Roxy Music

It wasn’t easy caring for a budding romance at that school – at least if you were heterosexual. If you were gay, you had it made, forced to live with dozens of potential mates. But things weren’t quite so accommodating for heteros. Legally, as I said, I was allowed to have a girl in my room for 45 minutes a night (9-9:45, 10:00 was sign-in, and many was the night when Tina or I would tear across campus at the last possible moment, desperate to make it home before the clock struck 10 and we turned into pumpkins). The weekends were a little better, you could get away with a couple of hours together, but much of our relationship was built walking up and down the long concourse that housed all the academic classrooms. It was too cold to spend time outside and we weren’t allowed to go anywhere else inside to talk, so we spent hours walking up and down that long, cold hallway, getting to know each other. And then, at the strike of 9, we’d go back to my room and continue to get to know each other. It wasn’t the best arrangement, and I once (foolishly) took it to the director of the Academy. I had been having a lot of trouble with their blanket policies (the administration had just reinstated the Draconian lights-out policy that had the students in an uproar and kept me locked in the bathroom with towels stuffed under the door so I could do my homework without getting busted) and I decided to go talk to Bruce about it. He was, unsurprisingly, unhelpful. But that was his job. He always said that if the students thought he was too strict and the parents thought he was too lenient, then he must be doing a good job (in a perfect democracy, everybody’s unhappy). He listened to my complaints about doing my homework while sitting on the shower floor, about trying to build a relationship while walking up and down a very long, very cold hallway. He nodded thoughtfully and in a practiced attitude of compassion, but offered no help. Of course. Even though I could be trusted to manage my sleep and homework and relationship schedules, the freshmen couldn’t, he argued, and it was far easier to put one blanket policy in effect than to try to tailor it for individuals, so everybody’s lights went out at 11:00. But he did take pity on my burgeoning hormones, and said that, even though the parents strongly denied it, he knew that we were all at that age when we wanted to “explore” each other, so he suggested opening up a make-out lounge were you could go and suck face with each other in the company of whomever else was feeling the urge. What a great idea! And maybe you and your wife could initiate it with a hot and heavy spit swapping session, Bruce, the louder the better! I left discouraged and disgusted.

Over the next few weeks, as Tina and I got closer, Flesh + Blood (side one, anyway) became our main make-out music (that, and side one of Gary Numan’s surprisingly ambient album Dance, which seems to have completely disappeared in the interim – with not even one track from it appearing on his labored two-CD best of collection). As our trust in each other built, our intimacy deepened, and we made the slowest possible trip around the mythical bases, spending weeks on each bag before moving on to the next. But, ultimately, though the spirit was willing, the flesh was weak, and I was never able to manifest my desire for her physically. In other words, I had a humiliatingly useless piece of rope dangling between my legs. It wasn’t that I didn’t find Tina attractive, or didn’t find out nocturnal explorations exciting or erotic, I was drowning in a sea of love and desire, but you’d never know it to look at me. She tried, but I was always more ticklish than turned on, and soon each of our encounters turned into a mixed blessing. I was delighted to be with her, to feel her soft skin and to drink in her exquisite aroma, but I started to dread the moment every adolescent boy craves, when her hand would work it’s way down my torso and underneath my belt, and discover…nothing. The nothing that gave the lie to my desire. The lack that mocked. I was confused, embarrassed, and depressed, but I couldn’t talk to her about it. I felt awful, but we were still so new to the whole world of sex that it seemed improper to discuss it, as though our minds were unaware of what our bodies were doing, and that if we spoke about it, it would disappear like smoke in the night sky. So we spent that spring running back and forth between first and third, but never making it home. Sorry, Tina, it wasn’t you. It was never you.