"Carpe diem"

Naive as I was, I knew that I did not like the new twist that my relationship with Garvey had undergone. He began regularly directing me to the "music room" after practice. He would stand behind me and pin my arms to my sides or hold me by my wrists, sometimes pulling my arms behind my back. I was to fight against him to gain my escape. Fight I did. As before, in his bed, I pulled, twisted, grunted, and struggled. Sometimes he would tell me that if I couldn't break away, I would be "rapped". I struggled harder. Other times, inexplicably, I would free myself after a relatively short session. I had yet to approach puberty and I was no match for a fully grown man, even one with arthritis like Garvey. I never understood why sometimes he made it so hard and other times it was much easier. I still don't. Invariably, in the course of this wrestling, my towel would fall from around my waist. He would tell me to leave it where it lay and I would continue my session naked.

He began ending these sessions by taking hold of my wrists and stretching my arms behind my back in an attempt to touch my hand to the back of my head. Even at the age of eleven I was nowhere near flexible enough to perform this stretch but time after time we would go through this painful pulling on my arms and shoulders until months later I could finally do it with relative ease. I tell you this to point out that the "treatment" never stopped. It evolved. There was always something.

Perhaps the physical pain was a test, something to toughen me up. Bad as it was the toll these sessions were taking on my soul was much more serious. I hated the grueling contests. I tried to avoid them. I tried to avoid him. Avoid the situations that led to these sessions. I showered quickly and tried to get out of the school before he would come downstairs from the gym to the lockerroom. I left without showering. One day he caught me in the hall and I got a lecture and he forced me to take a shower with only the cold water turned on. He stood watch and would have held me under if I had tried to get out. He'd done it before.

Not long after, I think sensing my attempts to avoid him, he cornered me in the boys' basement bathroom where we showered. I was using one of the two urinals when he came up alongside of me to use the other. "Are you familiar with the saying 'carpe diem'," he asked me. "No, of course not," he answered his own question. "It's from the Latin. It means 'seize the day', 'seize the opportunity'. Mr. Hughes, Jack, you have an opportunity in front of you. I don't do what I'm doing for you for just anybody. You have worked hard for what you've gotten. It's not enough. Do you want to be mediocre? Is that what you want? To settle for mediocrity? We haven't worked on your strength or flexibility lately. You aren't fast enough or strong enough to compete with those other guys out there. Most of them are already going through puberty. Are you going to throw it all away? I don't offer my services lightly, Jack. Make up your mind. And remember, 'Carpe diem'." He'd started to walk away when he turned and said, "And how's your head? We haven't been working on your sinuses, either. Don't neglect them. That'd be a big mistake." He turned and left.

I considered my options. None of them good. I wanted that for which I had worked so hard, and always seemed to be just out of my grasp: to play and to play well. How had that ever come to this?

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