An Erudite Perv's Reading Journal Part N


by Subedar

The perv has been rereading William Maxwell's The Folded Leaf. Spud and his friend Lymie are pledging a fraternity. They are blindfolded: "He [Spud] was pushed into the straggling line of naked, blindfolded neophytes, between Lymie Peters and Carson. After Carson came Lynch with a bow tie retied around his bare neck. Then Ford, Catanzano, and deFresne-- each with his right hand on the shoulder of the boy ahead of him. They were driven round and round the room, walking, running, hopping on one leg and squatting duck fashion until their knees went soft. They were driven over and under chairs into the next room and out again, to the sound of paddles slapping, feet stomping, voices shouting, the whoosh of a broom descending (on whose buttocks?)and often other inexplicable noises.

The neophytes were only kept on line half an hour. The more refined torment had to be administered singly. Carson wrestled for a long time with temptation. Lynch had to scramble like an egg, and Ford ate a square meal. de Fresne wore the skin off the end of his nose pushing a penny along the red carpet. And Catanzano, who was the biggest of the pledges and played on the football team, had to do as many push ups as he could and then ten more. With the third he felt a hand on the small of his back. The hand pushed down cruelly whenever he pushed up. After a while he collapsed and lay still, not minding the catcalls and obscene noises. He was a wop. His natural place was with the excluded. He was surprised to be here at all.

Lymie read a section of the classified telephone directory with the end of a cigarette directly under his nose. The others were fairly considerate. Lymie without his clothes on looked more delicate than he actually was, and they were afraid of injuring him. Also, they were waiting for Frenchie deFresne. They wanted to see if they could make Frenchie cry.

When it was his turn, they began by beating him with a broom to teach him that no one was kidding. They made him shadow box blindfolded, hitting him occasionally and shoving him so that he scraped his knuckles on the rough plaster wall. They rubbed hard on the short hair at the back of his neck, and also pounded incessantly on his collar bone(this produced an immediate and subtle pain) and made him do alternate kneebends while they counted 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 2, 10, 6, 14, 19, 9. When he had reached what they hoped was a state of physical exhaustion, Ray Snyder shouted, 'Think of a nine letter word starting with the letter S and ending with N or you will be in a hell of a SituatioN. We'll throw you in the SheboygaN river, neophyte. It's _d_a_m_n_ cold in there and no Good SamaritaN can save you from pneumonia. The SuspicioN will be thrown elsewhere, neophyte, so don't try for revenge' - - all the while pounding Frenchie's biceps and slapping his chest. Frenchie couldn't think of any nine letter word starting with S and ending with N, so they slapped him across the face several times. When he flinched, they slapped him harder until he quit flinching. After they had slapped him as hard as they could, fifteen or twenty times on both sides of his face, Frenchie cried and they were free to go on to the next part of the initiation."

Maxwell's novel is full of fathers and sons who are alienated from each other. He makes the interesting point that in "primitive" cultures fathers accompany their sons to initiation rites (like modern fraternity pledging) and this binds them together.

The perv is also reading Harold Nicholson's Some People (1927). Nine year old Harold Nicholson locks his governess Miss Plimsoll into the schoolroom and "flung the key out into the garden. It fell among the arum lilies. I got [into?] a panic after half an hour and asked the footman to help me find it. We searched in vain. My father observed us searching. A locksmith was sent for, Miss Plimsoll was released, and I was beaten with a bamboo riding cane." Unhappily, no pornie details divulged of that beating.


More stories by Subedar