For the first few weeks, classes went along normally. I avoided Christian as much as I could, but it was difficult because we had several classes together. At least we never sat near each other. I think we were about equally able in history and English. He was clearly stronger than I was in math. A few times I tried to smile at him or say hello, but he always rebuffed me, so I gave up trying.
Sometimes, because of my first reactions to Christian, I wondered if I was, in fact, prejudiced. My parents had taught me not to be prejudiced, but, other than a couple of live-in maids who were with us when I was younger, I had had almost no contact with Negroes. If I tried to avoid Christian whenever possible, was that because I was prejudiced or just because he had snapped at me that first day of school? I really couldn’t figure it out, but it was not something I wanted to discuss right now with my parents.
As I watched him from afar in those first weeks I realized that Christian was actually quite good looking. Somewhat taller than I, he had a finely chiseled face and short curly hair. His eyes were deep and nearly mesmerizing. In PE I realized that neither of us was much of an athlete. However, I did notice in the showers that he had a pretty good sized piece of equipment between his legs with some hair around it, and I wondered if he enjoyed jerking his off as much as I did mine. His body was solid and just beginning to fill out. It had become a habit of mine to check out the other boys’ equipment in the shower, but I had to be careful, because when I did, I usually started to get a hard-on.
I don’t think either one of us was especially happy to be in typing, but I found that, because it used the same eye-hand coordination I used in playing the piano, once I learned the keyboard I could move ahead fairly rapidly. About the fourth week of class, which we had twice a week, Mrs. Connors, the school secretary and our typing teacher, announced one day that, while everybody was making progress, she seemed to have two stars. “Peter and Christian have both mastered the keyboard and are typing almost thirty words a minute with good accuracy.” I turned and looked at Christian and he stared back at me. Right then I decided this was a challenge which I accepted. I was going to beat him. I’m sure he took the challenge, because soon we were both over 45 words a minute. This was getting to be fun.
Our history teacher was Mr. Lincoln, a good name for a history teacher I thought. His first name was Todd, like Lincoln’s beloved son, but of course we never used that. A couple of weeks after Mrs. Connors’ announcement, Mr. Lincoln had one of his own. He wanted us to do research reports in pairs. This was something we had never done, so he had quite detailed instructions printed out, including a schedule which told how long we had to do the research, when a first draft was due, and when the final draft was due. He also talked about doing a bibliography, which none of us had done before, and printed out samples with the correct order and punctuation. We had to use at least five references, none of which could be an encyclopedia. For each pair he also had a set of directions of the sorts of information he wanted us to find.
When Mr. Lincoln began to announce the pairs who would work together, my stomach began churning, and as he went through the pairs the feeling got worse until, by the time he got near to the end of his list, I was close to throwing up. I just knew what he was going to say. Sure enough, he announced, “Peter and Christian will do a report on the New England Whaling Industry.”
“This will never work!” I thought. “And why the New England Whaling industry?” We lived in the western part of the state, not anywhere near the ocean. I was sure that neither of us had ever seen a whale, or even wanted to.
Mr. Lincoln gave us the rest of the period for the pairs to begin planning where we would look for information and when we could find time to work together.
I walked over to Christian’s desk and said, “OK, so we’re stuck with each other. I don’t suppose you’re any happier about this than I am, but if we want to get a good grade in this class I guess we have to work together. Where do you think we should start to work?”
He scowled and said, “The library.”
“That’s great,” I answered. “I work there.”
Looking a little surprised he asked, “What is there for you to do in a library?”
I told him about my job and how, because of it I knew how to use the card catalog and where to find books using the Dewey Decimal System.
“What’s that?”
I explained how Dewey had come up with categories of non-fiction subjects and had assigned numbers to each, so you could find any non-fiction book in the library by knowing the system. “I even know the number for The Kinsey Report,” I said, “but the Librarian keeps that one in her office so I can’t get a look at it.”
At this, Christian looked very interested. We all had heard about the report and how shocking it was supposed to be, but none of us had ever seen one, even though it had been out since 1948, so we were all burning with curiosity.
We decided that Christian would bring his bike to school the next day and we would ride to the library after school. We certainly didn’t part as friends, but at least we were beginning to talk to each other.
The next afternoon we rode along Meadowbrook Avenue to the library, locked our bikes in the back and went into the lobby where I was greeted by Miss Thompson, the lady at the checkout desk. She gave Christian a rather startled glance as we went over to the card catalog and began searching likely topics. We tried “Whales” first and found a couple of books in the adult section. Then we tried “New England Whaling” and found nothing, so we tried “Whaling” and found just a single book.
Upstairs in the non-fiction part of the library we located the three books and took them to a table to look over. Eventually we decided that there was enough in the books to make it worthwhile checking them out.
Christian did not have a library card yet, so I checked all the books out on my card. We split them up, he taking the one on whaling, and me taking the two books on whales. We agreed that we would look at them more closely and get together after the weekend to compare ideas.
On Monday we met for a few minutes before school, and talked about the books. Christian found that the book on whaling wasn’t much help because it didn’t give any information specifically about New England whaling. I told him that the whale books had some good information but they wouldn’t help us until we knew which whales were hunted by New Englanders.
We discussed going to the main library in the city. Fortunately, Christian had a card there so we would be able to check books out. We couldn’t go that afternoon because I had to work, and besides we needed more time than we could get after school, so we decided to meet on Saturday at 9:00 at the school and take the bus which went right down Meadowbrook Avenue into the center of the city.
Christian and I didn’t talk much during the week, but at least he was saying hello to me now, acknowledging that I was a human being whom he knew. In typing class we now sat next to each other and exchanged challenging looks before the timed test that came at the end of each period. We were still quite even. One class one of us would pull ahead a bit and the next one the other would catch up and perhaps even pass by a little.
I was still unsure what I thought about Christian, but I began to believe that, if I could ever break down the wall around him, there might be a decent kid hidden behind it.
I was beginning to look forward to Saturday.