From Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!
I’ve hinted that my headmaster, Montague Brummell-Hicks, viewed me as a boy in need of control and correction. He seemed to have dark suspicions of my character and this irked me from the earliest days, for I saw there were other boys, more handsome and sunny of disposition, whom he favoured. Though I was undeniably the cleverest in classroom pursuits, he always seemed to frown and brood when he contemplated my case.
It goes back to my earliest days in that school, or rather nights. It must have been in my first term (aged 6½), before I went to hospital. We were under the care of Matron, Miss Woolgar, in matters of washing and getting up and having our lights turned off at night. She was a motherly soul and what I remember best of her is being ill with ’flu. In the afternoon, she propped me up with pillows in a big armchair in her cosy day-room, which doubled as her sitting-room and a sick-bay for the walking wounded. She gave me Ripley’s Believe It or Not to read; a big book of amazing things from Indian Fakirs who went blind gazing at the sun; to nine-year-old mothers; monstrous human deformities; an American railroad worker who survived a heavy crowbar driven through his skull and brain and out the other side; 49 different spellings of Shakspear; an astonishing number of words beginning with sn- about the nose and matters nasal. It was one of the Omnibus editions published in the Thirties, but when I recently obtained a copy I found it was a bit slimmer than Miss Woolgar’s. Some of the articles I remember are not there.
After lights out, we would sometimes have pillow-fights in the dormitory by moonlight, or plan “midnight feasts”. Sometimes we would take turns telling ghost stories, or playing games which began with someone saying “It was a dark and stormy night . . .” Popular topics were pirates and highwaymen. One night a conversation took place whose details I have totally forgotten. It makes me wonder what else has been washed away in the waters of Lethe; or conversely, if anything is ever washed away. In this case, one sentence of four words stays beached, exposed on the shore, when all the rest has been scrubbed: “let me suck yours.” The words were mine and once uttered, hung briefly in the air: words simple, bold, curious, innocent, yet naughty. They were incriminating words, a statement of intent, which, if they reached the wrong ears, would brand me a pervert, even if not followed up by action, which fortunately they were not, since the dormitory door opened as soon as they were uttered. The light went on, too suddenly for the boys out of bed to leap back in; revealing the headmaster, his face purple and distorted with rage. His fury could only be quenched by applying a cane to bare buttocks. There was no questioning, no trial. He wasn’t calm enough to speak. Afterwards, we were awed, bruised, sore from the beatings (administered to anyone who was out of bed when the door was opened; and of course to me). The incident was never spoken of again.
Mr Brummell-Hicks redoubled his snooping efforts thereafter, making additional restrictive rules which would have seemed irksome in a prison, designed to prevent activity behind closed doors, and set up Spartan regimes in which anything warm, comfortable or friendly was banished as if it would turn us all into women. If I remember correctly, to “behave like women” was his most scathing reproach. His policies upset Matron. In fact Matron wasn’t the same person for long, often lasting no longer than a term. I remember the headmaster supervising our periodic communal shower sessions. Hair shampoo was not unknown: it tended to smell of coal-tar. But he made us wash our hair with bars of soap, and scrub our bodies with brushes or bare hands, not fluffy cloths. Matron was still allowed to supervise our hygiene on other occasions, but there was a new obsession with bowel regulation. All boys must “go” in the mornings before lessons began, though this meant that we must queue for our turn. A commode chair was pressed into service, though it didn’t have the privacy of a cubicle. Matron muttered. She had been instructed to dose us with California Syrup of Figs, Cascara Sagrada and/or castor oil to persuade our digestions to conform. Matron dispensed these but if a boy was cut on the football field or tobogganing—I recall a boy Hartley with his legs cut to ribbons when his sledge hit the barbed wire at the bottom of the hill—it was Mr who poured on the stinging tincture of iodine.
At night we were allowed an insufficiency of blankets, which often kept me shivering awake. The senior dormitory was near to Mr & Mrs’ own bedroom. One boy who often wet the bed was made to have a string tied to his toe. The other end was threaded under doors so that Mr or Mrs could pull it in the night so that the boy could be awakened in the night.
I wonder if the headmaster’s negative attention directed at me would have subsided if another incident had not occurred a couple of years later. Clark and I became close friends. He was born in Burma, brought up by aunts in the nearby village and rather dark-complexioned. I imagine his father was white and his mother a native of the servant caste, but I knew these things only vaguely then. He taught me certain childish rhymes, so rhythmic they may have been designed for games with skipping-ropes. We were reported to Mr for chanting them. A beating would have been more tolerable, but our crime was noted in the book of Order Marks as “Filthy Language”. In some cases it was Mrs who assigned punishments for infringements noted in this book. In this way she would get tasks done in house or garden, such as sweep dead leaves and put them in sacks. But in this case it was Mr who determined a sentence of unheard-of harshness. It was the summer term and our leisure activities centred around a large muddy pond surrounded by overhanging trees. We swung on ropes over it, bathed in it, made rafts to float on it, made bamboo rods with floats of cork and matchsticks, so as to spend our leisure time in angling. Clark and I weren’t allowed to do any of these things or spend any time together alone. Our harsh punishment extended till two weeks before the end of term.
a wayfarer’s notes 
hello vincent!
sorry for not commenting on your blog for sometime.
with evey new post you are blossoming like a lotus!
how can you be so sure that canning didn't turn you away from unnatural tendencies. childhood punishments never leave you. never. that's when our characters build up.
you might be thankful to Mr. Hicks.
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I am not sure! It is for the reader to judge.
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This is very funny, given my own history Vincent. Can't tell that, might get between me and the Angels, or better, Me and the angels, lol.
I personally think that the only childhood punishment that 'sticks' is that which is really good for you, the other you slough off and forget, then live that which you were being punished for, but that is just a thought, I can't say for sure.
Homosexuality is a mechanical possibility, nothing more, and as such, angels will do anything that they can do, and try to get away with it, try to get the human to go along, this is temptation in the raw.
Doing it or not doing it, doesn't matter, one sides with the angels in this or that, or doesn't, ends up the same, some things you have to undo, others you never do really do, the problem with not doing is that you NEED then the understanding to set you free from the impulse, but the understanding is buried in the angelic nature that humans have to put up with for so long. Getting past it all is thru forcing the understanding in spite of the ease of resistence and the 'being drawn off' by the time-filling activities so conveniently provided.
Anyway, there is always something to defeat due to the myriad of possibilities available. Yes some are hygenically related, and some are emotionally related and some are thought related, but all is the same, something to understand, and you don't have to do, to understand, understanding something is getting past it, the thing that might be done is a rock in the ground. Grow thru it or around it, but grow and pass it.
Just some thoughts, funny post, enjoyed it. My sitation might be 'opposite', I could tell you about 'uncles' some time. They like to 'correct' little boys also, only it is in the other direction, lol, just something to realize and understand.
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Also, you might remember, regarding your headmaster, 'the teacher teaches what the teacher needs to learn', lol, says a lot, and I have yet to see it violated.
LOL!
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Also again, let me ask, without being too frank, not Frank, frank, not too frank tho, lol, have you ever heard of, or your readers, heard of, circlejerk? This is an activity that some pubescent males play about, with each other, today it would be perhaps 'homo' by definition I suppose, but was more of a curiosity and a time-filling thing.
I have been surprised at the (alleged) ignorance regarding this thing, especially today when you consider the realities of the recent past relative to adult males and children males. I do not agree, based on personal experiences with practicioners, that this is or leads to true 'homosexuality'. And even if it did in one or another, then I believe it goes back to needing to be understood. But this is not, NOT, to say, that everyone needs to experience it to understand it and get past it. I think that some never even think at all about any aspect of it, the curiosity of male about male in any form.
I hope I didn't get too Frank, or rather, frank.
Enjoyed the reading Vincent, thanks and keep writing, you have much to say and give, I for one, fully appreciate it.
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While attending Middle School (I was maybe between 11 and 13 at the time), I had some odd experiences in Gym class.
The school had a large indoor pool. Swimming was part of the class year round. For some reason the teacher had us all swim in the nude (boys only of course).
For kids so young this was not just awkward, but frightening when we did it for the 1st time. We also showered naked.
I don't recall any of it in an erotic or sexual way. With the exception of an occasional “boner” sighting, for which the offender was swiftly chastised.
In retrospect, I, along with my friends who shared that experience with me, often wondered about the teacher of this class and some possible perversion on his part.
But the memories that stand out for me were more personal. I grew taller than the rest of the boys over the summer prior to beginning Middle School. I was probably close to my height today at the time (5'11'). I literally towered over the rest of my class.
Ordinarily you might think that this would command some respect from the other boys. But it didn't. I was extraordinarily thin, and clumsy. I was no athlete.
I also grew pubic hair before the others did. Kids that age can be cruel. So, with all the physical differences, I was a target, and swimming naked only serve to emphasize the differences.
After 2 years of abuse, I skipped gym class and went to study hall in my final year of middle school.
The gym teacher never said anything to me and graded me as if I had attended class. I think he must have been aware of the abuse and let me off the hook.
No one ever said anything to me, not my teacher, nor anyone else at the school. I never told my parents, and I denied skipping class to my friends (even though it must have been obvious that it was true).
Gym class and athletics in general were a sore spot for me after that. I enjoyed playing baseball, football and street hockey with the neighborhood kids. But I never joined any organized sports.
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Thanks Jim & Charles & Ghetu for your detailed remarks, comments and reminiscences. I was awed by them when I read them first and didn't know what to say in response.
Especially as I am still a little reticent in discussing sex.
Erm . . .
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Many years later I wonder what might have happened if that seven-year old boy had let me suck his cock. At six, I had no sexual thoughts, let alone feelings. Even though Pat Goh aged six had told me the facts of life when I was four and I insisted on giving it a go, as I’ve described elsewhere. I wouldn’t want to end up anywhere else than exactly where I am now, long married and still in our old age (me in my eighties) able to do it, though not completely on my part. I like to think I’d have passed through puberty with gay experimentation, and stayed bisexual in thought but not deed. See for example this site
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