with his arms limp. I can see a tiny edge of sweat below the line of his crewcut bristles. The screen fills with an unrecognizable picture. Much later I know this is Dealey Plaza, empty. The room is cold and quiet. Only the flickering box has any heat. Wechsler appears at the door and leads his class silently into the room. Several boys sit with looks of relief on their faces. Thank God, they think. The President was shot. No quiz today.
I talk to my mother on the phone. “Where’s Dad?”
“He’s in Washington. He called this afternoon.”
“They might let us all go home.”
“When?” she asks.
“They probably won’t. What’s wrong with this country? It’s going crazy.”
“I know it,” says my mother.
On Saturday night at Keaton, there is no place to go except the butt lounge, the little snackbar or the lousy movie.
In keeping with its religious tradition, anyone caught drinking is liable for expulsion on the spot. If you go out for lunch with your parents on a day leave and have a sip of your father’s martini and a master smells alcohol on your breath when you return, it’s all over. I think they like to expel people. It keeps the budget balanced.
Zeke and I discover the pleasures of a bottle of thick cough medicine gulped on an empty stomach. Half-drunk, half-drugged, you tend to fall down a lot and mostly want to lie on your bed and listen to music. Then Zeke and I read about people who are getting high on morning glory seeds. I remember my grandfather showing me his morning glories in the Rochester garden. We go to the local hardware store and find they have stocked just the kind that makes you high: Heavenly Blue. I decide I don’t want to trip. I am afraid to lose control. I have fitted my mind into harness and the fit is tight, the harness weak. I still want to go to a good college and to get out in June, not in the middle of a term. I am a robot in tweed and necktie.
Zeke grinds up packets of morning glory seeds and washes down the foul-tasting powder with orange juice. In an hour, he is hallucinating. He lies on his bed and watches the gyrating flame of a small candle which he has put inside one of his wire sculptures. This throws eerie shadows on the walls of the room. I have drunk some cough medicine.
Later that night, I am awakened at four o’clock when a flashlight zaps me in my sleeping face. It combs the room.
“Is Zeke here?”
“No.”
“He’s out of his room. We’re looking for him.” The master closes the door and I listen to him walk down the steps and outside my dorm.
I am worried. Tom’s Lake sits outside in the darkness. Last year a boy, the most sensitive boy in the school, who wrote poetry and was into drugs, was found floating face down in Tom’s Lake. His blood was choked with barbiturates. I don’t want them to find Zeke floating in four inches of water. A few more months and we can be out of this place. We can be friends in a world without bells. I love Zeke. I have never had a friend I felt so close to before, whom I could talk to so easily, who understood me, both my strengths and my weaknesses.
Most everyone at school despises him. More seem to like me. Very strange, for Zeke is quiet and gentle and never says a hostile word to anybody. But I am continually blasting, bitching and moaning, possessed of a nasty cynical streak. I cut people down to their face, behind their backs, from left and right. I never let up the flow of insults hurled at Keaton. If I must be here—and I know I must for I have put myself here—I will fight it tooth and nail, while trying to ride it out for a year and the grades.
One afternoon after one of my caustic tirades against the school, Zeke looks up and says, “I want to teach you how to be nice.” He stares at me through his glasses, not angry but with seriousness. I know exactly what he means and for a moment, I feel tears building.
Four hundred boys stuck together in this school and everyone is afraid of being queer. There is a lot of talk about it. Who do you think on the faculty is queer? Who among the students? And each boy wondering, “Am I queer?” I know I love Zeke. And I worry. Yet I have no desire to touch him sexually. No fantasies about his cock or anything of the sort. Yet I know that there are nights I would just like to lie in bed beside him, not even hugging. Just to sleep next to my friend all night would be enough. This is the first year I have ever lived away from home and I am very lonely. No good thinking of that. Must make my mind a blank and get those grades…
The next morning, I find Zeke before breakfast. “Where were you?”
“Walking around. I was having a great time on the seeds. Couldn’t stay in this room. Went out to walk. Wechsler came into my room about five minutes after I got back. They went to your room, huh?”
“What’s going to happen?” I ask.
“What do you think?”
“Mr. Wechsler, I’d like to introduce you to my father.” They shake hands. Almost at once, Wechsler himself brings up the speech he has given. He knows my father works in the civil rights movement. The lounge is filled with mothers and fathers down for Parents’ Day. A table is covered with cookies and punch, big red bowls of the same stuff we drink with meals and call bug juice. Now they have slices of fruit floating in it. The walls and ceiling are festooned with blue and gold decorations. Wechsler is here with his girlfriend. A tall girl with long hair and long legs, she looks like a Vassar or Wellesley caricature. Each weekend he has her down. Nobody among the students is yet sure if they sleep together all night in his dorm apartment. Many investigations have been launched to garner this information, but so far he has evaded them all.
“Dr. Spike, take for example this law about segregated bathrooms in the South. People are making such a big protest about this. They want to make this illegal with the Civil Rights Bill.”
“Yes?” says my father. A faint smile flickers just beneath the surface of my father’s face.
“You’re a learned man, Dr. Spike. You have to respect the statistics. And the statistics show the necessity for segregated bathrooms.” Wechsler is smoking a cigarette in a very pompous way. His girlfriend is watching him carefully, with big eyes. My mother looks as if she wants to punch him. And I am waiting for my father’s move. I hope he gets Wechsler, I really do.
“Which statistics are those?” he asks.
“Statistics about venereal disease in this country. The rate among Negroes is at least three times as high as among white people.” Wechsler can hardly resist a big grin. He probably has the clippings with this statistic upstairs in a manila envelope labeled “Negroes.” He senses he is on the verge of triumph. At last! The chance to put one of these civil rights liberals straight.
“You’re also a learned man, Mr. Wechsler,” says my father. “I guess you’ve been around quite a bit too.” Wechsler nods. Is my father conceding, surrendering?
“Yes,” says Wechsler.
“Don’t you know where you get venereal disease?”
“What do you mean?”
“Not on toilet seats, Mr. Wechsler.” This hits the mark to bring a red blush over Wechsler’s face. He doesn’t know what to say. His girl is watching him. My father smiles. I am thinking, “You racist, you got what you deserve.” The conversation dies right there and the master and his girl melt away to the far side of the room.
“Thanks, Dad.”
They expel Zeke. The final straw comes at dinner one evening. A master named Mr. Fendler has the job of saying