Both the teacher, Etta Coughlin, and the student, Reena Patellan, were thinking the same thing at the same time: it was the middle of April 1955; the weather outside was wonderful, inviting, tempting. Yet here they both were, stuck indoors in a warm, dusty classroom.
They blamed each other. Miss Coughlin was punishing Reena by making her write lines on the blackboard. Reena didn't understand why she was being punished; just because she complained about the stuffiness of the class, then stood up at her desk, reached under her skirt, and pulled her panties down and off.
This act was so outlandish, so impossible that the class reacted by not reacting: they simply sat and stared in stunned silence. Miss Coughlin tried to return to her grammar lesson, but she was just going through the motions. Like someone who had witnessed a train wreck or some natural disaster, she kept on teaching a lesson she had taught for five years. When the bell sounded ten minutes later, signaling the end of the school day, she seemed to come back to life as she told Reena to stay while dismissing the others in the class.
The high school was an old building, looking like it had been built between the World Wars, and Miss Coughlin's class was on the third story. When teacher and student were the only two people left in the room, Miss Coughlin drew a shade down to cover the window in the door. They heard distant voices in the playground but couldn't see down into it unless they were at the window. Of course, nobody on the ground could look up and in.
Miss Coughlin sat at her desk, and Reena sat at hers. Nobody said a word for a minute or two, until Miss Coughlin, trying to act her sternest, asked, "Why did you do that?"
"Do what?" Rena asked, far too sweetly.
"Don't pretend like that to me. That awful display in class!"
"Was it really so awful, Miss Coughlin? I rather enjoyed it."
"Reena, NOBODY behaves like that in society! What's gotten into you?"
"Well, I've been doing some outside reading."
"I'm afraid to ask, but what have you..." Her voice trailed off.
Reena's voice was loud and clear: "Kinsey's report on the Human Female."
"But, but you're just a, a STUDENT! How dare you..."
"Easy; I went downtown and bought the book with my own money. No law against that, is there?"
"You're a high school senior! Why are you reading about, about..."
"Sex?" Reena finished the sentence. "Miss Coughlin, I'm eighteen and next month I graduate from this school. When am I supposed to read it: on my wedding night?"
"Nobody even knows if half of what he wrote is true! There has to be a scientific approach to it all: experimentation, replication..."
"All I know is how reading that book made me feel, and it felt RIGHT! I recognized what he was talking about: how I feel when I touch myself, or when someone else touches meβmale or female."
"Female? Are you saying that book turned you into aβa deviant?"
"Deviant?" Reena's reaction was the one that Miss Coughlin least expected; a reaction that froze Miss Coughlin to the marrow of her bones: Reena laughed delightedly. She laughed as if she'd just heard a joke watching Red Skelton or Milton Berle on television. "I remember my life, you know; years ago, before I ever heard of Kinsey. I remember how it felt when Mommy gave me a bath. I remember a summer by the sea where I took off all my clothes, right on the beach, in front of total strangers. I remember how it felt the first time I rubbed between my legs, and it all felt GOOD! I'll never deny it; it felt good!"
Etta Coughlin felt as if she was hearing the confessions of a murderer. That this pretty young woman was so casually confessing to so many horrible actsβit was monstrous!
"Reena, you're a very bright girl," Miss Coughlin replied, as steadily as she could, taking a different approach. "You have to know that you can't just talk about getting undressed or, er, rubbing yourself. And you certainly know you can't do those things in public!"
"Public, Miss Coughlin? It's just the two of us, here and now."
"Yes, and you're not here because you want to be here, but because I want you to be here. Now, get started." Miss Coughlin pointed to the front of the class. Blackboards covered three walls; the fourth was all windows. "Start writing 'I will not take my clothes off in class.' If you get bored with that, well, that's good. I can give you some other lines until you've filled every inch of blackboard on these walls. And you will not leave until they're all filled, so you'd better get started!"
With that, Etta Coughlin thought she'd made it quite clear to Reena Patellan who was in charge. She moved to a student desk in the back of the class with a magazine and began to read it.
Reena certainly got the message, and smiled as she started writing.
xxx