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But the shame I felt when I was eleven, that embarrassment over my half-formed manhood, soon disappeared. I filled out, I developed physically, I grew tall, and there was no reason after that for me to feel ashamed of my body. And so I remember a lot of swimming expeditions, and I never once came out with that line about bringing bathing suits. Sometimes there even were girls with us, a bunch of us ski
Thinking of these things as I plucked weeds in the fraters’ chili patch, my bare ass warmed by the climbing sun, I was aware also of other things floating in the deep places of my memory, old events, dark and unpleasant and half-forgotten, that I had no wish to remember. A whole curdled mass of memories. Myself naked on other days, with other people. Boyhood games, some of them not so i
Where could I hide? How could I cover myself? Were any of them watching me?
Actually no one seemed to be. Eli and the fraters were far up the row. Timothy, ambling lazily along, was almost out of sight behind me. The only one close to me was Ned, perhaps fifteen feet to my rear. Standing as I was with my back to him, my shame was screened. Already I could feel myself begi
Ned gave a guilty start, practically jumped as my eyes met his. His face went crimson. He looked away. And I understood. I didn’t need to inspect the front of his shorts for bulges to know what was going on in his head. For fifteen or twenty minutes now he’d been treating himself to a little fantasy trip, studying my body, contemplating my buttocks, snatching little glimpses of other goodies now and then. Dreaming his tricksy homo dreams about me. Well, there’s nothing surprising in that. Ned is a fag. Ned has always wanted me, even if he’s never dared to make a pass. And I was on display right in front of him, all of me, a temptation, a provocation. Still, I was taken aback by that look of desire, so obvious on his face, so raw; that shook me. To be wanted like that by another man. To be the object of his yearnings. And he seemed so stu
chapter thirty-one
Eli
The meditation, I’m convinced, is the core of the process. Being able to turn inward. You absolutely have to do that if you hope to accomplish anything her; The rest — the gymnastics, the diet, the baths, the field-labor — all that is just a series of techniques for achieving self-discipline, for lifting the balky ego toward the degree of control on which real longevity depends. Of course, if you want to live a long time it helps to get plenty of exercise, keep your body in trim, avoid unhealthy foods, etc., etc. But I think it’s a mistake to place much emphasis on those aspects of the Brotherhood’s routine. Hygiene and gymnastics may be useful in extending the average lifespan to eighty or eighty-five, but something more transcendental is required if you want to live to eight hundred or eight hundred and fifty. (Or eighty-five hundred? Eighty-five thousand?) Complete control of bodily function is needed. And meditation’s the key.
At this stage they’re stressing the development of i