Boarding School (7 page)

Man was that weird,
I thought as I entered my room. I decided to leave my door open to create a cross breeze.
We all like the dogs here,
I continued to think as I opened my window to gain some relief from the heat.
But this is
the first time I’ve ever seen anyone actually take one of them into his
room.

There were three dogs which hung around our campus regularly. Lollie and her brother, who was owned by another teacher at the Academy, and Bandit, the German shepherd that was owned by the neighbor kid Danny, were all friendly toward the students and were usually willing to retrieve a ball or two or just sit and be petted. These dogs were a constant presence in our lives at the Academy. In fact, one morning, while I was on my way back to my room after breakfast, I stopped with a couple of other guys on the basketball court in front of my dorm to watch Bandit as he roughhoused with Lollie. At first I thought that Bandit was trying to pick a fight with the young lady. But in no time he had her down and then to my astonishment, he nailed her right there in front of all of us. At the age of thirteen, seeing a sex act performed practically at my feet, even if it was between two animals, had a powerful effect on my hormone-filled body. I’ll skip the details about what followed, other than to admit that my reaction to this incident, once I was inside and alone, wound up making me a few minutes late for my first class that day.

In any event, once I was seated at my desk and working on my paper, I began to hear some odd sounds coming from the room at the end of the hall. Lollie barked a couple of times, and I could hear the Block trying to quiet the animal down. I could tell also that this kid in room four had opened his window as well, because I was hearing these and other sounds come to me through both my door and my window.

After a bit, things seemed to quiet down once more, so I tried yet again to shift my mind to the homework assignment at hand. But as soon as I began to write, I could hear consistent, almost rhythmic banging and squeaking sounds begin. Quickly I put down my pen and sat back in my chair to see if I could sort out what the heck was going on now. As I focused my attention to this new interruption to my afternoon of study, I concluded that I was hearing a metal bed frame being pushed consistently against an inside wall.
The Block has his
bed slid up into a corner against an inside wall and his window,
I recalled.

In no time, curiosity had the better of me and I decided that I had to find out what was happening. So I got up out of my wooden captain’s chair and I walked quietly down the hall until I was standing right outside the door to room four. As soon as I was still, and while the banging and squeaking continued, I was able now to discern that the squeaking sounds I was hearing were being made by bed springs. And on top of that, I now could hear Lollie uttering a sort of doggie groan with every exhale. “Rr, rr, rr, rr!”

/
can’t believe this!
My senses were defying my ideals of decency and proper behavior. By this time in my life I had heard jokes about Shepherds and their sheep, but what I believed was now occurring on the other side of that door, went well beyond any concept of sexuality that I had ever before encountered.

“Rr, rr, rr, rr!” Lollie continued her groans.

The more I heard these sounds, the more my curiosity grew until I reached the point where I decided that I had to know for sure what was going on in that room.
He can’t be doing that…
The whole idea seemed too impossible to be true. And so I walked back down the hallway to the east door and I left the building.

I had it in my mind to walk along the wide earthen ledge out behind our floor in a casual way, so I would appear to be just out for a break from my studies to get a bit of fresh air. And as I began to pass slowly by the windows, I was just as eager to disprove what I thought was taking place as I was to prove it. As I advanced along the back side of my dorm, leaves on the ground crunched under my feet which no doubt announced my approach because once I was along side the opened window to room four, and before I could make myself turn my head to the right to look into the Block’s bedroom, the kid spoke to me.

“Hi, Clint!” His voice sounded clear and quite friendly.

Right away I figured that a strong greeting like this meant that there was another more sensible explanation for the sounds I had been hearing. So with a great sense of relief, I turned my head and saw in horror as my neighbor lay on his stomach on top of Lollie—their encounter now apparently ended—while the dog lay quietly on her back underneath the boy.

“Oh… ah, hi there… Block.” What do you say at a moment like this? Hey, that’s a nice dog you’ve got there?

Lollie then twisted her head a couple of times to get a better look at me, but other than that, she seemed quite content for the moment to stay where she was.

Jeeze, I wonder if he’s gonna give her a cigarette, now?
I thought.

“It sure is a nice day outside today isn’t it?” Although he still sounded confident, it was obvious that the Block was now trying to make conversation to break through this moment of awkwardness.

“Ah… yeah it really is.“Again,! couldn’t think of anything else to say. But I was aware that if I stayed there any longer, there would only be one way for this conversation to go, and I didn’t want any part of that. So I excused myself. “Well, I guess I ought to be getting back to my homework. I’ll see ya later, then.” I was already walking away before I had finished speaking.

“Yeah ok, Clint. I’ll see ya later.” And that was the last we ever said to each other on the matter.

* * *

Her name was Ellen, and she was the first girl I ever French kissed. She had come to the Academy with the rest of the students from an all-girls school up in Boston, to spend an evening with all of us at the Academy. Everything about that night, I remember as being magical. It probably sounds strange to say now in light of the sort of world we live in today, but at the time, I didn’t know that there even was such a thing as French kissing. I had merely thought that kissing was kissing. But by the time my arranged date with Ellen was over later that night, I had become a devoted practitioner of the art.

“So is everything ok here?”

I felt a hand placed on my back and a voice speak to me from above. “Yeah, great!” I answered as I looked up and saw that it was the head proctor who was expressing an interest in my well-being.

“Good. We thought you two would get along well together because you both play the guitar,” he revealed.

“Oh yeah?” I then took my eyes off of the head proctor and looked again at Ellen with approval as she sat there on the small couch next to me. She was gorgeous with long brown hair and a cheery face. Our eyes met again and she smiled back at me.

The head proctor then continued with what he wanted to say to us. “Yeah, and we thought when we matched you two up that maybe you guys could play a few songs for us after dinner tonight. You know… to help us kick off the evening and everything.”

“Really?” I was amazed that I had been part of the strategic planning for this occasion. “Well that’s fine with me. What do you think?” I asked my date. We had only just been paired up by the head proctor and his counterpart from the girls’ school a mere three minutes or so earlier, so we were still on our initial attempt to get to know one another.

“Well,” she began, “I just got here, and I don’t have a guitar, and we’ve never tried playing together.” At first Ellen was less than enthusiastic with the idea. She looked around the room as she spoke and saw that people were beginning to get their plates and fill them with food. Plus it had been a long ride down from Boston on the bus, and frankly, I think she also lacked a bit of confidence in her music skills and was afraid of sounding foolish in front of everyone.

But I was used to getting up and doing impromptu performances. I thought the idea sounded fun. After all, life for me at the Academy was still relatively new and a quick couple of songs would gain me a little notoriety which, in turn, would make it easier for me to make friends, I figured. “Oh it’ll be easy,” I accepted the invitation for both of us. “If somebody else around here has a guitar we can borrow, we can probably have a few songs worked up in about fifteen minutes.” I then saw Ellen look at me with an expression of surprise on her face. What—she must have wondered—was I getting her into?

“Great!” The head of our student body seemed pleased that we were willing to make the effort. “I know where I can get my hands on another guitar. I’ll be right back.” And then he vanished into the crowd of students who by now had filled in the library around us.

“It’ll be fine,” I tried to reassure Ellen. “If you can play, I’m sure we can put together a couple of numbers at least. Do you sing too?” I asked.

“Yes, I guess,” she answered tentatively.

“Well then, we’ll be fine. I sing also.”

A moment later the head proctor had returned with a six-string folk guitar which apparently belonged to the head waiter. “We’ll hold some dinner for you guys while you go get ready.”

After that I remember taking Ellen over to my dorm room and pulling out my twelve-string. (Now, in case I was just expected to say something else here, let me assure the reader that I was raised to always be a gentleman around women. Also, at this stage of my life, I was still pretty naive about matters of sex.) About ten minutes later, after some quick rehearsing, we were as ready as we were ever going to be. So we returned to the library and took our places on a raised section of the room by the windows because it seemed to make the perfect stage for us. I have no idea now what we actually played that night, but I imagine—to be safe—we did standards like “Greens Leafs” because a lot of the time, the audience sang along with us. Our performance went fine except for the fact that the head waiter kept calling up for us to play “Wooden Ships” by Crosby Stills & Nash. At the time, that song was part of a brand-new album which I hadn’t yet been able to listen to. Looking back on it now, I have decided that he was simply jealous that such a young kid like me was up there getting all of the attention instead of him. And indeed, I didn’t know it at the time, but eventually I would feel the brunt of his ill feelings toward me. And, not to blow my own horn or anything, but I was a much better performer than he was. In fact, with the exception of one fellow who was a very fine pianist, I don’t remember anyone at the Academy ever being able to match me in this area.

So we did the two or three songs we had prepared to solid applause, but the audience wanted more from us. So, after that, Ellen and I alternated solo numbers for a while until we decided we had been up there long enough.

“Here you go.” The head proctor handed Ellen and me our dinners after we had put down our guitars and rejoined the crowd. “We put these plates together for you guys. Thanks a lot for doing this for us. I think it went over really well.” And then, as an older brother might do to a younger one, the head proctor reached over and rubbed the top of my head with his hand which, of course, messed up my hair.

“No problem,” I answered with a smile. “Any time.” And then I lifted one of my hands and used my fingers as a comb to put my hair back into place.

“You’re welcome.” Ellen also sounded grateful for the praise, but I think she was just as glad to finally have the whole experience behind her.

After dinner we joined some friends and made our way down to the coffee house in the Annex. There, amid the dim lights, the posters of rock bands and the loud music of Steppenwolf, the Doors and Jimmy Hendrix, we talked and danced through a good portion of the evening. One of the funnier things I remember about Ellen was that she had recently developed an odd affinity for baby bottles. As she explained it to me, the small ones were a convenient way to carry liquids when she traveled because they never leaked. She had many insights like this and I found it fascinating just to listen to her. But eventually, Ellen and I decided that we were restless and the time had come for us to go out and find something else to do.

We did peer into the black light room and saw that all nine mattresses were in use, but that wasn’t Ellen’s style. So we left the coffee house and walked around behind the Annex so we could stand on the beach and watch the moonlight as it reflected against the lake. Shortly after that, though, Ellen felt chilled, so we decided to climb the steps and return to the upper campus to check out what was going on up there. But we never made it all the way. When we reached the landing, instead of turning right to go up the remainder of the steps, we chose instead to continue straight ahead which took us directly into my dorm.

After I had hung a neck tie around the door knob on the outside of my door to signal to Matt, in case he came around, that our room was in use, Ellen and I then spent the next few minutes engaged in nervous conversation. Soon, though, we were sitting together on my bed. Ellen was a little more than a year older than I was, and as I look back on our evening together now, I realize that she was the one who was really in charge. And when we finally began to kiss, and I felt her tongue penetrate through my perimeter of teeth and then plunge itself deep into the private region beyond my gums so she could rub and play around in there freely and with impunity, my first thought was
What is she
doing to me?
An instant later, though, I realized that her oral gymnastics were causing me to feel exhilarated. So I immediately reciprocated with an equal amount of enthusiasm.

This was how Ellen and I then spent the rest of our evening together until the time came for her to rejoin her friends and leave the Academy to return to Boston. I never saw her again, but a few weeks later I received a small package in the mail from her. In it I found a small baby bottle, an elastic bracelet she had made for me from blue beads, and a picture she had drawn for me which she called a dot drawing. The artwork was done in ink and was comprised of a series of dots which together depicted the image of a short man wearing a large hat. My friends at the time told me that the man looked like Arlo Guthrie. I never knew one way or the other. I was just grateful to have received her gifts.