Gwen hated sex. She hated the thought of it, anyway. How vile and unsanitary it seemed. She'd never had it, herself, but she knew she'd never do it, no matter what. It wasn't that she couldn't find a man if she'd been interested in doing so; it was that she felt absolutely repulsed by the thought of someone else touching her, let alone the notion of being responsible for pleasing someone else so physically. Why did everyone make such a big deal about it, anyway? Sex was just some nude bodies putting their parts together. It was nothing more than an animal desire, and human beings were supposed to have evolved above such detestable urges. Such animalistic tendencies. Humans were supposed to have a higher intellect, a sense of otherness, a notion of decency that animals did not possess, and sexual acts brought them back down to their primordial appetites. Weren't human intellects and essences beyond such physical needs? Why did human beings wish to hold themselves back by participating in acts that awakened the ignorant animal tendencies within them? How could the human race ever hope to tap into the capacity of its greatness by continuously reverting to mere visceral beings for the pleasure of a moment? No, Gwen could not entertain the notion of subjecting herself to such personal degradation. No other bag of flesh and bones and guts would ever be able to cross her personal boundaries; no other person would take her down to the level of physical gratification. She hated the human body—hated it for its physical deceptions and desires. It was for this reason she detested catching others looking her way, scrutinizing her body or her face. Such misjudgments were made on a physical level! How hideous that one could never escape the realm of the corporeal. Why were people not judged by their intellects? The whole thing was a travesty; it was all a gross indecency and unfairness that people were all trapped in flesh prisons by which they'd always be judged. It was in order to fight the infringement of this prison that Gwen refused to give in to any physical needs she could keep at bay.

The subject of sex was one of the easiest for her to avoid. She'd never seen a single person with whom she could envision participating in such gross assaults to decency. In fact, the topic wouldn't have even been on her mind had not her employer, the ever-chattering Mrs. Ringword, been discussing her exploits as the two of them sat in her office and checked the attendance records in order to hand out detentions for that week's tardy students.

Gwen was always disturbed by how much personal information women were willing—no, desired—to tell perfect strangers. Checking out in a grocery store a few days ago, Gwen had been accosted by a young woman behind her in line who had perked up when seeing she was purchasing a pack of kidney beans. The woman had gone on about how she'd used to think, as a child, that the beans were actually made from kidneys. As Gwen had been on the bus ride to work on Monday, an elderly woman sitting next to her had complained about her corns and the ineffectiveness of her podiatrist. Why, just that morning, another young lady walking along the pathway in the park had stopped Gwen to ask her where she'd gotten her shoes; the lady apparently had a date that night and was hoping to be impressive, because "he might be the one!" What shocked Gwen more than the subject matter of such conversations was not so much the idea that these people didn't mind talking to a stranger but that they tended to speak to her as if she actually cared about anything they had to say. Their preoccupations had been further from her concern than whether or not lint was edible, and it both amazed as well as scandalized her to think that such people held the impression that she wanted to hear their trivialities, let alone converse with them at all. She was certain that in such situations (which tended to occur at least once a day) her expression alone deterred people from provoking a response. On occasion, however, she would have to go to the extent of just walking away.

But walking away wasn't an option right at the moment. Her current position as Mrs. Ringword's assistant attendance secretary was paying her enough to put up with the incessant blathering of the woman, no matter how disturbing her conversation was. More than any other topic, people's sexual lives was the most distasteful for Gwen to have to listen to. In the first place, she despised the notion of the physical feat, but even beyond her personal objections and convictions, she was entirely mystified as to why others felt it enjoyable—or worse, necessary—to disclose the details of their most intimate acts! If Gwen put aside her own biases and disgusts and looked at sexuality more similarly to the manner of her peers, she'd still have reason to wonder at such bizarre behavior. It had always been her understanding that, for whatever reasons, the majority of human beings took great pleasure in the acts she found so despicable. But their reasons, she understood, went beyond those of physical pleasure. Sex was supposed to be a passionate bonding of two human beings—frequently ones who'd committed their lives and souls to one another. Sex was supposed to be an intense encounter between two people, a place where they laid bare not just their bodies, but also their most personal weaknesses, defects, and taboos. What transpired between two people in words and in actions, what admittances and insecurities and formerly-concealed desires were given either freely or as concession, what dark corners of the human heart were divulged—well, none were able to say but those who had taken part in the act. And Gwen, who vowed never to be debased by subjugating herself to such intimacy, couldn't understand at all how others could discourse on such sacred secrecies as if they were sharing rumors about boys at a slumber party. Putting such things to words diminished whatever importance people believed the act possessed and cheapened it, but even worse, it became a displeasure for those burdened with the obligation of listening.

As Gwen sat there, listening to Mrs. Ringword's incessant chattering, she began to feel a sense of encroaching normalcy that she had dreaded since first taking on the job. Now, her days consisted of filing and data entry, but the real drawback was listening to her employer's constant talking. If there was anything Gwent hated, it was having to pretend that she actually cared about anyone else's problems. She didn't burden others with her miseries; why on earth should she be subjected to theirs? Mrs. Ringword, with her love for cats and all things fluffy, was as close to driving her insane as was the mere fact that she had had to take a mediocre job. It had only been a few days since Gwen had begun the job of assistant secretary of attendance, but she was already beginning to feel as if her mind was on the fringe of meltdown. This was mainly due to the fact that her primary purpose in being hired was to humor the attendance secretary herself. There was very little to entertain Gwen during her eight-hour shift. Besides meting out tardies and detentions (allotting punishments to strangers possessed a pleasure in itself), there was little enjoyment in her new job.

The attendance office was situated next to the main office. It was entered through a little door behind the head secretary's desk. Not much attention was paid to the attendance secretary. In fact, nobody cared about Mrs. Ringword at all until it came time to draw up report cards and check rosters at the end of each semester. For the past few mornings Gwen had entered the building quietly, traversed the distance from the main entrance to the main office, and gone to her desk with as little ceremony as possible in order to avoid being taken notice of. She always arrived at school quite early, because she hated running into the multitude of students that traipsed through the halls as early as thirty minutes before school began. This was a strange phenomenon to her. Gwen looked back to her own high school days and recalled hardly wanting to go to school until five minutes before the first period of the day. Seeing students in the hallways so early was as odd to her as was the fact that several of them seemed never to leave the main office. There were a number of students, in fact, who appeared willing to spend the entire day sitting in the main office. It was as if they had nothing better to do than harass the office staff with their presence. Gwen was shocked at the lackadaisical attitude the high school staff seemed to take toward such students. There was one boy in particular—Joe—who seemed to spend a good three hours each day sitting on the sofa against the office wall. Gwen only knew he was there because when she took her bathroom breaks or went to get some coffee, she was always startled to see the oddly dark, freckled boy, who possessed a slyness about his pointed face and was apparently content to be an office staple. She knew that his name was Joe because at one point, she had asked Mrs. Ringword whether or not the teenager sitting outside was actually a student at the high school at all, seeing as he never seemed to go to class. Mrs. Ringword had replied that "Joe is a very unique situation, and he has special circumstances that must be looked into."

Right then, Gwen was using an envelope licker to seal over two hundred letters to be mailed to the parents of incoming ninth graders for the following school year. She hadn't gotten any paper cuts as of yet, but she would much rather have had the pain of cutting open her fingers and watching her blood blot out the typing on the envelopes instead of the pain of listening to Mrs. Ringword go on and on about her dull life. This had been the protocol since Gwen had begun working at the high school. She would arrive at work and cherish the dark quiet, during which she pretended to file but really scribbled out her article ideas onto a notepad, and Mrs. Ringword would come in half an hour later, her arms filled with coffee and doughnuts; she would plop down at her desk and begin talking, and she wouldn't shut her mouth until three, when the final bell rang. So far, it hadn't been too tortuous, but today, Mrs. Ringword had chosen to discuss the most intimate details of her and her husband's spring break island vacation, and Gwen had nearly reached her breaking point. It was one thing to be able to tune out nonsense, but it was an entirely different matter to be forcibly exposed to content which should be edited for listener comfort.

Gwen tried as best as she could to filter out the words of her employer and instead focus on her own writing. While she felt that this new job was pretty much useless beyond its provision of a steady (albeit meager) paycheck, she had found some benefit in utilizing the wealth of human material by which she was daily surrounded as food for her new articles. She didn't particularly like any of the students wandering the halls; in fact, she quite made it a point to avoid running into them. But there was something so human in the teenage struggle to fit in and find understanding that Gwen had felt a real wakening of her own feelings of isolation during her teenage years. As repellent as these hormonal bodies wandering the halls were, she felt connected to them in a way she hardly wanted to admit.

Just as Mrs. Ringword was beginning to mention some sexual toy for overweight women that her husband had surprised her with, Gwen felt the sudden urge to use the restroom. She could hardly take anymore of Mrs. Ringword's blathering. She took the liberty of excusing herself from conversation, stood up, and hurried out of the room. There was no way she could bear listening to such nonsense for extended periods of time.

As she exited her tiny office, the sounds of fingers tapping at keyboards, women chatting on phones, and printers rolling out paper met her ears. These were the sounds of the main office. It was early in the morning, and the office was quite busy. There were students arriving late, teachers checking their mailboxes, and janitorial staff doing early-morning repairs. Gwen hardly looked at any of them; she instead strode out of the office and into the main hallway, making a beeline for the women's restroom across the way. She was just about to enter, when all of a sudden she caught sight of someone familiar and stopped dead in her tracks. Coming down the hall, right toward her, was a young girl that Gwen could not help but recognize. The girl was a pudgy blonde thing, and although it had been some time since Gwen had seen her—several years at least—Audrey King was someone impossible for her to forget.

Gwen immediately felt her heart quicken. She did not want Audrey to catch sight of her. She had no idea what to say after all that had happened in the past. In fact, Gwen was uncertain whether Audrey was even aware of what had taken place between her father and the babysitter he had paid to watch his daughter. In the split second that it took Gwen to recognize Audrey, the assistant to the attendance secretary chose to avoid guaranteed discomfort and ducked into the bathroom to wait until Audrey passed by.

As she stood in the stall of the restroom, having completed the task of emptying her bladder, Gwen racked her memory in order to match what she had just witnessed with her recollection of the little girl she used to babysit. Quite certainly, Gwen recalled having to pick Audrey up after school on several occasions. What the girl was doing here now, Gwen could not fathom. All of a sudden, this job had another drawback: the risk of meeting Audrey King face to face and having to confront her over events about which Gwen had hoped she'd never have to think again.