In One Person

principal sexual organs.” (But how could we fail to recognize such an obvious thing about our genitals? we boys thought with alarm.) “At this phase,” Herr Doktor Grau continued, “coitus is not necessarily the recognizable goal of erotic activity.” (Then why did we think about coitus nonstop? we boys wondered with dread.) “You are experiencing pregenital libidinal fixations,” old Grau told us, as if this were somehow reassuring. (He also taught German at the academy, in the same unintelligible fashion.) “You must come talk to me about these
fixations
,” the old Austrian always concluded. (No boy I knew at Favorite River admitted to having such fixations; no one I knew ever talked to Dr. Grau about
anything!)
    Richard Abbott told me and the cast of
The Tempest
that Ariel’s gender was “polymorphous—more a matter of habiliment than anything organic.” This later led Richard to conclude that the gender of the character I played was “
mutable
,” and I was further confused regarding my (and Ariel’s) sexual orientation.
    Yet, when I asked Richard if he meant anything at all resembling the “
polymorphous-perverse
phase” of the “bugs in amber” bullshit Dr. Grau had gone on (and on) about in morning meeting, Richard adamantly denied there was any connection.
    “No one listens to old Grau, Bill,” Richard had told me. “Don’t you listen to him, either.”
    Wise advice—but while it was possible not to heed what Dr. Grau said, we boys were forced to
hear
him. And, lying next to Elaine, with my hand on her bare breast, and our tongues once more entangled in a way that made us imagine what the next most erotic thing to do with each other was, I became aware of my growing erection.
    With our mouths still pressed together, Elaine managed to ask: “Are you getting a hard-on
yet
?” Yes, I was, and I’d noted Elaine’s impatience in her overloud utterance of the
yet
word, but my confusion was such that I was unsure what had initiated my erection.
    Yes, the French kissing was exciting, and (to this day) the touch of a woman’s bare breasts is not something I am indifferent to; yet I believe my hard-on began when I imagined wearing Elaine’s padded bra. At that moment, wasn’t I exhibiting the “infantile sexual tendencies” Dr. Grau had warned us boys about?
    But all I said to Elaine, in the midst of our darting tongues, was a strangled-sounding “Yes!”
    This time, when Elaine broke free from me, she bit my lower lip in the hurried-up process. “You actually have a boner,” Elaine said to me, seriously.
    “Yes, I actually do,” I admitted. I felt my lower lip, to be sure I wasn’t bleeding. (I was looking all around for her bra.)
    “Oh, God—I don’t want to see it!” Elaine cried. This was sexually confusing to me, too. I hadn’t suggested
showing
my hard-on to her! I didn’t want her to see it. In fact, I would have been embarrassed for her to see it; I thought it would probably disappoint her, or make her laugh (or throw up).
    “Maybe I could just
touch
it,” Elaine considered, more thoughtfully. “I don’t mean your bare boner!” she quickly added. “Maybe I could just
feel
it—I mean, through your clothes.”
    “Sure—why not?” I said, as casually as I could, though I would wonder (for years) if anyone else ever went through a sexual initiation of such a highly negotiated kind.
    The boys at Favorite River Academy were not permitted to wear jeans; dungarees, as we called them then, were not allowed in class or in the dining hall, where we were obliged to wear coats and ties. Most boys wore khakis, or—in the winter months—flannel trousers or corduroys. I was wearing a baggy pair of corduroys on this January Saturday night. It was a comfortable pair of pants to have a boner in, but I was also wearing Jockey briefs, and they were increasingly uncomfortable. Maybe it was the only men’s underwear you could buy in Vermont in 1960—white Jockey briefs. (I don’t know; at the time, my mom still bought all my clothes.)
    I’d seen Kittredge’s underwear, at the gym—blue cotton boxers, the color of a blue dress shirt. Maybe his French mother had bought them in Paris, or in New York. “That woman
has
to be his mother,” Elaine had said. “She could
be
Kittredge, if she didn’t have those breasts—that woman would know where to buy boxers like that.” And Kittredge’s blue boxers were
pressed
; this wasn’t an affectation of Kittredge’s, because