Boarding School (32 page)

“Yeah!” Matt replied in disgust. And then he said nothing more to me. I concluded then that my friend had probably no appreciation for the acrobatic nature of his water party with our host.

Our ride to the Academy that night was uneventful. Apparently all three of our escorts had bided their time in Boston somewhere rather than return to Ulster only to have to turn around and come back for us a short time later. And since nothing was said by anyone during our trip home that night, I figured that the older three had probably had as much of each other’s company as they could stand for one night. Plus by now we knew what all of the older kids at the Academy knew about Mr. Stuart and how things were whenever he got himself into this sort of condition. Without exception, whenever the head of our faculty was drunk, things around the man had to be kept quiet. This was the reason why lights out was one of the few rules at the Academy which was actually enforced. Clamor around Mr. Stuart when he was three sheets to the wind as they say, could be calamitous for any boy who didn’t watch himself in this regard. So other than the moment when we first entered the van and the head waiter had kidded Matt about his hair being wet still—both the head waiter and the leader had gone through the same indoctrination when they had been our age—nothing more was said by any of us during the entire hour-and-a-quarter drive back to the campus.

Naturally, the long ride back left me with time to review in my mind the events of this bizarre evening in Boston. I wondered how many other boys had been hung upside down in that incredible shower and how it was that such a nice woman like Sweetie could have such a warped penchant for thirteen-year-old boys. And how in the world could a couple be married and still do the things they had done with Matt and me on this night. But mostly I wondered what it was that Fatso had meant when he had told Mr. Stuart to turn us out during the upcoming week and why it was that we were going to be traveling somewhere on the following weekend. What did these things suggest about our immediate futures and would we ever be able to gain control over our lives again? Of course I was sure I already knew the answers, but these questions occupied my mind more than anything else that night as I sat there in the darkness and watched the front porch lights of probably hundreds of families— all safe and secure in their houses—pass by the window I kept looking out of. In fact I became so lost in my own thoughts, I failed to notice when we arrived finally at the Academy and the van had been stopped in front of our dorm so we could get out.

“It’s past lights out,” the leader said once Matt and I were standing on the outdoor basketball court. “So you two go on back to your room and get yourselves to bed right away.” “Yes, sir,” I replied obediently.

“Yes, sir,” Matt answered in the same subordinate tone. As Matt and I then walked down the flight of cement steps to our landing and continued on into our building, we did so without speaking a word to each other. It had been another day of enormous change and emotion for us. There was a great deal they had done to us once again and it was going to require some time for us to absorb it all, plus by this hour of the night we were too exhausted to think straight any longer. So as soon as we were in our room, we both lost no time in pulling off every stitch of our clothing and falling gratefully into our beds so we could welcome sleep and the end to this miserable day. Getting to sleep for both of us was easy, but waking up the next morning was another matter. As soon as the first bell of the day had sounded, the leader rushed into our room with our morning doses of cocaine. “Good morning, boys! Time to get up.” He had already showered and dressed for the day.

Matt and I answered this guy’s cheery greeting with grumbles and an obscenity or two.

“I’m going to prepare some lines for you right now and then after this you two are gonna have to do this for yourselves.” The leader wasn’t put off by our lack of enthusiasm for his visit. The kid knew as he placed his things onto the top of our dresser that our attitudes were now changed from the way they had been the day before.

As we sat up in our beds and rubbed the sleep from our eyes, Matt and I watched as the leader then chopped and mixed the white powder for us. And then when the time came for us to snort the drug up into our heads again, we did so without so much as a hint of argument this time. After all, cocaine was our life now. The draggy way our bodies were feeling told us that the head waiter had been right. We were indeed hooked on cocaine now and we needed the stuff so we could make it out of bed and through our day.

When we were finished, and Matt and I were sniffing the remainder of what we had just inhaled so it could go farther up into our nasal passages, the leader then went on to inform us of how our lives as drug addicts were going to be. “That ought to hold you two until lunchtime. After lunch come find me, and I’ll give you guys some more to hold you through the afternoon. Then after dinner I’ll give you two enough coke to use one time for the evening, and then again for tomorrow morning so we won’t have to keep coming here every day. Understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Matt answered.

“Yes, sir,” I said also.

“Fine.” The leader seemed pleased that we were now so cooperative. “All right now, here’s a hand mirror and a razor blade for you guys to use.” The leader then placed the items down on our dresser next to the picture of Matt with his parents. Then, with his responsibilities toward us discharged for the morning, the leader turned and walked over to the front of our room and opened our door again. “You guys go ahead now and get up. You’re still expected at breakfast this morning and you still have to attend all of your classes.”

“How?” Matt asked painfully. You could almost hear the tears in his voice.

“What do you mean, how?” The leader was surprised by my roommate’s question.

“How are we supposed to go to class when some of our teachers did us the other night when we were in the mud?” Matt really seemed bothered by this issue.

“You don’t have to worry,” the leader tried to reassure my friend. “They won’t say anything about it. Besides, all of us have had faculty cocks in our mouths at one time or another. It’s really no big deal. Now let’s get going.” And with that the leader then walked out into the hallway and closed our door behind him.

“Are you ok?” I asked Matt after I had heard the leader leave our building through the large wooden door at the west end of our hall.

“Yeah,” my roommate replied in a lost-soul sort of way. “It’s just… after having sex with Sweetie last night, it reminded me how much I hate being made to have sex with guys.”

“I know,” I agreed. “I hate it too. That’s why I try not to think about it and just go along with the things they make us do. It makes it easier to put up with, I guess.”

“Yeah, I know,” Matt sighed. “Also, now that I’ve had some time to think about it, I’m not sure what I think about having sex with another man’s wife. Even if he did want me to do it.” Matt sighed again. “It just seems like we’re breaking every rule in the book these days. Ya know?”

I understood the spiritual implications of what my roommate was saying to me. I had been feeling the same pangs of guilt, myself. “Yeah, I know, Matt. But I think in a few more days the number of people we have sex with and their marital status is gonna become a blur to us, anyway. So I don’t think it’s gonna do us any good to think about these things anymore.”

“Yeah, you’re right,” Matt agreed. “Besides, I think the cocaine is starting to kick in now so… who the hell cares anyway? Right?”

I then smiled at my friend. “Right.” By now I was beginning to feel pretty good too, so I swung my legs over and planted my bare feet onto the cold linoleum and stood up. “Come on, we’d better get going.” And then I began to look around the room for something I could put on to wear for the day.

The rest of that Monday went normally for us—if you could call our lives at the Academy normal. At lunchtime new table assignments were posted and Matt and I found ourselves assigned once again to the headmaster’s table. It was creepy too because during the entire meal I felt as if the man kept staring at my mouth as I ate. Then in the afternoon, we were told that since our training was now over and we were going to be put to work this week, we were no longer permitted to hang out with the gang in the leader’s dorm room. It didn’t make any sense to us, but neither did anything else in this crazy place.

For dinner, Thomas made mashed potatoes once again. This time though, we were served our dinner family style. And when Matt and I tried our food, we found that everything we had been given that evening tasted fine—if you could define anything that Thomas prepared for us as tasting fine. And so we figured that the sleeping pill caper was over for us.

“Pass the bread please,” Matt asked of one of the kids who was sitting across our table from him.

By chance I happened to take a moment to look around the dining hall once everyone at our table had been served their food. I guess I had the idea to see for myself if all of the other tables were serving the meal family style which, as I’ve said before, was the usual practice at the Academy. To my dismay, I noticed an instant later that the plates being handed out at the head proctor’s table had once again been prepared in advance in the kitchen before they were served. In order to see this, I had to make myself appear as if I was simply gazing around the room in a casual manner while I concentrated hard to peer between the several dozen other kids who were seated between the spot where Matt and I were now sitting and the table across the dining hall which had just captured my interest. And then I saw them. I don’t know why I was surprised, but sitting in the places where Matt and I had sat the week before were two new first-year boys. “Look over there,” I whispered to Matt.

When he glanced over in the direction where my eyes were indicating, Matt saw what I had just discovered. Carlos and Juan, our two Venezuelan next-door neighbors, were now sitting at the head proctor’s table and they were surrounded by the upperclassmen. “Oh shit! They’re eating their mashed potatoes,” Matt said to me under his breath.

“Yeah,” I acknowledged quietly.

“Who’s eating their mashed potatoes?” Frank suddenly butted in.

Startled suddenly by the sound of Frank’s voice, I responded by launching into him. “How is it that you’re sitting with us every time we’re moved to a different table, Frank?” Besides being upset about Juan and Carlos, I was feeling a little annoyed over the fact that Frank seemed to always be hanging around us and wanting to involve himself in our affairs. Also, I wanted to throw the guy off the subject of Juan and Carlos.

“I don’t know,” Frank replied. “I guess you guys are just lucky or somethin’. How ’bout you tell me how come youz two are always eatin’ together when everybody else who’s roommates gets split up at mealtime?”

It was a good question. Matt and I had wondered the same thing several times ourselves and all we could figure was that the answer probably had something to do with the fact that the head waiter was the one who made the changes in the seating assignments every two weeks. “I have no idea,” I answered in a way that was intended to portray me as being utterly innocent.

“Yeah?” Frank stared at me for a moment while his mind mulled over my answer. “So who’s eatin’ their mashed potatoes?”

“We are, Frank. Aren’t you?” Matt jumped in suddenly and saved me from having to come up with an answer that I probably wouldn’t have been able to sell.

“You?” Frank now looked confused. “But that wasn’t who…”

“How come you don’t like mashed potatoes, Frank?” It was my turn now to send in the next salvo.

“Huh?” Our misdirection seemed to be working. Frank now appeared to be thinking more about what we were talking about now than what we had said earlier. “I like mashed potatoes!”

“Then why aren’t you eating yours,” Matt lobbed another one at our friend. It was amazing how much we could both tell what the other was thinking these days.

“I am eatin’ them!” Frank was now exasperated with us. His Brooklyn short fuse was starting to work in our favor.

“Then why did you tell us that you weren’t eating them?” I chimed in again. “I didn’t… Aw what the hell!” Frank then gave up and looked down at his food again. “Never mind.” And then he looked up at Matt and me one more time. “Just don’t talk to me anymore. You guys are screwy.”

Matt and I then gave each other a glance of knowing satisfaction. We both understood how close we had come just then to revealing information about what was really going on in this place to an outsider. Most of the other members of the student body, including Frank, went about their business every day living their lives as normal prep school kids. Their routine was the cover the upperclassmen and the participating members of the faculty needed to keep the secret about the heinous things they were doing to us from becoming known by the outside world. We had been told time and again to never speak of what we were doing to anyone outside of our little gang and to do so would invite the harshest of punishments upon us. We knew from our experience in the mud pit that there were more than just the eight students we were aware of who were involved in the activities of our gang, but without knowing for sure who these other kids were, we could never be certain if telling someone about our plight would get us saved or beaten up. It was an effective way for the upperclassmen to keep us in line. And so Matt and I were constantly having to guard ourselves against slip-ups that might allow information about our tormentors to leak out accidentally. As for Frank, he was a bright kid and if he had been able to put together from something that we had said about the way our lives at the Academy really were, the upperclassmen probably would have dealt with the problem by hauling him off to the gym shower one night and putting him through the same initiation that Matt and I had been forced to go through. So at the least, we figured that we had just saved our friend from a life of drug addiction and embarrassment over being forced to perform blow jobs on demand. Preventing bad things from happening to Frank was one thing, but keeping Juan and Carlos safe was a different matter altogether.