"Ben Jeapes - Pages Out Of Order" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jeapes Ben)

university. In fact ..." He looked about, as though afraid of
eavesdroppers, though no one else could be in the same room. "... in fact,
and if you repeat this to anyone else you die, you remember Evans?"
"Yeah." Our school's rugby hero had left at the end of the last year for
Cambridge.
"I happen to know that he and Gale ... well, did it, as t'were, last year.
Or rather, Gale had it done to him, and found he liked it. And he has, so
to speak, done it with a couple of other boys too. And I'm not just
talking adolescents tossing each other off, I'm talking the whole hog."
"No!" I was shocked, horrified, fascinated, and I wanted to know
everything. It didn't occur to me to doubt him. "How do you know."
"Because he ... has told me. And, no Will, I'm not telling you who the
others are. You'd refuse to go in the showers with them if you knew."
There was a look in his eye -- a cold look, as if he was challenging me to
disbelieve him, and I didn't dare.
"You sound as if you don't mind," I said.
"Mind?" He seemed to muse on it. "I suppose I mind sixth formers buggering
third formers, but on the other hand, why fight what's inevitable?"
"I can't believe it!"
"It's understandable," he said. "These are the most potent years of our
life, Will, did you know that? You and I should be out there spreading our
seed about and instead we're here with nowhere to spread it except each
other."
This conjured up an image so revolting that it wasn't difficult to push it
away. Without looking up from his work, Tom carried on:
"And we're cooped up here with nothing but other boys for company, if
we're seen talking to a girl it's regarded as subversive and unnatural,
and they're surprised when places like this get a reputation as hotbeds of
buttocks and buggery. You wait 'til I'm dictator, Will. The public school
system will burn. It serves no useful purpose and gives its victims grief
for the rest of their lives."
"So--" I said, but there was no stopping him now.
"Anyone who has ever sent an adolescent to a single sex boarding school
will be forcibly confined in a room with members of whichever gender they
would least like to shag, and pumped full of hormones until they feel
they'll burst if they don't have it off with someone. Let them see how
they like it."
"I don't understand you, Tom."
He looked up at me and gave that grin again. His usual confidence.
"You will."

Fifth form, Spring term, 1981
In the fifth form, I got expelled.
Towards the middle of the year, with "O" level exams looming, the school
was hit by a drinking spree. Getting paralytic was the trendy thing to do.
When, for three weekends running, boys had been hospitalised for alcohol
poisoning, the headmaster made a speech to the whole school. Just
possessing the stuff was to be an expulsion offence. That was all.
Two boys from our year were expelled a fortnight later, for just that
crime. Tom, in public, was as shocked as the rest of us. Privately, he was