For months now, your loving mod has been meaning to post excerpts from Stephen Fry's wonderful boyhood memoir,
Moab Is My Washpot. But find them and typing them out has been something I've put off until today, when I need to procrastinate on something else!
In Bertie and Jeeves fics there are always references to learning about gay sex at Eton, but how much do we know about it, other than offhand references? Stephen Fry's boyhood richly describes what happened to him throughout his school years. At 13, in the 1960s, Stephen went to a similar public school to Eton, Uppingham, in the 1960s. Prior to that he attended a preparatory school called Stouts Hill, where at 12 years old he learned about the complex way boys looked at "queering":
At my last year at prep school, it had become very much the thing amongst a handful of us in our senior dormitory to do a fair amount of fooling around when the others were asleep. A couple of the boys were equipped with a set of fully operational testicles and bushy pubic undergrowth, others like me were not. I greatly enjoyed creeping over to another boy's bed and having a good old rummage about. I never knew quite what it was I enjoyed, and certainly the first time I saw semen erupt from a penis it gave me the fright of my life.
One of the boys, Halford, like me not fully ripened, took the same pleasure I did in wandering around the school naked. Together we would, with roaring stiffies, or what passed for roaring stiffies in our cases. creep around the bathrooms simply glorying in our nakedness. We might point and prod and giggle and fondle each other a little, and experiment with the that curious squashing of dicks in closing doors and desk lids that seems to please the young, but it was the nakedness and the secrecy that provided all the secrecy we needed.~~~~~
One afternoon, Fry's friend Halford got a cramp in his leg after swimming. Stephen helped him up and walked Halford around the pool until the cramp had gone. Halford immediately streaked away:
As the afternoon wore on, it became apparent to me that I seemed suddenly to have become extremely unpopular. I simply couldn't understand it...It was bewildering, but inescapable: boys were cutting me dead, sneering openly at me, sending me to Coventry and falling suddenly silent when I entered rooms.
Stephen discovers that his friend said Stephen put his around him "like a queer. Halford is hopping mad. He wants to beat you up." Stephen almost faints from terror:
Halford thought I was queer because I had put my arm round him! Put my arm round him to support him! The very same Halford who was wandering naked with me around the bathroom not two nights previously. The Halford who taught me how to shut my cock in a door. The Halford who did a backward somersault naked on the floor at me and pushed his finger up his arse, giggling. He
thought I
was queer?Fortunately, Stephen, weeping, tells the story to the history master, Mr. Bruce. At tea, Mr. Bruce said: "I have a special announcement to make" and praised Stephen for helping Halford. "I am awarding Fry five merits for this sensible, cool action."
...After one and a half seconds of unbearable silence, palms began to rain down congratulatory thumps upon my back, Halford rose sheepishly from his bench to thank me and I was in favour once more.[ ] But does that not tell you something of the psychological minefield one trod through in those days, when it came to questions of sexual nature, of sexuality, as we would say now? The difference between sexual play and queering; the blind terror that physical affection inspired, but the easy acceptance of erotic games.What do you think about this? The next post will be about the first phase of Stephen's time at Uppingham, where he is ashamed of his slow physical development and learns about more games boys play.
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