Capitalism Imperfectly Understood

Contents

Author’s Foreword

Prologue:

Chapter I:

Chapter II:

Chapter II I:

Chapter IV:

Chapter V:

Chapter VI:

Chapter VII:

Chapter VIII:

Chapter IX:

Chapter X:

Chapter XI:

Chapter XII:

Chapter XIII:

Chapter XIV:

Chapter XV:

Chapter XVI:

Chapter XVII:

Chapter XVIII:

Chapter XIX:

Chapter XX:

Chapter XXI:

Chapter XXII:

Chapter XXIII:

Chapter XXIV:

Chapter XXV:

Chapter XXVI:

Chapter XXVII:

Chapter XXVIII:

Chapter XXIX:

Chapter XXX:

Chapter XXXI:

Chapter XXXII:

Chapter XXXIII:

Chapter XXXIV:

Chapter XXXV:

Chapter XXXVI:

"Capitalism is what the people with all our money,

drunk or sober, sane or insane, decided to do today."

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Hocus Pocus, 1990.

This novel is dedicated to Mary Lou and Neil Edward, whom

I imagine laughing in the hereafter. What fools these mortals be.

Author’s Foreword

Although completed in 2011, this novel was written in large part over a period of 25 years, the 1980’s, 1990’s, and the first five years of the twenty-first century. It was my habit while practicing law to write in a Journal every other day or so, noting current events and outlining characters and plot lines for novels that I hoped to be able to complete someday. When I was finally able to organize my material in 2010-11, this book thus was already largely written in rough draft. It was mostly a matter of putting the pieces of the puzzle together, and updating.

The major theme of this novel is the interplay between the powers of denial and rationalization. My protagonist, Simon, is not inherently evil; he simply wants to succeed in life financially. He makes the most out of the hand life has dealt him in those terms.

I hope this story will resonate today, in an era when so many brilliant young people especially face enormous obstacles in attaining the American Dream. Some will consider Simon’s story cynically realistic and a path to success, while others will consider it a cautionary tale, a warning of what we all could become if we place worldly success above all.

For Simon’s world is much like our own, even though he lives in an alternate universe, one in which Wisconsin is spelled Ouisconsin, an older, more Gallic version of a Native American word. His world parallels ours, but with significant differences. Somewhere in the past society took a slightly different turn. I use this conceit to emphasize the fictional nature of the work. Although historical and even still living public figures are mentioned from our world, Wisconsin, and exist in both worlds, so are entirely fictional people, including my protagonist and his circle of friends and cohorts, who exist only in Ouisconsin.

By describing this alternate world, I also hope to illustrate how individual actions can impact history in a major way. I am reminded of Winston Churchill’s narrow escape from death in a 1931 taxi cab accident in New York City. Had he been killed, on May 10, 1940, Viscount Lord Halifax would have become Prime Minister of Britain. Lord Halifax was known for wanting out of an unwinnable war with Germany, and would have made peace with Hitler after the fall of France. As a direct result, Germany might have won the war.

Our lives often hang by a single thread, and we are all intertwined. Sometime in the past just such an event created Ouisconsin as distinct from our beloved Wisconsin. Much more than a mere difference in spelling for the name of our state was the result.

Atty. Richard J. Bisbee

Platteville, Wisconsin

August, 2011

Prologue:

The Time Capsule

Madison, Ouisconsin, July 14, 2051—The Worldwide Web reports that during the demolition of the old Executive Residence, better known as the Governor’s Mansion, located at 99 Cambridge Road in the Village of Maple Bluff, Ouisconsin, a suburb of the state capital, a secret vault was uncovered in the basement of the edifice. In a worldwide media event reminiscent of the April 21, 1986 live television broadcast titled, The Mystery of Al Capone’s vault hosted by the late Geraldo Rivera, the Maple Bluff mansion’s vault was opened during a live broadcast on the universal neuronetwork. Over a billion people tuned in. Unlike Al Capone’s vault, located in the old Lexington Hotel in Chicago, the Maple Bluff vault contained a type of time capsule, which included a secret journal maintained by a long series of Ouisconsin Governors, and various unpublished manuscripts, including the two volume Memoir of a little known onetime Ouisconsin attorney who years before had been a longtime resident of The Milwaukee Nervous Hospital.

No further details are available. For at the moment the documents, printed on a type of paper that is no longer manufactured, were confiscated by the FBI as property of the federal state. No reason or legal basis was given. An immediate electronic appeal to a federal court was quashed on the grounds of national security. It is thought that Roan E. Garland, Governor of Ouisconsin from 2015-2021, and President of the United States from 2021-2029 is involved both as one of the journal writers and as the subject of several manuscripts written by the unknown attorney who reportedly is still alive and living in the Milwaukee area at over one hundred years of age. The National Security Agency has not released any official statements or reasons why documents written by and about a U.S. President before his federal service should be classified as state secrets.

The Governor’s Mansion is being rebuilt and modified to conform to the latest energy and security standards. Located on the shore of Lake Mendota, it is only one of three official state governor’s residences in America that is not located within its state’s capital city, the others being Drumthwacket, located in Princeton, New Jersey, instead of Trenton, and the Ohio Governor’s Mansion, located in the suburb of Bexley, instead of Columbus.

Construction on the original home started in 1920 for Madison industrialist Carl A. Johnson as a private residence. Twelve years later, it was purchased by Thomas R. Hefty, a Madison banker, who sold it to the state of Ouisconsin in 1949. Architect Frank Riley of Madison designed the mansion in the southern Classical Revival style. His original design is being preserved as far as that is possible with the current re-construction. Set on 3.7 acres along Lake Mendota, the mansion includes 34 rooms and 7 fireplaces. The wrought-iron fence on the street side of the property originally surrounded the original State Capitol Building. The original mansion was a wood framed structure with painted stucco over sandstone and hollow clay tile face. The wood is being replaced with modern composite building materials that should last indefinitely. The mansion will remain three stories high, but its original basement is being modernized. The seven major garden areas, including a screened-in gazebo and winding walkways to the lake shore will also be preserved.

In addition to state monies, private funds are used to maintain the premises. The Ouisconsin Executive Residence Foundation, a non-profit, raises additional funds not provided by the state. It was established in 1964 by the Legislature at the request of Dorothy Knowles, the wife of Governor Warren Knowles.

For awhile, the Knowles lived in the then old Governor’s Mansion in Madison while the Maple Bluff residence was being renovated. That structure, located at 130 East Gilman Street in Madison, still stands amid other magnificent old homes in the Mansion District.

Morality is herd instinct in the individual.

Friedrich Nietzsche,

The Gay Science, section 116

Chapter I:

My life story would be trivial and of little interest were it not for my relationship with Nikolai, the Georgian. That much is clear. I include the following autobiographical material merely by way of introduction and to explain if that is possible why I did what I did, and did not do what I should have done at an earlier date. As humans our basic motivations are universal but also singular. We all share the same basic impulses and motivations, but also are driven by biological forces peculiar to each. Our life experiences, our environment if you will, determines how these basic needs and wants are expressed and fulfilled.

But enough abstraction. I was born in a small town in Ouisconsin on July 14, 1951, Bastille Day, a national holiday in France. I am of mixed European ancestry, including some French. From a very early age, I felt estranged from life, only too well aware of its absurdities. Indeed, I was a frank breach birth: I came into this world ass first. I think that sums up my attitude from the start. Years later I would imagine that I did not want to be born into this corrupt world of materialism. That even in the womb I had intuited its base and evil nature.

But I was never an atheist. From an early age I had an intuitive understanding of the Divine, the spirit world. I imagined myself saying upon birth, Why have I been summoned forth into this world of evil materiality? Long before I could read, I was a Gnostic. I later discovered gnostic writings which merely reaffirmed that which I already believed.

Gnosticism comes from the Greek gnosis which means knowledge. Gnostics believe that humans are divine souls trapped in the ordinary or material world which was created by an imperfect spirit called the Demiurge. The ultimate God who is perfect and thus good can only be known through the mind. In the first few centuries after Christ, Gnostic sects were common among Christians. But they were eventually persecuted by the dominant Roman Catholic Church and disappeared until the Reformation.

The important point is that from the beginning I regarded this world we live in as evil and somehow temporary and but a shadow of our true spiritual nature. Very Platonic. The fact that I am neither an atheist nor a Satanist is important in this story. Much of what happened was the result of the inherent corrupt nature of this world. To most psychiatrists and many others this basic world view is but a cop out, for they view this existence as the only possible one, at least the only one that we are capable of knowing. And that there is no other.

Having established that, it is also important to note that in my early life especially, I was predominantly homosexual in inclination. Born into an intensely homophobic society, now less so, I viewed this as yet another absurdity with which I had to deal. Fortunately for me, I am not particularly effeminate, and also find attractive young women desirable, albeit to a lesser extent than selected young men. Had I been a Prince or someone with responsibilities to perpetuate a dynasty of some kind, I would have had no trouble doing my duty. Indeed, as a young man I had numerous amorous adventures with members of both sexes.

But I am getting ahead of myself. As any good psychoanalyst will tell you, it is nature and nurture in combination that make us what we are. To understand both, that is, my heredity and early childhood, I must briefly describe my parents. My parents were high school sweethearts. After my father’s service in the South Pacific during World War II, they married. Mother, whose family on her mother’s side were often highly educated and professional people, wanted my Dad to take advantage of the GI Bill and go to college. But instead he became a stonemason. The popular misconception is that Jesus Christ was a carpenter, but Dad would have told you that he was actually a stonemason. The word used in the original New Testament was builder, which was misinterpreted in the middle ages because most dwellings were then made of wood. But in ancient Judea, most buildings were made of stone. Hence there is a plausible argument that Jesus and his father Joseph were stonemasons and not mainly carpenters. I mention this because Dad was innately religious. A devout Catholic, he attended a parochial grade school and from an early age rarely missed Mass. Mom on the other hand was Protestant, Congregationalist originally, descended on one family line from ministers. And a social climber. Although my Dad earned more money as a stonemason than most college educated men of his generation, she felt unjustly blue collar. People whispered that she was pretentious. A voracious reader, she got pregnant with me and had to drop out of college. My two siblings followed in close succession, thereby thwarting her college ambitions. Or so she said. When we were in school full time there was no real good reason why she couldn’t go back to school. But she didn’t, preferring to blame us.

Be that as it was, it fell to me to fulfill her intellectual and social ambitions. I was not a child prodigy, but as I got older did better and better in school and on standardized tests. Like many working class boys, I was a slow starter but by Junior High was considered intellectually gifted. This promise endowed my mother with much validation and imagined status and did much to offset suspicions that I might not be exclusively heterosexual. As long as I did well in school I felt safe from family opprobrium on that account. More on this as my story unfolds.

When I was five, I got a toy fire engine that was large enough to ride as a vehicle. I loved that fire engine. I would sit on it with my firefighter’s hat and trundle on and on. One day while I was so occupied a neighbor who was visiting asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. A fireman I declared. No, my mother intoned, looking deeply into my eyes, you want to be a lawyer. From an early age she had decided that I was to be a lawyer, like her cousin.

I just withered under that gaze. Months later I entered kindergarten. I’ll never forget Miss Kaufman, my teacher. She was stern in a strictly no nonsense way, and always brisk and full of energy, her cheeks a cherry red. If it hadn’t been for a slight mustache and shovel shaped buck teeth, she might have been pretty. After my initial trepidations upon seeing her faded, I came to love school. I loved playing farmer in the dell and duck, duck, goose with the other kids. In those days, kindergarten was basically to socialize children: they didn’t even try to teach us the ABCs or how to count. Miss Kaufman was there basically to keep order, and to discourage us from picking our noses in public and peeing on the carpet. She had no sympathy for nose pickers, and carpet wetters did not fare much better. Fortunately, I quickly learned where the bathroom was, and to raise one finger when I had to pee, two for when I had to poop.

But I had problems with number two. For reasons unknown to me, the stalls in the bathroom had no doors. Even at age five I was very modest. To make matters worse, the female teachers felt free to barge in at any time to see if the boys were up to any mischief. Miss Kaufman was especially apt to do this—I think it had something to do with her being single for all those years. As a result, I was afraid to poop there. Once again, my body–matter–presented a problem. I did my best to keep it in until I got home. But one day I failed. There I was in the hallway, on my way to the outer door, when I suddenly realized that I simply could not hold it any longer. I turned and dashed to the bathroom at the other end of the hall, but only made it as far as the entry to Miss Kaufman’s room. Quickly, I looked around—no one was in sight. In a flash I dropped my pants and planted two long grunts in the doorway. In another moment I had pulled up my pants—you might remember, the kind with an elastic waistband and no zipper—and was gone. Once home I surreptitiously hurried into the bathroom to wipe and clean myself.

The next day Miss Kaufman gathered us together on the rug for a serious talk. In sombre tones, her face drawn, she explained that something unfortunate had happened the day before—she declined to say just what—but that they knew who the culprit was. But, in order to give the offender a chance to expiate his guilt, she had decided to give him a chance to step forward and accept responsibility for his act. She had assumed that only a boy would do such a thing, or perhaps she was using he in the sense of person.

Does that mean that the bad person won’t be punished? asked a little girl.

Oh, no, Miss Kaufman replied, shaking her head and looking askance, her lips pursed tightly. But the punishment will be less severe if he comes forward. Miss Kaufman was obviously very serious about getting the little bastard who had dared to crap in her doorway.

A silence descended upon our little group. No one even moved. For a moment I considered confessing, but then concluded that she was bluffing. This was the first time in my life that I remember making that decision. She would have quietly taken me aside if she had even suspected me above all others. I was only five, but no fool. When no one raised his hand, Miss Kaufman slowly stared at each and every one of us in turn. As her eyes bore into mine, I was reminded of how my mother did that. But I did not flinch. For a moment I thought she might finger me, but then her intent stare moved to the kid next to me.

This is my first memory of getting away with a big lie. I had tried lying since the age of two, but my mother always seemed to know when. Years later, when I was in college, I returned to my old school. The rooms and furniture seemed so small—as a child, everything had seemed so big. To my surprise, Miss Kaufman was still there teaching kindergarten in the same room. She didn’t recognize me, but took my word that I had been one of her pupils. I never told her that I was the pooper.

The summer before entering first grade I learned about the atom bomb and discovered the cold war. If a movie is ever made of my life, this year should be done in black and white—indeed, most of the fifties seem to have been shot in shades of gray. Most of the movies were shot in black and white, and were often about the second world war. The few movies in color were usually Bible epics, often Old Testament stories. School was organized along military lines. Every day we said the pledge of allegiance, had air raid drills, and attended parades in which military hardware—tanks, jeeps, and rockets pulled on trucks—figured prominently. I’ll never forget being waked up in the middle of the night by the sound of bombers overheard, from Truax Air Force base. My father loved to bring us to world war II movies; as a result, many times I had nightmares of being bombed, and had to crawl into bed with my parents.

I became obsessed with the fact that we didn’t have a bomb shelter in our basement. I asked my father why we weren’t building one like many of our neighbors. He explained that if we were atom bombed a shelter in our basement would do no good. Somehow I didn’t find the explanation comforting.

My first memory of specific gender conditioning occurred during the summer between second and third grade. We were on a family outing at the beach—my grandmother was there, as was my mother, father, and Aunt Rose and her husband, Uncle Russ, and their only child, my cousin Ann. Being an only child is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. Let’s face it, one of the major reasons people have children is that it is their only real chance to be management. That is, for at least eighteen years they get to boss the kids around, and attempt to mold—sometimes warp—his or her values and lifestyle. In contrast, at work most people have to do whatever they’re told. Well, as the number of siblings decrease, the parental directions per child increase in direct proportion. In addition, you are considered spoiled because you get a few more material things.

When we were small, our parents liked to get my cousin Ann and me together as often as possible. We were the same age. At any rate, there we were on the beach, little kids with no less than five bossy adults to supervise our every move. My two siblings, my cousin Ann, and I. In anticipation of our outing, Grandma had presented us with gifts. I got a little blue pail and shovel for scooping sand. Ann was given—get this—a pink bow for her hair. At first, she had been very pleased with it—her mother put it in her hair while everyone stood around admiring her. But once on the beach, the sand warm to the point of hot, the thermals causing distant images to waiver, the water blue beneath an intense turquoise sky, she became more interested in watching me scoop the sand into my pail. I was especially intent upon culling snail shells—I kept the perfect, unbroken ones in a small pile; the others I threw far and wide.

Suddenly, Ann petulantly pulled the pink bow from her hair, dropped it on the beach, and fingered the spaghetti straps on her ridiculous little tank suit. Little girls were required to cover their flat chests in anticipation of someday having something to hide. I thought that Ann might bare herself, but instead, she walked to my side where she proceeded to get in the way. Obviously, she wanted to participate in my activities, but I was absorbed in the task of filling my little pail with sand, and didn’t want to be bothered. Besides, there was only one pail and shovel. To my horror, she started scooping sand into the pail with her hands, without even sorting out the snail shells.

Go away, I’m busy, I growled lowly. I didn’t want the adults to hear—they were sitting in lawn chairs on the grass not far away.

Let me have the shovel, Ann cried, an implied threat in her childish, but calculating voice.

No, it’s mine—go play with your pink bow.

With a tearful cry, Ann ran to the adults complaining that I wouldn’t let her play with my pail and shovel. The men looked to the women for a decision—child rearing was essentially their department—while the women exchanged glances. Without a word, they simultaneously arrived at a consensus. My mother stepped forward and quietly suggested that I be big and share with my girl cousin. I balked, but did not seriously question the outcome. Long before I had learned that what adults give they can as easily take away—children have no property rights under most circumstances.

Well, I knew that Ann’s interest in my pail and shovel wouldn’t last long if I seemed to have lost interest. So I walked off in a huff, my small fists clenched, and sat down on the beach not far from the pink bow. Sure enough, Ann soon began to look in my direction, obviously bored with shoveling sand by herself, but I steadfastly refused to join her. Determined, she went back to her task. I looked around, bored with inaction. The discarded pink bow caught my eye. I started to move toward it, but then changed my mind. Instead, I looked around. No one seemed to be watching. I decided that my fears were groundless. Casually, I walked over and squatted, staring at the pink bow in the sand as though it were a curiosity. There never was any chance that I would put it in my hair. I was not one of those gay boys who try on their mother’s clothes, high heels and lipstick, or anything like that. I simply wanted to get a better look, and perhaps touch it. Gingerly, I went to pick it up when Ann cried out, Look, Simon wants to wear my pink bow! Her tone was unmistakably mocking. This was her revenge for my inattention.

I looked up. She was pointing at me and laughing scornfully. Instinctively, I looked toward my father. He said nothing, but his expression was somewhere between a scowl and a glower. He never spanked, partly because he considered it anal stimulation. Besides, from an early age I had learned to tacitly obey him when he looked that way. Uncle Russ was barely disguising a smirk. I was afraid to look at my mother and the other women. Instead, I turned in embarrassed disgust and walked down the beach, away from the family. As The Pretender to the Pink Bow, I was an outcast, if only temporarily. To have protested my innocence only would have made matters worse.

At the far end of the beach I came across a young man and woman under a blanket. They were facing each other, the man on top, his pelvis slowly grinding in an ellipse, but there was no huffing and puffing. Rather, they were staring into each other’s eyes with studious intent. I wasn’t certain what they were doing, but it looked interesting. Quickly, I forgot about the pink bow. Years later I realized that I was watching a slow but intense screw.

Suddenly, three older boys—fourth and fifth graders—appeared out of nowhere to taunt the couple. Like jackals, repeatedly they attacked in an attempt to snatch the blanket covering the couple, only to be repulsed by the man’s murderous stare. The bushwacking boys were afraid of what he might do to them. Finally, like wolves they separated and approached in three different directions. The man could not protect all his flanks at once—he stared off two, but the third snatched the blanket from behind. Fortunately, the man was able to grab a corner of the blanket before it had been carried totally beyond his reach. With one firm tug, the boy on the other end was felled. Quickly, he scrambled to his feet and darted away with the other boys, all laughing over their shoulders.

Briefly, for a moment I saw the naked woman’s breasts—that was a first for me. In amazement, I looked around, but no one was nearby. The man and woman once again had privacy in that deserted area, far from the other sunbathers. I thereupon walked back in the direction of my family. I could tell that one of the adults had said something to my cousin Ann about her prior rude behavior—surely one of the women, for Ann was again wearing her pink bow with an air of defiance, and didn’t dare tease me, my pail and shovel abandoned in the sand.

From time to time after that I would think about the naked woman’s breasts. Years earlier, as an infant and then as a toddler, I had been especially fond of my mother’s ample breasts, often encased in a bra which made them conical shaped, per the fashion of the 1950’s. I would run and throw myself into her arms, my face resting against her breasts. Until my father decided that perhaps I liked them a bit too much. From then on mother would turn away when I tried to embrace her in that manner. As I said, I am not totally homosexual, and later in life enjoyed heterosexual experiences too.

The following Fall I entered Third Grade, where once again I came under suspicion of wanting to wear The Pink Bow. Miss Rickstead, my teacher, was young and pretty. And she had a talent. It was well known that she could spot a Nancy boy with unerring accuracy. I don’t think she was particularly homophobic for the time, but had an ability to discern which boys would grow up queer. I think she took pride in this talent and felt the need to demonstrate it each new school year. As I already noted, I was not effeminate. I loved the rough and tumble play typical of boys my age. And I was not the object of bullying, largely because I was very large and strong for my age. During recess I had organized the boys in my class into herds of wild horses. We would roam through the nearby trees, running in a group or herd. At other times, we divided into gangs and played takeover: one group attempted to defend a piece of ground, usually a hill, from the other. I often was king of the hill. Sometimes we just had acorn fights, throwing them at one another.

During that year, some of the girls had taken to hanging upside down from the monkey bars, their dresses around their ears, in an attempt to get our attention. The sight of their underwear made some of the guys watch with precocious interest, and chant I see London, I see France, I see someone’s underpants.

One day in mid-winter Miss Rickstead took us to the gymnasium where she instructed us to take off our shoes. She then put a vinyl record on a phonograph set up in a corner table. After listening for awhile, she suggested that we move to the music in whatever way we wanted. To decrease inhibitions, she left the room, neglecting to tell us that there was a one way observational window on the wall. From inside the gym it looked like a small mirror. Soon we were spread through the gym, doing our various things. I became so absorbed in my movements that I failed to watch the other boys. I was all over the place. I think I even tried some entrechats.

Without warning, my eyes were closed, suddenly Miss Rickstead took my hand. She had come back. I could tell by the gotcha expression on her face that I had been too uninhibited for a male. She had caught me. I was considered effeminate. As we passed one of the other boys, I noticed that he was moving slowly, his arms stiff and eyes wide but blank, zombie-like. This was considered normal for boys. Only girls could be graceful and uninhibited.

Not long thereafter, I was referred to the school Speech Therapist for an alleged sibilance problem, a polite term for a lisp. I never had any such problem. I had to practice my s sounds in front of a mirror. The Speech Therapist, a friend of Miss Rickstead’s, thought she heard a lisp too. When my parents were notified, mother objected. The principal was summoned to sit in on my speech therapy. He could not detect any lisp, and that was the end of my Speech Therapy. But Miss Rickstead had made her point: I was marked as a likely homo in her view. But most others at the time did not believe her. Many considered my treatment to have been unjust. Not because they had any sympathy with sexual deviants at any age, but because I did not otherwise exhibit effeminate behavior. Like most other boys I had learned at an early age to at all costs avoid that stigma.

Miss Rickstead got her revenge for being contradicted by the principal regarding my alleged lisp. When we received our mid -year report cards, she marked me as merely satisfactory in all categories. My mother was outraged, as she was convinced that I have a superior intellect. I should have received highly satisfactory scores in her opinion. Miss Rickstead thought me merely average, like the other working class boys.

Mother’s chance for retaliation occurred later that year. For months Miss Rickstead had occasionally referred to Cliff, her clandestine boyfriend. He was the school custodian. In those days, the predominantly male non-college educated custodians were paid more than the mostly female college educated teachers. Nonetheless, such liaisons were frowned upon. Miss Rickstead was clearly attracted to Cliff, a darkly good looking young man. One day, he appeared at the classroom windows and started to wash them. Of course he immediately captured our attention. Miss Rickstead walked to the windows and beckoned to Cliff. At first he looked confused, but then realized that he was to enter the room through the window. Soon he was sheepishly standing inside amid many oohs and ahhs from the children. Suddenly the entire class burst into applause.

When I told my mother about this event, she had that ah ha look in her eyes. Turns out that Cliff’s car had been observed parked near Miss Rickstead’s house overnight on numerous occasions. Mother brought this to the attention of the school principal. Not look afterward, Miss Rickstead announced that she and Cliff were getting married. I think it was a shotgun marriage as they used to say. Both their jobs were on the line.

Not long thereafter, Miss Rickstead attempted to install me in the highest reading circle. There were three reading groups; hitherto, I had been the best reader in the middle group. Miss Rickstead seemed almost apologetic as she introduced me into the most advanced group on a trial basis.

There was only one other boy in the highest circle, little Sammy Goldberg, the shortest boy in the class, but darkly cute. Upon sitting down, I was handed a reader. The stories in it were longer and the print smaller than in the reader used by the middle group. Naively, I looked around the circle with a wide grin, expecting a welcome, but instead with confronted with cold stares. Imploringly, I looked to Allison Horne for acceptance. She was a tall, blondish girl who lived on the lake in the upper income area of town, and the brightest girl in the class. She adverted my gaze with an imperious air. By Third Grade, she was a precocious society matron.

I looked to Marsha Pearson, who lived not far from me in our working class neighborhood. Haughtily, she looked aside. Perhaps she would have been friendlier if I hadn’t left her in the lurch. The previous summer she had organized the girls in the neighborhood into a gigantic wedding, with herself as bride.

A few days before, she had sent a messenger to tell me to be there. I was to be the groom. Of course I didn’t show up and played baseball with the guys instead.

And, finally, I looked to little Sammy Goldberg, hoping for some male solidarity. He sighed wistfully, his shoulders hunched and legs dangling—they didn’t quite reach the floor. Basically an introverted intellectual with no courage, who looked to his elders for support and justice. He could not be relied upon to stand up for me.

Thus intimidated, I opened the book and tried to follow as the others read in turn, but found it difficult to focus. Besides, some of the words were new to me—the others had read from that book many times before. Finally, my turn came to read aloud. With the exception of Sammy, who remained noncommittal, the girls leaned forward, intent to pounce upon me for the slightest error. Visibly shaken, I did poorly. Miss Rickstead decided that I should stay in the middle group where I did fine. Mother was visibly disappointed.

But again, the following year mother was vindicated. We had our first battery of standardized tests, the Iowa Basic Skills. This was the first time I had taken a standardized test, and received the second highest score for a boy in the class: I ranked in the 93% for Fourth Graders nationwide. And I had a new teacher. My grades went up accordingly. It seemed that my performance on this battery of tests convinced my teacher that I was more intelligent than previously thought.

But once again I am getting ahead of myself. The summer after third grade I developed a close friendship with Donny, a neighborhood boy. Although a year older than me, Donny was shorter and thinner than I was; in fact, he was the runt of his class. But in no way fragile. Usually we played either baseball or war games. We would dig foxholes in a nearby vacant field, much to the consternation of the owner. And for Christmas we all got the latest in toy submachine guns, bazookas, and so on. Periodically, the neighborhood guys got together to pick sides in our mock wars, which would often go for weeks at a time. At other times we had cowboy and Indian or cops and robbers themes. We re-fought just about every war in American history.

That summer Donny and I decided to become blood brothers. Initially, we had planned on doing it right and slashing our wrists with his older brother’s hunting knife, and then mix our blood, but when the time came, we chickened out. The crucial point is that we mix blood, I observed. So I got a needle, sterilized it with fire, and pricked our respective right index fingers, and then mixed the tiny droplets of blood.

The following year, however, Donny and I had a falling out. For months during the Fourth Grade he had grown increasingly disenchanted with me because in his estimation I was beginning to exhibit sissy tendencies. I had become a book worm, and began to frequent the library and read even when I didn’t have to. Donny, on the other hand, was a true son of the working class–already he disdained school and academics, but had developed an interest in cars and what goes on beneath the hood of a car. And already professed a sexual interest in girls–his older brother, for example, kept girlie magazines and a pack of condoms in his dressing drawer, which we occasionally looked at.

Before abandoning me altogether, Donny strove to educate me by suggesting that I change my ways. But my mother especially had already inculcated me with the notion that we were of a higher social class than most of our neighbors. She often pointed out that what passed for masculinity among the lower classes was really stupidity in disguise. She assured me that not everyone eschewed book learning, and that not all men were garage monkeys. And that not all boys felt the need to play chicken on bicycles, a popular neighborhood pastime, where two boys would ride directly at each other. The loser would be the one who turned away. Sometimes there were no losers. The resulting accidents were rarely serious,