Clare Goodwin

It's summer and Louise is finding it hard to concentrate in a stuffy prefab school room stale with the breath of those trying to explain things to people who really couldn't care less. She sits, knotted with the effort of trying to disappear, in a compulsory sex education class, hands under the desk silently thumbing through the pages of a book.

Each sheet bears scrappy evidence of Louise's inner life; who she might become and what she hopes to experience if given half a chance. There are swatches of material, song lyrics and notes from books that will never feature on any curriculum. She glances down at a textile square, an ethnic formation of hot colours and angular shapes, and blushes at a memory of rewinding the Betamax through "Jesus Christ Superstar”. "Listen, Jesus, I don't like what I see...”, sings Judas, loud, too loud in her head, the moth caress of material fluttering against his bare, sweaty, brown chest.

Miss Brown normally teaches science yet now, here, she appears mildly allergic to the grubby biology of procreation. Gothic and intense, she often forgets to put a thick black ring of kohl around both bulgy eyes. Mouthy Tanya reckons "it's sad, all a bit Alex”, some psycho guy from a film Louise has only ever seen a poster of. Today, the twitchy Miss Brown is making them watch some obscure government health film about chickens and eggs, which if you didn't already know how babies were made would give you little or no extra clues.

At least that couple are not involved, Louise thinks to herself, that hairy bloke and his long-haired woman from the sex book. She wonders what it would be like to meet them in real life given that they are so embarrassing a spectacle to witness in graphite... especially through a half-open drawer on her father's side of the marital bed, under the squirrelled selection of hotel milks they use every morning when the Teasmade goes off.

When "it” happens to her things will be diffferent. Whatever "it” is the experience will not be defined by the thin walls of a semi, or the feathery marks of a dubious drawing, she thinks, finally losing her grip on the day to a mental cocktail of heat, light, foreign fabrics and flesh. Rebecca Geldard, 2010