This is a story about college and fraternity life. It contains explicit sexual activity between males. If such is offensive to you or if you are not of an age where reading such material is legal, please move on. Otherwise, I hope you enjoy the story.
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DELTA IOTA KAPPA
by Macout Mann
Chapter 5
Paxton's Problem
When Rutledge saw Paxton Sunday morning, he said, "I talked to Winthrop at the mixer last night. Man, you gotta be crazy, if you think that guy's gay."
"So I'm out of my mind," Paxton rejoined. "Fuck it."
"Hell, he had gals all over him. Told me about one that he was really hot for. I'm even quoting him in my story for tomorrow's paper."
"Maybe these fucking faggots can pull the wool over your eyes. They ain't fooling me none."
That afternoon Paxton and the rest of the team watched the footage of the game. The coaches carefully analyzed the pluses and minuses of Sanderson's performance, and outlined what they would emphasize in the coming week's practice. Dick Winslow came in for big accolades for his touchdown run. He'd sidestepped at least three tackles to reach the end zone. Paxton got the impression that it'd be a long time before he'd get off the bench.
Monday morning Rutledge's story together with coverage of Sanderson's win over William and Mary dominated the Parrot. His lead ended, "James Winthrop summed up the evening's festivities. Look at all these good-looking girls,' the pre-law freshman said. Now I know why I came to Sanderson.'"
"Goddamn," Jerry Squires kidded, "the way you're going you'll be DIKa's president even before you're an active. That's great p.r., man. For you and the frat."
At breakfast James was kidded by a number of the other brothers. "We got ourselves an overnight celebrity," one said.
American Government was James' ten-o'clock class. Several students mentioned the article to him before it began. It was a large lecture class, over a hundred students. It was taught by Elliot Holmes, controversial author of The Coming Crisis: Goldwater-Johnson Foreshadows aCcoming Governmental Paralysis, and a leading governmental scholar. Today would be his first lecture.
Last week's classes were taken up with introductions and on Thursday, the American Government Criterion Test. Sanderson did not believe in teaching students what they already knew. So in many classes criterion tests were administered. They covered all the information a student was expected to know at the end of the term. Any student who scored 90% or more on the criterion test was excused from taking the course. He didn't get credit, but the course was excluded from his requirements. Other students were given a similar test at the end of the course, and their performance on it, compared to their performance on the first test, was used to evaluate the instructor.
Today the eminent Professor Holmes was at the lectern.
"American Government," he began, "is an historic anomaly. It could have come into being only here, and yet, it could not exist without the thinking of British and other European scholars, such as Locke and Voltaire. Britain evolved into a democratic, but quite different system, with no written constitution; while America produced a Constitution that has endured for over two hundred years. That was the fruit of the American Revolution. Meanwhile, in France almost simultaneously the French Revolution produced chaos, and after six more republics, what Winston Churchill called `de Gaul Stone.'
"This semester and next," he continued, "we want to discover what American Government is about, why is works, and how it functions. And," he added, "how you can keep it from falling into chaos."
For fifty minutes the class was mesmerized. As a skilled and practiced lecturer, he concluded precisely on time with the words, "and that's what we will consider next time."
While James was listening to Mr. Holmes, Britt Galloway was talking to Sammy Burns. Burns was the football team's "gay boy." Officially he was in the closet, of course, but many of the "more liberal" players sometimes hooked up with him, including the three DIKas on the team. As guys of similar inclinations joined the team, they were brought into Sammy's circle of friends.
Britt explained his feelings about Paxton to Sammy. "What we'd like you to do," he said, "is to come on to him and see what happens."
Burns replied that Paxton was the last person on the team that would turn him on, but he reluctantly agreed to make an overture.
That afternoon, George approached James. "I got a letter from my dad." He said. "I'd like for you to read it, if you would.
"If you want me to," James responded. "Come up to the room."
George passed the letter to James without further comment. It was obviously typed by Mr. Blaylock himself. The contents weren't something to be entrusted to a secretary.
"Dear son," it began, and continued as follows:
"By now, you have become familiar with the peculiar practices that
make Delta Iota Kappa unique, and I assume you have taken them in
stride, as I did twenty-five years ago. I also assume that for
you, as for me, these contacts have been your first. No problem if
they weren't, but I hope that you do come to realize, if you don't
already, that intimacy with other men is something to be cherished,
never to be ashamed of or denied.
"I want you to know that although the relationship your mother and
I have had all these years has been filled with love, that it has
also transcended sex. That is to say that I have also had
fulfilling relationships with other men ever since I was introduced
to male sex at Sanderson. And I have no regrets.
"I hope it may be so with you.
"With a father's love,"
And it was signed, "Dad."
"Quite a letter," was all James could say.
"Yeah," George answered. "But I'm damned glad he sent it. Makes me feel a whole lot better about things."
"Uh, huh. I had the feeling you were pretty up-tight last night."
"Right on. I wanted to get with you so fucking bad, but then I kept thinking, `what the hell am I doing?'"
"Well, all I can say is I wish my dad felt the same way yours does," James opined. "If he knew I was gay, he'd disinherit me for sure.
"Anyway, now you can get with Gary with a clear conscience."
After practice, Paxton found himself walking alongside Sammy Burns.
"Working up a sweat make you horny?" Burns asked.
"What d'ya mean?" Paxton answered.
"Hell, I get a hard-on whenever I exercise, all the time during practice. I gotta wear two jock straps to keep it from showing."
"That's fucking weird, man."
"Nah, it aint so weird. Lots of guys are that way." Burns reached down and clawed his crotch suggestively. "I used to know one guy that got so horny he had to get a blow job after every practice," he added.
"Shit yeah. Maybe we could just ask the coach to have a bunch of naked gals lined up right outside the showers," Paxton laughed.
"Oh, the guy I'm talking about didn't wait for a gal to come by. Anybody's lips would do."
"Not for me!" Paxton almost shouted. "Aint no queer ever goanna touch my dick! Besides, I aint got your problem anyway. But you aint saying you'd let some motherfucker suck you, are ya?"
"I'm just saying what this other guy did," Burns responded. Again he caressed his groin. Paxton didn't reach for his, but the growing bulge in his jeans didn't escape Burns' notice.
Paxton did have a problem. He was brought up in a small town in Oklahoma. His dad had worked as an oil field roughneck, but had been injured in an accident on a rig. He got disability payments and worked doing odd jobs, but the family still lived pretty much hand to mouth. His mother was an evangelical true believer, and his parents were both very strict with both Max and his older sister. She had exchanged the harshness of their existence at home for an equally harsh and unsatisfying married life as soon as she graduated from high school. Max was left to try to live up to the expectations of his parents, mainly by becoming a big jock. He had accepted the scholarship from Sanderson mainly to get as far away from home as he could. He hadn't realized that once here he would be outclassed socially and academically, but that hadn't really bothered him. Not yet.
Paxton's real problem, the one that worried him, however, went back to a day when he was thirteen. His father had caught him and a friend in the tool shed jacking each other off. The old man had gone apoplectic, ordered Max' friend to get out and never come back, beat the shit out of his kid, ordered him never to see the other boy again, and finished by giving him the lecture. Beginning with the Old Testament admonition against "spilling your seed on the ground," continuing that "laying with another man is an abomination," following that with the truism that "beating your meat makes you feeble-minded," and ending with the declaration that "no son of mine is goanna be a goddamned queer," the elder Paxton frightened his son into a state of perpetual anxiety.
The fact was that the two boys had no concept of homosexual activity. They were just being thirteen-year-olds. Curious. "I'll do you if you'll do me." That sort of thing.
But as Max grew older, he found that he was not drawn to girls as his peers seemed to be. Sure, he dated. He had to, if he was to keep his father off his ass. But here he was, a freshman in college, who had never had a sexual experience of any kind. Oh yes, he continued to masturbate, careful that his father would never suspect. And he had strange feelings around some other guys. Like a tingling down in his pants. He didn't really understand. Not every guy. And he sure as hell didn't get a hard-on when he was playing football. But a certain kind of fella somehow turned him on. And that bothered him. And he had to be damned sure he wasn't "a goddamned queer."
There was a kid in his English class that gave him "that feeling." Goddamned Sammy Burns sure as hell didn't. He couldn't figure what he was all about.
Burns couldn't figure what Paxton was all about. He told Britt Galloway that he'd tried to come on to Paxton without being too open about it, and Paxton seemed to react like he didn't know what Burns was talking about, except to say in no uncertain terms that he wasn't gay.
"Maybe you wouldn't mind trying again," Galloway urged. "I'm not gay either, but you know what I'd like you to do right now, don't ya? Let's go."
Tuesday was English for James and Paxton. "Oh, for a muse of fire!" Mr. Samuels intoned. "A poem in flames!" he suggested.
Paxton hadn't read the first word of "Henry V," but for some reason the image conjured by the professor struck a chord.
"A kingdom for a stage, princes to act, and monarchs to behold the swelling scene!" Mr. Samuels would have loved to have become an actor, but fate had decreed that he would become a scholar.
"Imagine," he continued, "a play in which one of the greatest battles of all time is fought on a stage no bigger than this room. So Shakespeare resorts to a technique as old as theatre itself, the chorus. He urges the audience to pretend.
"I was very young, when it was still the radio, not a tv, that we all sat around each evening. I remember listening to programs like 'The Theatre Guild on the Air' and 'The Ford Theatre,' where we heard famous plays and conjured in our mind's eye what the scene looked like. In some respects that was more satisfying than watching somebody else's idea of what a scene is like. When 'Henry V' is staged today, the audience still must use its imagination, much like we did listening to radio drama, and 'think, when we talk of horses, that you see them printing their proud hoofs in the receiving earth.'"
"Lawrence Olivier made a movie of 'Henry V' during the Second World War, principally as a propaganda film to boost British morale; but in the process made what most of us consider the first real movie of a Shakespearian play. In it, he opens and closes the film in a replica of the Globe Theatre, moving to real settings only as the audience becomes involved in the action."
"Envision an actor standing at the center of a bare stage." Mr. Samuels then recited the first Chorus speech; and when he finished, there was appreciative applause.
The class then moved to a discussion of the historical background for the play, how King Henry had been thought of as a light-weight playboy upon assuming the throne, and how this attitude was reflected in Shakespeare's two plays about his father.
And the class learned—some for the first time--about the structure of Shakespearian plays, Mr. Samuels emphasizing that the Elizabethan theatre was a quite rowdy place, leading each event to be presented in three scenes. In the first a character asks "what's going to happen?" and is told. In the second we see the event. And then someone arrives late and asks "what happened?" and is told. So even the groundlings are kept aware of what's going on. "In 'Henry V' the Chorus performs some of these functions, and his speeches are some of Shakespeare's best," Samuels concludes, "and that's why some of the greatest actors have chosen that role over that of the king."
He ended the class by having students read the first big scene of the play in which the emissary of the Dauphin insults King Henry. He had James read the part of the emissary and chose George to read the king. George's interpretation was surprisingly good, his New England accent contrasting nicely with James' upper-class urban Texan.
Paxton, who had never encountered Shakespeare before, came away with a new interest in the class. And he got that special feeling again, as he watched George Blaylock stroll out of the classroom.
Copyright 2012 by Macout Mann. All rights reserved.