supplicium post mortem

When I write the phrase little chat, it is usually in upper case, Little Chat. I think you already know what that means. It is probably time I attribute the phrase to its originator. Mark first used, upper case, early in our correspondence, but I incorrectly remember hearing it first in a vignette he wrote for me.

Our email correspondence (until he moved to Gotham) stretches to almost a thousand emails each, almost all of them saved individually in txt files with names like “fmark232.txt” [the 232nd email from Mark to me] or “tomark33″ [my 33rd email to Mark]. As you can imagine, it’s hard to find a reference amongst all that, especially 15 years after the fact.

Tonight I was searching for the text of this Little Chat vignette, which I did using the Search function on my PC. It turned up many emails, and the first one I opened turned out to be the one in which he confessed that he loved me. I barely remember this email, but encountering it again absolutely slayed me. I won’t quote it. My eyes are still swollen.

I did eventually find Mark’s vignette and have posted it below as well as under the Stories tab. The scenario was Mark and Casey at the Lewises. This was an alternate reality to Home School, one we only played a few times. The idea was that Mark and Casey had run away from the Orphanage and had been found and adopted by the Perfect People (Dr. & Mrs. Lewis). I later (or was it earlier?) wrote a companion piece to his vignette, which I also posted under the Stories tab. After reading them both, I feel his is much better: more direct, less fussy and complicated, more spontaneous and full of heart. Looking at both scenarios from far away, I would say that we never lived or much played the letter of them, but the mood and heart of them were a constant feature of our life together, especially Mr. Prior’s life with Casey.

Without further ado, then, here is Mark’s piece, Wednesdays.

Wednesdays

by Mark Hastings

Sundays are for Regulars, for weekly cleaning.  Sundays are always spent together, at the Lewises.  Casey and Mark go to bed sore and peaceful and clean and warm.  Whole.  Sundays are a deep rich blue, the smell of dark polished wood, a full stomach and a feeling of belonging.

By Wednesday, that’s worn off a little.  Mr. Lewis is fond of saying, as he shaves on Wednesday morning, that Wednesday is the worst day of the week. Equidistant from the comfort of weekend.  Neither the residual freshness of Tuesday, or the slight anticipation of Thursday.  Nothing but acres of dullness.  Mrs. Lewis has Commitments on Wednesdays, so supper is usually something cold.  Mark and Casey both have School things that they hate. For Mark, it’s morning gym, ninety minutes of effort with the school Sergeant’s swagger stick flailing its response to slackness, and the inevitability of at least one vault-horse caning, ‘poer incurriger les otters’.   For Casey, double Latin in the afternoon with the psychotically sarcastic Mr. Whitworth, whose greatest pleasure is to decline irregular verbs in time with his strap-strokes, and who makes a virtue of leathering girls just as hard as boys.  Out in front of the class, but facing towards your peers so they are spared the worst witness of unprotected strapping, and can better concentrate on construe.

Mark has learned to avoid the Wednesday vault-horse, and Casey the mid-week strap, because on Wednesday evenings they have their “Little Chat”.

The children do the dishes after supper, while Mr. Lewis goes to his study, and Mrs. Lewis rests up.  There is a sense of anticipation, although it isn’t the edginess of Sunday, before the Regulars, because often a Little Chat is just that.  Even so, the dishes get done well, and quietly, on the whole, on Wednesdays.  Mark and Casey smarten themselves up, and jaunt carefully along the downstairs corridor to the study.  Sometimes Mrs. Lewis joins them, sometimes not.

Little Chats are lucky-dippy.  In the months since Casey’s arrival they have ranged from a particularly uncomfortable interview over a broken ornament (Casey), cleverly replaced on its shelf (Mark) and not discovered broken for some time afterwards (Mrs. Lewis), to a riotous game of Racing Demon in which Mr. Lewis was heard to swear when Casey stole his Ace of Spades, was sent to the corner by his family and threatened with a very hard whacking by Mark if he ever did it again.  On average, one or both of the Lewises feel that one or both of the children would benefit from a little additional discipline perhaps one week in two.

Little Chat discipline is always the same – slipper, paddle or hand, administered in traditional manner, across the knee of the parent in the clock-ticky quiet of Mr. Lewis’s study.  It’s very different from Regulars. Canes, birches, crops and straps are banned.  Punishments are measured in minutes, rather than strokes.  Usually either a Quin, being–as Casey might explain–five minutes, or a Dix, being ten.  Mark hates Dixes, with a passion, especially when they’re paddle, and administered by Mrs. Lewis. Casey has mixed feelings about the whacking, but she loves the closeness and warmth of Little Chats, the fire glowing orange while the wind blows white outside on winter Wednesdays.

So, Wednesdays are made red, a smell of incense, a little adventure, and fun.

Think you?

He wasn’t a relative. He wasn’t her godfather. He wasn’t even her guardian, but she’d been sent to stay with him in his rambling, damp house on Galway Bay. She was to call him Professor, and he spent much of his time like the professor in the Narnia books, locked away pursuing unfathomable and possibly magical matters.

The Professor lived with an Irish Setter—mad, soppy, antic. They took long daily walks and expected her to accompany them. Over the Burren, along the shore, up Connemara hills, in rain, in sun, in gale they walked.

He had no patience for petty regulations of the modern world. He bought his meat from a butcher out of the back of his farm, not licensed, but extraordinarily fresh and good. His milk came from a neighbor’s cow, his eggs from chickens down the lane. The hysterical alarms of contemporary life—H1N1, salmonella, pedophiles, climate change—meant nothing to him.

He did insist on certain courtesies. When he entered the room, she was to stand. When granted admission to his study, she was to give a small bow, more appropriate to a German schoolboy, she thought, than to an orphaned American girl. And when something she said or did indicated to him, by whatever mysterious code, that she required discipline, he administered it after the method of his childhood, with a slipper across his knee, or a worn leather strap. It was better, he said, all of it. More healthy, more traditional, more human.

Read the other folks writing this week:

• Travis King
• Rafi

Those of you who follow me on Twitter will be sick to the back teeth by now of hearing about the great bookcase cleaning-and-reorganization of 2009. I was so physically exhausted yesterday that my legs and arms were trembling. Some of this was the exertion of assembling, moving, and improvisationally securing to wall of the newest overflow bookcase. But otherwise it was a day filled with lifting, reaching, humping, etc. The rule for the day was to finish everything I started, on the spot. I have a deep-seated habit of leaving things almost-done. I’m trying to retrain myself.

I never listen to the radio except in the car, but yesterday I put on WCBS FM and was treated to great music from “the sixties, seventies, and eighties.” The music plus the work took me back to all the move-packing I did in high-school and college, as well as memories of moving into my current home at age 24. I made myself throw away M’s scratched plastic sunglasses (which resided on the bookcase), and this only enhanced the sensation of living some past identity. I really do not want to go back to my 20’s, to that person whose “family” was my mom, brother & sister, dad & stepmother. You could not pay me enough money to relive ages 15-25. Yet here I am, as aimless as I was then, but with more responsibilities. Actually, I had more aim then. I was going to be a famous theater director. Then I was going to be a famous writer. The fact that these are no longer my aims does not translate to failure in my mind, but success – in escaping the grip of my childhood worship of Accomplishment. Today what I want is the Real Deal in my personal life, a family of my own, a vibrant spiritual life, and the space and permission to write all the books that are in me. To be honest, I wouldn’t mind being a famous writer, but the best kind of famous for me would be 1) making sufficient money from it; 2) being known and respected enough to be asked to read and speak places; 3) being known and respected enough not to have to shop my  projects around. I would not want to be famous like, say, Neil Gaimon and have a frantic, celebrity life that required an assistant. I would never want to be famous enough to have the media pry into my personal life.

The bookcase reorg. project had begun months ago, but yesterday I woke up to find that TL had written on the board, “Wednesday is Procrastination Busting Day.” Oh, brother. To hear her tell it, if you quit procrastinating, things take a lot less time than you feared. In reality, the bookcases took a lot longer than I feared, which – Newsflash TL! – is why I procrastinate in the first place. But here’s the kicker: I’m in the shower at 9.30 pm after 13 hours of work, hardly able to stand up (pity party!), and there’s this voice saying, Ok but you still haven’t made any progress with the book project (a typesetting job that has nothing to do with the bookcase reorg). And as much as cdm would like to whine and say this voice belongs to TL, it really doesn’t. In reality TL was saying: Well done, Casey. Things look great. You worked so hard today and I’m very impressed with your determination. Ice-cream tomorrow! Casey did not hear this, however. Casey only heard: You’re still not doing enough. It was this same, sinister voice, I suspect, that panicked us as we tried to fall asleep with worries about what on earth we will do when one day we have to pack up this whole house and move somewhere else.

RP and M were onto this demon, and managed Casey with it in mind. Hence rules #2 and #3. Casey’s four rules, by the way:

1. Be honest about feelings and needs.
2. Be kind to yourself.
3. Do what you want, not what you should.
4. Ask other people what they feel, don’t decide things for them.

Yesterday, I was capable of identifying that demon, intellectually rejecting the way it wanted to poison a day’s hard work, but I wasn’t able to dispute with it vigorously, as RP could. I had no sword, no chariot, no bow. I had no one valiant on my side.

I did come across some very old dockets. I think these were something M produced before we got the docket book. They date from the first autumn of his residence here in Gotham, my first as a full-time teacher. What they were doing tucked away in the memoir of a neurosurgeon, I have no idea. Seeing his handwriting, even only his initials, is worse even than seeing his photograph. Why should his writing persist when he can’t? Clearly, I am nowhere near being ready to tackle the Basement Reorg. or the Man-closet Cleanout.

The last docket appears to have been issued by a choleric and muddled member of staff at St. Mary’s. Click to see the back. I don’t remember the story behind this one, but I think RP ended the escalating drama by informing Casey he’d called Miss K, sorted her out, and would now be sorting Casey out, ha ha. I like his little “as discussed” on the back.  November 6, 1996 looks to have been a train-wreck of a day. Eventually, RP stopped biting at things like a pile of dockets and just did what was required to stop the downward spiral. Sigh.

—A word of advice, before we let you loose on the beasts.

—Sir?

—Take the stick to someone the first or second day. Find the leader, and find a reason to cane him. When you do, cane hard.

—How hard?

—Too hard. Gets the message out. And you don’t want him coming back for more.

—What message, sir?

—That you’re not to be trifled with.

—Ah.

—Now then, take that, and that, standard issue. Practice. I recommend a pillow set about yea high.

—Yes, sir.

—When it comes to the act, for Heaven’s sake take your time. Observe all the regular ceremonies.

—Which are?

—Make the boy remove his jacket. Have him stand before you, look him in the eye, and announce the sentence in full.

—I’m giving you six?

—That’s rather prefectorial and brief. Better: Carleton minor, you have been insolent and self-indulgent mucking about in my lesson. You are now going to receive four strokes of the cane. Bend over.

—A bit artificial, isn’t it?

—Not at all. But make sure you hold the boy’s eye the whole time. If he looks away, make him look back.

—Right.

—Take time positioning him. For three or four strokes, you can have the boy touch his toes, but for anything more, it’s better to give him something to hold onto. If he seems overconfident, adjust his posture. Make him feel he’s conforming to your standards, not the other way round.

—Right.

—For the caning itself, you’ll hear every sort of opinion, but it is my long experience that slow is best. Count at least to ten between strokes, preferably twenty. You want him to have the full experience, remember.

—Yes, sir.

—Don’t let him get up until told, and of course observe the standard ceremonies afterwards, handshake, etc. When the boy says Thank you, don’t say You’re welcome. A simple nod is best. Whatever you do, don’t jaw him again.

—I used to hate that.

—Everyone does. Once the punishment’s given, it’s done and dusted. Full stop. And don’t tell him you hope you won’t have to do it again. Refrain from commenting altogether, unless a pithy Well stuck is merited.

—Right.

—You ought to stick to the cane, I think, but if it seems appropriate, you could put a third former across your knee for the slipper. I’d only do this in private, though, and be aware that he will feel the humiliation keenly. I think it’s best to avoid the slipper altogether this term, however.

—If you say so, sir.

—I hope you aren’t humoring me, young man. I know of what I speak! A good caning is one of the most fundamental sizings up there is between men and boys. Respect it.

—Oh, I do. But, sir… I feel I should level with you.

—How so, young man?

—I feel I must tell you that I am opposed to corporal punishment entirely. On grounds of conscience.

—Oh, yes? And how do you intend to maintain order?

—With clear expectations, praise, force of personality, and other non-physical sanctions.

—Right, well, I’m sure that will be a roaring success. But not unless you cane—effectively—at least one boy from every form. Once you’ve done that, you can use any methods you please.

—Is that an order, sir?

—Oh, don’t bristle, young man. I’ve said you won’t be persecuted for those beliefs of yours. Though how a Marlborough prefect wound up a white-feather man is a confounded mystery.

—So I’m told, sir.

—Right, then. To sum up: cane early, cane hard, observe ceremony. Never punish in anger, in haste, or in confusion. Clear?

—Crystal, sir.

—Then kneel, young man. And rise. Your rod and your staff. Go forth and educate.

Microfantasy Monday is the brainchild of the Sweltering Celt. The theme this week is ceremony. Congratulations to Ang & Doc on their wedding!

—Bring him here.

—Let me go!

—Shan’t. You’re a horrid, dirty boy spying on us.

—He saw us the whole time.

—He saw our knickers!

—Let’s pluck out his eyes.

—Let’s feed him to the Germans.

—Quiet, all of you. He’s got to have a proper trial. Right then, you, what do you have to say for yourself?

—Cat got your tongue?

—Not so clever now, is he?

—Order! Nothing to say…? Then the court finds you guilty of espionage in the first degree. And public lewdness.

—I wasn’t lewd!

—Shut up. It’s time to discuss your punishment.

—Let’s tell his Headmaster. He’ll get the cane.

—Let’s tell his dad. He’ll get it unprotected.

—If we tell his mum, he’ll get the hairbrush first.

—Mum said he’d get the strap as well if there was any more nonsense.

—Traitor!

—Should’ve seen him last night in the air raid shelter.

—If you say one word—

—Ow, Mum, please! Mummy! And that was just the slipper.

—I’m going to kill you, I am.

—No you aren’t, boy. You’re going to listen to us. The court will consider a gesture of compassion.

—Well, what?

—Sulking isn’t done, you know.

—If you agree not harm the witness here, now or ever, and if you agree to accept the punishment of the court, we will keep this matter amongst ourselves.

—What’s the punishment of the court, then?

—Three from each of us, with this.

—But that makes…

—Don’t strain yourself calculating. It’s that or we tell your mum, your dad, and your Headmaster.

—That’s not fair!

—Your choice.

—You’re evil, you are.

—Insulting the court will get you nowhere.

—If I agree, then that’s an end to it? You won’t tell anyone else?

—Right.

—What about the boys?

—No-one.

—Well…

Microfantasy Monday is the brainchild of Sweltering Celt. The theme this week via ButchtasticKyle was espionage.

She wasn’t a rower. Those people were beyond her in every way, more fit, more popular, more everything. She could scarcely do pull-ups at PE. He didn’t row either – that boy Andrew, from her class – until this summer.

From the slope above the tow-path, she watched as he dragged himself to the boathouse at dawn and every afternoon at four. She’d gone initially to watch him, but now she set her alarm as much to see the one who met him there. This other boy’s name she knew; everyone knew it – James. He’d been star of their rowing team until he left to row for Oxford. Now he rowed beside Andrew, his muscles flexing beneath the singlet he wore, held together at the shoulder with a safety pin. Through the binos she could see the scar on his forearm. There’d been a motor accident in his Upper Sixth year. He’d been dragged three hundred yards along the M25. He was lucky, they said.

She killed the mosquito on her cheek and trained the binos down into the boathouse. The sun cast long shadows through the windows. The path was clear, the evening still; their voices carried up the slope. He was berating Andrew now, as he often did, for his lack of effort. Andrew’s father hadn’t hired him to waste time, but to train Andrew up. Andrew shuffled and bent reluctantly over the scull. James held the back of his neck and raised a slipper. She watched.

Read other folks writing this week:

• Travis
• Frenchie
• PapaTomLA
• Rafi

— So what do you make of the new boy, day two?

— Titchy one? Not much.

— Really?

— Haven’t had a chance, honestly. Second XI are driving me right round the bend.

— Ah.

— Clearly you’ve made something of him, though. Speak.

— Promising, we think.

— On or off the pitch?

— Both.

— Go on.

— We-ell…he gives off like he doesn’t know he’s born, but.

— Mettle?

— In spades, I’d wager. Had to umpire the Third this afternoon.

— Oh, and you suffered.

— Hideously! But as for yon tadpole, he’s a straight bat.

— Wake me in a year’s time.

— Should’ve seen his face when he was dismissed.

— Oh?

— Positively sulked. Scrumptious.

— Dear me. We can’t be doing with poor sports in this house.

— Certainly not.

— Where’s he now? At nets?

— Bound to be.

— Send him up. As he is. And before you think it, you can make yourself scarce.

— Glutton! If you’re going to get those flannels down, the least you can do is let me watch.

— Filthy boy. Impatient boy.

— Guilty.

— The flannels may or may not come down, but the only thing he’ll feel today is the sole of my slipper.

— Today.

— Vive hodie. Leave tomorrow to develop itself.

— Oh, the developments!

— Get out, you. Out.

You know how it can take years to get a reference, or even realize there is one to get? Even at my advanced age (ahem), I can still be blown away by my ignorance. This Monday, exiting the British Museum (as you do when you’re in Englandland, and find to your appalled surprise that the reading room is closed until 2012!), I saw an ice-cream van. It looked like this, minus Rupert Grint, sadly.

So, finally, I got the joke. Lemme splain:

Back in the day (13 years + ago), Marky & I used to be friends with a venerable English m/m top called Mr. Penn. Mr. Penn was IRL a retired school teacher, in addition to being an encyclopedic top. We did a day of school with him on two occasions (once on April Fool’s Day – poor him!). Mr. Penn knew the score in every way, but of course we made fun of him when he was out of the room for his particular verbal tics, and his rather twee way of referring to some of his implements. He called his favorite cane Mr. Whippy. If you carry on with that, Hastings, you’ll have an appointment with Mr. Whippy! he’d threaten. Marky would snigger. The whole time I just thought this was some babyish nickname, plus I thought personifying one’s implements was gay. Now it turns out I was missing the point. Doh.

But speaking of Mr. Whippy, I would quite like to see Rupert bending over for Mr. Penn. He would  be made to improve his schoolwork and not drop out at 16, make movies, and buy ice-cream trucks. I still remember how to spell government after hearing Mr. Penn’s voice drum it into me (and into my bottom with his slipper). TGI works, kids!

[This deals with characters introduced in this unfinished story. Thanks to Mija and Pablo for title inspiration!]

St. Cecelia’s School
Wednesday after Candlemas

The two fourth graders did not see it coming. One moment they were shouting across the dinner table, and the next they were being hauled by their collars from the refectory. Rex Traherne and Colin Cowley stumbled but did not fall. Father Donne kept them both upright even as he pulled them off balance. Across the main corridor they tripped until they landed together on the sofa outside Father Donne’s office. Disoriented and strangely breathless, they looked up at him. Face flushed, he pressed his lips together as if he didn’t trust himself to speak. Rex opened his mouth, but before any words came out, Father Donne pointed a silencing finger at him. Rex closed his mouth, and so did Colin. Father Donne inhaled and straightened his jacket. Then he lunged forward, lifted Rex from the sofa, and deposited him in the club chair on the other side of the room. With an unspeaking glare at each of them, he left.

***

Donne regained his composure, as much as was possible, in the brief walk back to the refectory. When he stepped inside, the room fell silent. Six tables craned their necks to look at him, and beyond him out the door.

“Carry on,” he said mildly. “Nothing to see here.” He resumed his place and continued serving the sliced apples which composed dessert that evening.

“Sir? Sir, what happened?” the boys at his table chorused. “What did Rex and Colin do?”

“Nothing to do with you,” Donne replied curtly. “And I suggest you keep your voices down.”

The refectory that evening had been louder than any in the term. The walk back from evensong had been a nightmare, with boys mucking about while crossing busy streets, Traherne and Cowley chief amongst them. Donne had had to stop the crocodile, issue demerits, and rebuke the lot of them right in front of the CNN ticker. It had been dark and rainy. He had been afraid for their safety. Back at the school, the boys had been permitted by the matrons to come to supper in their pyjamas. Donne considered this enormously scruffy and bad for discipline – particularly considering the study hall they had to get through afterwards – but apparently changing into pyjamas was tradition on nights when they were caught unexpectedly in the rain. He bowed to convention, but he did not like it.

And already, before he’d even finished serving dessert, the volume in the room had risen again. He scooped the last of the apples onto a plate, and caught the eye of Felix Marvell, his senior prefect. Felix set down the banana he was peeling and met Donne by the toasters.

“Felix,” Father Donne said, “Will you and Theodore please help settle this lot down? The fourth grade in particular are behaving appallingly.”

“Yes, sir,” Felix replied. “What’s up with Rex and Colin?”

“I’ll sort them out before prep,” Donne replied. “Hopefully it will have a salutary effect on the others.”

“Do you mean sort out, like you sorted Theo out, sir?”

Donne concealed his surprise. “Yes.”

“Cool, sir.”

Father Donne did not know what to make of his prefect’s idiom. “Carry on, Marvell,” he said wearily.

“Yes, sir!” Felix chirped.

Donne watched Felix and Theodore Marvell work their respective brands of persuasion. Felix gripped a third grader by the upper arm – with more force than Father Donne could plausibly employ – and with all the power of his personality instructed the imp to calm down. Theodore had left his own table, installed himself at the one farthest from Donne, and was confiscating uneaten dessert from raucous boys. The edge came off the volume. Donne stood up from his table, deputized the nearest eighth grader to say grace, and departed.

Outside in the corridor he felt a wave of nerves, as he always used to feel before administering punishment, back when he dealt regularly with boys. He wished he could board the elevator and retreat to his rooms, kneel in the corner of his sitting room, and ask the Lord for guidance, and fortitude. Fortitude, he was beginning to think, was a forgotten virtue. He had defined it that Sunday to the confirmation class as the strength to do that which was necessary, particularly when you didn’t feel like doing it. That, he knew, was only part of its meaning. Fortitude was also the strength of mind needed to bear pain or unpleasantness with courage. In the cool corridor, he gazed at the cross hanging above the refectory door. The problem waiting for him in his office was a minor discipline issue involving two basically decent nine-year-old boys, the kind of thing he had dealt with regularly in his youth, as a father and prep school master. That, however, had been decades ago. Lifetimes. Despite his encounter the other night with Theodore Marvell, Donne still felt strangely ill-equipped to manage boys of the present day. Nevertheless, he recalled the slogans that echoed in London during his own boyhood in the decade after the Blitz. Keep calm, and carry on. He buttoned his jacket, hoped for fortitude, and repaired to his office.

read the rest of the story

I think it happened during M’s second visit to Gotham, about six weeks after his first. There was a lot of tgi during the trip, a lot of scenes, a lot of exploring what it was like to inhabit all these characters. The scenario was Mark and Casey were at “College,” a standard issue English Public School, in RP’s House with TL as the assistant housemaster. Casey was being provocative about so many things, and one I think was the issue of bedtime. I remember TL advising RP that if Casey (who at this time was 15ish and in the 5^th form – ha, what a joke!) was going to behave like a ten-year-old and not go to bed when she ought, then perhaps he should treat her that way. RP replied that she was definitely going to have a spanking for the bedtime issue, but he was more unsure about other matters with her. They discussed it more. And underneath the role of TL, I was burning all over my skin because I was so very ambivalent about that type of punishment. My line had thus far been – I only do English school discipline because it’s so unlike my own experience, and anything like my own experience is a turn-off. But here was RP announcing that an otk slippering was a perfectly natural matter of course that he was accustomed to taking when occasion demanded.

So, fast-forward, Casey got the slippering (across pyjamas), followed by a few strokes of the dorm cane unprotected (also the first time she received anything unprotected, which powerfully pushed against my/her excessive American modesty. When I was growing up, just having anyone see your underpants was enough to make you die of shame. cf. M’s English schoolboy upbringing where communal nudity was the norm, and his attitude that if anyone wanted to see his willy, it was a nice one and they could see all they wanted. Ha ha.) Long story short, this scene freaked Casey out so much that she decided to run away from College. She packed a knapsack. She was going to the airport. She was going to buy a plane ticket to Bolivia (where she’d visited once). She was escaping.

Scenes over, M and I go to sleep. In the middle of the night, though, Casey wakes up and sneaks out of the house. It was mild (for October) and wet out, that kind of warm, misty rain. The avenue outside the door was devoid of traffic, quiet, lit by yellow lamps. Casey – exhilarated – sprinted down the street, free!

Here’s where the extraordinary strangeness of playing kicks in, as anyone who’s really played will understand. At the corner: Casey out, another character in. Someone puts a quarter in the payphone (1995, ha ha), and dials a number which looks like my home number, but which is the number for College. It rings and rings, and for a while I wonder if he’ll answer it. Eventually, he picks up my ringing phone. Someone on my end asks for Mr. Prior and announces herself as Officer something. She’s found a runaway from his school, she thinks. He can come collect her at the station. Er…where is that, exactly, he asks? The officer gives helpful directions (go to x street, turn right, turn left at y street, one block up on the left). They ring off.

casey's rock (in daytime obv)

Casey, dejected, captured, makes her way to the appointed meeting point, perches on a large rock, and buries her head in her arms. Such despair. Such loneliness. Such longing.

And before too long, the footsteps of Church’s shoes are heard on the sidewalks of Gotham, and RP in his tweed jacket is walking towards her. He puts his hands in his pockets, stands near, and tells her gently to come on. She comes. They walk side by side, not touching, back to College in the mild, misting rain.

Inside, he tells her to change back into her pyjamas. She almost protests – I’m not staying! – but she doesn’t. He brings her a glass of water in the blue glass and sits next to her at the table. They talk, and she cries and cries.

What was it about that scene that made her cry so much? It was a few hours after her first otk experience, which deep down was what she needed and craved, even if she felt compelled to fight it to the point of trying to run away. Then there was the fact that RP was passing this test she’d unconsciously set for him. He’d come for her – out in the rain in the middle of the night, three blocks away to the big rock outside the “police station” [public library]. M was passing a test, too. He’d picked up a ringing telephone in a strange house in the middle of the night and answered the call to a scene – out in the rain in a foreign town, any time, anywhere, anyhow. No flinching, no hesitation, no limits on what he was prepared to play with me when summoned. And RP was handling Casey right, gently but firmly. There was no question of whacking her then, but neither was he backing away from what he’d done. I can’t really remember what he said or what she said, but I remember a lot of tears across the kitchen table, and on some level it was an admission of how much RP meant to her – and M to me. It was one episode in a long line of givings-in to that huge, drowning love.