ARCADIA ACADEMY FOR BOYS
                                     Chapter Five
                                    "Settling In"

        The first weeks of October were a time of hard rain.  The weather
turned cold, the skies dark, and the quad and the playing fields flooded.
The boys took to wearing flourescent blue rainboots and rubber raincoats
that made them look very cute, but I clucked to see them dash from building
to building, their naked legs exposed to the harsh winds.
        It was time of head colds, sniffles and sneezes.  In class, we'd
left the American frontier behind and moved on to urban studies, reading
Horatio Alger's novels of poor newsboys in New York City.  Each class began
with students presenting oral reports while I pushed a serving tray down
the aisles, bringing glasses of orange juice and cups of herbal tea to the
cold, dreary boys.  The school had been built in the 40s and the iron
radiators clanked with steam heat.
        I squatted beside Ethan, working quietly so as not to disturb Jimmy
Wong's recitation, and set a delicate white tea cup on his round left knee.
The boy gazed at me with sad puppy eyes.
        "Ethan?"
        "I don't feel so good."
        I felt his cheeks with the back of my hand and brushed his auburn
bangs aside to feel his forehead.  "You're burning up!" I gasped.
        I set the cup back on the tray, walked to the coat rack at the back
of the class to put on my raincoat and boots, then returned to Ethan's
desk.  "Boys?  I'm leaving for the infirmary.  In the meantime, I'd like
you to sit quietly and read."
        I nudged Ethan and he stood up slowly, head down, lanky body stiff
with aches.  He dragged his feet as I led him to the door, the exhuberant
bounce gone from his young legs.  We shuffled down the hallway in silence.
I checked the name tags above the hooks on the wall until I found Ethan's,
then I squatted and began to put on his boots.  Perhaps my actions were
inappropriate for an independent 12 year old like Ethan, but the sick boy
let me dress him.
        "I don't feel good."
        "Shhh."  I helped him into his raincoat and snapped the buttons,
pulled the hood over his head and tied the string under his chin.  All my
life I had felt out of place, but suddenly the compass of my existence
stopped spinning.  The essence of man-boy love was revealed to me there in
the school hallway, the honorable and enormous responsibility of rasing and
loving a little boy as I helped Ethan dress himself when he could not help
himself.
        The boy swayed unsteadily.  "I feel like I'm gonna pass out," he whined.
        I guided him along, the clomp of our boots echoing on the wooden
floor.
        Ethan vomited suddenly, bending over and heaving.
        "Oh, yuk!" he whined.
        I hugged him from behind, my muscular arms wrapped around his
tummy, and I winced each time I felt his diaphragm convulsed.
        "EW, MR. WILSON!" he cried when he was empty, elbows bent and
twiggy arms flopping, staring at the mess on the floor.
        I reached around him to wipe his lax mouth with a kleenex from my
pocket, then swept him up in my arms and strode to the exit, throwing open
the doors.  Ethan snuggled against me, burying his face in my chest as
torrents of rain battered us, the blue hood snapping around his head.  The
boy's raincoat fell open like the unpetalling bell of a blue flower, hard
water pelting his poor, naked thighs.  His shorts grew drenched instantly
and formed a dark, sopping 'V' of fabric in his crotch.
        I dashed across the quad, mud puddles sloshing beneath my boots.
The trees swayed dangerously in the blowing wind, branches scratching the
stormy sky.  A tremendous flash of lighting and thunderclap made Ethan
scream and me stagger.  The air crackled with electricity and stole the
breath from my lungs.  The sky went white and turned the landscape to a
photographic negative.
        "It's a tornado!" Ethan shrieked.  He brought his rainswept face
close to mine, eyes filled with terror.  Desperate before the storm.  A
child frightened by the storm.
        "No, sweetheart!  I've got you!"  I crushed the slender boy to my
body, the thumb and fingers of my right hand sinking into his olive thighs
rivering with water.  "I'll protect you!"
        Ethan probed my eyes.  Negative ions erupted all around us in the
charged air.  Then the boy wrapped his arms around my neck, taking refuge
in my adult promise of safety.
        I raced for the infirmary above the cafeteria, dashing up the
stairs two at a time.  I burst into the office and yelled for the doctor as
I lay Ethan on an examination table.  The doctor hurried over to pop a
thermometer in the boy's mouth and unbutton his shirt.
        "He vomited and he's running a temperature!  He's scared and cold
and he vomited!" I cried as another surge of the storm made the lights
flicker.  I shifted from foot to foot, watching the doctor examine the boy.

        "Calm down.  It's all right," the doctor said soothingly, his
accented voice slow and melodious.  He was a small, middle-aged Hindu man
in a white doctor's coat.  He fit a stethascope to his ears and touched the
silver disc to Ethan's bony chest.  "It's just the flu."
        "Are you sure?"
        "Yes," the man smiled, patting my arm and taking a moment to run
his eyes over my shorts suit.  "I am positive."
        "I have to get back to class.  Take care of him?"
        "Of course."
        "Don't go, Mr. Wilson!" Ethan whined, legs patting the table and
crinkling the white paper as thunder shook the building.
        "Shhh!  You'll be fine!  The nice doctor is going to make it all
better!"
        I picked up a towel beside the examination table and used it to dry
Ethan's legs.  The boy rose up in a half-sit, watching me.  I noticed that
Ethan's flat stomach was firm with a "six-pack" of tiny abdominal muscles.
Between his undeveloped pecs was a crease in the center of his chest.  I
set the towel aside and pulled straight his wet, clinging shorts.
        "I'll see you after school.  You get some rest."  I patted the
boy's chest until he lay back on the table.
        "Promise?"  Ethan stared at me dazedly.
        I suddenly realized the true depths of Ethan's independence.  He
was just a little boy who had grown up without parents.  How many times had
he been left frightened and alone in the infirmary?  Felt a pang of
loneliness without a parent to applaud his performance in a school play or
his kicking the winning goal in a soccer game?
        I backed toward the door.  It was a tremendous effort to leave.  "I
promise."
        Ethan draped his left arm over his face.  The Hindu man smiled at
me as he removed Ethan's blue boots and shoes, dropping them to the floor.
Then he peeled the boy's drenched knee stockings down, reached out to
unbuckle the boy's belt in a demure, professional manner.
        I turned and walked quickly from the room, down the stairs, dashed
into the storm.  There was nothing more I could do for Ethan.  Sometimes,
all a man and boy can do is to hold each other against the storm and make
promises not to break.

        Ethan had been moved to a private room.  I sat in a wooden chair
beside his hospital bed.  The boy was dressed in a white pajamas shorts set
decorated with clipper ships, right knee poking out from beneath the
covers, glazed with faint amber light from a corner lamp.  I dabbed at his
forehead and face with a damp towel, spreading the collar of his pajama
shirt to cool his reedy throat.  Ethan murmured, head lolling on the pillow
in his fevered sleep.
        Frank and Harrison stopped in to reassure me that boys endured
often caught flus or endured broken arms and legs.
        "Come on, chap.  Let's have a drink," offered Harrison.
        "He needs sleep," said Frank.  "And Dr. Hatham is an excellent
physician."
        I nodded, but I had never been around hurt children.  I reached out
to stroke Ethan's knee, palming it in my hand.  The child slept, unaware.
I lifted the covers and pointed at the boy's white shorts wrinkled in his
crotch, touched one of the clipper ships on his hip.
        "He's so little," I whispered, sliding my hand along his inner
thigh with a feathery touch.  "And it's so cold for short pants.  But he
wears them because it's all he knows.  Dressed in shorts for our sexual
needs," I said guiltily.
        "If the boys wore long pants they would still catch colds,"
Harrison soothed.
        "It's for their needs, too," Frank said.  "Ethan has needs.  He
stares at your legs."
        I started, gazing down at my bare thighs, short pants and knee
socks.  "You're just saying that," I said, my fingers playing in the folds
of Ethan's pajamas.  But only at the hips and lower abdomen: I would never
corrupt the boy's purity by touching his dormant genitals uninvited.
        "No, Daniel.  Haven't you noticed how he lingers when serving you
at meals?"
        I had noticed but kept my hopes in check, not wanting to experience
an awkward scene or a crushing rejection.  I'd contented myself with
holding the boy-waiter's thighs when he stood beside me to serve,
exchanging quips and witty observations.  I wished to do nothing to
jeopardize our relationship.
        I straightened the boy's legs and tucked them under the covers,
brushed the bangs from his fevered forehead.  "I love you," I whispered,
speaking my love to a boy for the first time in my life.  I had never felt
so sincere, so clean.
        Frank turned off the lamp and clapped my on the shoulder.
Miserably, I followed him and Harrison to the door.

        The storm was over.  I wandered the empty campus for an hour, the
gutters and trees dripping with water.  I'd forgotten my raincoat and it
was very cold, but the sky had cleared and the Michigan night glittered
with a thousand stars.  Plumes of breath rose from my mouth as I stared at
the swuare, lamplit windows of the dorms.  The boys were preparing for bed,
and I knew that each of their radios was tuned to the school cable station.
We all listened to the radio.  The radio broadcast early mornings and
nights, structuring our lives with weather, music, announcements limited to
the enclosed world of the Academy.
        I headed for the station tucked in a alcove above the clock tower,
curious about the boy whose voice I knew so well.  I was also cold and
needed to warm up, and I had an idea.  The large building was quiet and
deserted.  I ascended the metal, spiral stairs, my boots echoing, my steps
heavy.  Approaching the studio, I peered through the window and saw
Spencer.  I touched the glass and sighed, a lonely man.
        Spencer's suit jacket and raincoat were hung on a corner rack.  The
blonde 14 year old held a pencil in his hand like a microphone and was
singing, slow dancing by himself, still wearing his large, rubber
rainboots, stockings shoved down around his ankles.  The boy's smooth
calves looked very thin.  He wore black headphones beneath a gray
snap-brim.  His necktie was loosened, his collar unbuttoned, shirt sleeves
rolled up to the elbows.  Music was limited to big-band jazz and singers
like Nat King Cole, Dean Martin, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, each song
absent of gender references.  The students believed that the men were
singing their love for boys.  The lush music cast the Academy in a simpler
time, creating an atmosphere of starry-eyed romance that made virgin boys
like Spencer sigh.
        Spencer performed a soft-shoe across the room, slim pale-gold legs
crossing and uncrossing.  Was he singing to one of the posters of a young,
skinny Sinatra or a suave Martin on the walls?  I opened the door quietly.
Spencer's high, tenor voice held a lilting note, then dipped and nicely
turned a phrase.  Young Spencer was a gifted musician who played piano and
guitar, and he imitated Sinatra perfectly, though several octaves higher.
His nasal speaking voice was clear when he sang.
        "Knock knock," I called.
        The blonde teen crouched over his pretend, pencil microphone, gray
shorts molding around lean, half-moon buttocks.  He twirled toward me, eyes
sqeezed shut, face transfigured.  I watched his small mouth open and close
and had no doubt that he had never had an orgasm.  The romantic music was
the only outlet for his pubescent energies.  All of the teachers were
attracted to the boy, fascinated by his protracted innocence, but Spencer
was so artistically shy and sensitive that he failed to pick up on the
overtures teachers extended to him daily.  Spencer was a Peter Pan of a
boy, a cupid who stung everyone with arrows while he himself drifted
through an epicurean sphere.
        "YAH!"
        Spencer saw me and jumped, throwing the pencil across the room with
a convulsive snap of his arm.  "You scared me!  Don't do that!" he piped,
blue eyes wide.
        "I tried to let you know I was here," I said apologetically.
        "Didn't you see the red light?  I'm broadcasting!" he scolded.
        "I'm sorry."
        "Shhh!"  The boy held up a finger, turned and flopped down on a
metal stool before a control board.  I stood by the door obediently; the
station was Spencer's kingdom.
        The boy took several breaths, rubbed his slender thighs fast and
hard, then punched a button on the panel as the song ended.  He gripped a
wide, square microphone and leaned over it.
        "The great Sinatra backed by full Nelson Riddle orchestration," he
announced in his cute nasal voice.  "Song title, 'When The Wind Was Green.'
It's a good night, as always, here at AABR, Arcadia Academy Boy Radio.
Now tuck yourselves in and say your prayers.  The big, bad storm is gone.
All is well."
        The boy's legs bounced, and he trembled with emotion.  He gripped
the microphone tighter, shoulder blades protruding beneath his shirt like
wings.  The boy was passionate about his job.
        "This is your ever faithful, ever wakeful, best friend Spencer
Applewhite.  Yes, it's me, Spencer.  You all know who I am.  And here's one
of my favorites as you turn out the lights, 'Georgia' by Ray Charles."
        The boy punched several buttons and turned off the microphone.  The
first, plaintive notes of the song filled the studio, violins gathering,
then dimmed as he turned down the volume.
        Spencer swivelled around to face me, lifting his snap-brim with his
left hand while draping the headphones around his neck, then setting the
hat back on his head.  I'd never seen the pensive boy so relaxed.  "Hello,
sir," he chirped jauntily.
        "You're good.  Really good."
        The boy blushed modestly, dropping his head and scratching his
pretty thighs.  "I'm sorry I yelled.  You scared me."
        "I love your program.  Us teachers talk about you all the time.
The boys, too."
        "I like doing it," said Spencer, speaking to his thighs.  His
thighs spread out over the edge of the stool, the inner skin tinted with
pink hues.  "It's easy to talk when no one can see me."
        "You're so quiet in class."
        "Class is different.  But in here it's a fishbowl.  I can be a like
a goldfish in here. Bright like a goldfish."  The boy's voice was soft and
confessional.  His legs began to bounce again.  "I can say anything in here
and everybody listens.  It's like magic.  I can't explain it."
        "You're a beautiful boy, Spencer.  A beautiful soul."
        The sensitive teen lifted his face.  A soft face filled with
adolescent, artistic need to be understood.  Then I sneezed explosively.
        "You're freezing!"  Spencer gasped.  Then he patted his thighs and
held out his arms to pull me onto his lap as if I was one of the new
orphans he always befriended.  I stepped forward, stared at his small lap,
paushed.  "Um, wait.  You sit first."  The boy
stood.  I sat.  He touched my knees.  "Wow!  You're cold!"
        I was shivering but hadn't noticed until then.  "Yes.  I guess I am."
        "That's not good," Spencer said, shaking his head, blonde bangs
fluttering beneath his hat.  He began to energetically rub my legs,
delicate hands going around and around my muscular thighs, making a faint
rasp.  After the dark, lonely night, the station seemed warm and bright.
The friendly boy only increased my sadness.
        "You don't have to do that, son."
        "You'll catch cold," he answered matter-of-factly, plopping himself
onto my lap, face to face.  He wriggled and kicked his legs over mine,
innocently humping me to create more friction, blue boots swinging above
the floor.  "Sometimes the little kids play in the snow so long you have to
warm them up like this," he declared earnestly, holding my shoulders and
gazing into my face.
        "Gentle one," I whispered.  I fingered the boy's snap-brim and
touched the red feather tucked into the felt band.
        "See?" he asked, rounding knees bending and legs kicking back,
humping closer until his soft genitals pressed my own.  Spencer thought
nothing of it.  "Better?"
        "Better.  Thank you."
        The teen nodded with satisfaction, kicking rhythmically, glossy
thighs slipping over mine.  He patted my shoulders.  "Now what's wrong?"
        "What do you mean?"
        "No one walks in a cold night without something bothering him."
        I gazed down at the boy's crotch touching mine, our matching shorts
wedged tight.  A knot rose in my throat.  "Ethan's sick.  He's in the
infirmary," I croaked, my voice breaking.
        Spencer tensed and froze, then began humping faster.  "It's O.K."
he cooed.  "Ethan'll be all right."  Not every boy at the Academy developed
a relationship with a teacher.  Most were adopted out to carefully screened
men and male couples before that could happen.  Those who remained looked
after each other.  Spencer's behavior was testimony to the affection and
care-giving all orphans feel for one another, the natural bond all boys
feel toward other boys and men.  Heightened by his unique upbringing.
        "I'm sorry.  It isn't your place to take care of a teacher."
        "It's all right," he grinned, bouncing as he humped.  "You like
Ethan?"
        I nodded, and though I registered his squishy genitals against
mine, the first boy-genitals I'd ever felt, I remained flaccid.
        "Yeah.  Everyone likes Ethan."
        "I like him a lot.  Thank you for holding me.  I feel so lonely."
        "Is Ethan in the infirmary?"
        "Uh huh."
        "He'll get better.  Don't be lonely, O.K.?"
        I lpatted Spencer's kicking thighs and smiled.  "You look cute in
that hat," I said.
"Listen.  I stopped by to ask a favor.  Do you take requests?"
        Spencer stopped humping, blue eyes widening.  "Sure.  What do you
want to hear?"
        "Something for Ethan?  Do you have John Lennon's 'Beautiful Boy'?"
        "Go over there."  Spencer pointed, and I rolled the stool to a
shelf of tapes, my strong thighs flexing, making the teen weave left to
right.  Spencer selected a tape and I rolled the stool back to the control
panel.  'Georgia' was ending.  The boy-DJ cued up my request.  He gripped
the microphone and turned it on.
        "This is our final song for the night.  A special request going out
to a boy we all know very well.  A boy in the infirmary.  This song is a
request from our new teacher, Mr. Wilson, for Ethan Sevatis."
        Impuslively, I leaned over Spencer to speak into the microphone.
"Ethan is a beautiful boy and I am so blessed to have met him," I said, my
voice thick with emotion.  "I only wish I could sing because I'd sing this
song to him tonight.  I wouldn't wake him.  I'd sing softly in his ear."
        Spencer stared at me, mouth open.  "Wow," he gasped, a shudder of
romance coursing through his slender frame.  His face glowed.
        "Ethan.  I want to play with you in the spring, in the emerald
fields with the warm sun shining down, chasing butterflies among the
buttercups.  I want to play with you in the dusk, the puffy clouds in the
sky white and pink like carnations.  We'll catch fireflys and put them in a
jar, watch their impossible wings expand and their abdomens pulse gold,
marking time for us.  Slow, honeyed time that never ends."
        "Wow wow wow!" Spencer yelped.  I squeezed his trembling thighs to
hold him still.
        "I want to carry you back to my room with your arms full of
buttercups, butterflies, the twinkling bell jar.  I want to sit with you
all night and my room scented with fresh flowers, petting your head, your
face, your pretty knees.  Hurry.  Get well and hurry to me, Ethan.  Darling
Ethan."
        I was finally living in a world where it was safe to express such
feelings.  My heart would have burst trying to contain such love.  I leaned
away from the microphone, gazed into Spencer's eyes.
        "Oh, wow!" the small teen sighed.  He looked drugged with romance.
"Ethan?  You are a very lucky boy.  This song is for you.  For the spring
and the emerald fields," he said dreamily.
        Spencer turned off the microphone, whimpered and draped his arms
around my neck, melting against me, face nuzzling my chest.  I flowed
around him myy hands moving over his thighs as the song began.

                        Close your eyes.  Have no fear.
                        The monster's gone, he's on the run,
                        And your daddy's here.
                        Beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful boy.

        "Beautiful beautiful beautiful, beautiful boy," Spencer purred,
snuggling like a baby.
        "You're a beautiful boy too, Spencer," I breathed, left hand
sliding up his sweet leg to his hip, right hand stroking his frail back.
        "You're neat," he whined, releasing a long, soprano sigh.  "I like
butterflies, too.  I like flowers and spring."
        "Bright, bright goldfish," I gushed, holding the lad.  "Come out
from your fishbowl.  Come out.  A daddy's here.  A daddy's here for you,
too.  Let him find you."
        "Really?  You mean it?" the boy asked, and now our roles were
corrected, I was comforting him.
        "Yes.  Just reach out.  Reach out."
        Spencer snuggled closer and I held him.