When I was seven, I was sent to prep school, Prep being an abbreviation of preparatory.
So I was being prepared, but for what? Other peoples’ expectations. But that wasn’t who I was.
I decided on a strategy: from now on I would pretend to conform to those expectations, while remaining essentially detached.
This strategy more or less worked for the next five years. I loved football and cricket and singing too. Despite the institutional brutality, I mostly succeeded. The strategy held up. Or so I thought, visiting me in the backroom, basement or attic of emotional exile….
Then I was sent to ‘Public’ school. Only it wasn’t public at all. I was thirteen, unlucky and decidedly private.
Institutional brutality was now expanded. Senior boys, prefects were authorized to beat wrongdoers with a paddle. Self satisfaction in combination with sadism was the prep for success. Hormones raced. There were no girls. During the Easter holidays of my first year, my parents took me to Malta. We stayed in a grand hotel in Valletta. My first orgasm came in a dream about our waitress. This was private, naturally.
Back at boarding school, it wasn’t all bad ,friendships were made. I still meet up with Phil, from time to time. Last summer, we spent the day on his boat that is moored at Gosport.
