The Abstinence Teacher. Tom Perrotta

Ruth told him. “It's brand-new. For display purposes only.”

      IT WAS her own fault, she thought, for not having seen the trouble brewing. The atmosphere in the school, and around town, had changed a lot in the past couple of years. A small evangelical church— The Tabernacle of the Gospel Truth—led by a fiery young preacher known as Pastor Dennis, had begun a crusade to cleanse Stonewood Heights of all manner of godlessness and moral decay, as if this sleepy bedroom community was an abomination unto the Lord, Sodom with good schools and a twenty-four-hour supermarket.

      Pastor Dennis and a small band of the faithful had held a successful series of demonstrations outside of Mike's World of Video, convincing the owner—Mike's son, Jerry—to close down a small “Adults Only” section in the back of the store; the church had also protested the town's use of banners that said “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas.” Tabernacle members had spoken out against the teaching of evolution at school board meetings, and initiated a drive to ban several Judy Blume novels from the middle-school library, including Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret, one of Ruth's all-time favorites. Randall had spoken out against censorship at the meeting, and had been personally attacked in the Stonewood Bulletin-Chronicle by Pastor Dennis, who said that it should come as no surprise to find immoral books in the school library when the school system placed “immoral people” in positions of authority.

      “They've given the inmates control of the asylum,” Pastor Dennis observed. “Is it any wonder they're making insane decisions?”

      But the good guys had won that battle; the school board had voted five to four to keep Judy Blume on the shelves (unfortunately, the books themselves had been repeatedly vandalized in the wake of this decision, forcing the librarians to remove them to a safe area behind the circulation desk). In any event, Ruth had foolishly chosen to view these skirmishes as a series of isolated incidents, storms that flared up and blew over, rather than seeing them for what they were—the climate in which she now lived.

      Her second mistake was thinking of herself as invulnerable, somehow beyond attack. She'd been teaching high school Sex Ed for more than a decade and had become a beloved figure—or so she liked to think—for the unflappable, matter-of-fact candor with which she discussed the most sensitive of subjects. She believed—it was her personal credo—that Pleasure is Good, Shame is Bad, and Knowledge is Power; she saw it as her mission to demystify sex for the teenagers of Stonewood Heights, so they didn't go through their lives believing that masturbation was a crime against nature, or that oral sex was the functional equivalent of kissing a toilet seat, or worse, perpetuating the time-honored American Tradition of not even knowing there was such a thing as the clitoris, let alone where it was located. She was doing what any good teacher did—leading her students into the light, opening them up to new ways of thinking, giving them the vital information they needed to live their lives in the most rewarding way possible—and in doing so, she had earned more than her fair share of respect and affection from the kids who passed through her classroom, and some measure of gratitude from the community as a whole.

      So when Principal Venuti told her that he needed to talk to her about an “important matter,” she showed up at his office without the slightest sense of misgiving. Even when she saw the Superintendent there, as well as a man who introduced himself as a lawyer for the school district, she felt more puzzled than alarmed.

      “This isn't a formal interview,” the Superintendent told her. “We're just trying to get the facts straight.”

      “What facts?” said Ruth.

      The Principal and the Superintendent turned to the lawyer, who didn't look too happy.

      “Ms. Ramsey, did you … umm … well, did you advocate the practice of fellatio to your students?”

      “Did I what?”

      The lawyer glanced at his yellow pad. “Last Thursday, in sixth-period Health? In response to a question by a Theresa McBride?”

      “When Ruth realized what he was talking about, she laughed with relief.

      “Not just fellatio,” she explained. “Cunnilingus, too. I would never single out just the one.”

      The lawyer frowned. He was a slovenly guy in a cheap suit, the kind of attorney you sometimes saw on TV, blinking frantically, trying to explain why he'd fallen asleep during his client's murder trial. Stonewood Heights was a relatively prosperous town, but Ruth sometimes got the feeling that the people in charge didn't mind cutting a few corners.

      “And you're telling us that you advocated these practices?”

      “I didn't advocate them,” Ruth said. “If I remember correctly, I think what I said is that some people like oral sex.”

      Joe Venuti let out a soft groan of dismay. Dr. Farmer looked like he'd been jabbed with a pin.

      “Are you absolutely certain?” the lawyer asked in an insinuating tone. “Why don't you take a moment and think about it. Because if you're being misquoted, it would make everything a lot easier.”

      By now it had finally dawned on Ruth that she might be in some kind of trouble.

      “You want me to say I didn't say it?”

      “It would be a relief,” admitted Dr. Farmer. “Save us all a big headache.”

      “There were a lot of witnesses,” she reminded them.

      “Nobody had a tape recorder, right?” The lawyer grinned when he said this, but Ruth didn't think he was joking.

      “I can't believe this,” she said. “Are people not allowed to like oral sex anymore?”

      “People can like whatever they want on their own time.” Joe Venuti stared at Ruth in a distinctly unfriendly manner. Before being named Principal, he'd been a legendary wrestling coach, famous for verbally abusing several generations of student-athletes. “But we can't be advocating premarital sex to teenagers.”

      “Why do you guys keep saying that?” Ruth asked. “I wasn't advocating anything. I was just stating a fact. It's no different than saying that some people like to eat chicken.”

      “If you said that some people like to eat chicken,” the lawyer told her, “I don't think Mr. and Mrs. McBride would be threatening a lawsuit.”

      Ruth was momentarily speechless.

      “Th—they're what?” she spluttered. “They're suing me?”

      “Not just you,” the lawyer said. “The whole school district.”

      “But for what?”

      “We don't know yet,” said the lawyer.

      “They'll think of something,” said Venuti. “They're part of that church. Tabernacle, whatever.”

      “They got some Christian lawyers working pro bono,” Dr. Farmer explained. “These guys'll sue you for wearing the wrong color socks.”

      AFTER LIVING the first forty-one years of her life in near-total obscurity, Ruth had been shocked to find herself transformed into a public figure—the Oral Sex Lady—a person she barely recognized. The story was first reported in the Bulletin-Chronicle (“Sex Ed Crosses Line, Family Says”), and then picked up by some larger regional papers before getting an unwelcome moment in the sun of a big-city tabloid (“Oral Sex A-OK, Teacher Tells Kids”). Ruth was contacted by numerous journalists eager to get her side of the so-called scandal, and although she was itching to defend herself—to rebut the malicious and ill-informed Letters to the Editor, to put her “controversial remarks” in some sort of real-life context, to speak out about what she saw as the proper role of Sexuality Education in the high-school curriculum—she had received strict instructions not to comment from the school district's lawyer, who didn't want her to jeopardize the “sensitive negotiations” he was conducting with the McBrides’ legal team.

      The gag order remained in effect during the emergency school board meeting called to address the crisis, which meant