Hall of Mirrors, Part IV (The End)*

(Continued from yesterday)

One day in religion class toward the end of the year, we were learning about the "procreative role of the conjugal act." Out of the blue, someone asked Father Philip, to a chorus of laughter, what masturbation was. A wiseass in his own right, Father Philip had graduated from our school twenty years before. Sometime earlier in the school year, we had delighted in coming across his senior yearbook in the library. Underneath his ’50s flattop portrait was the designation Class Cynic.

Now, standing before us in his black robe, he reddened almost imperceptibly -- whether out of anger or embarrassment I couldn’t tell.

"Is there anybody here," he answered dryly, "who doesn’t know?"

The room broke up again.

I knew enough to laugh -- I could follow a lead. But when I got home that night, all I found in the dictionary was "manual stimulation of the genitals." As far as I could tell, I was already stimulating them, and I didn’t even have to touch them. I closed the book, not confused exactly but not sure of much either.

***

The streakers soon retreated to footnote status. The spring play, The Importance of Being Earnest, had only upperclassmen in it, with no roles for the likes of me (but for one lucky junior, there was yet another drag role -- the imperious Lady Bracknell). Burt Reynolds remained disconcertingly captivating, but eventually, by sheer will, I put a stop to our meetings. The Beatles continued to hold interest, but by the end of the year I’d caught up on all of their history I could with the help of The Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature -- right up the brief, anticlimactic Newsweek item that somewhat matter-of-factly reported their breakup, as if everyone knew they were headed in that direction all along.

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*Insofar as a fragmentary, incomplete essay can have an end.