Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2001 20:47:44 -0400
From: David Buffet <tightserve@hotmail.com>
Subject: Alpha Male - Chapter 33

Chapter 33: The Brotherhood
	There was an incident at lunch.  The dining room housed a number of large
round tables.  They sat ten comfortably.  We had, since the beginning of the
summer, been eating at one table regularly.  It was cramped when we were all
there at the same time, but not overly so.  Lunches were the worst in this
respect.  While the boys floated in and out of breakfast and dinner
depending on their preferred individual schedules, everyone ate lunch at the
same time.  That day, Corey was the last to arrive.  With the addition of
Shmu at the table, all the seats were taken.
	"Move," Corey said, standing behind Shmu.
	"Die," was Shmu's response.
	Conversation continued as if the exchange hadn't taken place.  Corey
continued to stand behind Shmu, tray in hand, and glower at him.
	"I said 'move'," he repeated when he realized that Shmu was going to
continue ignoring him.
	"Sit at another table, Corey," Steven said testily.
	"Why the fuck should *I* have to move?" Corey whined angrily.  "He's not
even on the team."
	"Neither are you, asshole," Doug said.
	This was important.  I watched in morbid fascination as if it were a train
wreck in the making.
	"He's a guest," said Steven.  "Have some manners."  Shmu made no move to
get up.  While I wouldn't have either were I in his position, there was a
significant difference between the way he was handling the situation and the
way I would have.  He remained entirely nonchalant throughout.  My smile
would have been forced and for effect.  His was the same easy smile that was
there before Corey had interrupted.  I would have been tense as a cat about
to pounce.  Shmu was as relaxed as a cat in the morning sun.
	"Get your faggot ass out of that chair," Corey said.
	I had seen this scene before.  There was, again, a moment of perfect
silence in which all the players froze - the calm before the storm.  There
was, again, an explosion of movement.  As before, everyone save me knew
exactly what the response would be and where they should be to prevent it.
Unlike the last time, though, the boys dove to restrain Shmu, not Corey.
His arm was already raised to strike when Dan grabbed it.  Doug was on Shmu
holding him down in his chair with a bear hug.  Matt was standing between
Corey and Shmu to prevent a possible counter-attack.  It was balletic.
Everyone was talking over the din of falling silverware, either yelling at
Corey or trying to calm Shmu.
	Shmu had trumped Corey.  How could that be?  Was there some unwritten rule
that said age won over team identification?  Granted, Corey wasn't on the
team, but still - he did practice with them every day.  Or was it the
dynamics of the particular people involved?  Corey wasn't much liked among
the inner circle of the team, and Shmu, of course, was an instant hit
wherever he went.  Had it been me, would it have come out the same?  Well,
it had been me earlier in the summer, and the outcome *had* been the same.
Or had it?  When I was involved in this scene, I had felt that the boys had
restrained Corey to protect Corey from making a mistake.  Punching damages
the hands, and gymnasts need their hands.  Now I had the clear sense that
the boys were restraining Shmu to protect Shmu.  Not from physical harm, or
course.  It was pretty evident that everyone at the table thought Shmu would
flatten Corey.  It was to protect Shmu's presence in the camp.  If he beat
the shit out of Corey, he would be required to leave.
	There was an uncomfortable stand-off until Drew announced that as he was
finished eating anyway, Corey could have his seat at the table.  Tensions
eased, and people returned to their meals - all save Adam, who had continued
eating throughout the exchange.  I looked at him.  He smirked inscrutably
and winked.
	Shmu went to explore the grounds after lunch and to enjoy a workout of his
own.  I took my place in the stands with my green notebook.  I had
recognized another hint of Alphadom that morning and was intently trying to
distill it into measurable units.  While Dan seemed somewhat less so, Adam
was definitely, if subtly, chameleonlike in his nonverbal communication.  He
matched his signals to the expectations of the person with whom he was
interacting.  I took notes furiously, transcribing all his and Dan's moves.
Still, I was haunted by the nagging suspicion that despite my copious notes,
despite my careful attention to detail, all the transcriptions would amount
to no more than sheaf after sheaf of useless wallpaper.  There was something
I was missing.  I had catalogued numerous behaviors - each noteworthy and
curious in its own way.  But combined, they were still not enough to explain
the control these boys enforced.
	The commons room sport of the evening was TPB, or Toilet Paper Ball - a
Machavelian game of ambiguous origin that involved throwing a roll of toilet
paper around the room into wastebaskets placed in strategic positions.  The
key to the game was to get the toilet paper to unroll continuously when
thrown, so that the room became a maze of criss-crossing, unbroken lines of
tissue.  "Running bases" was overlaid onto this field - made difficult, of
course, as one had to negotiate paths where great care had to be taken not
to tear the streamers - as were mechanisms for scoring goals, getting people
"out" and, of all things, a penalty box.  Penalties were awarded for even
the most minor infraction of the endless corpus of obscure rules that
included no pointing, no bestial noises and, my personal favorite, no use of
the letter "k".
	It was one of the endless list of reindeer games in which the happy little
elves engaged on boring camp evenings to stave off psychosis.  While I found
this one particularly baffling, Shmu was immediately taken with its
meaningless moments of athletic virtuosity, refereed decisions based on the
arcana of play and the fact that the stakes were high: this game was for the
championship.  No less than a claim to be the Best TPB Team in the Universe
was at stake that night.  Even were I tremendously drunk, I could not have
enjoyed watching them more, or wanted to participate less.
	Evan, it seems, had a knack for play. I could not tell this myself, of
course, as having watched no less than four tournaments over the course of
three weeks, I still had absolutely no idea how points were accumulated.
But he was regularly complimented on his style.  Doug was also considered
good, which amazed me.  Here was a man who had to be reminded which
direction left but was who was able to call a penalty on Drew because he
threw an underhand pitch, and *everyone knows* that when you throw the pitch
underhand the spool of toilet paper was only allowed to unwind
*counterclockwise* (unless there were already two players standing in
wastebaskets, called a "deuce", in which case the roll could unravel in
either direction.)
	Doug raised his elbow at Drew, assiduously following the no pointing rule.
"Penalty on Drew," he called.  "That didn't fly in the opposite direction
that a watch runs."  The word 'counterclockwise' was, of course, verboten as
it contained a 'k'.
	I can imagine this, as well as many of their other games, being born of
long nights of alcohol induced haze.  Hell, I myself had created the random
game or two on the occasional undergraduate night wasted wasted.  Watching
them laugh and play and move and argue over rules reminded me of my own
clique of undergraduate friends, except that with us, it was more whether or
not 'oe', a whirlwind off the Faeroe Islands, should be capitalized and
therefore be ineligible to use in Scrabble.  I still say it was valid!
	The game was almost over.  Only 100 feet or so of tissue paper remained on
the roll.  All three trash cans were filled with players, which signified
something important, though for the life of me I could not figure out what.
The boys were excited as Brad came to "home trash" for his turn.  Amidst the
banter of the game, Adam appeared in the threshold and leaned, thumbs hooked
in pockets.
	When his mere presence caught everyone's attention and they quieted down,
he said "Corey," turned and left.  Corey turned white.  The rest of the
boys' reactions varied from amusement to indifference to disappointment to
relief.  Reluctantly, but without a word, Corey got out of the wastepaper
basket and left the room, turning right to follow Adam.
	This caused a problem.
	"We need another player," Evan protested.
	"Heywood, get in the trash can." Brad said.
	"Who?" This from Shmu.
	Doug's elbow immediately went up in Shmu's direction.  "Bestial noise:" he
said, "owl."
	"There's no way I'm getting in that wastebasket."
	"Unauthorized use of eleventh letter," Doug called, his elbow swinging
around to point at me.
	"He's not playing yet," Evan complained to Doug.  "You can't site a
non-combatant."
	"Combatant?" I asked, amused.
	"Get in the can," Brad repeated.  "Help us out, Bud.  We can't play with
four people.  We're winning!"
	The truth of it was that I didn't belong in that game.  It was not my place
to play.  How can I describe why?  For all my envy at the bond they had, for
all my wishes to be one of them, I recognized that I was not and could never
be.  Not because they would not accept me - they would, I had come to
believe.  But because it was not the role I wanted or needed to play with
them.  Shmu could come to the camp and instantly belong.  Regardless of how
long I stayed with them, I would always be on the outside - despite my
strong connections to many of them individually.  There were things about
their interactions which, despite my best research, despite my most intense
observation, I would never understand.  While I ran with the wolves, I was
not a member of the pack.
	But how could I express this without offending them?  I could not say, "I'm
not one of you," since their hospitality toward me had been prodigious, and
from their perspective I belonged in the camp, even if not on the team.  I
could not say, "it is not my place," since from their perspective, it *was*
my place to help them out when they needed.  What I had invested to be a
laden symbolic rite of membership was simply a game to them.  I could not
say "I don't understand how you interact."  Their answer would have been,
"doi.  Just interact."
	With few other avenues left open to me, I retreated behind the
fastidiousness with which I had already become identified anyway.
	"I'll do your laundry," I said, "I'll mop your floors, I'll go on gofer
runs for you, I'll clean your squirt off the fucking rug, but I tell you,
honey, I am *not* standing in a trash can."
	The room erupted.  Appeals were made to my sense of duty, to my sense of
fair play, to my sense of honor.  My favorite was Doug's.  "But it's for the
championship of the entire universe!" he said, dumbfounded that this would
not sway me.  Finally, and to my undying relief, Dan offered a solution.
	"I'll sit out the rest of the game," he said.  "I'm satisfied with the
galactic title, anyway."  He hopped off the round table where he had been
playing the position of "high fielder" and negotiated his way through the
weave of toilet paper strands.
	"Let's take a walk," he said.
	"Okay."  I followed him, both sad and grateful to be out of the room.
	When outside in the cool night air, I thanked him.
	"For what?" he said.
	"Getting me out of that.  You came to my rescue."
	He shrugged his shoulders.
	"Do you know why I wouldn't play?" I asked.
	"Something ridiculous, I bet."
	 I smiled.  "Do you want to know why?"
	"No need," he said.  "Everyone's allowed to be ridiculous twice."
	I laughed.  "Rule of the game?"
	"My rule," he said.
	I put my hand in his and we walked on in silence through the darkness.
	"How's your ass?" he asked after a while.
	"It's okay," I said.  "Kinda tingles.  I know we played, that's for fucking
sure.  Just a little tender when I sit down."
	"Do you like it when I do that kind of stuff to you?" he asked.
	The question caught me entirely off guard.  I stopped and turned to face
him.  We had come to the edge of one of the fields.  A distant light cast a
dim, oblique glow on one side of his face, leaving the other entirely in
shadow.
	"That's a really difficult question for me to answer," I said.  "I don't
like the pain.  I mean," I added, interrupting myself, wanting to get just
the right words, "I don't like pain.  And sometimes you freak me out a
little."  He turned us and we started walking again as I continued to
explain.  "But I'm learning that there's a lot about what we do that I
really like.  I mean, I *really* like it."
	"Like what?"
	"This is all so new to me, Dan, it's really hard for me to say.  When I'm
with you...before you, I'd always felt like something was missing.  I don't
feel that with you."  We walked on a while as I tried to gather my thoughts.
  It was a new sensation for me.  Usually I figured out what I thought by
speaking.  Doing it the other way around was a curious approach to life.
	"You bring me to places I never even knew existed.  I'm scared by some of
them.  And excited.  I think I realized last night, that there's a key to it
all.  It's fills in the hole that had always been there."
	"What's that?" Dan asked.
	"Surrender."
	He let go of my hand and put his arm around my waist.  I rested mine on his
shoulder.  We walked on.
	"A long time ago, you said that it was 'need' that got you off.  Is that
kind of what you were talking about?"
	"Yeah," said Dan.  "That's about it."
	"So can I ask the same question?"
	"What question?"
	"Do you like it when you do that kind of stuff to me?"
	He squeezed my waist.  "Yeah," he said.  "I like it."
	"Is it the pain for you?  I mean, inflicting it?"
	"No," he said, "not exactly."
	"What then?"
	He tried to find the words with the same care as I had.  "I like to see you
squirm.  I think it's hot.  I like to see you squirm from what I'm doing to
you.  Being able to do it to you - make you squirm - gets me off.  Because
you let me.  You surrender to it.  Doesn't have to be from pain, though."
	"What's hot about it?"
	"I don't know," he said.  "You're the expert."
	I laughed.  "Not in this shit, I'm not," I said.
	"Then we don't know," he said, satisfied to leave it at that.
	We were in the middle of the field by now, walking slowly and aimlessly.
	"How did you know?"  I asked.
	"How did I know what?"
	"How did you know you liked it?"
	"How did you know you were gay?" he asked in return.
	"When I started jerking off, I only fantasized about men," I said.  He
shrugged his shoulders.  "Okay," I said.  "Point taken.  So when you
fantasize, is it about men or women?"
	"You still into this gay/straight thing?" he asked.  I could hear the smile
in his voice.
	"Yeah," I said in seriousness.  "I have to be, I think.  I mean, we worked
our asses off to make the world a safer place to be.  At least, parts of it.
  So, yeah.  It's important to me that people who are gay can be gay."
	"So what if it worked?"
	"What do you mean?"
	"What if all y'all made a world where it didn't matter if people were gay
or straight?  Right?  Isn't that the point?  If everyone is treated equally,
does it still matter if I was gay or straight then?"
	"We're not there yet."
	"Hypothetically."
	"Hypothetically?"
	"Yeah.  Hypothetically."
	"No, *hypothetically*, if we really *were* all equal and everyone was
treated with the same respect, then no.  It wouldn't matter.  But we're not
there yet.  Not by a long shot."
	"Don't you change the world one person at a time?  Isn't that one of all
y'all's slogans?"
	"Yeah, but..."
	"So we'll change the world startin' right here.  It won't matter whether
I'm gay or straight."
	"But it still matters to me," I said.
	"Why?"
	"Because if you leave me for a woman, I'll be really pissed."
	"But not if I leave you for a guy?"
	"It doesn't have to make sense, Dan.  It's the way I feel."
	"So why can't I not care about whether I'm with a guy or a girl?"
	"Because it doesn't make sense!"
	He stopped walking, turned and smiled at me.  I laughed.
	"You know," I said, "very few people can trap me that way."
	"Surrender, Dorothy," he said.
	"Oh," I said, laughing even harder, "that does it.  You're *definitely*
queer."
	We made our way back to the dorm.  It felt so good just to be with him like
that.  I had grown since my last relationship.  Somehow, I didn't have to
persuade Dan that I was right.  It didn't matter so much that we saw things
differently or that we disagreed.  If effort was to be put in, in the
future, it would be in trying to understand, not to convince.
	We strolled down the hall past the commons room.  The game had broken up.
Some of the boys remained, others had turned in.
	"So ho long's Shmu staying?" Dan asked.
	"Why?  You want me to stay in my own room tonight?"
	"Nope," he said, "just..." but he never got to the end of his sentence.  We
had turned right at the end of the hall, and Dan had opened the door for me.
	There on the bed on the right was Adam, shorts drawn down to his knees.
And under him, sobbing, impaled, was Corey.