but in fact stood there in cold misery. She was so pretty, Carolyn, as pretty as a Playmate. I knew well enough the pleasure she could give as a picture, but what I wanted was the pleasure she could give in person, her soft lips pressed to my lips, her glossy paper body pressed to my body.
If you’d asked me then what love was, I would have replied in terms of a deep, upsetting beauty-hunger, with at its centre, the tang of it, lust; and I would have said that love was my favourite emotion, though I was far less familiar with it than I was with desolation and frustration.
In 1979, at the age of sixteen, I entered Mount Athos School, an all-boys boarding school. This unexpected turn of events came about because the powers that be had decided that there was a need for more women ambassadors, and so my mother had been plucked from relative juniority and appointed Canada’s representative to Cuba. My father, who by then was sick of the civil service and gladly accepted a golden handshake, was going to run from Havana his Ediciones Sin Fronteras/Editions Sans Frontières, which would specialize in the two-way translation of Quebec and Latin American poetry, an affair of little profit but great love. But the rub was that there was no secondary school for foreigners in Castro’s republic. Thus, with funding from the Department of External Affairs, the un-Canadian option of boarding school presented itself.My parents were heart-broken at the idea of being separated from their son, but I jumped at the idea. Boarding school! It set my imagination on fire. What an adventure it would be!
I passed the stone and iron gates of Mount Athos on a sunny September afternoon. I had a trunk and two suitcases, I had a name tag in bright red letters tirelessly sewn onto my every item of clothing by the ambassador-designate to Cuba, I had three new blazers, a smart new trench-coat and a fine selection of my father’s ties, I had bright hopes and great expectations.
The vista that offered itself as we drove up the long, curving driveway was promising: expanses of green lawns and playing fields bordered by great leafy trees, a well-integrated assortment of grey-stone and red-brick buildings, some old, some new, a number of neat gravel paths, a chapel with stained-glass windows, and one large stone cross in the centre of the grounds; and the village we had just come through was one of the prettiest I had seen in central Ontario.
My room, my new home, was a perfectly symmetrical arrangement of two cupboards with drawers, two beds, two desks and two wrought-iron windows with a third-floor view, from atop a hill (the said Mount Athos), of a rolling apple orchard and, in the distance, Lake Ontario. I was assigned the right half of the room. This parcel of territory delighted me. I tested the bed. In my hand I had a thick manila envelope containing all sorts of information on the school, omen of further promise.
I felt my life was beginning.
I don’t have fond memories of my two years at Mount Athos. As a school it was good enough. We learned our calculus andbiology well, that sort of thing. But what I mainly remember is the climate of disrespect that pervaded the institution, a disrespect that often descended into emotional savagery. Just about the only delicacy I can trace to my Mount Athos days is the fact that when I pass through a door I hold it open for anyone coming through behind me.
TWO REASONS WHY I HATE MOUNT ATHOS SCHOOL:
(1) I asked Gordon, the returning boy who was showing me around, what my roommate was like. “Croydon?” he said. “Oh — he’s nice.” But in saying this he looked away. I should have taken note. Instead I rolled this odd name around in my mouth, taking a liking to it, already considering it that of my best friend.
Gordon’s reply contained another sign of things to come: the propensity of boys and masters at Mount Athos to call the boys by their last names. For Croydon was a surname, and Croydon was
If you’d asked me then what love was, I would have replied in terms of a deep, upsetting beauty-hunger, with at its centre, the tang of it, lust; and I would have said that love was my favourite emotion, though I was far less familiar with it than I was with desolation and frustration.
In 1979, at the age of sixteen, I entered Mount Athos School, an all-boys boarding school. This unexpected turn of events came about because the powers that be had decided that there was a need for more women ambassadors, and so my mother had been plucked from relative juniority and appointed Canada’s representative to Cuba. My father, who by then was sick of the civil service and gladly accepted a golden handshake, was going to run from Havana his Ediciones Sin Fronteras/Editions Sans Frontières, which would specialize in the two-way translation of Quebec and Latin American poetry, an affair of little profit but great love. But the rub was that there was no secondary school for foreigners in Castro’s republic. Thus, with funding from the Department of External Affairs, the un-Canadian option of boarding school presented itself.My parents were heart-broken at the idea of being separated from their son, but I jumped at the idea. Boarding school! It set my imagination on fire. What an adventure it would be!
I passed the stone and iron gates of Mount Athos on a sunny September afternoon. I had a trunk and two suitcases, I had a name tag in bright red letters tirelessly sewn onto my every item of clothing by the ambassador-designate to Cuba, I had three new blazers, a smart new trench-coat and a fine selection of my father’s ties, I had bright hopes and great expectations.
The vista that offered itself as we drove up the long, curving driveway was promising: expanses of green lawns and playing fields bordered by great leafy trees, a well-integrated assortment of grey-stone and red-brick buildings, some old, some new, a number of neat gravel paths, a chapel with stained-glass windows, and one large stone cross in the centre of the grounds; and the village we had just come through was one of the prettiest I had seen in central Ontario.
My room, my new home, was a perfectly symmetrical arrangement of two cupboards with drawers, two beds, two desks and two wrought-iron windows with a third-floor view, from atop a hill (the said Mount Athos), of a rolling apple orchard and, in the distance, Lake Ontario. I was assigned the right half of the room. This parcel of territory delighted me. I tested the bed. In my hand I had a thick manila envelope containing all sorts of information on the school, omen of further promise.
I felt my life was beginning.
I don’t have fond memories of my two years at Mount Athos. As a school it was good enough. We learned our calculus andbiology well, that sort of thing. But what I mainly remember is the climate of disrespect that pervaded the institution, a disrespect that often descended into emotional savagery. Just about the only delicacy I can trace to my Mount Athos days is the fact that when I pass through a door I hold it open for anyone coming through behind me.
TWO REASONS WHY I HATE MOUNT ATHOS SCHOOL:
(1) I asked Gordon, the returning boy who was showing me around, what my roommate was like. “Croydon?” he said. “Oh — he’s nice.” But in saying this he looked away. I should have taken note. Instead I rolled this odd name around in my mouth, taking a liking to it, already considering it that of my best friend.
Gordon’s reply contained another sign of things to come: the propensity of boys and masters at Mount Athos to call the boys by their last names. For Croydon was a surname, and Croydon was
Similar Books
