Mr. Cavalier, our Phys Ed teacher, doubled as our Health teacher. He was mortified but made up for it with volume, as though he was trying to communicate his lack of knowledge through sheer force of will. I wished he wouldn’t keep rambling, stomping over terms like a water buffalo, leaving words like orientation and identity and binary rubbing their heads woozily while he waved his arms about, correcting his own blunders, blushing. He showed a lot of videos and TED Talks because otherwise someone would have had to tell him that the word is transgender, not transgendered, and he would massage his chin and nod yes, yes, that’s right.

Not everyone was awkward, I guess, at least about the topic of sex. The kids who are in the Safe Spaces club have been waiting all year to watch a teacher try to fumble through the terms that are the feature of hundreds of Tumblr accounts, AMAs on Reddit, even shows on Netflix, YouTube, articles and reviews. Some people are very well versed in everything to do with sex and health and gender identity and like talking about it all the time. That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re experienced in the fine art of actual sex.

But, I mean, a lot of people are having it.

A lot of people are getting whatever they can: blow jobs, hand jobs, full-on sex, too. I don’t think girls are getting many jobs done for them, to be honest, but they’re participating, they’re the worker bees, from what I can hear. It’s happening all over: in bathrooms and parties, in bathrooms at parties, under the stairs, behind the bleachers, in cars. In this way, we are no different than teenagers of the past hundred years. The Industrial Revolution probably just inspired more places for teenagers to have sex.

Some people here also show no interest in sex, and in the new age of everyone having an identity, some of these kids self-identify as “asexual.” Others are so into “healthy sex lives” that they make it their mission to embarrass everyone with their extreme comfort with their sexuality. And some kids get totally turned on by something else altogether: social justice. The social justice warriors, who naturally hate being called that, learn every term, every way in which privilege reveals its ugliness, and will be the first people to tell you to check yourself. Woke AF.

I am a late bloomer, I guess. I’ve never had a boyfriend, but that doesn’t make me a nun. I mean, I have danced close enough to feel someone’s dick. Guys used to like me, but I usually dodged and deflected. The next thing I knew I was the school slut, so go figure.