As we sat in the cafeteria having breakfast — Larry and Leo sat, that is, while I got marginally comfortable with one knee on the chair and the other foot on the floor — the loudspeaker crackled to life, in Gil's voice. "I need all First Year students to come to the Demo Room at 8:30 am. Demo Room, 8:30."
The clock on the wall said 7:50. There were no classes until 9. Larry looked at me. "You guys had a demo a couple of weeks ago."
I returned Larry's puzzled look. "I remember. Better than anybody else, in fact. Do they..." My blood ran cold. "No. Oh no. Shit." I jumped to my feet and ran out of the caf.
I pounded down the hallway and threw open the door of my room. "Maverick?" I looked all around, looking for signs Maverick had been there. Nothing was visible in the bedroom, but Maverick rarely left anything laying around. In the bathroom, I felt the towel. Wet. Maverick had showered, but now was gone somewhere.
I ran back up the hall, rounded the corner, and pounded on the dorm parents' door. "Gil? Brian?" No response.
Where is he, where is he, what is he doing? He's volunteered for a demo, hasn't he? Is that what all that talk last night led him to? Where is he?
I ran to the Hall of Honor, running breathlessly past the first aisle of heads, looking down each successive aisle as I came to it. No Maverick.
I stopped at last, bent over, to catch my breath. I walked up the last occupied aisle, stopping at Sumner's head. "I wish you guys could tell me what happened here last night. What did he say to you? What's he going to do? Did he promise he'd do one last service to the school and make up for the shit he's done? DAMN it!" I turned to run out, but stopped myself. I turned back to Sumner and petted Sumner's hair softly, bending to kiss my former roommate's cheek. "Love you, hon. I'm not going to let another roommate join you in here just yet."
As I ran out of the Hall of Honor, it occurred to me at last that, if the meeting in the Demo Room had anything to do with Maverick, he was probably there now. I took the next turn in the corridors and ran down to the Demo Room.
I burst through the door, obviously startling Gil, Brian, and Maverick, who seemed all to be making adjustments on the noose hanging in the center of the currently-empty circles of seats. I shouted, "Maverick, there's no reason to..." I stopped suddenly and blinked. "What the hell is that?"
It wasn't a noose they were adjusting. Hanging where the noose should be, there was instead a neck trainer suspended by the rope. "Maverick, what's happening? Gil?" I felt completely out to sea. Larry and Leo had never mentioned demos like this. And they had been as befuddled as me at the call for an unscheduled meeting.
Maverick beckoned me over. "We're almost ready here. I was about to come and find you. I want you to be here with me for this."
"Ummmm... for what?" I walked to him and stared up at the neck trainer. I couldn't imagine what its intended use here would be. Obviously the neck trainers could be used to support a Hanging Boy's full weight, but it didn't seem to me that a demonstration of that was really necessary.
"I'll need some help. And..." Maverick looked directly into my eyes. "I just need you here with me. Okay?"
I tried to see what was behind Maverick's eyes, and saw no sign that he was about to do away with himself. I did see, not just in Maverick's eyes but in every muscle of his body, that he was going to do something he found very hard. If Maverick was, for one time in his life, asking for support, I was willing to give him all I could. "Sure."
The door to the room opened, and three First Year boys came in, looking curious, seeming to notice simultaneously the neck trainer, and stopping to look at it and whisper to each other while finding seats. Gil and Brian left the central area and hovered near the door, leaving Maverick and me as the centers of attention. The fact that it was those two boys in particular, the subjects of last night's punishment, standing by the platform was not lost on any of the students as they came trickling into the room, and I knew that most of the whispers and probably all of the giggles involved speculations as to whether there was some further punishment not mentioned in the student handbook. I moved closer to Maverick, not only for support but also in hopes of picking up some vibration from him that might shed some light on what was happening.
By about 8:25, Gil signaled that everyone was present, and Maverick cleared his throat, immediately quieting the by-now loud murmurs that filled the room.
"I asked Gil and Brian if it was okay if we could all meet together like this. I just have some things I want to say, and then there's something I wanted to show you."
Jack's jaw was set in irritation, his eyes rolling, obviously wondering how Maverick could be allowed to summon the whole class for a meeting and wondering what new outrage he might be hatching.
Maverick went on, "I want to say that I'm sorry about last night. I know you all had to suffer a little for something I did, and I never meant for that to happen. I promise I'll never let it happen again."
It occurred to me that, for last night at least, the class was equally mad at me. I broke in, "I'm sorry too. For the rest of my life, if any of you ever lose any privileges, I promise, on my honor, it won't be because of me."
I looked at Maverick and caught the tiniest smile in return. I could read that smile: Maverick's acknowledgment that none of the trouble had been my fault this time either.
The students started relaxing a little, even Jack. A mass apology was something they could all live with, even at 8:30 in the morning.
Maverick spoke again. "After just a month and a half, you're probably all better at what we're all trying to do than almost anybody in the world outside these walls..."
Several pairs of eyes shot wide open in surprise. Some of them may not have looked at it quite that way before, but beyond that, the last person in the world they would have expected to point it out would be Maverick.
"...and I know all of you want to be the best Hanging Boys you can be. We can all get there by sharing with each other..."
Dropping jaws now were joining the bulging eyes. Jack was looking directly at me, as if he suspected I was responsible for substituting a fake Maverick in place of the real one.
"...and I've got something I can share, and I thought it would work simplest to show all of you together instead of one at a time. I've seen a lot of you trying to do some of the hanging moves I've been doing, and I know you're running into the problem of trying to breathe while you're doing it, like you were trying to recite the alphabet while writing the numbers from one to ten."
I saw several stunned nods. The soft background whispers had vanished entirely. The room was in dead silence other than Maverick's voice.
"There's some training you can do to help you get past that." He stepped up onto the platform. He was fully dressed, but no one commented on the breach of etiquette — not even making jokes about why Maverick didn't want to show his butt uncovered today.
Maverick secured the trainer around his neck. "I'm just going to hold my hands behind my back, but when you practice it, have your partner tie your hands or use the handcuffs or whatever you usually do. And strip naked like for any practice, so it all feels normal. The important thing is to do everything exactly the same way you would if this was a noose. Roll your head, do everything you'd normally have to do to get air and blood circulation. But because it's the trainer and not a noose, you'll be able to breathe easier and stay up longer — a lot longer, until your neck just gets tired. You need to get used to the feeling of doing those two independent sets of movements, and this will give you the freedom to do that without running out of breath."
Maverick put his hands behind him, clasped one wrist with the other hand, and nodded to me. I was so absorbed in what Maverick was saying that it took me a moment to realize I was expected to do something,. I quickly reached out and pulled the lever to make the platform descend, my eyes glued to Maverick.
It looked just the way it did in our room during practice, the hip thrusts, the sensuous leg movements. At first that was all he did, and then, continuing those moves, he began taking care of the movements of his head he needed in a noose to prolong his life. He kept it up for several minutes. Even in clothes, Maverick was simply the most erotic thing any of the boys had seen, and I noticed several of them reaching down to rub.
I had adjusted to the display enough that I noticed Maverick's foot-waggle — sensing the signal was, for me, the equivalent of a motorist sensing a red traffic light slightly below the conscious level and automatically applying the brakes — and I pushed the lever back to raise the platform.
As soon as Maverick had his feet planted, he said, "Did you see how I started? I was just doing the hip thrusts for awhile, then I added the head movements. At first you'll need to get into the rhythm of one before you add the other to it. But before long you'll have the feeling for doing both sets of moves together. When you get to that point, stop doing it with the neck trainer and try it with the noose."
Trent, a bison, raised his hand, a surprising acknowledgment that, for now, Maverick was the teacher. "Is that just an ordinary neck trainer, like from our rooms?"
Maverick nodded. "It's the one from my room, in fact. Just rig it up in place of the noose, and put the noose back later."
Another hand went up. "Should we stop practicing with the noose altogether for now, or mix the trainer and the noose together?"
Maverick nodded as if to say, Good question. "Until you get to where you can do this, just use the trainer only. You're trying to teach your body to do all the motions automatically, and you don't want to confuse your muscles with mixed requirements. This may take as many as... well, see how you're doing after a half-dozen sessions. That may work, or it could take more. You can do more practice sessions in a day, though, because using the trainer isn't as tiring."
Each time Maverick finished responding to a question, he glanced over at me. It didn't seem to be the sort of look that requested approval, or any gesture from me, and in any case it was only for an instant, before Maverick turned his attention back to the other boys.
Another hand. "Are we going to be able to use the trainer in Hanging Class?"
Maverick shook his head. "I checked with the teachers, and they don't want to change the structure of the classes right now. If you've got a class today or tomorrow, hold off on starting with the trainer until after that. By the time your class meets again, you should be off the trainer and back onto the noose. Oh! And you don't need to be doing all the things I do right away. This is just to get you started, to give your body a feeling for how it can be making organized motions below the neck while you're doing all you need to with your head. You're all experienced enough with hanging in general that you'll know when it starts feeling right."
From behind the rows of seats, Gil waved to get Maverick's attention and pointed to his wristwatch. "It's 8:50, Maverick."
Maverick sighed with what seemed to be relief. "Okay, that's all I've got."
The students immediately started out of their seats and heading for the door, some going to their rooms, others to class. Jack, on his way past, opened his mouth as if to say something to me but closed it without speaking, shaking his head with an expression of wonder.
As the last of the students passed through the door, I turned to Maverick. "Maverick, that was... ufff!"
Maverick had turned toward me and almost collapsed against me, encircling me with his arms and burying his head against my shoulder the same way he had the night before. I noticed for the first time that Maverick's whole body was shaking. "Maverick, you all right?"
I felt Maverick's head on my shoulder nodding. Maverick's muffled voice said, "Wynn, I did okay, I think."
I suddenly realized that Maverick had been doing something so alien to his instincts that it had taken every ounce of his will to bring it off. What he had done had required that he not only organize what he wanted to do and say, and consider what to say in answer to the student's questions, but that he also edit his initial speech and his responses on the fly to make sure there was no trace in them of any put-downs or insults, nor even any physical reaction that might suggest he thought the students facing him were enemies to be slapped down and conquered. And the only reason I knew this was the insights I had gained into Maverick's inner being last night — during the meeting there had been no visible sign that any such internal struggle had been going on.
I put my hand on the back of Maverick's head. "You were fantastic! It all just seemed so natural."
I felt Maverick's head shaking. Voice still muffled, he said, "You know it wasn't. Is it going to get easier?"
"Maverick, everything you've ever learned to do has gotten easier with practice. Just like what you told the boys about hanging, today. Right now this is something you're working on. After awhile it'll be part of who you are."
Maverick lifted his head finally, brushing away tears and showing a shaky smile. "Thanks."
Brian, with a puzzled expression overlaid with a This-is-none-of-my-business look, tapped me on the shoulder, and handed me the neck trainer. "You guys better get to class. We'll finish straightening up in here."
I nodded, took Maverick's hand and pulled him at a dead run out of the room.
As we hurriedly grabbed our books and notes, I said, "I thought you told me you didn't know how you learned the sex moves."
Maverick started, "Did you think—" He seemed to cut himself off like a driver stomping on the brakes. He gave the shy little smile again. "I lied." He rushed out of the room.
I followed him, thinking: It's going to take a conscious effort for him, for a long time, to stop that reflex that spits out a sarcastic response to every question. But he's working so hard at it!