With the fifth and last move of dormitory that school year I was, at long last, getting some part of being a Middle School boy right. Being a Middle School boy was about having more choice and being more confident. What Peter and Colin had done to me had given them great confidence, not that had previously lacked it. But also they were horrible towards me in ways that I could not put into words if I had tried to. They seemed to have barely even been told off for what they did, and I had suffered more than anyone wanted to estimate. At most I appeared to have endured and survived it all. But inside I was still worse than messed up about what Peter and Colin had done to me. If the staff had a view it was that I would have been that I had been assaulted, but that did not make me gay and with a school with a reputation to keep assault between minors is no reason to call the police. And since legally neither assault nor homosexuality had ever happened on the premises then what had happened to me had not really happened at all. If nobody said anything then there would be no consequence from it.
In my new room I was with my best friend, Kevin, and my worst enemy, Colin. As far as I could tell, without saying anything saying anything to me, I was gay because of what Peter and Colin had done with/to me. It did not matter that I had not consented to it, in fact I was all the more gay for the loss of consent; I would not be gay if I had resisted them well enough that I could disown what they did to me. I was gay because I did not resist Peter and Colin's advances hard enough. I did not know what role consent should have in sex. What I knew of the macho culture I was previously meant to inherit was that consent was never to be discussed, it was to taken as read, ignored or disregarded and any struggle taken as part of the act.
Out in the real world homosexuality was partially decriminalised after having been criminally demonised since Victorian times. But as new choices went it was tough for an adult male to claim they were homosexual. In the majority straight culture the word 'gay' used to mean light and fluffy, or carefree, even less than ten years before 1973, the year I was introduced to the word. Then gay had changed to meaning effeminate and tending towards homosexuality, which in the heterosexual world was a non-category of relationship. It also meant being useless with your hands whilst having an arty or sensitive nature. Homosexuality was made legal in such a way that any adult who embraced it had to be so discreet about it as to be socially invisible. This included putting up with crude jokes and false stereotypes about how they lived. If they were 'out' to each other socially then how they were known beyond their accepted circle would be pure caricature.
When school boys used the word 'gay' they did not know what it meant and did not connect the word with men who lived together who were socially invisible. Kevin was spoken of by the boys as 'being gay' but it was okay for him because he was big and strong, unlikely to be bullied. He was more eccentric than gay, and he was asexual. His idea of being gay was shown via music, he was a huge fan of David Bowie. I had a few ex-jukebox DB singles which I had picked up very cheap on the market. He had the albums, and his own record player to play them on when he was allowed to stay in his room to play them.
In my new room I was with my best friend, Kevin, and my worst enemy, Colin. As far as I could tell, without saying anything saying anything to me, I was gay because of what Peter and Colin had done with/to me. It did not matter that I had not consented to it, in fact I was all the more gay for the loss of consent; I would not be gay if I had resisted them well enough that I could disown what they did to me. I was gay because I did not resist Peter and Colin's advances hard enough. I did not know what role consent should have in sex. What I knew of the macho culture I was previously meant to inherit was that consent was never to be discussed, it was to taken as read, ignored or disregarded and any struggle taken as part of the act.
Out in the real world homosexuality was partially decriminalised after having been criminally demonised since Victorian times. But as new choices went it was tough for an adult male to claim they were homosexual. In the majority straight culture the word 'gay' used to mean light and fluffy, or carefree, even less than ten years before 1973, the year I was introduced to the word. Then gay had changed to meaning effeminate and tending towards homosexuality, which in the heterosexual world was a non-category of relationship. It also meant being useless with your hands whilst having an arty or sensitive nature. Homosexuality was made legal in such a way that any adult who embraced it had to be so discreet about it as to be socially invisible. This included putting up with crude jokes and false stereotypes about how they lived. If they were 'out' to each other socially then how they were known beyond their accepted circle would be pure caricature.
When school boys used the word 'gay' they did not know what it meant and did not connect the word with men who lived together who were socially invisible. Kevin was spoken of by the boys as 'being gay' but it was okay for him because he was big and strong, unlikely to be bullied. He was more eccentric than gay, and he was asexual. His idea of being gay was shown via music, he was a huge fan of David Bowie. I had a few ex-jukebox DB singles which I had picked up very cheap on the market. He had the albums, and his own record player to play them on when he was allowed to stay in his room to play them.
Colin and Peter were split up to discourage their previous collusion. In my dormitory Kevin openly became a protector to me. In him I found a person I could trust. After nearly a year in the school and near six months of the escalating terror of Colin and Peter it was a respite to find an openly supportive friend. As two boys who quietly, and sometimes not so quietly, identified as gay we protected each other in that room. In the natural light of those warm early summer nights Colin would lay naked on the middle bed. He knew he was handsome and knew we were gay without anything being said. Whilst he played with himself he knew that we had no choice but to listen as he quietly asked 'Who wants a taste of my cheesy foreskin?'. We did not need the sound effects, neither of us wanted a taste of anything. But Colin did not know when to stop tempting others. We were each in our beds. Both of us turned to the wall, different walls, with a our blankets over our heads to look away from him. We had to ignore him for each other's sake. Kevin and I had to resist being baited that way, and because of each other we could.
Kevin and I had fought once, during the period when Peter and Colin were misusing me and Kevin was drawing me back to the school from the private road, I returned but with a mean temper. I could only lose the fight, either way. He was much bigger than me, I lost the fight. If I had won the fight then I would have lost my friendship with him. I still don't understand why when boys sense a fight then they want more of it, as if they were goaded by the very idea of fighting. Perhaps they liked the idea of the underdog winning, the change of odds and the bullies stood up to. I was always a disappointment when I fought, it was always as an unplanned reaction and I always lost, even to boys same size and smaller than me.
During the summer the BBC repeated their 'classic children's serial' 'Robinson Crusoe'. The version they showed was filmed for french television the early 1960's. It had been dubbed into English so that when Robinson's lips moved differently to the vocal we heard, and there was a lot of voice over work to create a sense of continuity. We were meant to watch television together to give the staff time to do other things. The television was meant to be our overseer for that short time. The staff never saw it, but I could not watch a single episode of that programme at the time without crying before it finished. Other boys noticed and none of them knew why. Part my reaction was to the way it was filmed. There was a pitilessness and poverty in the isolation that Crusoe suffered. The mix of isolation, pathos, sentimental music, and plots where crises were barely averted always left me emotionally unsettled the same way that kippers and smoked haddock had upset my stomach not that much earlier in my time at the school. Then there was the theme tune that was full of wow flutter with number of times the film had been played. It sounded positively seasick by itself.
During the summer the BBC repeated their 'classic children's serial' 'Robinson Crusoe'. The version they showed was filmed for french television the early 1960's. It had been dubbed into English so that when Robinson's lips moved differently to the vocal we heard, and there was a lot of voice over work to create a sense of continuity. We were meant to watch television together to give the staff time to do other things. The television was meant to be our overseer for that short time. The staff never saw it, but I could not watch a single episode of that programme at the time without crying before it finished. Other boys noticed and none of them knew why. Part my reaction was to the way it was filmed. There was a pitilessness and poverty in the isolation that Crusoe suffered. The mix of isolation, pathos, sentimental music, and plots where crises were barely averted always left me emotionally unsettled the same way that kippers and smoked haddock had upset my stomach not that much earlier in my time at the school. Then there was the theme tune that was full of wow flutter with number of times the film had been played. It sounded positively seasick by itself.
When I cried it was usually among many boys and nobody knew why. Detachment was part of the schools values, nobody in the school ever thought anyone ever had good reason to cry, least of all as a reaction to a television programme. From the start of my time in the school I could not do detachment the same way as everybody else did. One time I cried whilst watching 'Robinson Crusoe' and one of the smaller angrier boys challenged me to an arm wrestling match. He was a tough nut. I could spell 'psychotic', if I had known what it meant then it would have given it to him as a nickname and for him not knowing what it meant he would have worn with pride. I'd seen him be that furious that he threw his dinner plate full of food at the wall in the dining room in the past. The sight of the plate immediately breaking in half and dropping, but the food slowly sliding down the wall was the nearest any of us had ever seen to spontaneous performance art in the school. I was bigger than him so other boys thought I should win. But I did not have his drive. After a fair struggle, with me being cheered on, he won. The boys wanted me to win and I lost. They were disappointed but I soon got over it. But at least had I agreed to the arm wrestling in the first place and it was better than watching the wretched 'Robinson Crusoe'.
After all my immediate reactions against the machismo and abuse from Peter and Colin had played themselves out, with the worst effects possible exhausted, there was one last response left to try. Though it was the most difficult response to make work within the rules and culture of the school; open acceptance of my newly found homosexuality. I thought I could trust and say calmly, and without mentioning Colin or Peter or what they did, that I'd had 'gay sex' and it could be an okay. In fact it could almost be a normal experience. But I chose the wrong pupil. He utterly disbelieved my words, and mentioning me he spread his disbelief to as many of the boys as he knew. The result was that I was laughed at and publicly disbelieved, which in some sense I deserved but not in the sense for which I was laughed at.
The level of coercion that Peter and Colin had used had hurt me, a lot. The lies that they told themselves and me that what they were doing was not sex when clearly it was sex had hurt me, but-and it is a huge but-if they had not got off so much on being bullies, which they continued to do, it could all have been so much less painful. It would have ended much more agreeably. Peter and Colin's machismo and lies, their arrogance, were what destroyed all consent and worth in what they did. I was not responsible for them being bullies when they thought they could get away with it.
The cheap talk and laughter behind my back were like many other things in that place, a nine-day-wonder. After the nine days ridicule was over the gossip's next object of amusement came along, given the proximity to the Summer what we were going to do in the holidays was most likely the subject. I could start to own what I had said about myself for myself and try to believe that it should be a matter of choice, rather than disguising being coerced.
There was an odd pay off to this slightly botched 'coming out' into nothing. It was summer and it was common that a majority of the boys went home to their parents at weekends much more often than in the spring. The staff encouraged parents to make arrangements to collect their offspring from the school and return them on Sunday evening. I did not go to the parental house; they would never make the arrangement to collect me. My dad had a means of transport, he had bought himself a scooter and, unlike some of the the things sold to him by his mates, it worked. he rode it about at weekends. I sometimes fantasised him turning up at the school with his scooter and he would take me, me riding pillion behind him, back to the parental house; it never happened. I only ever got to spend a weekend with my parents during term time when the school staff could persuade one of the fathers of other boys who lived in the same town as my parents to take me in his van. The man did it, but nearly as unwillingly as I was received by my family when I arrived.
So since I had to stay at the school then on one of the weekends when there were just ten or eleven boys there out of the usual nearly fifty one of the staff arranged for me and one of my closer friends to camp out in a two man tent in the grounds one weekend. There was no sex, but there was touch and it was consensual. It should be no surprise that it was more me on him than him on me. But given the maulings I had endured, being in control of what I did and it being agreeable mattered a lot to me.
It was all much nearer gentle, experimental, hugs than anything else. When we talked it was about nothing much-the summer holidays to come and what we might have wanted to be if being in this present school had not got in the way. When the talk stopped I remember the quietness of his trust of me in that isolated spot in the field not far from the school. It was as if the chatter and pressure of the school had just fallen away from us both. His isolation touched my sense of isolation, and our sense of being in the school fell away.
These two nights of camping helped me prove to myself that I was stronger than I appeared to be. This was a new script for me. Whatever future world I took part in my character was always going to be more about emotional strength and endurance much more than physical prowess.
The level of coercion that Peter and Colin had used had hurt me, a lot. The lies that they told themselves and me that what they were doing was not sex when clearly it was sex had hurt me, but-and it is a huge but-if they had not got off so much on being bullies, which they continued to do, it could all have been so much less painful. It would have ended much more agreeably. Peter and Colin's machismo and lies, their arrogance, were what destroyed all consent and worth in what they did. I was not responsible for them being bullies when they thought they could get away with it.
The cheap talk and laughter behind my back were like many other things in that place, a nine-day-wonder. After the nine days ridicule was over the gossip's next object of amusement came along, given the proximity to the Summer what we were going to do in the holidays was most likely the subject. I could start to own what I had said about myself for myself and try to believe that it should be a matter of choice, rather than disguising being coerced.
There was an odd pay off to this slightly botched 'coming out' into nothing. It was summer and it was common that a majority of the boys went home to their parents at weekends much more often than in the spring. The staff encouraged parents to make arrangements to collect their offspring from the school and return them on Sunday evening. I did not go to the parental house; they would never make the arrangement to collect me. My dad had a means of transport, he had bought himself a scooter and, unlike some of the the things sold to him by his mates, it worked. he rode it about at weekends. I sometimes fantasised him turning up at the school with his scooter and he would take me, me riding pillion behind him, back to the parental house; it never happened. I only ever got to spend a weekend with my parents during term time when the school staff could persuade one of the fathers of other boys who lived in the same town as my parents to take me in his van. The man did it, but nearly as unwillingly as I was received by my family when I arrived.
So since I had to stay at the school then on one of the weekends when there were just ten or eleven boys there out of the usual nearly fifty one of the staff arranged for me and one of my closer friends to camp out in a two man tent in the grounds one weekend. There was no sex, but there was touch and it was consensual. It should be no surprise that it was more me on him than him on me. But given the maulings I had endured, being in control of what I did and it being agreeable mattered a lot to me.
It was all much nearer gentle, experimental, hugs than anything else. When we talked it was about nothing much-the summer holidays to come and what we might have wanted to be if being in this present school had not got in the way. When the talk stopped I remember the quietness of his trust of me in that isolated spot in the field not far from the school. It was as if the chatter and pressure of the school had just fallen away from us both. His isolation touched my sense of isolation, and our sense of being in the school fell away.
These two nights of camping helped me prove to myself that I was stronger than I appeared to be. This was a new script for me. Whatever future world I took part in my character was always going to be more about emotional strength and endurance much more than physical prowess.
I was glad when the holidays arrived and the last I saw of Colin and Peter was them getting out of the school minibus several hours before me at their different addresses on the five hour journey that I and eight other boys undertook to be returned to our parents for the summer. I thought I had seen the last of them both for a long while.
I didn't know it but I was wrong. Peter was still not quite through with me.
I didn't know it but I was wrong. Peter was still not quite through with me.
Find Chapter 20 here
Find the introduction and chapter guide here.
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