Read Online Honorable Men by Louis Auchincloss - Free Book Online Page B

than Bogart?” he demanded.
    â€œIt isn’t. But God knows what we were before we were Bogarts. And now brace yourself, Tarzan. My old man’s a dentist. And a dentist in Brooklyn, too! I guess the trustees like to use some of their scholarship pennies to give this joint a flavor of democracy. Not too much, of course. Just the right amount.”
    Chip did not think that his parents would take to Chessy, but hadn’t they sent him to Saint Luke’s to meet “different sorts of boys”? He decided to let Chessy join him on weekend bird walks, though the latter seemed to care very little for birds. He did care, however, about sex, and he talked of it with an openness that Chip found exciting. So long as he did not have to respond—and Chessy was perfectly willing to do all the talking—he thought it might be less wicked. Chessy was particularly vivid about the monastic aspects of school life.
    â€œWhat sense does it make to lock us up here, months at a time, with no woman under forty allowed to set foot on campus, except some guy’s sappy kid sister for Sunday lunch? I ask you, Tarzan, have you ever seen such a collection of bilious crones as our cleaning women? They say your grandfather inspects each candidate for the job. That old boy must have a depth of concupiscence to spot so precisely the attributes in a female that would make the most sex-starved boy vomit!”
    â€œI wish you’d leave my grandfather out of it,” Chip retorted. “And I wish you wouldn’t call me Tarzan.”
    â€œIt’s only a pet name. And only in private. I like you, Benedict. You’re naïve, but you’re straight. Which not many guys in this snob academy are.”
    Chip was touched in spite of himself. “I like you, too, Chessy.”
    â€œGood. Maybe we’ll make something of it. What else do they offer us here?”
    â€œI don’t think I follow you.”
    â€œOh, yes, you do, Tarzan. Yes, you do! You’ll be ready for a chimpanzee before the winter’s out. Hell, your grandfather can rumble on till the cows come home about ‘doing dirty things,’ but if he doesn’t let somebody out of this place from time to time, or let somebody in, he can take the consequences. He was young himself once. He ought to know.”
    Chip did not respond to this, and the following weekend he arranged to be too busy in the gym for their walk. Yet he was appalled to find his imagination aflame with the idea of “doing dirty things” with Chessy. At times the erotic images that filled his mind would be so vivid as to make concentration in the classroom impossible, and on one occasion he failed to respond to a master until the latter had thrice called his name.
    â€œCome, Benedict, daydreams, daydreams! The Christmas holidays with all your little girl friends will come around soon enough!”
    The class tittered, but Chessy’s smile was a leer.
    And then one night Chessy slipped into his cubicle and tried to get into his bed.
    â€œGet out of here!” Chip whispered fiercely and swung at him. Chessy dodged, snickered and returned to his own cubicle.
    After this Chip withdrew from all close association with his erstwhile friend. They greeted each other when they passed in the corridors, and they sometimes walked in company from the chapel to the schoolhouse, but Chip kept the conversations brief and impersonal and avoided any reference to the cubicle episode. Chessy, though, seemed to divine that such reticence must mark a major temptation. He would sneak up behind Chip and hiss in his ear: “You know you want it just as much as I do, Tarzan. Why hold out?”
    The riveting, humiliating idea that his weakness had been uncovered, that for all his outer fortitude it was apparent to Chessy that he yearned for another visit to his cubicle, that “Tarzan” was a fraud and a phony who feverishly pined to do everything Chessy wanted to