The Boy Avengers (3 page)

JACK FOSTER'S PART IN ALL THIS WAS APPARENTLY not known to anyone but me and father. Their friends must have known or suspected that my mother was having an affair with my tutorespecially those who lusted after the animal themselvesbut I doubt if they knew my father was, too; or if they did, that such a minor thing could have led my father to bash her head in.

The fact is, the murder was an impulsive act. What jealousy there was, caused my mother to remove my father symbolically as a competitor by biting his cock. What caused my father to kill my mother was sheer animal reaction. It was, I think, self-defense, and to my mind, he should have won acquittal on those grounds. But since he concocted that ill-advised intruder story and refused to budge from it, he signed his own death warrant. Of course I am reasoning from the climate of our present times. Perhaps my father knew his own times well enough to be certain that righteous horror would have rendered his very real self-defense null and void in narrow minds, that his desperate gamble was his one chance.

Even my grandmother seemed not to suspect that Jack was involved, for she tried to persuade him to return as my tutor. I was so certain he'd refuse I didn't even protest. My infatuation with him, which had reached a peak when I saw him fucking my father, ended abruptly when my father brought that brass candlestick down on my mother's head. (Ironically, the brass candlestick had belonged to Jack Foster. He called it a family heirloom but never claimed it after the murder.) I set this as an arbitrary moment. I was not actually aware how dead my feelings for Jack were until that first night at my grandmother's house, when I was unable to masturbate with the image of my former tutor's genitals in my mind's eye. I couldn't even get an erection.

I failed to persuade my stubborn grandmother to send me away to school. I had a succession of tutors who came to Briarwood, most of them with imposing academic credentials but inferior ideas on how to teach. One whole year we rented a villa in Florence, and I learned to speak Italian and French fluently, had fascinating sexual adventures (I was a precocious eleven) with uninhibited, completely natural Italian men, the most gifted and understanding of whom was well into his sixties. This would never have been possible in America, or in
any
country but Italy, I think. He had outstandingly enormous and beautiful, responsive genitals, was generous with them, and somehow contrived to make me an equal partner. With the beauty and magnificence of this experience in mind (my first, actually) I have never been tempted down the path of promiscuity. I will never settle for a sexual experience for its own sake. I had not intended to speak of this, for I do not consider my sex life any of the business of this story, but I think it might be regarded as a presentation of my credentials for judging the sexuality of others, as I shall be doing.

For the sake of fairness, I should mention here that my sexual precocity got an important, perhaps crucial boost at Briarwood. Since my parents had been indifferent to books, my grandmother had bodily transferred my grandfather's extensive library to Briarwood, under the supervision of the asexual young man who had been in charge of it the previous several years before my grandfather's death.

My very first day living at Briarwood I'd probed through the library and was astonished to discover that there was an enormous pornography collection. It wasn't surprising my grandmother never spotted it, for it had been discreetly placed on a mezzanine reached only by a narrow spiral staircase. Neither my grandmother nor my succession of tutors showed curiosity about what books I was reading, so I was able to read pornography extensively and openly. The library was complete. There were heterosexual books, beginning with seventeen different editions of the famous
Fanny Hill,
editions in several languages of the Marquis de Sade and other classic works of sadism and masochism, but the bulk of the collection concerned homosexualitypossibly the best, most complete collection in the world. There were poetic, glowing accounts of sodomy as the ultimate in sexual passion between men, some of them one-copy editions commissioned by my grandfather from famous authors who couldn't resist his offers. One of the best was by a noted British poet. I devoured these glowing apostrophes to sodomy with such pleasure and conviction that by the time I met the right person in Italy, I was exactly ready. I shall also confess that my quick assimilation of French and Italian was in furtherance of reading the many books on sodomy in those languages.

When I became fifteen, six years after the tragedy, my grandmother surprised me by asking if I would like to go away to school, to prepare for college. I had been carefully mustering my own arguments to this end. I suspect she guessed this and had decided the events of my mother's accidental death were sufficiently forgotten and that I would not be singled out and embarrassed.

Also, by taking the initiative, she was able to dictate the school. She selected Cornhill, a small Anglican High Church preparatory school in Connecticut, operated along strict lines the better-known schools had long since abandoned. It dated only from the twenties, but the headmaster carried himself as though it dated from the Norman times of its bleak architecture. He had acquired obscure Holy Orders and persisted in dressing in monks' garb. If he wanted to chastise a boy, he had only to slip his cowl over his close-cropped skull. Words were hardly necessary. He ware sandals summer and winter.

I was so pleased to have won a battle I didn't have to fight that I did not quarrel with her choice. Actually, as you will see, there was a minor family connectionif a million and a half can be considered minor.

I have wondered if she ever studied a catalogue of the school. And would she have sent me there, then? Or did she know? My second day at Cornhill, I was literally stunned into numbness by coming face to face with Jack Foster. Had I changed that much? He showed not the slightest sign that he recognized me. He merely gave me the neutral nod he'd have given any other new boy.

I learned that he'd come to Cornhill five years before, after a crash education course at Columbia. He was athletic director and assistant history master. Six years had made little apparent difference. He looked the same, except that his face had acquired deep lines at the mouth that made him look more sensual. Surprisingly, he wore tight slacks, making it obvious that his genitals were larger than ordinary, even to the unpracticed eye. He no longer wore jockstraps except for sports. I learned that the older boys called him Stud behind his back.

I felt not the slightest pang of desire for him. Nor for anybody. Except for the intricate masturbation fantasies I had evolved, I intended to have no sex life at Cornhill. However I had every hope of finding intellectual companionship. I felt that in a world of boys like myself, at last I would find identity; but I learned quickly that similarities in age and sex and wealth and social position did not change things even a little. I found strangers one's own age and sex and social position even more remote than strangers one might encounter at random. What made it especially difficult was that the other boys in my form had been at Cornhill at least five years, and knew and liked or disliked each other intimately. Only the first form, the youngest, had new boys. Some had rooms on my floor. That first night I heard quiet, lonely crying from one of the rooms and envied the lad for being young enough to cry.

After I had been at Cornhill one unhappy week, another new boy arrived in my form. His name was Jeff Talbot, and like myself (I later learned) he had been taught only by tutors. But he was fourteen, a year younger.

It would have been kind of me, I know, to have taken the new boy in hand, for no one else did, but I continued to hug and treasure my loneliness. I made no gesture towards him.

Two days later, on the athletic field, our form was playing soccer (a ridiculous game I disliked on sight). One of the other boys was trying to reach the newcomer how to kick. He and the others were nearly convulsed at Jeff's miserable efforts.

He's even prettier than your daddy, a voice said in my ear. I didn't have to turn to know who it was.

For the first time in my life I had a feeling of insecurity. People speak of moments that change their whole lives. You'd think in my case it would necessarily have been the moment my father spontaneously bashed in my mother's head with Jack Foster's brass candlestick. My God, the symbolism of that!

But actually it was the moment Jack Foster not only revealed that he knew who I was, but that he had been acutely aware of my father's good looks, though in a pejorative way. I suppose he enjoyed them without approving of them. I am certain he didn't envy them, that he considered God's gift of his heavy genitals quite sufficient. More than that, he felt the need to let me know all this.

For the first time in my life I actively hated a person. My mother's death forced an immediate physical change upon me, in that I'd had to move from one enormous, heavily-guarded estate to another; but curiously it caused no significant mental change. My parents had been taken from me, but they'd been my playthings from the beginning; I enjoyed them but I had not needed them materially. So my memory of them could remain warm.

Jack Foster's cruelly-intended remark did more than reveal him to me. It also revealed Jeff Talbot to me. I suppose my own misery had blinded me not only to Jeff's miseryfar greater than mine, I am sure, for he lacked my inner resourcesbut also revealed his remarkable beauty. It was false to call him even prettier than my father. My father had had black curly hair; Jeff's was very blond, very straight. And my father was handsome, not pretty.

Jeff Talbot
was
pretty. About his beauty was an air of absolute purity, absolute innocencean appearance, I have since discovered, that is far more of a goad to a man's lusts than the most overt appearance of sensuality in a remarkably good-looking boy.

He's even prettier than your daddy, Jack Foster had whispered in my ear. It seemed as if it took forever to pull myself together, yet I know it took no longer than the turning of my head to look at him. It was in my heart to cut him hard, and I could have done it. But for some reason that wasn't yet clear I felt an acute need to dissemble.

I thought I remembered you, I said brightly. And my daddywasn't his hair dark?

I could see I puzzled him. His mind was in high gear. Had he remembered me as brighter, more articulate than I appeared now? I couldn't resist a stiletto dig to his vanity. Aren't you fatter?

No.
Exactly the same weight. I take care of myself.

It might seem odd, but from indifference to Jeff Talbot I suddenly, because of one cruel phrase, became intensely involved. At the moment of Jack Foster's speaking, his beauty, the beauty of his whole person struck me with a physical force. It was, in every sense of the word, an infatuation. With it came the knowledge of the form that infatuation must take. I felt a need to have him need me. I would protect him from the world. I had long felt strong enough to face the whole world myself, for myself. Now I knew I had the strength to face it for the both of us.

I mentioned before my absolute contempt for organized athletic activities. With many the contempt is born out of inability, from ineptness. Mine was an intellectual contempt.

Now, hardly a minute after Foster's remark, I did exactly what
he
should have been doing. I jogged over to where Jeff was nearly in tears at his inability to kick a soccer ball, and I showed him exactly how it should be done. That I could do it at all surprised the others. That I could do it superbly well and teach it quickly and effectively disconcerted Jack Foster. He blew his whistle to indicate that the athletic period was over, though it still lacked fifteen minutes by the clock. I felt a heady triumph. And I played it carefully. I must not reveal my hand too soon. See you around, I said to Jeff, and I went to the shower room.

Jeff seemed sensitive to the moment and I was glad. It would have been natural for him to come stand next to his benefactor in the shower had he been less mature, less astute. He stood by himself.

For the first time I took a good look at Jeff Talbot. His whole body was as exquisite as his face. I had watched him jogging to the shower. His carriage was nearly perfect. He had a natural grace of movement that accented his good looks. If there had been anything even slightly effeminate about his movements I know the others would have been quick to seize upon it.

His genitals were as beautiful as the rest of him, would have tempted me unbearably had I not been so strong-minded. He was circumcised, but lovingly, with a sufficient flap to give his penis character and definition. His testicles were large-average, blended magnificently with the rest, hung free exactly to the length of his penis, which was ample and flawless. It was such a beautiful and rightful part of him that I didn't feel that unreasoning lust I'd once felt at the sight of Jack Foster's overwhelming genitals.

Ironically, Foster showered with us, as though to offer me a comparison. I heard a low whistle at the sight of him unselfconsciously soaping his genitals, getting them far cleaner than absolutely necessary. There was a half-smile on his face. I am certain he was enjoying the reaction of the boys. I felt almost pity for him that it was necessary for him to make such a display of his one distinction.

Where did you learn to kick like that? asked Jamie Crawford, who was in his final year at Cornhill, captain of the soccer team. Ah! So even my small talent took precedence over the display of the great man's genitals! But even he seemed to consider it a pertinent question. He listened for my answer.