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I couldn’t stay with this fantastic line of thought long enough to parse out whose disappointment I was willing to cripple myself to avoid (or forgo).

And then out of nowhere it returned to me, the moving thing Himself had said to Orin. This was concerning ‘adult’ films, which from what I’ve seen are too downright sad to be truly nasty, or even really entertainment, though the adjective adult is kind of a misnomer.

Orin had told me that once he and Smothergill, Flechette, and I think Penn’s older brother had gotten hold of a magnetic video of some old hardcore X-film — The Green Door or Deep Throat, one of those old chestnuts of cellulite and jism. There were excited plans to convene in V.R.3 and watch the thing in secret after Lights Out. The Viewing Rooms at that point had broadcast televisions and magnetic VCR-devices, instructional mag-vids from Galloway and Braden, etc. Orin and co. were all around fifteen at the time, bombed by their own glands — they were pop-eyed at the prospect of genuine porn. There were rules about videos’ suitability for viewing in the Honor Code, but Himself was not noted for his discipline, and Schtitt didn’t yet have deLint — the first generation of E.T.A.s did pretty much as they pleased off-court, as long as they were discreet.

Nevertheless, word about this ‘adult’ film got around, and somebody — probably Mary Esther Thode’s sister Ruth, then a senior and insufferable — ratted the boys’ viewing-plans out to Schtitt, who took the matter to Himself. Orin said he was the only one Himself called into the Headmaster’s office, which in that era had only one door, which Himself asked Orin to close. Orin recalled seeing none of the unease that always accompanied Himself’s attempts at stern discipline. Instead Himself invited Orin to sit and gave him a lemon soda and stood facing him, leaning back slightly so that the front edge of his desk supported him at the tailbone. Himself took his glasses off and massaged his closed eyes delicately — almost trea-suringly, his old eyeballs — in the way Orin knew signified that Himself was ruminative and sad. One or two soft interrogatives brought the whole affair out in the open. You could never lie to Himself; somehow you just never had the heart. Whereas Orin made almost an Olympic sport of lying to the Moms. Anyway, Orin quickly confessed to everything.

What Himself said then moved him, Orin told me. Himself told Orin he wasn’t going to forbid them to watch the thing if they really wanted to. But just please to keep it discreet, just Bain and Smothergill and Orin’s immediate circle, nobody younger, and nobody whose parents might hear about it, and for God’s sake don’t let your mother get wind. But that Orin was old enough to make his own entertainment-decisions, and if he decided he wanted to watch the thing…. And so on.