Chapter 15
Sterling is dressed in the Faux Duke’s official uniform – their mascot is a mischievous monkey, supported upside down by one arm, holding a blue devil mask, right-side up. He cycles to the park to gather with his ultimate teammates. Back home he has left Sara in charge, to sort out all the confusion that will inevitably befall The Sterling this particular morning. For her part Sara will quickly lay out in disordered fashion a DIY breakfast (from Catherine’s supply of microwavables) and then abandon ship for the same reason as Sterling: confusion avoidance. And there will be confusion and anger as well. The apartment has only three showers which will have to be divvied among the ten young men and women, all eager to cleanse themselves of residuals from the previous night. Two of the showers are en suite and it’s unlikely that Jeremiah, William and their companions will share these private domains with the Trips and their harem. The hot water tank, tested over time, is good for four eight-minute showers; after that the water becomes tepid, which suddenly turns invigoratingly cold. The last Trip or Tripette will experience what it’s like to jump into an ice fishing hole.
None of this is on Sterling’s mind. He has relegated the Trip predicament to the back burner, alongside his legal problems and his state of disconnectivity, and is focusing on having a good ultimate game, wondering why a team with such potential can usually play so lousily. He loves this sport so he is arriving early. Thus he is quite surprised to realize that he is the last to arrive. The posted game time was 9:30 A.M.; this apparently has been changed, without his being informed. He needs to tell teammates that he is not perfectly incommunicado; messages can be left with his parents on the home phone (which lacks voicemail). The entire squad is present, twelve people in all, including Sterling. There are usually absences, however, making today unusual, indeed unique. The other team are just beginning to arrive but his own teammates are already huddled together in a strategy scrum. Sterling dismounts and is noticed. There’s a murmur and the scrum instantly disassembles. The team members, each careful to avoid eye contact with Sterling, begin stretching and otherwise busying themselves. Sterling walks over to Sally:
“Hey, what’s up?” he asks.
She doesn’t reply for a moment and then offers only:
“Hi.”
Sterling starts stretching his calf muscles, next to Sally.
“You know, I don’t have a cell anymore. So you’ll need to phone my home. I came here yesterday but the practice had been changed. And today you’ll showed up early. What’s up?”
An older member, one who meets the by-law’s age distribution requirements, comes up to him. He motions for Sterling to step aside for a private chat.
“Sterling, we’ll need your jersey,” he says.
Sterling looks at him, confused. Are we changing uniforms yet again, he wonders. His uniform is like all the rest: green with a red monkey head, holding the mask of a blue devil. The name Faux Dukes is split in two, each word emblazoned vertically under the armpits. Like so much this team does, the jersey design (rather hideous in the boy’s humble opinion) is the result of a compromise, reached only after hours of endless inebriating discussion, little of which Sterling was party to. Over the past year Sterling has successfully avoided most of the team’s effort at participatory democracy.
“We’re changing uniforms again, Paul?” Sterling asks.
“You’re no longer on the team,” he replies.
Sterling lets that sink in and looks around at his teammates, apparently former teammates. He is starting to see the picture.
“Paul, I didn’t quit. If someone told you I quit, they’re wrong. Sorry.”
He returns to his stretching, ignoring Paul. Another team member, Louis, arrives as back-up.
“We had a vote. You are no longer on the team.”
“We had a vote,” Sterling repeats, with a bit more mock than intended. “ ‘We’ wouldn’t happen to include all the team except me, would it?”
“We’ve had a vote; it’s final,” he affirms. By now the rest of the team are paying attention.
“Apparently I’ve been transported to Cuba or somewhere. If I remember, our by-laws say something like: ‘Any member’s participation can be terminated by a formal majority vote for any cause, but said cause must be specifically stated before the vote, in writing to all members. Each member must be notified of said vote at least 24 hours in advance. All members may speak on the motion for a maximum of three minutes…’ and it goes on and on and on. It seems to me, Paul, Louis and any of you who want me off the team, I have the moral right and the by-legal right to hear my accusers, no more than three minutes each, mind you. You should be ashamed of what you’ve done. Maybe in China you could get away with it. But not in America. You ever hear of basic human rights?”
This is liberal Durham; his teammates, or at least those old enough, surely vote Democratic and tow its party line. The accusation of human rights abuse is a gauntlet they dare not pick up. Sterling then surveys the individual teammates, glaring at each one individually. Before his eyes can reach Sally she says:
“We have to vote again, guys. Maybe Sterling will waive his right to advance notice.”
“Maybe he will so waive his right if he’s told what this is all about? Is it because I miss practices. I will not miss any more; you have my word. Is it because I don’t participate in all the endless debates and just want to throw the frisbee? Well, I’ll participate if you want; just be aware that I know the by-laws and I can be an absolute asshole when it comes to details, so I’m told.”
He takes a deep breath and then glues his ass to the bench and waits for a team response. A player from the opposing team arrives, tells them it’s nine-thirty, and asks them to get on to the field.
“Five minutes,” Paul replies, waving him off. He addresses Sterling and the group.
“The reason we voted you off the team, Sterling, has nothing to do with your activity on the field. We’re more concerned with what you do off the field.”
“What, my straight A average? My playing other sports, lacrosse and boxing? My work with underprivileged youth? My tutoring autistic children? My defense of gay rights? What so upsets you, Paul?” he asks.
“The Smiley Boy video,” someone in the back offers.
“Oh,” Sterling says. “Should I mention it’s wasn’t me who uploaded this video? It was private, not for public consumption. I’m the victim here. I don’t want to ask how anyone found the video, but whoever has viewed it will surely have noticed that I don’t wear the team jersey. In fact my own name’s nowhere to be found. So really I don’t see how this impacts the team. I mean, I don’t want to be rude, but is this any of your damn business? Please, you each have three minutes to tell me how this involves you or the team. Meanwhile, should we play or forfeit?”
The other team have all taken their positions and await the Faux Dukes.
“Go play. I’m not going anywhere. You vote me off and I’ll give you the jersey and trunks and I’ll bike home in my jockstrap,” Sterling adds, by now in a fairly foul mood.
He is joined on the bench by four other substitutes while the first seven take to the field. He looks at his fellow substitutes. One says:
“Hey, I voted for you,” he says.
“Was the vote close?” Sterling asks.
“Let’s just say your vote wouldn’t have made any difference,” the teammate responds.
Sterling notes to the others that he has been on the bench the longest, so that makes him coach, according to the by-laws. For the next 24 or so minutes he will throw his maximum effort at attaining a victory. The first thing he does is tell the boy who voted for him to prepare to go in for Paul, the man who voted against him. He then explains a new game plan to the substitutes; all four will be sent in as soon as possible, replacing more than half the team. Sterling will remain side-lined. Soon a goal is scored against them, around P
aul, who plays at the key defensive post. The mass substitution is effected before the ensuing throw-off, as the rules allow. When Paul gets off the turf, Sterling approaches and talks to him in a very businesslike manner. He tells Paul that he’s playing the wrong position. He’s horrible at defense because he can’t throw an accurate long pass. He is not playing to his strength, which is uncanny fielding and the quick short toss. He wants to reposition Paul close to the opponents’ goal, all the way at the opposite end of the field from his current position. Is that OK? It will mean a lot of running? No, Sterling replies. He doesn’t want Paul to wander more than five yards from his post. Play to your strength, he’s told. Paul waits on the sideline until the next goal, at which time substitutions are permitted. Meanwhile Sterling talks with Sally. He considers Sally one of the weaker throwers but the best playmaker on the team, even better than Sterling himself. Sterling knows his strengths, and maintaining the large picture while he’s playing is not one of them. He can strategize when he’s coaching from the sidelines, but when he’s on the field, he’s too focused on immediate play. That’s a weakness (this from someone who is big on focus and who admits to few weaknesses) which he has identified but has not yet been able to correct. Sally, in contrast, is excellent at reading the action and calling plays while she’s competently holding her position. Yet she rarely exercises her ability, for reasons unknown to Sterling nor perhaps understood even by herself. Her timidity is surely a psychological restraint, in that the individualized manner a player plays any sport mostly involves personal character and psychology. Sterling doesn’t have the time (and is perhaps not as qualified a sports psychologist as he imagines himself to be) to sort out her issues; but he knows what the team needs from her. He tells her, in so many words, to be more balsy and orders her to call plays. He apologizes for being so bossy, but asks: Do you want us to win or not? Sally is not confident she’ll call the right play. Sterling says he is confident: “Just do it! If it doesn’t work, you can blame me and never have to do it again.” At the next substitution, with the score now 2-0 against them, Paul and Sally both return to the game. The new strategy starts to pay off. Sally calls a play that produces a quick goal from Paul. The team begins steadily to improve as Sterling continues to tinker and reposition players. At each goal he continues to make substitutions, dazzling the opponents who are sticking with their original seven, each controlling a fiefdom, and growing tired, both physically and mentally. The Faux Dukes, in contrast, are on a roll, not feeling the least fatigued although they are getting more exercise today just trotting on and off the field than they do in their normal games, characterized as they were by sedentarily accurate play, according to Sterling. The boy, himself, has yet to play. He’s much too involved with coaching. As much as he likes to play, as much as he wants to play, as much as he wants to score goals and show himself indispensable, he knows he’s better used at the moment as the bench coach. At halftime the Faux are actually ahead 7-5 in this overall fairly defensive match. The team is in a high mood. The topic of earlier discussion is not revisited. The only complaint is that Sterling has not yet played (a by-law violation). Their team, which presumes to be a participatory democracy, intends that all players “strive for parity time” on the field, according to Article XI, Section A, Subsection 1. Thus Sterling is obliged to play for much of the second half as the team struggles to an 11-9 victory. Before he leaves he mutters a blanket apology of sorts saying that he had not intended his video to offend anyone. At least he doesn’t have to bike back home only in a jockstrap.
Whether thanks to competence, arrogance or just plain luck (the fourth quality that all successful athletes possess à la Pandely), Sterling has managed to avert an ultimate crisis, which of course he had only himself to thank for. The next crisis of his own doing, that he must now solve, involves his sanctimonious friends and druggies, aka the Trips. After arriving back home and taking a coldish shower, he goes into clean-up mode: ten sheets and five pillow-cases into the washer; tissue, condom and wrapper collection (three per bedroom) and general clean-up to get the apartment cleaner than his parents had left it. The kitchen and washroom look like tornados have attacked. All the linen in the washroom closet has apparently been extracted and then stuffed back, seemingly at random. Obviously the Trips had conducted a search for their travel kit, which Sterling had removed for safe keeping. Before he had left for ultimate he had also absconded with the contents of the wastebasket, which included nine colored, broken wrist bands among the waste. Sterling reasons that the boys, after sampling their girls, had agreed on who would end up with whom. In any case the Trips were now going to pay for their lifetime of indiscretions. When he gets around to cleaning the kitchen Sterling notices the thank-you note William had tacked up on the corkboard (he carries around Duke letterhead for just such an occasional emergency), next to a thank-you note from Jeremiah (in the margin of a newspaper scrap), next to an envelope also addressed to him, which when unsealed reveals the angry penmanship of a Trip. It makes a point: “We want our stuff. We will return at 5 PM – JCZ.” Sterling is delighted that one problem has just been solved: he no longer needs to figure out when he will confront the Trips. They will arrive gunning for him.
Sterling has to commit most of the afternoon to clean-up. After that he’s hit by a sudden brainstorm; he starts weeding through his clothes in a move to down-size. He thins out his underwear and sock drawers and separates out all his undersized tee-shirts, but keeps those silk-screened with his smiling face. He finds a few pairs of pants that are too short for him, shirts that his arms have outgrown, and some shorts that might fit but are not very attractive, the type of thing the tasteless Trips would wear. He goes through the various medicine cabinets in the apartment and removes all the excess tubes of toothpaste, underarm deodorants. The Sterling’s cast-offs fill three grocery bags which he takes downstairs just as Bucephalus and the parents return. He puts the bags in the back of his mother’s hatch-back and then goes to the gym for a work-out. After that the shower delivers some hot water. At five o’clock he’s at the kitchen table, waiting for the Trips. They arrive punctually. He motions for his friends to sit down at the table. There is no small talk.
“Where’s our stuff?” one asks. A refrain comes from his two brothers.
“What’s in the film containers?” Sterling asks.
“What do you think?” one replies, somewhat nastily.
“It none of your beeswax,” another says.
“You can’t go around and steal our stuff,” the third says.
“We’ll share if you want some.”
“Sure,” the others agree.
“Share what?” Sterling asks.
“Give us back our shit,” one says, his vulgarity raising fraternal eyebrows.
“Our stuff,” the others agree.
“I’ll give it back when you tell me what’s in them,” Sterling responds.
The boys look at each other.
“He knows what it is,” one says to another. “Yeah, but can we trust him?” another asks. “Hey, if he gives us his word that we can get our stuff back, we can trust him,” another concludes.
“It’s just some coke and crack. We use in moderation. A little bit helps us perform. We don’t abuse drugs,” they say simultaneously.
“No way,” one adds.
“Now give it back.”
Sterling nods. “OK,” he says loudly, whereupon his mother walks in carrying the boy’s toiletry kit.
They look at each other and at Sterling and at his mother. They’ve been had; they really have nothing to say. Sterling, however, has something to say.
“First, thanks for being honest. This is what’s called an intervention.”
The Trips rise, on their way to the door. They want no part of any intervention. Sterling and his mother can keep the drugs. There’s no problem scoring again, through one of their staff.
“Sit down, boy
s,” Catherine says. My husband’s downstairs. You have a choice. You deal with me and my son or you deal with my husband and the long arm of the law.”
The Trips look at each other and given the choice, collectively sit down.
“JCZ, I’ve known you since before you were born. In my job I see children die from drugs on a weekly basis. I’m not going to lecture you. You’re beyond lecture. You are going to be getting professional help. It’s all been arranged.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Yeah, you’re not our parents.”
“And we’re emancipated.”
Sterling smiles. His mother continues.
“That’s the irony. You’re emancipated and that means you can be treated like adults. I don’t need to get your parents’ permission. They don’t need to know what’s happening. We can tell them if you want.”
The Trips nod in the negative, in unison. The last thing they want to do is to hurt their parents.
“All right, we’ll go to drug counseling,” one says. They all start to rise.
Catherine nods against that idea.
“My son tells me you have time on your hands for the next few weeks, concert tour begins in the fall. You’re going on a little retreat before that. And when you come back you’ll be clean.”
At that moment, Pandely, sweating from a workout, arrives. He greets each Trip with a handshake and stares at the shaving kit.
“Catherine,” he says. “Don’t you have a soft drink to offer our guests?”
“Yes, dear. JCZ were just telling us that they are going away for a bit.”
“No concerts?” Pandely asks as he fetches glasses and ice and soft drinks.
“September 2009…Campus Revival Tour…sir,” the boys say, assembling pre-composed parts, as orchestrated.
“What type of retreat?” he asks.
“Sports, religious, music,” the boys say in a conflicting manner all at once.
“Sounds like a lot of fun,” Pandely says as he leaves for a slower.
Catherine looks at her son. It’s his turn to talk:
“Now here’s what we’re going to do. You and me and my mother are getting into her car and we are going to take a little ride. I know that you won’t give me any trouble. I know you will not give me any trouble because if you do, first I am going to beat the holy shit out of you and then give your bag of goodies to my father and he can do with you what he wants. He’s a lot less zero tolerant than I am, or maybe that’s more zero tolerant. You get my drift?”
The boys are not in so much shock that they can’t glare at Sterling, with hatred.
“Hand over the phones,” he orders. That produces no response, so Sterling yells: DAD.
The boys take out their phones from their pants, in a uniform gesture, but don’t yet hand them over.
“Yes, Sterling,” his father says, poking in his head, keeping the rest of his body, which is in a towel, out of view. The Trips obediently surrender their PDAs.
“I’m going out with mother. We’ll be back for supper. Can you order Chinese?,” he asks.
“Yes, son,” Pandely replies and heads back to the shower.
Sterling passes the boy’s phones to his mother.
“Can’t we call our girlfriends,” one protests. Sterling produces a handful of severed colored wristbands.
“I think not, the way you treat them” he says. “Try writing a letter. Or if you want me too, I’ll call them and explain everything.”
They shake their heads against that idea.
Sterling drives; his mother rides shotgun and the brothers are being transported in the back seat. They drive for about twenty minutes to the outskirts of Chapel Hill, past a few small towns until they reach their destination – a gated estate with a simple sign: Anderson Clinic. Sterling hops out and speaks into an intercom and the gates opens so the car can enter. The facility includes several dormitories and a larger central administration building. There are people in green gowns and blue gowns, defining nurses and orderlies. The patients all wear white. Sterling pulls up the car and turns back to his passengers.
“Two of you wait here. You’re taking turns. Just one of you come with me,” he orders. He opens up the hatchback, retrieving one of the grocery sacks of his hand-me-downs. He walks with one of the Trips to the admissions desk, where the boy signs himself in voluntarily as Zachary. He doesn’t bother reading the small print; he has people who always do that for him.
“Are you really Zack?” Sterling asks.
“Who else would I be? Zack is the evil one,” he retorts. Sterling gives him the bag of clothes. He continues:
“You won’t be able to contact anyone on the outside by phone except my mother, but you can write. We’ve already taken care of this with your parents. If they send you postcards from Europe, Asia, or South America, your manager has agreed to forward them to us and we will copy them to each of you.”
“You’ve talked to our manager?” the boy say incredulously.
“Mother has covered all the bases. We’ll keep this a secret; your fans don’t need to know. I know you think I hate you and I certainly could have been a better friend, but I want you to know that this is for the best. I don’t want for one of you to die and the other two to have to kill themselves.”
The Trip is amazed and he blurts out, before he thinks:
“How do you know about that?” he demands.
“I do now,” Sterling shrugs. As little boys, maybe only five or six at the time, they had told Sterling that they were so much of a unit that if one of them died, the rest of them would want to join him in heaven, then and there. They asked Sterling to join their pact; he refused. “Without my brothers life on earth would not be worth living,” one little boy had said, and this was immediately confirmed by his siblings. In the back of his mind, Sterling had never forgotten this, and he must have shared the anecdote at some point over the years with his mother. Last night when he saw all the drugs they packed just for overnight use, he realized that death and suicide were only a swallow or snort away. That’s what caused him to initiate the events that now play out. The worse is coming up.
Sterling starts to head to the car. The boy who calls himself Zack wants to follow.
“I’m sorry, you can’t come. I promise you, you’ll see your brothers before long.”
It dawns on Zack that they are being separated.
“God damn you, Sterl,” he yells, the first time in his life such a curse has passed his lips. He starts to run around Sterling, but Sterling restrains him until men in green arrive to take him away. The boy kicks and screams but mostly he sobs in painful gasps. Sterling, himself, is almost in empathetic tears, but he must get back to the car before either of the other two escape. His mother has one by the arm, one who is way too respectful to hit or bite her to break free. The other, however, has opened the door and is heading for a reunion with his brother. Sterling intercepts him and has to fend off a kick aimed at his groin. He slaps the brother hard across the face, drawing blood. The boy knows that without his brothers he is overpowered; he calms down sufficiently so Sterling can lead him back to the car. They speed off, the two brothers holding hands and trying to comfort each other. Both are holding back sobs.
When they reach the perimeter, the car stops while the gate opens; Sterling turns to his mother. He is distraught, unsure whether he’s doing the right thing. Usually he’s so cock-sure about everything in life. Rarely has he ever doubted what he does when he is actually doing it. He may have regrets afterwards, but self-doubt and Sterling are not well acquainted. He now needs support, the type that mothers give best. His mother, who is made of steel and ice, takes his hand tenderly.
“There’s no other choice, son,” she says. He accepts that judgment without hesitation and they drive off.
Sterling had wanted to blindfold the Trips so they couldn’t find their way back to one another, but his mother had i
nsisted that the abuse centers she had chosen were noted for their maximum security features. If anyone escaped, one even promised that they would refund twice tuition (that’s what the entry fee was called). For the Trips, of course, money is no object. They have a business manager for that. They have no idea how much they were worth ($4 million and change) or their earning potential ($100 million over the next 20 years). Their manager had little choice but to accept Catherine’s proposition; the alternatives are worse: death was bad enough (although a company could use the Jackson model and capitalize on a death) but the idea of scandal among evangelicals was far worse. The manager had agreed to pay the various tuitions if the boys each voluntarily signs himself in. There would also be a shake-up in the supervisory team and the boys would henceforth be closely monitored with twice-weekly urine tests. That is, when they returned.
One down, two to go, as Sterling drives on back roads that disguise the direction he heads. Eventually they reach the second facility. By this time the remaining Trips have composed themselves but are still pretty glum. They put up no resistance when they arrive at Piney Woods Sanitarium, somewhat of a misnomer since the surrounding forest is hardwood. The Trip with the fat lip volunteers to stay here. He signs in as Zachary.
“Your brother said he was Zack,” Sterling comments.
“He’s the not-too-bright one, haven’t you noticed? I’m Zack, the evil one,” he shoots back.
“I know you think I hate you and I certainly could have been a better friend, but I want you to know that this is for the best,” Sterling says as he departs.
“God damn you, Sterly,” this Zack says, his ease at profanity stunning them both. The hatred Sterling feels directed at him is not mitigated by its reoccurrence; it’s not a sentiment he cares to get used to.
The car heads back toward Durham and stops on the outskirts of town where there is another treatment facility. It is eight floors, a more vertical prison. It offers quite pleasant suites, a gym, a restaurant rather than a canteen and even has a rooftop garden and swimming pool (with a high fence to discourage jumpers). Converted from a Chapter 11 motel that could reach full occupancy only on basketball weekends, the new owners have in rehab created a cash cow, producing more profit than the Duke Motor Plaza ever had. During good economic times in the Research Triangle drug rehab is a growth industry; at other times it’s rampant.
The remaining Trip signs in as Zachary; Sterling is too emotionally drained to comment. He musters the enthusiasm to say: “I know you think I hate you and I certainly could have been a better friend, but I want you to know that this is for the best.” He hopes he’s right, for everyone’s sake. He waits for and receives the expected “God damn you, Sterling.” Sterling reflects to himself that parenting is just the shits. In dealing with this relatively straight-forward matter (all the details worked out by his mother), Sterling is completely drained, emotionally. How can parents discipline their children, year after year? How can any sane parent, well, manage someone like himself? Sterling realizes that he would have driven himself crazy if he had been his own parent. All the deception, half truths, rule bending, not to mention his superior intelligence…he doesn’t want to dwell on this now. Nor does he realize that in his seventeen years this is the first time he’s empathized with his parents.
When they eventually arrive home, Catherine asks her son to handle the boys’ phones, which Sterling interprets as instructions to construct an auto-reply that says the Trips are indisposed for the foreseeable future, ending with an affectionate: “C U at Campus Revival Tour 2009. God Bless.” For good measure he spams everyone in the trio’s address books with a similar message. This is not difficult. Once he figures out how to operate one phone, the other two prove identical, just like their owners. The task take him about forty minutes, because he prolongs the pleasure of connectivity as long as humanly possible. It reminds him of one of the few adolescent pleasures he allowed himself during his year of abstinence – from his 15th to 16th birthday – during which period Saturday night became the only permitted day of relapse. If his mother would just give him two hours a week to play with his iPhone – actually a replacement, the new model due out in a matter of days – he’d serve the rest of his punishment without complaint.
Sterling, who shares so little of his day-to-day life with his parents – and virtually nothing of his inner life with them – decides that tonight will be the leaf-turner. Tonight is the night for the new Sterling to make his debut. They eat their Chinese and Sterling describes his day at ultimate. He omits nothing, especially his pride at being successful in not getting booted from the club.
“Why do you think they wanted you off the team?” Catherine asks.
“The video, of course,” he quickly responds.
“But why?” she rephrases.
“They didn’t like the video; it offended them.”
“What about it?” she persists.
“I didn’t ask them what scene they didn’t care for. I am not sure how many people saw it. Mostly they saw it second-hand.”
“Go on,” she continues.
“Mom, you’re sounding exactly what I imagine a shrink would sound like.”
“I am merely curious, son. This is an important event in your life. We should talk about it,” she says.
“I agree,” Pandely adds.
“Well, I imagine they think it is improper for a sixteen-seventeen year old boy to do in public what he might do in the privacy of his own bedroom, which is sort of acceptable behavior nowadays on the internet. It’s all a question of social code. My code threatens their code.”
His parents say nothing. They want to listen. They wait for him to continue. When he realizes this, he offers some thoughts off the top of his head.
“Accepting that my code is different, that leads me to three areas I should explore. One, why the difference? Two, is there a right or a wrong? Three, where do I fit in? How can I be accommodated, and if not, how can I change? Or should I even change? It may take me some time to figure all this out. There may not be definite answers; life, unfortunately, is not multiple choice. Is that enough of an answer for now?”
“Thanks for talking with us. You know, this is the first real conversation we’ve had since this table has had an empty place.”
“That’s a euphemism for Susan’s death. You can mention her name,” he says.
“Yes.”
Pandely has stopped eating and is ready to offer a little insight.
“You talk about moral codes and things that are a bit beyond me, son. Let’s talk about boxing. It much simpler. There are no codes. Everything is by rules. There may be judgment calls; that’s why there are judges and the ref. Life can be simple if you let it. There are simple rules about what you do and don’t do. Just forget about codes and start living by rules; life would be simpler.”
“Not everything in life has rules, dad.”
“No, but start by not breaking as many rules as you can. Life would be simpler. That’s all I’m saying,” he says, not wanting to get into a debate when he knows that his over-intelligent son can twist what he says to mean just its opposite.
“He doesn’t break so many rules, Pan,” Catherine says coming to his son’s defense.
“You don’t know the half of it, dear,” he says to his wife.
Sterling looks at his parents who have the potential for a disagreement. He says to his mother:
“I break more than my share of rules,” he concedes.
“JCZ forget their shaving bag. Do the boys shave yet?” Pandely asks, nodding in the direction to the toiletry kit.
Sterling grabs it. “The little fuzz balls are starting to learn. I’ll keep this until they return from vacation. May I be excused?” he asks on his way out. A few moments later he has flushed $870 worth of illicit substances and some ounces of foul-smelling semen down the toilet.
William’s former comment that Sterling spen
ds forty hours a week on homework veers only slightly off base. It would be more appropriate to say that the boy spends that much time on intellectual work, most of which is not actual schoolwork. In anticipation of summer vacation (and before The Punishment), Sterling had found a classy British website and downloaded a copy of Philosophy 101’s primary source reading list, the most comprehensive, yet still manageable, he could find on the web. Now he sits at his desk, devoid of distractions, and soaks in some Plato. Sterling, who is innately methodical, is reading the great thinkers, one at a time, in sequence. Of course, he does not want to read every word each has written; rather, he has chosen to focus on their most frequently cited works, according to Google-Scholar. He has started to borrow these from the various libraries he has access to. He doesn’t need to ask whether it wouldn’t be more efficient just to find a Philosophy 101 text book that covers the whole of western (and eastern) thought in under 400 pages, giving each thinker the proportional space he (rarely she) has earned, according to the taste of an esteemed editor, probably a promotion-denied college professor who is better at earning royalties than doing serious research. Sterling would rather stand on the shoulders of giants with Google-Scholar. Himself an educational philosopher, he asks: why substitute CliffNotes or Classic Comics for the real McCoy? Sterling’s goal, although he himself may not realize it – his summer reading program is instinctive, unplanned, devoid of one of his pet peeves: rationalizing forethought – is to get a picture of how humanity thinks, studying the foundations of philosophical thought in order to understand how the process has evolved. His survey, which he expects to complete by summer’s end, is background reading. He’s absorbing ideas. He is reading slowly, not intentionally memorizing, whether consciously or unconsciously. Slow for Sterling would be like skimming for the rest of us. When he finds an intriguing passage – he quite enjoys the idea of Plato’s cave – he may read it over several times. He’ll probably be able to repeat verbatim these passages, if asked to. Since he first learned to make sense out of letters (before he was three), reading has been fundamentally his favorite activity. It doesn’t substitute for sports; then again, it’s not a rival to sports, either. Nor sex. As he’s grown up, he has come to realize that not all the world shares this pleasure. William, for example, has never declined a Classic Comic when assigned a member of the canon to read. Sterling used to find people’s anti-intellectualism and mental laziness sad; now he finds it mostly annoying, in that the result is a planet populated largely by non-thinkers grazing among assorted ignoramuses. At the moment Sterling especially enjoys Mr. Plato, a fellow elitist. He can hardly wait to get to Confucius for eastern elitism, after he’s through with western thought.
That Sterling turns to original sources suggests that he prefers that others leave the interpretation to him. That’s perhaps one reason why he has so often been considered by his teachers as a difficult student. It’s not that he doesn’t respect teachers (that’s true, but another matter entirely) or trust them (there are reasons in his past for this); he just doesn’t need them. In his particular case, they are getting paid for doing nothing. If left alone he could have easily home-schooled himself and not have even strayed from the web. Indeed, that’s what Durham Prep has finally let him do, against the judgment of Coach Mac and a few others. All the school wants from him now is an occasional score on this or that test in order to raise the school’s average. It’s a relationship that works; no one much cares whether it’s symbiotic or parasitic, or who’s the pimp and who’s the whore. This streak of independence is something which both his parents and his school are resigned to; indeed they indulge him in it. Whether the larger society will be as flexible is another matter. The Smiley Boy video, a harmless prank in Sterling’s view, seems to have created waves that would rather drown him. He’s been thrust into a whirlpool in which he is penalized for being a free, independent thinker. He has started to lose control. He can’t do his own lawyering. That is, he is not legally qualified; more importantly, he has not learned how to think like a lawyer, primarily because he’s never tried to. We’re not talking rocket science, he imagines. So far his out-guessing the system, however, has produced only bad choices which have included an overnight stay behind bars in the basement of the courthouse and which, if he’s not careful, could land him in juvie.
Sterling reluctantly puts aside Plato, or pretends to, in order to receive a visit from William, who enjoys engaging his friend while he continually searches for his inner gay self. William sees the world as he sees himself: someone continually trying to escape the closets that are being erected for him. For years he’s been trying to get Sterling to get in touch with his own non-heterosexual being, which is the exact wording he uses as he skirts around the issue. Sterling knows William (and vice-versa) exactly for what he is – supposedly confused – and he doesn’t let his friend’s pseudo-shrinking much bother him. For years he’s been able to partially tune William out so he can carry on more pressing mental self-dialogues, occasionally refocusing when William produces a non-rhetorical question. William has just taken Mr. Della Knave (Sterling’s spelling) to the airport and his mood is both up and down. He’s in the afterglow of their twenty-four hour fling, their relationship consummated (thrice) as well as consecrated: Harvey’s gift was buying a ton of cigarette paper; William’s gift via his dad was a handsome check with enough wrapping material to do in a small country. While Sterling is supposedly not looking, William has maneuvered his hand between the box mattress and springs to find the wrapper he had hidden there. At the time it had seemed unseemly to just drop a condom wrapper on the floor so he had wedged it aside for later retrieval; he had forgotten to reclaim the evidence. Getting it back before Sterling or his mother happened to find it was what prompted this visit other than, of course, BFF-ship.
“I already tossed it out,” Sterling explains as he watches William’s failing attempt to cover his actions. “Did you want it for a keepsake?” he asks.
“You found it?” William asks, embarrassed, about two mental steps behind Sterling.
“The math didn’t add up. Three condoms but only two wrappers.”
“You counted?” an amazed William asks.
“I’m a thorough housekeeper,” he shrugs off. “So it was a good first date?”
“Like no other,” William says, all smiles.
“Do I need a blow-by-blow?” Sterling asks, not wanting to let William yet off the hook. William for his part wants to change the topic.
“We just talked. He wondered why you are so conservative,” William explains, pointing to the three framed portraits on the wall: Jefferson, Lincoln and Reagan. Now that the room is devoid of all things with chips, the portraits take on a more prominent place.
Sterling is having none of this and gets back to the main topic:
“You know, that you don’t need condoms for oral sex. Despite common sense fellatio isn’t thought to lead to STDs.”
This is not the topic William came to discuss. He says:
“Harvé couldn’t believe you were a Republican and were stirring up a hornet’s nest with the tea-baggers.
“Tea-partiers,” Sterling corrects.
“I explained you were just rebelling against your liberal parents and your communist grandparents.”
“Almost communists. It was their parents who were the communists, murdered by the Greek Army. Have you been reading Wiki on CliffNotes on Freud?” he contemptuously asks. William ignores the barb.
“I explained how your family was just devolving…” William explains, interrupted by Sterling.
“…Evolving,” he corrects.
“Whatever, and that even here in North Carolina, by no means a left-wing state, you would be considered politically red-neck, what with boxing and guns, support of capital punishment and animosity against welfare…”
“Animosity? Has that Yankee fellow from Canada been teaching you big words? He spend the whole night g
iving a vocab lesson to the back of your neck?” he asks, suddenly realizing that the not-so-nice old Sterling has emerged. “Sorry,” he says on quick reflection.
William is not especially offended, however, because the lame insult comes for a boy whose views on gay sex come across as somewhat conflicted, at least to William. They are akin to a very liberal Jew’s view on rants of holocaust denial: acceptable but only under the weight of the First Amendment. In other words, Sterling has repeated told William that he has never touched and that he will never touch another man’s junk, but he ardently defends William’s right to do so. William has often wondered whether his main supporter is not really a homophobe in homophilic robes, or even vice-versa. They change the subjects by implied mutual agreement.
“I tried JCZ and I keep getting an auto-reply. Are they on tour already? They were hopping mad about something this morning. When they talk to themselves, it’s like a foreign language.”
“I don’t think they are on tour.”
“I don’t know. I tried all three numbers: ‘C U at Campus Revival Tour 2009. God Bless.’ Exactly the same in all three. YMMV, you’d think. It’s like they’re poking fun at themselves.
“They did say something about a retreat. They don’t want to be disturbed. Maybe they want some privacy.”
“I guess. Court tomorrow?”
William hands Sterling a print-out of a legal matter he found on the internet. Sterling glances over it before putting it in his inbox.
“Nah, just lawyers. You know, Billy…William…last Sunday when we were driving back from the spa…”
“Don’t go there, Sterling.”
“I don’t want to go back there…”
“That’s not what I mean,” William corrects.
“I know what you mean. I just wonder why you got so mad when I asked you what happened. I spend the day waiting for you and you didn’t say anything. Did something bad happen?”
“No.”
“You’re not going to tell me anything?”
“Can I have some privacy, please. It’s bad enough you’re counting condoms. Do I have to run away from you like JCZ? I mean, the Trips didn’t run away from you but, you knew, we all need privacy, except for you. Witness Smiley Boy.”
“Sorry I asked. But Buffeau was there and…”
“He told you he was there? What did he say?” William asks.
“Nothing. I have to ask you.”
“He told you to ask me?” William asks.
“I didn’t say that. It’s just I have to ask you because he won’t say anything.”
“Well, then, I guess neither will I,” William says smugly.
Sterling is exasperated, his curiosity unquenched. He turns to the other mammal in the room.
“Attack, attack,” he commands. Bucephalus opens one eye and goes back to sleep. “Attack” is not part of her vocabulary. The friends smile at each other. William is fully aware that Sterling’s curiosity is unbearable; this bothers him not in the least. He resorts to a gesture known to infuriate Sterling: he zips his lips and throws away the key.
“Look, Billy…William…I know where the Trips are and they can’t be disturbed. We each have our secrets.”
“They’re OK?”
“They just need a vacation, that’s all. They’ll be good as new when they get back. Let’s leave it at that,” Sterling says. They do. After a few more exchanges lacking substance, William departs. Sterling returns to his friend Mr. Plato.