Skulking across campus while my former teammates sailed. Locking myself in dead air. I avoided social contact, then felt disappointed and lonely when nobody noticed my absence.
The tedium of boarding school life set in and took hold of my imagination. Two or three hours would pass unaccounted for daily, while I stretched sideways on my bed or sat at my desk staring at the empty spaces on my Princeton application. I’d already filled in the name and address. The only thing left to complete was the essay section: “What has been the most significant event to influence your life?” A good question, one with an obvious answer.
I found Cal’s body hanging from a hot-water pipe that ran up the back wall and along the ceiling in the room we shared at Kensington. It was a Sunday in April. A week before Easter. Cal looked as though he was in the pro cess of dressing for church. He wore a white collarless shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, and tan pants. His feet bare. His eyes still open. A chair, my chair, on its side underneath him. We kept some lines of rope around as practice tools. We’d challenge each other to invent new sailor’s knots.
“That’s a triple lather snake bend.” Cal tossed me a tangled mess. “Figure it out.”
“Looks like you twisted your grandma’s underwear.” I untied the jumble and designed my own hitch. “Now that’s a royal thunder wench rig.”
“Looks more like a royal pain in the ass.”
We could go back and forth like that for hours. Pausing in between knots for conversation.
“I’m glad we got to choose each other,” Cal once said.
“Choose what?” I asked.
“Being friends.” Resting his elbows on his knees, he stretched his arms flat and open in front of me. Veins tightened and flexed from his wrist to his biceps. Solid muscle. “If you were my brother, I’d still like you, but it wouldn’t mean as much.”
“I know what you’re saying.” Sometimes when I looked at Cal, I felt myself blur and fall into the weight of his arms. “It’s weird,” I said, “but if it ever came down between you or my brother, Riegel. Like a life jacket question?”
“You’d throw it to me?” Cal asked. “Without a doubt.” I nodded. “Don’t tell Riegel.”
In the last semester of our junior year, Cal used a coil of nylon eightplait rope to tie a noose. Taking our game one step further.
When I found Cal dead, I didn’t go for help. I captured and understood the entire scene in the frame of an opened door that I quickly closed in front of me. Calmly, I went to the library, the chemistry lab, and the lake. I was lying flat on the bottom of a canoe in the Boathouse when ambulance sirens interrupted the quiet spring campus. I waited for someone to search me out and messenger the news. No one came. I shifted my weight and rocked the canoe, hoping to draw attention to my hiding place. At the time, it didn’t occur to me that I was unimportant. That Cal, dead and gone, mattered more than me, stretched and cradled in a canoe. I stood up in time to look out a window and catch the sight of his body being carried on a stretcher. Hidden under a long white sheet. Later, I would be told that an underclassman had knocked on our door, looking to play a game of roof Frisbee. I would listen as this boy, this finder whom I did not know, recounted to a group of mourners that he’d only opened the door because he’d thought he’d heard a voice call out to him.
I wonder about that voice. A few days before his death, I stopped speaking to Cal. We’d done things. Touched each other. At night, alone in our room, we’d pretend to wrestle. Rolling and bracing our chests and legs in tight formation. Cal would pin me to the floor. He’d bite my neck, scratch his teeth against my chin. He’d mask his palm over my eyes. Bring his open mouth onto mine. Wet blackness deeper than I’d ever given or received. He’d shift his hands down my thighs and, because our bodies were so much the same, Cal knew just
The tedium of boarding school life set in and took hold of my imagination. Two or three hours would pass unaccounted for daily, while I stretched sideways on my bed or sat at my desk staring at the empty spaces on my Princeton application. I’d already filled in the name and address. The only thing left to complete was the essay section: “What has been the most significant event to influence your life?” A good question, one with an obvious answer.
I found Cal’s body hanging from a hot-water pipe that ran up the back wall and along the ceiling in the room we shared at Kensington. It was a Sunday in April. A week before Easter. Cal looked as though he was in the pro cess of dressing for church. He wore a white collarless shirt, unbuttoned at the neck, and tan pants. His feet bare. His eyes still open. A chair, my chair, on its side underneath him. We kept some lines of rope around as practice tools. We’d challenge each other to invent new sailor’s knots.
“That’s a triple lather snake bend.” Cal tossed me a tangled mess. “Figure it out.”
“Looks like you twisted your grandma’s underwear.” I untied the jumble and designed my own hitch. “Now that’s a royal thunder wench rig.”
“Looks more like a royal pain in the ass.”
We could go back and forth like that for hours. Pausing in between knots for conversation.
“I’m glad we got to choose each other,” Cal once said.
“Choose what?” I asked.
“Being friends.” Resting his elbows on his knees, he stretched his arms flat and open in front of me. Veins tightened and flexed from his wrist to his biceps. Solid muscle. “If you were my brother, I’d still like you, but it wouldn’t mean as much.”
“I know what you’re saying.” Sometimes when I looked at Cal, I felt myself blur and fall into the weight of his arms. “It’s weird,” I said, “but if it ever came down between you or my brother, Riegel. Like a life jacket question?”
“You’d throw it to me?” Cal asked. “Without a doubt.” I nodded. “Don’t tell Riegel.”
In the last semester of our junior year, Cal used a coil of nylon eightplait rope to tie a noose. Taking our game one step further.
When I found Cal dead, I didn’t go for help. I captured and understood the entire scene in the frame of an opened door that I quickly closed in front of me. Calmly, I went to the library, the chemistry lab, and the lake. I was lying flat on the bottom of a canoe in the Boathouse when ambulance sirens interrupted the quiet spring campus. I waited for someone to search me out and messenger the news. No one came. I shifted my weight and rocked the canoe, hoping to draw attention to my hiding place. At the time, it didn’t occur to me that I was unimportant. That Cal, dead and gone, mattered more than me, stretched and cradled in a canoe. I stood up in time to look out a window and catch the sight of his body being carried on a stretcher. Hidden under a long white sheet. Later, I would be told that an underclassman had knocked on our door, looking to play a game of roof Frisbee. I would listen as this boy, this finder whom I did not know, recounted to a group of mourners that he’d only opened the door because he’d thought he’d heard a voice call out to him.
I wonder about that voice. A few days before his death, I stopped speaking to Cal. We’d done things. Touched each other. At night, alone in our room, we’d pretend to wrestle. Rolling and bracing our chests and legs in tight formation. Cal would pin me to the floor. He’d bite my neck, scratch his teeth against my chin. He’d mask his palm over my eyes. Bring his open mouth onto mine. Wet blackness deeper than I’d ever given or received. He’d shift his hands down my thighs and, because our bodies were so much the same, Cal knew just
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