"Guess I won't ask you to borrow one of those condoms."
"Take them all," I say, plucking the foil wrappers from my purse and tossing them on her binder. "Although I'm sure Mrs. Hill has plenty she would happily give you."
Faye laughs. A normal person would probably shove them out of sight, but she just leaves them there, prompting some strange looks from our classmates.
"Oh, and Faye? The correct question would have been to ask me to give one to you. Borrowing implies that you'll give it back. Please don't."
- Laurie Elizabeth Flynn, "Firsts" (2016).
As the United States Center for Disease Control reminded us via Twitter on July 23, 2018:
"We say it because people do it," they wrote.
"Don't wash or reuse condoms! Use a fresh one for each sex act."
A Short Book Review of "Firsts".
Ms. Flynn's debut novel, by the way, is worthwhile, filling a much needed gap in the literature for teens who are, or are considering being, sexually active.
"Firsts" is necessarily much more explicitly sexual the most teen fiction, in which heroines tend to get laid for the first time, by their one true love, half way through the second volume of a three volume novel, or at the very end of a stand alone novel close to the novel's own climax, double entendre intended.
But, she does its topic justice by exploring the complex emotional and interpersonal dimensions of being sexually active in a relatively realistic, albeit slightly exaggerated, way.
Flynn also refrains from sex shaming (something that even horror movies love to do) or obsessing over consequences like STDs and pregnancy that can be largely avoided if one, like her heroine, practices safe sex, while addressing the various serious issues like improper pressure to have sex and very early teen sexuality and exploitation, without being completely overwhelmed by the negatives.
Other resources that are available don't meet that need.
In contrast, webcomics like "Boo! It's Sex" and "Oh Joy Sex Toy!", and a great many "medically" oriented sites, are really little more than illustrated sex education classes or background medical research. But, while reproductive health is important, that isn't all that there is to sex.
Cosmopolitan magazine covers somewhat similar ground in pseudonymous sex articles delivered with a similar attitude, but aimed at an older audience that thinks it is more sophisticated than it really is, of twenty-something single women in the big city looking for an eventual husband.
And, both pornography (which is ubiquitous on the Internet for free in all of its form), and genre romance fiction, are such unrealistic fantasies that they are misleading. Pornography, of course, also never addresses the emotional and interpersonal dimensions of sexuality at all, even though it illustrates some of the mechanics of having sex in a way that comprehensive sex education classes, despite their description, do not. Romance novels, however, also tend towards either idealized sex, or rape fantasies, and tend to put sex on a pedestal, rather than integrating it into the lives of its characters as just one more part of their lives.
"Firsts", along with some isolated premium cable television network series, in contrast, integrate realistic descriptions of sex into its narrative more holistically, without quite crossing the line over into erotic fiction, which is simply pornography in written form.
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