Chapter 8

I lay facing Grant, letting my body cool down after lovemaking, moving my head occasionally to kiss him. Shawna was spending the evening with Jackie.

Grant’s lips curled into a smile as he stroked my hair. “Can you believe it? Eight weeks from tomorrow.” The Dean had just informed Grant of the date late that afternoon, and had assured him that he had already invited his father and sister, and that their guest passes were in the mail.

I kissed him again. “You don’t need all that time to get yourself ready, I hope. We still have the one last party show to do in a few weeks.”

Grant gave me a tiny headshake. “I can wait until after that to start getting my head in the right space. Have you started checking into your own...” He stopped suddenly, frowning, looking into my eyes.

I stopped breathing, knowing why Grant was suddenly silent.

Grant, still frowning, asked, “You were going to tell me, right?”

I didn’t need to ask what Grant was talking about, or how he had known. There’d been some tiny physical reaction, at the moment when Grant had asked about my hanging. Few of the Noosemeisters were as skilled as Grant at reading body language, especially of the one person he knew better than anyone else in the world. “Of course, honey. I’ve been trying to work out how to say it.”

“Is it because of our proteges? They’re all really coming along fast. Especially Holden.”

I nodded, blinking back a tear. “I know. But Hamish won’t be here for another seven months. I had to offer to stay. The Dean wasn’t going for this whole thing with Holden and Hamish otherwise.”

Grant looked at me seriously. “So are you okay with this? It feels like you are.” Reading again. “You can really wait that long? I don’t think I could.”

I put my arms around my lover, squeezing him tight. “I am okay. It’s not like I don’t get to hang at all. The noose will be out there waiting for me. It’s hard to take something you’ve chased after for years and push it farther away, but it’s still going to be there. The hardest part is...” The tear at last spilled from my eye. “I was worried you might think I’m ... insulting you. To say I’m going to stay on so long after you’re gone.”

Grant’s eyes widened. I saw that something had finally come out of my mouth before Grant could read it. “Oh, honey, no! No! Nothing like that! Listen...” Grant looked away for a moment, searching for the right words, finding them at last, giving me an intense look as only Grant could. “There are a lot of things I trust. I trust the noose. I trust my skills. And you taught me a long time ago ... I have to trust my partner. And I do, I trust you completely. I trust you for a lot of things, but most of all, I trust you always to do the right thing. That’s what teaches me what the right thing is. And you believe this is the right thing. I can tell you do. If you think it’s right, that’s always going to be enough for me.”

The single tear became a flood. My throat was suddenly so tight I couldn’t believe there wasn’t a rope around it. I choked out, “I love you, Grant.”

The sudden return of Grant’s smile made his face more beautiful than ever. “And I love you, Amy.” He kissed me, hard.

We made love again, with twice the passion of our earlier session.

The Dean rolled his eyes, but was smiling. “You want to communicate with Hamish? You know we don’t allow communication between our First Year boys and their families. That would include boys whose First Year status is ... in suspended animation, as it were.”

I knew he was referring to Holden. I wasn’t sure I wanted to bring this up. “Ummm ... I did see my brother when I was a First Year.” It always irritated me to discuss Andrew for any reason.

“There’s a difference. He’s a club member.”

The one stain on the Academy’s reputation, in my view. “Anyway, this wouldn’t be a personal communication, Sir. And not from Holden himself. I could request to take this information to him myself, on my own, but I’d like to keep it even less personal than that. This would be in the nature of the Academy itself giving some advice to a potential student. Just in an institutional way. In the form of a letter.”

“We’ve never done that before either.”

“I know, Sir, but I’m thinking it’s pretty well-established now that this is a unique case. And I can give you the usual justification that this will help the two of them get their act together sooner once Hamish arrives here.”

The Dean smiled again. “I suspected as much. What would the letter say?”

“I have a draft here, but let me describe it first, so you can see why everything is in there. For one thing, you’ll see there’s no proprietary information in it. No giving away any Academy secrets. There are basically just three things we need Hamish to work on.

“One is a reading list. About half of what we have Holden reading is publicly available. Some of the things we’d picked out for him, it turned out he’d already read them, and Hamish has too, but not all of them. So we’ve put together a list of books, available on the outside, that Hamish hasn’t read, and it would save time if he read them before he got here.

“The second thing is a physical exercise program. Just like all of the other students here, we’ve got Holden doing a lot of conditioning in the gym. Obviously we’d like to avoid his body getting noticeably different from Hamish’s, and there’s no reason why it should, because Hamish could be doing the same exercises at home.

“And then finally, there’s something Hamish can do in preparation for doing party shows. It’s our secret, mine and Grant’s, but it actually only helps specifically for that one purpose. When Grant and I started training to do the shows, we did hanging exercises carrying extra weight—eventually we got to where we could hang while carrying almost two hundred extra pounds. And we needed that for the kind of hanging he and I do together, where we alternate holding the other up so they can breathe—but it’s not something helpful for the standard type of hanging. You know how studies have shown that practicing with extra weight doesn’t really help for normal hanging techniques, beyond what the standard neck-trainer does. So if, for whatever reason, Hamish told anybody what he was doing, it would actually be kind of misleading, because people would say, Aha! So that’s the Noosemeister secret! And it’s really not! It’s just something Hamish needs to do, and it wouldn’t help anybody else.” I leaned forward. “And the point is, he’d be ready to start working on choreography as soon as he gets here.”

The Dean nodded, already having known that was coming, and held out his hand. I handed over the letter. He sat patiently as he read it—some parts several times.

At last he nodded. “I’m going to want to reword this, to make it clear that it doesn’t imply an offer of admission, and perhaps to hint at the need for some discretion on his part. But I’ll leave intact the descriptions of the program he should be following.”

I gave him a huge grin. “Yes, Sir! And is there any possibility Holden could sign it at the bottom?”

The Dean chuckled. “Of course not. And you’re just giving me a chance to assert authority by saying ‘no’, aren’t you?”

I felt my cheeks and neck heat up. “I just wanted to try, Sir.”

Melissa gave me a kiss as she pulled the door closed, then held Jana’s hand as they trotted down the hallway toward their class. I waved after them, then walked back to my room.

Grant and Holden were there, sitting on the bed, looking at the television, where Grant was running a video of a First Year boys’ hanging class from several years ago. Holden’s concentration on the screen was so intense that I wasn’t sure he’d noticed me coming in.

Holden pointed at the screen. “I think his left leg is unbalancing him. He’s swinging it out too far.”

Grant nodded. “So what would you do?”

Holden fingered his lower lip, considering the question, still watching the boy on the screen. “Maybe tap at his foot every time he swings it out like that, to make him conscious of doing it.”

I smiled, remembering Grant administering a very similar cure to Wendi once.

Grant used the remote to move the tape ahead to the next boy. Again, Holden watched the screen with a very Grant-like intensity. At last he looked at Grant and said tentatively, “He’s probably okay?”

Holden breathed an audible sigh of relief when Grant nodded. “For his level of development, anyway.” Grant raised the remote again. “Let’s skip over the next boy. He’s okay too.” The boy wriggled on the screen in fast motion, and Grant slowed the tape to normal speed as another boy started.

Holden leaned forward, and quickly leaned back. “That’s easy. He’s not turning his head enough. You could...”

Grant held up a hand to stop him. “Okay, but remember, always look at the boy’s whole body. When there’s a problem in one place, it could be caused somewhere else.”

Holden nodded and leaned forward to watch the screen again. As the boy finished, Holden looked helplessly at Grant. “Could you run it again?”

Grant nodded and rewound the tape. Holden leaned even farther forward to watch the boy again, almost unblinking. Suddenly he bounced on the bed excitedly. “Oh, yeah! He’s got his hands too high up his back! It’s making his shoulders hunch and he can’t turn his head properly. You could give him a crotch rope to hold them down...” He frowned, and shook his head. “He’s too inexperienced, he doesn’t need that distraction.” He thought a little longer, as Grant rewound the tape and showed the boy again. Holden sat up again. “You could tie a thread between his elbows, so he couldn’t separate them more than that distance. Tell him to try not to break the thread. That would keep his hands down.” He grinned at Grant. “Okay?”

Grant laughed and patted Holden’s back. “Nice job. I’ve got that class to go teach. Just relax a minute while I talk to Amy.”

Grant guided me out of the room, closed the door, and said barely audibly, his eyes alight, “Most underclass boys have a hard time picking out flaws in another boy’s form. I tried this same exercise with Melissa and Jana. Together. They got over half of them, which was really good. Holden caught all of them, and that thing with the thread ... that might work better than what I was going to say.”

I grinned, and whispered, “That’s great! We knew he was special. See you in awhile, honey.” I kissed Grant, waved goodbye, and opened the door. Holden had rewound the tape to the beginning and was restoring it to its case. He looked up and smiled. “Hi, Amy. That was fun.”

I smiled back. “Grant says you’re doing really well. Sit back down a minute. I’ve got something else to talk to you about.”

Holden nodded and sat on the bed again, waiting.

I began, “I know you haven’t been in classes, but you’ve probably heard the First Years talking about this. Their first party is coming up in a few weeks. Now, you’re not a member of the class, but I asked the Dean, and he left it up to me to decide whether an extra year of parties would be helpful to you. So I need to figure that out ... You know what I’m talking about, right? What the students do at parties?”

Holden nodded. “Oh! Sure. There’s a little about that on the Web site. I was...” Holden suddenly looked slightly uncomfortable. “I’d been figuring, after you got me the extra year to wait for Hamish, that that would be one of the things we could do together. Him and me.”

I frowned. “Together, as in working the same bedroom?”

Holden nodded again. “I mean, I was hoping.”

I shook my head. “Maybe somewhere along the way, later, but not at the start. I’m not even going to ask the Dean about that. Every Noosemeister has to demonstrate they can provide sexual services solo. Grant and I have worked together a few times, when it worked out that way at auctions, but at first the Dean wouldn’t let us. Not until he was sure about our solo skills.”

Clouds of concern began billowing in my mind. I’d never seen Holden unsure of himself before. I had quickly become accustomed to thinking of Holden as another Grant, superior in every facet of a Noosemeister’s life. Grant, along with everything else he did, always drew outstanding reviews from club members he entertained privately at parties. I’d been assuming Holden would share that skill as well. “Holden ... you’ve gone to the clubs around town, right? To meet sex partners?”

“Oh, for sure! Hamish and me knew that was one of the things we’d need to be good at, for the Academy, so we went once or twice a week. We’d hook up with a girl, or with a boy if it was an all-male club, and, you know, learn from experience. We read some books, too, of course. And watched videos.”

I was about to say I was doubtful about the idea of picking up much practical information on the subject from books, but was suddenly struck by Holden’s wording, as I played it back in my head. We’d hook up with a girl. Singular. My frown deepened. “Holden ... Have you ever had one-on-one sex with anyone other than Hamish?”

Holden bit his lip and shook his head, saying in a tiny voice, “No.”

I suddenly realized I was being unfair to Holden. I was scaring Holden, making him feel as if he had done something wrong in coming to the Academy with less than the usual amount of experience with sex. It was true that any Noosemeister needed to be ready to handle clients who had any number of different sexual preferences, in one-on-one situations, and that Holden’s one-on-one sexual history was far from sufficiently varied. But the Academy was a place of learning. You didn’t have to arrive already knowing everything. That’s why they had classes. Including sex classes. I reached out and covered one of Holden’s hands with mine, and smiled. “Listen, Holden, I’m not mad at you. I just got a little surprised for a minute. We could wait on the parties until next year...”

Holden shook his head, a determined look suddenly on his face. “No, I want to do it.”

I blinked. “There’s no reason we couldn’t wait, it’s really okay...”

The intense Grant-look was in Holden’s eyes again. “Amy, I’ll do anything I need to, to be a Noosemeister. The Dean could tell me I need to jump off the roof, and I’d head for the stairs as soon as he said it.”

I looked at him wide-eyed. “Ahhh ... Well, that won’t be a requirement, I’m pretty sure. But ... so you do want to go to the party?”

Holden nodded his head emphatically.

I was silent for a time, considerations swirling around in my head. One of them finally came to the fore. “If I’m going to tell Wendi and Lucas to include you on the list for the party, I’m taking on a lot of responsibility. I’m telling them you’re ready to perform and to make the club members happy.” I continued thinking, my lower lip squeezed between my thumb and forefinger. Okay, I thought, first things first. I gestured at Holden. “Take off your clothes. I want to check on your grooming. I need a closer look than I’ve been getting when you practice hanging.”

Obediently, Holden shrugged out of his shirt, kicked away his shoes, and pulled his shorts down, then his briefs, kicking them away as well.

I looked him over, lifting his arms. “Underarms okay.” I backed away, looking at Holden’s tan line. “I don’t think you need to use the tanning bed. There’s no telling what effect it might have on your skin, and I think members will like the contrast anyway, with your lower body freckle-free. Lie back on the bed.”

I considered Holden’s wispy pubic hair. Some students had their bushes permanently depilated, and the club members and buyers seemed to like it that way. Holden’s bush was a soft reddish orange triangle, a little lighter than his hair. It was very soft, and looked rather inviting. I ran my fingers lightly across it; Holden jumped slightly and giggled. In a thoughtful voice, I said, “Okay, let’s keep that for now. We could still get rid of it later if the members don’t like it. For the time being...” I bent down still closer, gently separating Holden’s glutes with my fingers, examining the area in between. “I want you to go to the salon, and ask them to do a short trim on the hair between your cheeks.”