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My mother let out an uncharacteristic chuckle. “Rory, you didn’t have sex. Go to sleep. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Apparently, I had taken “sleeping with” a man quite literally.
“Wait, Mom. You’ll see me in the morning? What are you talking about?”
“You don’t think that you can call me at 2 a.m., confess to having had sex with your counselor, real or not, and then expect that your father and I are going to let you stay at camp? We love you sweetheart, but you must have us confused with a band of hippies.”
And, true to her word, she showed up the next morning at 8 a.m., ready to pack her car with my things and drag me home, even with my tennis career on the line. Crestfallen, but slightly relieved to get away from Bradley, I remained silent as we drove home.
Yet once back at Webberworld, I immediately started wondering if I might have committed an unforced error with Bradley. Maybe I needed to give it another shot.
There was no way to exorcise the adolescent demons begging to break out. Some nights, unable to sleep, I was almost literally going out of my mind...
Over what remained of summer, I hoped that Webberworld could become a place where I’d get some desired attention, but that didn’t happen. My fantasy of elegant partying was a myth, just as my early “sex life” had been such a disappointment. Even my father’s elaborate barbecue remained a silent and untouched witness to the splendor around it.
My mother’s plan all along had been to resist bringing the outside world inside to experience her endless labors. In their paranoia, my parents weren’t just shutting me in; they were shutting themselves off from neighbors and friends. We lived our lives sealed off by an emotional moat, one that only the bravest of boys dared cross.
5. The First Real Boyfriend
Mike Boyd was my first real boyfriend at college and the only guy that my parents knew and liked—even though he wasn’t Jewish—probably because he was a seemingly-mature neighbor’s kid who happened to be a sophomore at the same Ivy League school I was about to enter.
Of course, they thought he was just a happy-go-lucky friend, and they had no idea of his darker and more perverse side. He sported J. Crew shirts and pastel pants along with tasseled loafers and no socks. My mother felt that his preppy ambiance fit perfectly with her vision of my future life.
We had shared literally one romantic moment prior to college. As a high school junior, I was his date at his senior prom, which was held at a country club. On a beautiful balmy night, we’d walked out on the golf course and shared a very brief kiss before I broke away and said, sternly, “Let’s not ruin our friendship.”
I should have stuck with that warning.
When I arrived at college, Mike was a slick and experienced mentor who offered to take me under his rather heedless wing. Little did I suspect—or maybe I did—that every time he saw me back home he had planned to move our relationship into more intimate territory once we were out of town and more independent.
Mike had joined one of those tradition-laden but disorderly fraternities (weren’t they all?). Chugging a few beers with his dates at the keg parties, his prevailing strategy was to woo freshmen coeds who had thrown off parental shackles and were anxious to unhinge sexual inhibitions. Meanwhile, I was trying to focus on my studies in the smug, overbearing way of the Ivy traditions. My study habits, honed in captivity, were still rigorous, despite my sudden liberation.
Yet my hormonally surging body was also responding to this historic moment. In bed in the women’s dorm at night, I was obsessed with a vision of the Roman Colosseum, inhabited by gleaming, muscular gladiators astride prancing stallions. I would be the prize conquest of their fights to the death. Somehow, Mike’s face would appear in those fantasies.
It was my first party at college when we met at his animal house. I must have been looking for someone who was safe, but who had the edge that could take me way out of bounds.
Mike was a couple of brews ahead of me. His eyes locked instantly with mine, and my body, overcoming caution, relished his lustful intent. He was nineteen, but he looked older, rugged, lived-in, and sex-savvy, and he had an air about him that suggested he knew the inside rules of cool in college.
We didn’t talk of Webberworld or our chaste past. We were now more sophisticated and shedding our old skins. For his part, Mike was extremely cunning, funny as hell, and, just under the surface, maybe a bit of a snake, imparting the advanced knowledge that would be my undoing.
Somehow, getting away from home, I had become more attracted to Mike. To me, his craftiness equaled power, and the unique power of the “naughty boy” was the greatest aphrodisiac. We were soon both a bit blotto. Mike dragged me down to the basement, and in a dark corner we began groping each other.
My parents would have had Mike de-testicled and decapitated if only they knew how my “preppy friend” had gone nuclear during our first interaction at college.
Mike started kissing me, first lightly on the lips and then harder on the neck. This wasn’t the down-your-throat style of the tennis counselor at camp. It felt really good, especially as Mike moved behind my sensitive ears.
There was a surge of electricity traveling downward. I could feel the pudendal organs doing a war dance, replete with war paint, inside my midsection.
But just as my whole lower body felt suffused in a warm bath, Mike pulled back.
“Your college education is about to begin,” he warbled.
“I’m ready for graduation—don’t stop,” I begged.
“College Rule Number One,” Mike proclaimed; then he seemed to immediately forget what came next.
“What’s that?” I asked reluctantly, playing along.
“Ah yes. The first rule. Learning how to kiss behind the ear. There’s an art to it. No sucking sounds or breathing outward into the ear canal, and keep the sloppy tongue-work to a minimum.”
