Everything Is Different Now
I closed the door of Jim’s room in the East Tower and moved carefully past Mr. Moore’s room to the top of the stairs. I paused and looked back at the dim space between their rooms. Would Mr. Moore have heard anything? I didn’t know him all that well, but he was close with Jim. I found him a bit daunting. He struck me as professorial, erudite, somewhat aloof. But he had turned me onto In Watermelon Sugar. What would he have thought about what just occurred? Would it have mattered?
The stairs coming down were barely lit from the small windows at each landing. It was well past midnight, and the east wing was silent and empty. I took my time and thought about what Jim and I had talked about over the past weeks. We talked about everything. We had long discussions about religion, philosophy, and of late a lot about psychology. He had lent me a thick college level textbook on the subject. I had sat on the window sill outside his door for hours devouring it.
Jim was far from the only adult I’d grown close to. At each school or camp I was sent off to I invariably gravitated towards my elders. Kids my own age wanted nothing to do with evolution or chemistry or the question of what we were born with and what had been imposed on us. They wanted to talk about sports and being a success in life. They wanted to be exactly what I did not want to be: normal.
So my best friend in those days was Jim. I could share my thoughts and questions on any subject with him. But recently he was having misgivings about a certain topic. At first he wouldn’t explain it. Until then nothing seemed taboo. So I pushed him to explain.
I reached the bottom of the stairs. Instinct told me to go all the way down to the first floor past the offices which would be empty at this hour. I paused as I turned the corner and looked out through the east portico at the building that stood just past it.
The building that housed many of our classrooms was connected by the portico. Ellis Hall was a long tall block of red brick. The main building was a gothic edifice in the shape of a capital E, lying on its side facing north. It had high ceilings, slate mansard roofs, pointed arches, ornate stonework. A few gargoyles keeping their own counsel.
I stood for a moment in the silent hallway. Nearly all the hours of my life for the last three years had been spent within these two buildings, the majority of them a mix of pain and tedium. Jim had been my saving grace, I’d even say savior, the one person who did not see me as an oddball. He recognized my hunger to see past all the bullshit. The best parts of the day would be spent in his classroom, sitting at one of the long lab benches, poring through supply catalogs of fascinating glassware. Some had animals prepped for dissection. I spent days there dissecting the cat Jim had ordered for me.
And in the evenings a note from Jim would liberate me from the purgatory of study hall. We could talk, or sit reading, or we could watch Night Gallery up in his room.
A radiator clanked from somewhere behind me and I turned down into the wide hallway leading to the central wing.
I moved quietly along the corridor, vacant offices to one side, the parlors to the other with their rows of stern portraits standing vigil in near darkness. Those who might judge me slept elsewhere; those who already had, slept endlessly.
I moved quietly but unhurriedly until I came to the foot of the main staircase. Here at the crossing I stopped before ascending. To the north the grand divided staircase, dark wood and ornate ironwork. To the south the grand entranceway. It would not be long before I would pass through those doors for the last time, experienced in ways unimagined by the men who built this place.
I pondered the school as if from outside its gothic hulk. All that brick and stone and its many inscriptions. In Memoriam Alexander Turney Stewart, St. Paul’s patron and benefactor. Ars et Philosophia. Historia et Scientia. Jim had given me all of that. Just not in the manner those Christian gentlemen had in mind.
Another clang from a radiator, this time close by, roused me from my reflections, and I crept up the stairs. As I came to the landing, I kept my head down and peered around the banister, looking up the remaining flight of steps that would bring me to the west wing and the long hallway of dorm rooms. Behind me, the chapel doors were open, and I could just see the rows of wooden pews and the ranks of the organ pipes on either side of the darkened nave.
I kept close to the wall as I ascended. At the top I froze at the sound of another clang. It came from just around the corner. I held my breath. What if one of the masters found me there? I could make an excuse. I thought I heard someone in the chapel, maybe. But the danger I felt was not about discovery. Our secret would remain safe. But what if any of the teachers or the other students did know.
No one would understand, but they all would pass judgment.
The evening would not define me. Jim and I would not try that experiment again. He hadn’t even dared to express his feelings about it. We should not be even talking about such things. It could not happen. Yet I was the one who insisted. I wanted the experience, to know how it felt, what it might mean about who I was going to be.
I waited. All was silent and even the radiators seemed to have settled into a deep sleep. I turned the corner and moved quietly till I came to my room. I pulled the tall door shut behind me, quietly removed my clothes and slipped into bed.
I lay awake almost till dawn. I was glad it happened, it felt like a gift. One of many Jim had given me. It hadn’t felt bad, or wrong, just a little strange. Perhaps just not my thing. I did not feel changed. I was still me.
But the world was not the same. Dawn came and just as I fell asleep I thought: Everything is different now.
As I write this, fifty years have passed since that evening. I spent another semester at St. Paul’s and Jim remained my friend and mentor. We remained as close as ever. He took me to the city to see a movie and we stayed overnight. But we never did what we had done that night. I did not feel the desire for it and he never asked me to.
I stayed in contact with him for a while, some letters, a few phone calls. Eventually I lost touch.
I’ve never been shy about relating this story to friends, even the occasional acquaintance. No one sees it as I do. The consensus is that Jim was wrong to allow it to happen, even that he was perverted, or had perverted me. My memory of it being instigated by me is always doubted, as if I suffered from Stockholm syndrome. It’s not surprising they would see it this way, but they are mistaken.
I almost left this story out. But I could not. Jim was too important to me and to my journey in life.
In preparing to write it down I did some research. I discovered the school had closed. It stands fenced off and abandoned these last thirty years. I found a YouTube video some twenty-somethings had made, having broken into the building. They wandered all over filming as they went. How strange to see it — all those abandoned hallways, rooms strewn with detritus, the small organ I used to play in the chapel, covered in dust, a few keys gone like missing teeth.
I found a Facebook page for alumni. I asked if anyone knew what had happened to Jim. Someone named Lofton responded with the sad news that Jim had passed. This turned out to be Mr. Moore. We traded a few messages. He shared that he and Jim taught at private schools in New York City after St. Paul’s closed. They also traveled together — Switzerland, the Soviet Union, Africa where Jim was happiest. He told me Jim died around 2008 of cancer.
I had not realized how close Lofton and Jim had been. He told me he had roomed with Jim from St. Paul’s onward, in Manhattan and then in Florida where they retired together. I do not know what he knew of our relationship. Would it alter his affection for Jim? I am reluctant to quote his messages directly, but will share this, from the end of his last message to me:
He was my best friend and I still miss him.
Mr. Moore must be in his mid to late eighties. As curious as I am, and as much as I would gladly hear more about Jim and their life together, I feel I must let the past remain abandoned. All that matters is that I honor his memory. I will always miss him. That will never change.