Chapter 197: Aftermath of the So-Called Castration Attack

Monday, May 9, 2005 (Continued)

Unlike the police, the Principal did want to cause me trouble. I was ordered to go to his office, where he started yelling at me for causing all these troubles. Today's fracas was going to cause him a GREAT deal of trouble, so it had to be someone else's fault, and he was laying the blame squarely on my shoulders.

I let him rant and rave, hoping it'd just be a short-term letting off of steam. I spent the time thinking about what I should do if it was more than just steam. I didn't want a war with the Principal, and I certainly didn't want to declare one unnecessarily, but I definitely didn't like the idea of him declaring war on me and my not defending myself.

His rants were mostly hot air, and he didn't actually tell me I was suspended or expelled, but he did threaten to revoke my special privileges and he said, "If you're involved in one more such incident or commit a single breach of school rules, then you'll be out of here so fast your head will spin."

I prefer my head to do as little spinning as possible, and battling the Principal for reinstatement after I'd been expelled would be harder than stopping him expelling me in the first place. Nor did I want to lose my privileges, especially as I failed to see the connection between my being able to come and go from classes to help me cope with two grades' of work, and Head-Goon's forming a gang to help him violently take out his anger over losing his girlfriend. Lastly and worriedly, I feared the Principal was very likely to find a pretext to use against me soon. There was my skipping school to go to LA, my playing with so many girls, the jealousy that'd be caused when my wealth became common knowledge, the pipeline just starting, and God knows what else might happen. It was probably only a matter of days before he'd think he had sufficient reason to get rid of his problem.

When I had a chance, I said, "It's true that I'm a highly effective lightning rod for violence, but I don't cause the lightning, I merely attract it..."

#1: <Actually, lightning rods do contribute to the creation of lightning.>

#4: <Let's not confuse the Principal with facts.>

" ... Bullies have been attacking smart kids since forever. Expelling me from school because I'm an irresistible target for bullies won't solve the problem; it'll just shift it onto other targets. The blame belongs to the bullies, not the victims. I'm sure you're aware by now that I've never had anything to do with Liam Hill," (the Head-Goon). "I only learned his name from someone in the crowd who recognized him after the fight was over. I didn't taunt Liam, I didn't boast around school that I'd stolen his girlfriend, or any of those types of things. I didn't even know he existed until he attacked me. He formed a gang to ambush and attack me for two reasons, neither of which I had any part in. Because his girlfriend broke up with him, which is hardly an uncommon occurrence and certainly not sufficient justification for such an assault. And because year after year students in this school have seen violence go unpunished, so they've learned that it's a safe and easy way to get what they want."

The Principal wanted to argue, but I overrode him by insisting, "That point was made over and over again in the anti-bullying talks we all had to listen to. Are you saying that the experts that talked to us were all wrong?" The Principal looked like he was going to cut me off shortly, so I had to scare him into shutting up for a while. I added, "I'm looking forward to telling the Corvallis and Oregon Boards of Education that you wouldn't even let me talk to you about bullying after I was nearly castrated in your school, that you tried to blame me for the whole thing, and that your views on bullying are opposite that of all the experts we've listened to in assemblies." That took the wind out of his sails, and more importantly, out of his mouth.

Trying to think of a threat credible enough to scare the Principal into letting me have my say, made me think of the Boards. To get him in trouble, I'd said something about the Principal disagreeing with the bullying experts, which reminded me of something useful: Everyone in the school had been made to attend anti-bullying lectures recently, as part of the school's new Zero Tolerance program. Unlike a lot of the kids - especially the ones that needed it the most - I'd actually listened to the speakers. One of their points had struck me quite strongly. The speaker had said that the school's becoming zero tolerant to bullying was only the beginning of many years of effort, because kids who'd already experienced several years of bullying as victims were going to grow larger, and become bullies themselves. By keeping to an extremely vigilant zero-tolerance policy, the new bullies wouldn't be able to abuse the younger kids so badly. So when the younger kids grew older, they wouldn't abuse the then-younger kids so badly, etc. It would take several cycles of students to get the school 'clean'. The speaker was focused on the school and the school alone. She spoke as if students ceased to exist upon graduating. I'd sat there thinking about the school being 'cleaned' by year after year dumping its bullies into society. Now that I'd thought of it, I was going to use that idea to scare the crap out of the Principal.

I did a zigzag Julia would be proud of, "You know that $45,000 you paid me two weeks ago to settle our previous disputes?"

Not liking where the conversation had lurched, his reply was a worriedly drawn-out, "Y-e-s."

"Do you know what 'Day Trading' is? Short-term trading of currency, futures and other volatile financial instruments?"

"I've heard of it."

"And I know you're aware that I am a genius. I've been part-time day trading with the $45,000 seed money you were forced to give me. So far I'm up over six million dollars."

"What! Preposterous."

He started telling me off for lying to him. During his tirade I pulled out my billfold and extracted one of my bank manager's cards. I held it up in front of the Principal, to get his attention. I knew how to use the Principal's phone from the previous times I'd used it, so I picked it up, selected an external line, then dialed the bank manager's number.

I introduced myself, and was quickly put through. I asked, "That transfer from my personal account in LA to my personal account in your branch, did you say it'll appear in tomorrow's or the day after's balance?"

Then I asked, "And how much was it for exactly, down to the cent?"

I held the phone so the Principal could hear the bank manager say, "Exactly eight million dollars. No extra dollars or cents."

"Thanks very much. That's all I needed. Bye."

I hung up, then said to the Principal, "I have a couple of million of expenses out of that eight, so I'll net six million before taxes. There are some other contracts in place that will be paying out over the next few days, so by Friday I'll have closer to $7 million in net profit.

^-- "I know for a fact," I lied, "that the 10th graders in today's assault were frequently involved in bullying incidents starting a few years ago, and they've becoming increasing violent in recent years. I imagine that if the 11th and 12th grade classmates of those two guys are questioned, they'll confirm they were also trained to be violent in this school too. There has been so much bullying in this school for so long that year after year there've been a huge number of boys fed into Corvallis's society that believe that violence is a successful, unpunished way of solving problems.

^-- "I am thinking about paying experts to do a research study that identifies the additional violent crimes caused in Corvallis because of your past lax attitude to bullying. It'd start with using the student rolls for the last several years and checking how many of them now have criminal records for violent crime, compared to other Corvallis schools. I'm sure your school will show up as having trained a higher proportion of criminals than any other school in the area, probably at a rate that got worse year after year as you let violence breed greater violence for several years. The study will list the crimes, the victims, the pain and misery caused, the monetary cost, and everything else that the experts I'll hire can think of. I'm sure they'll be able to identify an appalling level of negative consequences, as graduates would've left this school believing violence was easy and safe, so many of them would've tried it, caused harm, and often got caught.

^-- "I'll pay to have the study delivered to every family in Corvallis, and make sure it has a cover title of, 'The Cost of Additional Violent Crime in Corvallis Caused by Gaige Adams'." (The Principal.) "I'm sure the experts will be able to extrapolate the negative consequences out for decades, talk about the increased taxes required to pay for the additional policemen that'd be required, and whatever else they can think of."

He'd recovered from the shock of my having millions of dollars, and from the surprise of my threatening him, and now he was extremely pissed off. He was yelling, "How dare you, blah, blah..." I ignored him.

I much preferred not to have to leave this school, so I couldn't walk out of his office as the start of carrying out my threat to get the study done, so I had to stay in the room. If I'd had my cellphone, I would've pulled it out to call the Dean of OSU for his advice on how to get such a study done. Instead I sat listening to his angry tirade.

It took a while, but eventually I managed to inject, "You threatened to expel me for something I had no responsibility for; so I threatened to expel you for something you have enormous responsibility for. Plus I have millions of dollars of my own money, the support of the Dean of OSU, I'm sure the Boards of Education will fall all over themselves to help me, the Mayor of Corvallis has already started doing me favors because he knows how important I'll be for the future of this city. Need I go on?" I'd asked the last question because I'd run out of scary sounding components to my threat, but also because I could see that he understood the size of trouble he was in.

^-- To rub it in even further, I added, "Is there anyone at all who'd actually be on your side?" I gave him a moment to think about that, then, "I have no doubt that my study would destroy your career, and would have me - the victim of hundreds of beatings in your school - smelling like roses for having succeeded despite all the obstacles you put in my way, and for alerting society to the danger your approach to schooling causes. With a bit of money spent of publicizing it, I might be able to get your name known all over the country as the epitome of a bad way to run a school.

^-- "Did you learn nothing from the fate of those six boys? They attacked me without provocation, and I defended myself extremely well. You just attacked me again, threatening me with loss of privileges and expulsion because some guy I'd never heard of couldn't handle his girlfriend leaving him. I will defend myself just as capably against your attack as I did against Liam's gang. I won't break your arm, but I will break your career. I would be more than happy to deal with another Principal, and I'm sure I could rely on the Boards of Education to find me a damned good one, especially if I offered them a sizable donation if I graduated after having experienced a new Principal who was helpful, easy to get along with, and was more concerned with graduating successful students than blaming victims of violence for his own failure to take responsibility for letting it go unchecked for several years.

^-- "You've got three options. First, you can resign - something very few people would be sad to see happen. Second, attempt to threaten or attack me in some way, in which case I will get rid of you in the way I described. I'd be more than happy to get you replaced by another Principal, so you're already on very thin ice as far as I'm concerned. Or third, you can start treating me like the most valuable and important student in your school, rather than the source of all your problems. That means no more threats from you. If I stub my toe and bleed on a path, I don't want to be expelled for defacing school property. If I'm attacked again - envy about my being a millionaire will likely lead to that - I will defend myself as much as necessary.

^-- "Friday a week and a half ago, I let nine boys surround me, taunt, push, slap and punch me, but I did absolutely nothing back to any of them, even though I easily could have. That's because I am NOT a violent person and I was willing to let them abuse me without responding because their attacks weren't life threatening. Today I was nearly castrated and could well have bled to death, so my fighting back was necessary. In the future I will continue to act as maturely and responsibly as possible, and you will not only NOT attack me with ridiculous threats, but you'll protect and support me as if you were mature and responsible too. By the way, I strongly suggest you keep news of my wealth to yourself. The longer that takes for that to get out, the longer it'll take envy to motivate other people into attacking me again.

^-- "I don't want to hear you ever threaten me with expulsion, loss of privilege, or any other type of negative treatment ever again. Nor will you threaten my sisters or friends either. By threatening to withdraw my so-called privileges, you raised the issue of them. My 'privileges' are so I can learn better and faster, which is what your job is ALL about! That you threatened to make my education more difficult confirms my low opinion of you.

^-- "From now on, if I decide I need another 'privilege', I'll tell you what it is and you'll grant it. Next year I'll be doing 12th grade as well as finishing off my Bachelors in Mathematics. I'll be extremely busy, so to save time I might buy one of the houses bordering on the school and set it up as a study, with another of the $15,000 computer systems that OSU has already given me, a library, and a gate in the fence between that house and school. I don't want any crap from you about me going back and forth, or my sisters or anyone else I invite." Unfortunately I didn't expect to buy that house, as I was already worried about running out of money. But it served as an impressively expensive and justifiable example of a future privilege.

^-- "The only way I'll listen to any objections from you is if the negative effect of what I'm doing is comparable to the harm you've caused by graduating hundreds of violent bullies into society."

^-- "I didn't want a war with you. I've got far more important things to do, and God knows you've got plenty of work too, but you declared it by starting with the threats. Between my millions and help from the Dean of OSU and the Corvallis and Oregon Boards of Education, I'm sure I'll win your war so fast your head will spin. I'll leave you to decide whether to cooperate with me or to ruin your career and have yourself go down in history in all the biographies that'll be written about me as a truly terrible Principal. I look forward to seeing how you treat me and this incident over the next few days."

I left the room.

During my speech the Principal had been denying, protesting and trying to take back his threats, but I'd yelled right over the top of him when necessary, or just talked as he started giving up, as there was no good reason for me to stop short. Quite the opposite, as I was sure he'd soon have more ammunition to use against me; most likely because of more violence or something involving naked girls. So it was best that I seize this opportunity to redefine our relationship. It was unlikely that I'd get a better incident than this, as blaming me for it was truly absurd. Boys who've lost their girlfriend should NOT consider castrating their successor to be an acceptable option! And neither was my breaking a few easily healed wrists or arms disproportionate compared to what everyone thought my assailants were trying to do to me. Plus it was completely true that I'd been on the receiving end of bullying hundreds of times at his school, so I carried a great deal of animosity toward the Principal. If he works hard to stop bullying, I'll ignore him, but if he causes me grief, I am more than happy to fuck him over, which I genuinely thought I could do, exactly as I'd described.

If my speech backfired - if he discovered a spine and fought back - the worst that could happen was that I'd be expelled. I really didn't see that being anything more than a very short-term problem. I could probably choose between changing schools, getting him removed and myself reinstated here, or getting the Corvallis or Oregon Boards of Education to force him to take me back. So I essentially had nothing other than a temporary inconvenience to lose, and free run of the school to gain.

In case you think that my action was extremely foolish, or that I was pushing my luck way too far, my answer is that I was VERY aware that the Principal was already in major shit with the Boards of Education - so much so that he might lose his job over this incident anyway. It was entirely possible that all I needed to do to get him fired was to tell his bosses what he'd threatened me with in his office. He was already on such terribly thin ice with them that he had almost no way of kicking up a fuss. His aggressive accusations against me had probably been a desperate attempt to coerce me into accepting the blame for today. He knew he was looking down the barrels of career-damaging guns, so he'd probably been desperate to browbeat me into accepting blame for this latest disaster. Unfortunately for him, it'd backfired, and now his position was under threat from below as well as above.

I was effectively telling him that I could blackmail him now. In a practical sense I could do it because I was extremely secure and he was extremely insecure. In a moral sense I could do it because he had no moral credit whatsoever. He was selfish and flawed enough that I had no hesitation in pressuring him further. It was, truly, his own fault. Morally I didn't feel dirtied either. I would continue to study hard and get good grades. When I had spare time at school and wanted to have some fun and games with it, my leverage over him should smooth the way.

It wasn't as if I'd tried to use that power in some totally selfish, damaging way, such as getting him to rearrange the class memberships so all the boys in mine were replaced with great looking girls, or to make the inter-period breaks longer (although that was tempting). I hadn't even asked for my own private room with a key and a bed. Mostly I just wanted to be able to get on with my studies without having to worry about the external crap he was trying to load on me. Besides, at the current rate there wouldn't be any boys left in my 10th grade classes soon, so I would have a room of girls to myself.

[In the hours and days that followed, the Principal didn't try to shift any of the blame onto me. For example, he got to give yet another anti-violence speech - this time to all the high-school boys in the school hall. During which he put 100% of the blame onto the six culprits. He also expressed considerable frustration that "You boys are failing to understand that violence is wrong." Which only went to prove how dumb he was. Boys LOVE violence, and they'd been getting away with it at school for years, so a few speeches were hardly going to stop the behavior.

He kept his job, largely (I believed) because my family and I didn't demand otherwise. My attitude was, "I don't care either way." Which was the truth, as it wasn't as if a new Principal was going to make any difference, and I certainly wasn't worried about bullies anymore.]

Julia had called my mom as I'd asked her to. Julia had more or less said, "Mark was attacked at school again. It's all over and he wasn't touched, so there's nothing to worry about. I saw the whole thing, and he was amazingly impressive. He'll tell you about it when you get home tonight."

I'd not gotten my parents involved. I probably should have, what with my being a minor and my talking to the police, but I thought I was on pretty safe ground and there was nothing they could do except worry. So they didn't hear any details until they got home. Mom, being Mom, immediately flipped her lid.

"Mom, why are you flipping your lid?"

"You could've been seriously hurt!"

"No I couldn't. To hurt me they had to be able to touch me, and I didn't allow that." Not strictly true, but sometimes it's better not to let Mom learn the actual facts, because they tend to upset her.

"But there were SIX of them!"

"In all honesty, the only difference how many of them made was in how badly I hurt them. If there'd been just one, I could have held him down without hurting a hair on his head. If there'd been sixty, I would have had to hurt the first dozen or so very badly indeed, until the survivors got the hint and ran away. Six was no big deal. Every time one of them tried to grab or punch me, I broke his arm. Funnily enough, none of them made a second attempt. The whole fight lasted only a few seconds because I broke their arms the first time each of them reached for me."

Julia was with me while I was telling my parents, and she backed me up with complete calmness and confidence, saying, "They didn't have a chance to land even one punch, Felicity. It was so one-sided it wasn't even a fight." Earlier Julia had suspected that I'd deliberately let the last guy land a few glancing punches. She'd confirmed her suspicion with me while we were waiting for the cops, and wasn't counting those punches now.

When Mom was semi-calm again, I risked moving on to the next part of the news, "I knew it was only a matter of time before some guys attacked me, and I'd already decided to hurt them badly, which is why I broke four of their arms. So the whole thing went exactly according to my plan. One of the guys even provided me with a wonderful excuse for injuring them so much, he said and did some really stupid things, so I could claim he was trying to castrate me."

"WHAT!"

"Relax Mom..."

"HOW CAN YOU TELL ME TO RELAX! He was trying to..."

"And I'm TRYING to get you to relax. Just because someone's trying to do something, doesn't mean they've got a snowball's chance in hell of success. It was just a dinky little pair of scissors, and he was stupid to say he could cut anything with them. It was absurd, but it gave me the excuse to break a few arms. He was a blustering idiot, and it took me less than a second to break his wrist. Remember how my sensei tried to punch me from behind when he was testing me at the Williams'. What's the chance a stupid boy could get near me when he was coming from the front and even being so stupid as to tell me in advance what he was going to try to do? Beating him was easier than taking candy off a baby. I wasn't the least bit worried. Given how many very good reasons I've got for not wanting to be a eunuch, if I wasn't worried you shouldn't be either."

Mom was now only half-flipped. To save time I decided to be more convincing. We were in the living room, which was a bit exposed, so I said, "Let's take this to Carol's bedroom. I want to show you something. Wait for me there, because I need to get some demonstration equipment first."

They went to the bedroom. I went to the kitchen. I put a dessert spoon in my pocket, and picked up the biggest, nastiest looking carving knife we had. I held it hidden against my side, so seeing it early wouldn't spoil the surprise.

In the bedroom the first thing I said was, "Donna, you wait in your room. I'm going to do something I want to be a secret and you're not good enough at keeping secrets."