and he admitted purchasing the rubbers because “I uh, kind of, uh, you know, thought I might like, uh need one, uh, someday.”

I was reinstated, but like Paul Harvey says, you can’t unring a bell. The hate mail and crank calls continued even while I became more popular with the kids. In retrospect I should have left but I decided to stick it out instead. I liked the district and given enough time I was sure things would calm down. I was wrong.

My wife had gone into town and I was working alone in the barn when the six masked upstanding members of the PTA cornered me.

“John Abbott?” One asked, and without waiting for a reply he simply said, “We have ways of dealing with perverts like you.” I soon learned that one of their ways involved a five foot long piece of stout cord and two bricks. I distinctly remember the tug on my testicles and the sound of the bricks slapping together and the all-encompassing pain. The rest is kind of a fog.

I moved to another district and taught for another ten years, but my heart just wasn’t in it and I retired as soon as I could. No one ever accused me of messing with boys, or girls, again.