Here is the latest chapter of the story. As always, it is fictional, so don't go looking for allegorical representations of your Uncle Milton or Jesus in it. If reading stories involving erotic interactions among minors isn't your thing, or is illegal where you live or under your sense of morality, don't read it - stop now. I want to express my thanks to the people who have read this story, and who have then commented on it to me - positively and negatively. The former are flattering and appreciated, and the latter have been instructive, I hope.
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When the World Changed Part 31
The ride back to Wilson the following morning was silent and tense. Brady's mother clearly had hoped he would want to stay home longer, and Brady's guilt over disappointing her was discomfiting. He yanked his bags out of the trunk as fast as he could when she stopped behind Linsley, started inside, then stropped and turned. "Mom, I - "
"It's all right, baby doll," she said evenly, but he could hear the pain in her voice. "You go see your friends and be good. Have a wonderful time. This is home for you now, isn't it?"
Brady swallowed hard. "Mom, it's not like home, it - it's different. But . . . but it's like I belong here, even though a lot of the time I feel like I don't fit." He rubbed his face. "It's just complicated, Mom. I love you."
She smiled. "I know. And I love you too. Now go live your life. Call me tonight?"
"Of course. Unless Stassen hogs the pay phone again like last week."
She laughed, a raspy painful sound that shook Brady deeply. "I'll be waiting. Now get inside, it's cold. I love you." She put the car into gear and slowly pulled down the gravel drive. Brady stood rooted until she vanished from sight.
The dorm was quiet, few if any kids back yet. There was an hour until lunch. He unpacked carefully, not wanting to wrinkle and of the dress shirts his mother had so precisely ironed (she was much better at it than the School's laundry, a cramped room below the dining hall that stank of detergent and too much starch). He sat on his bed, put on "Surrealistic Pillow" and flipped idly through his copy of Julius Caesar. He knew his English final would focus on it, plus he just loved reading it over and over. The language, the cadences, had him hooked. He would devour Shakespeare the rest of his life.
A knock on the door roused him; he must have dozed off. He leaped to the door, expecting to see Doug. But it was Mr. Billips standing there. "Conover, you're back early."
Brady blinked the sleep from his eyes. "Um, yes, sir, not - not a lot to do at home on a misty day like this, and my Mom needed to get to work."
"Can I come in?"
Brady felt vaguely uncomfortable. "Sure! Sure, come on in. Uh, you can sit at the desk there if you want, OK?" What was this about?
Billips smiled at him. "Relax, you're not in any trouble." Brady did sag a bit in relief, though he tried to conceal it. "I just wanted to check in on you, see how you're doing after a little time home." He seemed a bit uncertain. "I know you had a rough patch there, with the McShane kids - " A rough patch, Brady thought incredulously? Fucking Christ, are you kidding??? " - and the School certainly tried to keep rumors of some of the more, um, scandalous parts of what happened private. To protect David, of course," he added a bit too quickly.
So that was it. They were afraid he'd talked. That the truth might get out and put the School in a bad light - or worse, a lawsuit. "Sir, I want to protect David as much as anyone. I haven't talked about anything with anyone." In fact, he realized, aside from solicitousness over the state of his ribs, his mother had been surprisingly blas‚ about his injury. Did she really know so little of what had happened? "David's been picked on too much be guys, especially those two. I'm glad it's over."
Billips nodded and smiled. "I'm glad you understand, Brady. And that you're being a good roommate for David. That's a huge bond, you know. I went o Exeter, and my roommates are still among my closest friends." He laughed. "They can't believe I was stupid enough to take this job and go back to another boarding school, but they haven't dumped me yet." He stood to leave.
"Sir?" Billips stopped and turned back. "Why'd you come in here?"
Billips gulped. Brady knew he had him. "Conover, this is difficult stuff - what happened."
"He got raped, sir."
"Well - "
"Douggie needs to go to jail, you know that."
Billips sighed and sat again, this time on David's mattress. "Yeah, he probably should."
"Probably???" Brady demanded.
"I wish it was that simple, Conover. Who McShane is - the name, the family - shouldn't matter, but it does. With the School, with lawyers, with the police and the courts. Money matters. And old money matters even more."
"David's family is rich," Brady challenged, "and has been for a while. I mean his dad went here, and didn't his grandfather too?"
"They did. But there's money, and then there's money," Billips answered, stressing the second one. "The Tanners are well off, but not connected in finance circles in Manhattan. They're just in Westchester, and David's father is only a doctor - "
"So what? If David's not rich enough to be protected from people like McShane, what about kids like me? My family doesn't have shit." He instantly regretted the obscenity in talking with a Master, but this was no ordinary conversation, and Brady was getting angry.
"Language, Conover. But you're right," Billips sighed, "it stinks. My folks weren't well off - I went to Exeter on scholarship, like you did, and if you think there's a class system here you should have seen it there. But that's just a microcosm of life, Conover. We all have to navigate it, and to try to make it fairer where we can. And part of that is picking battles. You fight every unfair thing you see, you lose focus and you lose on every one of them."
"Dr. King says injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," Brady responded defiantly. Hal had taught him that quote.
Billips smiled. "And he's right. But look at how tough things have gotten for him. It's not enough that he's fighting segregation, now he's against the war, and getting into union battles, and advocating for poor people - he can't focus on one problem at a time. We need guys like him to point us the way, but the real work is small scale, tedious. Ugly. Here, we had the ugliness right in our faces - well, yours, and Tanner's - but we made progress. We got rid of them. That's a good thing. They surfaced again right away -Douggie at least - and that shows how strong their pull is. But we cleaned our own house. I'm just sorry it took so much for it to happen."
Brady cocked his head, realizing a question he hadn't thought of before. "What happened to Ian? I didn't see him at Dunston."
"No," Billips answered, shifting on the bed. "Apparently Ian and his mother have separated from the dad, and Douggie. I understand it's pretty bitter. She's as old money as he is, so it's like battle of the titans. They've both tried to freeze the other's accounts, change locks on houses, things like that. The public reason is his adultery - I guess she'd been tolerating that for a while. It's getting into the papers in New York. I think Ian is just not in school right now."
Brady remembered Ian at the DC hearing, and felt a sudden pang of pity for him. Christ, he's a victim, too. Almost. Why'd he have to be such an asshole about it?
"At any rate," Billips said, rising again to leave, "I'm glad you're keeping David's best interests first in your mind."
"And the School's, right? Especially the School's?"
Billips looked at him for a long second. "In this case, Brady, they go hand in hand. Believe me." He closed the door softly.
He was too agitated to read, or to sleep. His anger at Ian was confused now with sympathy. Why am I feeling sorry for the biggest asshole in my class, he thought. But he was. Ian had been abused, and molested, and turned into an asshole. And so, really, had Douggie. His anger shifted to Mr. McShane. Fucking rich bastard, thinks he can buy his way through life. Someday, I'll bring pricks like that down, I swear it.
David's entry interrupted his silent pacing tantrum.
"Conover! What the hell?"
Brady stopped, almost tripping over his own feet. "Uh, hi Davy. I - I was just, y'know, thinking. And stuff."
"Yeah, at seventy miles an hour. What's going on? You OK?"
"I'm fine. Really! I just -"
At that moment Mr. Tanner strode into the room with a suitcase in each hand. "Brady!!!" he exclaimed with evident pleasure. "So glad to see you! How's your mother doing? I'm surprised you didn't spend the day with her, since you didn't need to be back until after dinner."
Brady felt doubly uncomfortable now. "Well, um, she had to work today, and - and I really needed to be back -"
"Bray! How are you, man?" Doug almost ran through the door, coming perilously close to knocking Mr. Tanner over. "Oh, sorry, sir. Hey Davy! C'mon, Bray, my dad wants to say hi."
Brady was grinning stupidly now. "Sure! Sure, uh - let me - I gotta get shoes on - Mr. Tanner - uh, Davy - I'll be, like back, in a few -"
"Can it, Conover," David said. "Just go." He and his father wore suspiciously identical smiles.
Brady and Doug bounded up the stairs, Brady trying not to gape openly at Doug's butt flexing in front of him as they took them two and three at a time. They had a brief and inconsequential conversation with Doug's father in Doug's room, and as he went down to his car. They stood brushing shoulders as they watched Mr. Garretson's car drive off. "He's going to have a really shitty drive back, I think," Doug said. "It'll probably be snowing by the time he gets out towards Reading."
"Yeah," Brady answered dreamily. He was focusing on the contact between their shoulders. All his anger, worries, concerns, had vanished. Doug was there with him again. He turned his head and grinned at him.
Doug caught sight of him. "What?"
Brady inhaled sharply and glanced away, embarrassed. "I just - y'know, it - it's good to be back. Good that you're back. And all. I mean, right?"
Now Doug was grinning. "Right." He threw his arms around Brady for a moment. "Let's go see what Davy's up to. Dunc says he'll be back early, too, He called last night. We can hang out all afternoon." He was moving away toward the door now, but Brady couldn't budge. The feel of Doug's body against his, even through their coats, had left him breathless. He tingled everywhere. His eyes were vacant. "Bray? You OK man?"
Brady shook his head violently. "Yeah! Yeah, sorry, I just - I was, uh, thinking. About some stuff." He started to follow hastily.
"What about?" Doug frowned, concerned, waiting for him.
Oh shit, Brady thought, what to say. "Uh, well, um, Billips - Billips, he came into my room right after I got here. He, uh, was like checking me out, see if I'd told anyone - my mom, I guess, but like anybody - about McShane, and David, and all that stuff - "
"Why the hell'd he do that?"
"I think they want to keep it quiet. Spare the School's reputation and shit." This was a safer area for discussion. Brady felt relief along with a return of his anger. "Don't want McShane's dad to fuck with them."
"Well they threw both of 'em out already. How can he fuck with the School now?"
"Dunno. I guess money talk, nobody walks," Brady said, quoting the Dennison's Men's Clothier ad that WABC ran every five minutes all through the night. "Route 22 in Paramus."
Doug laughed. "It took me three weeks to figure that out. Dunc had to explain it to me. What idiot is gonna go shipping for a suit at three in the morning?"
"Well they're open till 5, so you want to avoid missing out," Brady answered with a grin.
Doug shoved his shoulder. Brady shoved back. They laughed and attached one another, wrestling with mock abandon. They found themselves entangled, fallen against the wall of Linsley, pressed against the dormant ivy tendrils.
A long second passed. Brady didn't dare look up. "I think it's a draw."
Doug took a long breath and stepped away. "Yeah. Nobody wins." They went back inside.
As they climbed the stairs again, slowly this time, Doug turned to Brady. "Um, is your brother OK? I was reading about that fight at, what did they call it, Dak To - "
"Yeah he's fine." Brady really didn't want to think about this subject. "That was up in like the middle of the country - the Central Highlands - and Trent is down closer to Saigon. He wasn't near that."
"Good." They got to the door for the third floor. "So he's coming home soon, right?"
"End of January. Getting close."
"Wow, that'll be such a relief."
"Yeah," Brady breathed softly. "It will."
Doug pushed open the door. "Well, at least we're winning there, so things are getting safer for him."
Brady frowned. "I hope so."
Mr. Tanner was waiting for Brady when he got back to his room with Doug. "Boys, could I have a couple of minutes here with Brady, please?" David rolled his eyes. Doug stared at Brady alarmed. Brady felt the same. What now?
He sat reluctantly on the edge of his bed as David and Doug slipped out. Mr. Tanner slid a chair over in front of him. "So, how are you doing?"
Brady blinked, avoiding his eye contact. "Um, I'm fine, sir. Had, y'know, a nice weekend."
Mr. Tanner nodded. "Glad to hear it. You sleeping OK?"
Brady was taken aback. "Yeah, sure."
"Good. How was your weekend with your mother? Is she coping all right with things?"
Brady blinked. "What - no, she - I mean she's fine, why would she not be, like, coping, with anything?"
You haven't told her?"
"Told her what?"
"About what happened. About your feelings, for your friend Doug."
Brady stared at him as if he were an alien. "No! I - what the hell, sir, do - I'm not gonna talk to my mother about . . . about, stuff like that - "
"You need to Brady. It's as important as talking to me, or to any therapist. You -"
"I don't want to talk to you, or to any damn therapist! I just - can you all, all of you, please just leave me alone?" He turned away to the window, simultaneously ashamed of himself for being so disrespectful to Mr. Tanner, and angry at being put on the spot in such a manner.
Mr. Tanner looked at him with an expression of deep sympathy - which only infuriated him more. "Brady, I know you're used to being strong. To thinking you have to be strong, for your family's sake. For your own. But that's not being strong. Not with what you're inevitably doing to yourself. Sooner or later, you won't be strong enough. And when you fail at that, it'll hurt so much more than if you let things out, shared, trusted, and relied on other people. People who care about you.
"You protected my son when he was in a - a desperate situation, you put yourself at terrible risk. I may be a therapist, and technically your therapist, but this means a lot more to me than just a professional relationship. My concerns for you are very, very personal. I want to see you happy, and for you to succeed. Please let me help."
Brady saw the pain in Mr. Tanner's face. It looked strikingly like the hollowness in David's eyes when he spoke of what had happened with Stud Douggie. He knew he needed to speak, to say something. "Mr. Tanner," he whispered, ". . . I - I . . . this is hard. For me. OK? I mean I want to, and I, like, appreciate, all that you've done - and Davy too - for me, and that you're like worried, and concerned and stuff. About me. I just - I don't know what to do, or - or what I am, or anything."
Mr. Tanner smiled. "What you are," he said, "is a very bright and talented young man trying to know himself. The bad news is that you never stop that. You always will be trying to figure yourself out, however much you get at least think you understand yourself as you get older. You'll always be a mystery to yourself, at some points. So, I guess the bad news is that the feelings you have - the doubts, the insecurities - they don't go away. All your teachers, your mother, me - we all have them."
Brady tried to make his hollow laugh sound hearty. "Well that's encouraging."
Mr. Tanner laughed, and his laugh was very easy indeed. "Yeah, I know that feeling. The point is that you can't run from self discovery, from trying to figure yourself out. You have to embrace it, and embrace what you learn - even if it turns out to be something you don't like about yourself. Because if it is something bad, you can focus on it, change it. Make yourself better. And that's the good news. That you can always do that."
Brady shook his head slightly. "I - I can't make myself better on this one. I've tried. I know it's wrong and - and like unnatural, and sick. But I still feel it." He couldn't being himself to articulate, precisely, what "it" was.
"Brady, there's nothing wrong, or sick, or unnatural, or sinful, or anything like that, about loving someone. It's not wrong, it's just - different. Different from what other people feel, who they fall in love with. Who they're attracted to. Some people like blondes, some brunettes. Everyone falls in love with someone diffferent ? different from the person others fall in love with. You -" Brady stiffened. Mr. Tanner smiled. "You like, a classmate, a great deal. And it really is OK to feel that."
"B - but it's hopeless, don't you see? I mean, it's not like - not like it can ever happen." Not as if he would ever love me, really love me, like I love him, he wanted to say, but that would be too blunt an admission. He turned back to the window. "It's just a dead end."
Mr. Tanner's hand on his shoulder was firm, reassuring. "Maybe. I don't know that. If it is, there'll be other people in your life. This is the first, and that first is just a terrifying experience. It's thrilling and scary and you never know what to do, and you're always certain you're messing things up. And a lot of the time, you are," he laughed. "But you get through it, and whether it lasts or not - whether it turns out to be your real lifelong passion or not - you learn. You learn about yourself. It's not easy, self discovery. We learn through pain, far too much. I wish there were another way, but there really isn't. So," he turned Brady to face him, "I don't mean for you to enjoy the pain, but to look past it. That's not easy, because it consumes you entirely. But there's more to life than this fear, and all the unknowns that tear at you."
He stepped towards the door. "We can go into a lot more specifics sometime, if you want. For now, I'm just glad we talked, even in general terms. You're going to be fine, OK?" He opened it for Brady to leave.
"OK. Thanks, Mr. Tanner." Like hell I will, he thought.
David was leaning against the wall outside the door, talking with Jerry Solomon and Doug. David smirked at Brady as he appeared; Doug looked really worried. "You OK, Bray?" he asked earnestly.
"Fine! I'm fine. We just, um -"
"They just talked about intimate details of his masturbation fantasies, I think," David said in a calm clinical voice. Doug stared incredulously at him. Jerry lost it after about a second, and their laughter echoed through the building.
"Oh man, that'd be so sick!" Doug shouted between laughs.
David immediately turned dead calm. "You mean you don't fantasize when you do it, Garrestson?" Doug was again brought up short.
Brady wanted to move on from this entire area of conversation. "Yeah, he fantasizes about little needling twerps getting their due." He playfully punched David's shoulder.
"Hey, you're supposed to be my protector! Do the job right!"
"I am. I'm protecting you from your own asshole self." Brady grinned. He liked that one. Jerry Solomon let out a long ooooo, further confirming the quality of the dig.
David laughed harder as his father came out into the hall, pulling on his overcoat as he did so. "Can I have my room back now, Dad? Done with the regression therapy or whatever?"
Mr. Tanner smiled and shrugged. "Yes, you can. The microphones are now well hidden." He winked. "C'mon, David, walk me to the car. I want to say a proper goodbye to you." He shook Brady's hand. "Thank you again, for everything."
Brady was taken aback. "Sir, I haven't done anything, I - "
"You have, Brady. Trust me. A very great deal. Take care. Give my best to your mother. He glanced at the group. "You must be Doug," he said, extending his hand. Brady felt himself tighten. "Very glad to meet you." They shook hands, Doug looking a bit confused by the gesture. "And it's good to see you again, Jerry. You've grown quite a bit since last spring."
Jerry was still barely 5'4", but the compliment nonetheless thrilled him. "Thanks! Yeah, I'm finally growing some."
Mr. Tanner smiled at them all for another moment, last at Brady, then turned towards the stairs, gesturing for David to follow. He did, glancing back at Brady as well and rolling his eyes in exaggerated disgust.
Jerry went into the room to await David's return. Brady and Doug leaned against the wall facing each other. Brady was unable to stop smiling. They spoke casually, about inconsequential things. Evan soon joined them, and then Alan Black, who had his bad arm in a dirty looking grey sling. The migrated from room to room, floor to floor, boys joining and falling away from the group, but always with Brady and Doug talking amongst them. Brady was at once in heaven and hell: he was with Doug, but he saw that this self discovery was one he could never change, or remedy, or make right. It was his great joy, and his ultimate despair. Pleasure without hope. By late afternoon he felt exhausted. Only Doug's presence - his smile, his voice, his laughter - kept him going.
They all sat together at dinner - a special treat, since seats were usually assigned and distributed so boys sat together at random weekly. Vic Stenkowski and Dunc joined them by that time. Brady grew quiet, listening to the chatter, laughing at the jokes, but watching Doug from the corner of his eye constantly. Doug, too, was largely quiet, pushing the mush that constituted the main dinner course about his plate idly and occasionally stealing glances at Brady. They grinned each time their eyes met, then both looked away furtively.
By the time they dawdled their way back to Linsley, most of the other boys had arrived, and the relative quiet of the afternoon was replaced by bedlam. Everyone, it seemed, had to say hi and talk to everyone else - exchanging stories from home and random gossip, asking about upcoming finals, laughing, teasing, roughhousing. Billips came out several times to quiet them down, with only temporary success. Luce and Bailin, the new prefect who had replaced Cureton, made only half hearted efforts to maintain order (in truth, they were was much offenders as the freshman boys). Only when the bell rang for evening study hall did the halls clear.
Neither Brady nor David had much to do for the following day's classes, so they sat idly. Amid the long silences, they talked a bit. David had celebrated Thanksgiving with his father's family. His mother, at least from her absence from the conversation, had pretty clearly neither attended nor called. Brady felt uncomfortable asking anything directly, so the silences filled in for information. "So," David finally asked after one of the long pauses, "what all happened with you? Get laid any more by your buddy back there?"
"No," Brady replied, a bit nervous about this subject. "He - he wasn't around. Went, uh, went out of town for the weekend with his family, I guess."
David nodded absently. "Too bad for you, then, huh?"
"Yeah. Too bad." Brady sighed. "I - I don't know that I want to do. . . y'know, that . . . with him again, or any more. I just -"
"Aw, that's sweet. You're being faithful to Doug now."
Brady regarded him warily. "That was shitful to say. What the hell?"
David sighed. "Yeah, sorry. I just - this weekend was really crappy."
Brady looked at him intently. "Your mom?"
David smiled bitterly. "Gone native. She's at some place called Esalen, finding her human potential." He sighed, looking out the window. "And I guess that doesn't include being a mom, anymore." He stood and began pacing. "I guess I'm 'an impediment to her finding her full potential as a woman.' That's what my dad said she told him."
"Jesus," Brady whispered. And I think I have problems, he added to himself.
David laughed mirthlessly at his remark. "Yeah, that's kinda how I took it, too."
"How - how's your dad doing?"
David snorted. "He explains everything to me in shrink-speak, as if it's all just the most natural thing in the world and nothing to get freaked about." He ran his hands through his hair, wiped at his face. "For someone who tells everyone to confront and let your their feelings, he's the most self-contained prick I ever saw. Nothing upsets him. His fucking wife is braiding daises or something in Big Sur and burning sage incense - all that stupid shit -with some froggy looking guru who wants to get into her pants. And probably is. I just - " He turned to the wall and banged his head against it- "I don't know. It's just fucked."
Brady searched for something to say. Nothing came to him. He stood, crossed the room, and put a hand on David's shoulder. He felt the tremble beneath his fingers, his palm. "Davey."
David sighed and turned, patting Brady's chest. "No weepy crap this time, Brady. Not any more. I - I'm done with that. I gotta be. I mean . . . it hurts like shit, y'know?" He stepped away and slid into a pea jacket. "I gotta walk a bit, OK?"
"Want me to come along?"
David hesitated a moment. "Nah. Just stewing over stuff. I'll be fine, don't worry. I'll avoid jumping off the bridge into the lake. Dissociated near suicides are your thing, not mine."
What the hell does "dissociated" mean, Brady thought, as David closed the door behind him.
He sat alone for a while. He couldn't get the line, "And tales of brave Ulysses" out of his head. He rubbed his face. That guy had it easy, he thought.