Rip the Jacker (Part 5)
By Dolphin Dan
*** WARNING ***
This story focuses on masturbation and sexual desire among members of the same gender. It also contains descriptions of sexuality. If it is illegal or morally uncomfortable for you to view such material, please do not continue. This story is a work of fiction. It did not happen.
[OUR STORY: "Rip the Jacker"'s reign of terror over Homer High School continues. After five "attacks," word is beginning to get around school, but the administration seems intent on covering it up. Kyle, who is secretly the Jacker, is treading carefully. His friend Paul, to whom he is secretly attracted, is attempting to solve the mystery, and the Jacker saga is now a duel of wits to see who is more clever--Kyle or Paul.]
I was absolutely astonished that nothing serious came of the fifth attack, not even the letter I had sent to the Iliad. In fact, neither Royce nor Paul mentioned that a letter from the Jacker had been received, and although of course I couldn't ask about it, I immediately suspected that Mrs. Brune had been the first (and only) person to look at it, had notified the administration and probably either been warned by Reinhardt or took it upon herself to remain tight-lipped about it. By the end of the week we were hearing rumors that the Jacker (that term had finally begun to circulate around the students at large) had struck again, but they were unconfirmed, and the rumors lacked any details. Even Paul was in the dark. On Thursday night I couldn't help asking him, "Is it true the Jacker is at it again? I've been hearing things," and he shrugged and replied, "I don't know. If he did, no one's talking."
Even more amazing, Claire never said a word. I thought that I would hear something secondhand from Dominick, who had to have realized that his gloves had been switched with phonies. But I heard nothing. She wasn't oblivious to the Jacker rumors, and I assumed that if Dominick had any indication that the theft of his gloves was a Jacker crime, I would have heard about it. But I didn't, and of course I couldn't ask. But more than a week went by and the Jacker was last semester's news. What was going on?
I was actually quite offended. The administration had outfoxed me. Probably a janitor or faculty member had discovered the mess in the bathroom before a student did. They probably cleaned it up immediately, and instead of acting on the tip in the note to try to return Dominick Petra's property, Principal Reinhardt instead kept quiet. Dominick must have certainly realized at some point that his real gloves had been stolen--and, as I hoped and anticipated, he probably had no clue exactly when they disappeared--but he did not know that they had been found again, and under what circumstances. This angered me. Reinhardt had stolen Dominick's gloves! He was going to withhold property belonging to a student in order to keep the lid on the Jacker story, and in doing so he caused me to violate Tenet 7. That was inexcusable, and I took it as a declaration of war from Principal Reinhardt.
However, right before the publication of the next issue of the Iliad, which came out a week and a half after the fifth attack, we received a "directive" from the office to publish a small notice on the front page of the paper, in a box:
"NOTICE
A rash of thefts have been reported in and around the school. Please keep a close eye on your belongings. If you are the victim of a theft, or notice any strange activity, please notify a faculty member or security guard immediately.
The Administration."
Paul, as usual, smelled a rat. At lunch on Friday he grunted at the published paper. "I can't believe that's all they're going to say about it," he said. "There's some creep stalking the school, and they're warning people about thefts?"
"It makes sense, I guess," said Jeremy.
"Well, it does prove one thing," said Paul, folding up the paper. "If the administration is running this notice now, it means that the guy is still out there. I bet those rumors we've been hearing about an attack last week are probably true." He drank from his can of Coke. Shaking his head, he said, "I just can't believe the administration is going to sweep this under the rug. They're playing with fire."
"What can we do about it?" I shrugged.
Paul didn't answer, but I had a feeling he wouldn't just let it go.
He didn't.
The sixth attack was, if you'll pardon my immodesty, a stroke of genius.
After the Iliad with the theft notice came out and it looked like the Jacker phenomenon was waning, I racked my brains trying to figure out what my next move should be. There had to be another attack; that went without saying. Furthermore, the Jacker would have to take extra precautions to break through the code of silence that Reinhardt and the administration had erected. Obviously the next note found at the scene would be confiscated by the administration, and the artifact itself probably would be too. Sending a copy of the note to the Iliad was, I thought, a good idea, but I had underestimated Mrs. Brune's duplicity and her fear of stepping out of line with the administration. Thus, the Jacker would have to go over her head next time--or under it, as it were. The next note would go directly to Royce, by name. That wouldn't incriminate me. Everybody knew Royce was the editor of the Iliad, and perhaps the Jacker could even say that he was stymied by "Reinhardt's cronies" last time. Furthermore, it struck me that I could use the identity of the target to my advantage. I started to think about this, and the implications of the scandal that might erupt if it were made public that the administration knew about the attacks and did nothing to warn students (or parents) about them. I had no idea how far up the chain the knowledge went. Possibly the Jacker case was known to the school district, or the police. But if the next person the Jacker target was motivated to make a stink about it--perhaps to the school board, which would make the attacks a public and political issue--Reinhardt would be badly embarrassed. This was my main motivation. I wished the man no ill will for his own sake, but he had caused me to violate Tenet 7 and dishonor Dominick Petra, and I had to seek revenge. A brouhaha in the press and a run-in with outraged members of the school board asking questions like "Why wasn't this made public sooner?" was the perfect punishment. But if only I could find a target who was somehow connected, who, if he learned he was the object of some weird stalker, would try to take the case up the chain instead of letting it die.
Then I realized, I had the perfect target: me.
My uncle was on the school board. My mother was active in PTA. My parents were pretty prudish about matters of sex, and very protective of both me and my brother. If they were to learn that there was some kind of stalker at Homer High--and that the stalker had fixated on their son--and that the administration was doing nothing visible about it--I could virtually guarantee that angry phone calls would be made to my uncle. Of course. It was perfect! And the choice of myself as a Jacker target had numerous added benefits. It would throw Paul off the trail, for one. I wouldn't have to steal anything from anyone or run the risks of getting caught. And I could custom-tailor both the Jacker's attack and my own response to make the biggest splash possible. In fact the idea of fixating on myself--as narcissistic as it sounds--was arousing. The night I thought of it, I masturbated in bed and came on myself. I rubbed it in to the skin of my stomach until it dried, consistent with Tenet 3, and also to complete the spiritual circle of linking the predator (me) with his prey (me again) through the sacred medium of my semen. From that point on, I treated myself exactly as I would treat a prospective target.
I decided that the artifact would be my baseball cap. I had a St. Louis Blues cap that I wore frequently, usually backwards, and most people knew it as a mark of "Kyleness." If I was not myself the Jacker, I thought perhaps the Jacker would choose that as his artifact. My hair was shaved pretty short and I did think it was sexy--it felt good to rub my hand over the stubble on my scalp--so it wasn't a far stretch to believe that the Jacker might imbue my baseball cap with sexual connotations. Furthermore, it was something that someone could conceivably steal from me if they were careful and lucky. Several teachers had rules about not wearing baseball caps during class, so I took it off sometimes, and who was to say I might not be absent-minded enough to leave it lying about where someone could snatch it? The hardest thing was coming to grips with the fact that, if I offered up my hat as a Jacker artifact, I might never see it again. I thought it likely that Reinhardt would steal it from me by declining to notify me that it had been recovered. I loved my cap, but decided that, if I didn't get it back, I could go down to Pro Sports in the mall and buy myself another one. It was worth it to humiliate Reinhardt, to avenge the dishonor done to Dominick Petra, and to carry on the Jacker legend.
I planned the attack for the morning of the second-to-last Friday in January. I would report the cap missing on Wednesday, and I'd make a big deal out of it, which wouldn't look strange. Claire joked that "Kyle and that hat are meant for each other." In the meantime I had all the time and leisure I wanted to come up with the other details of the attack.
The next note was long. It took me two evenings of excruciating cutting-and-pasting to put it together, but I think it was my best one ever. It read:
FEE, FI, FO FUM
ANOTHER WALL COVERED IN CUM
COPS AND TEACHERS STILL SO DUMB
YO HO HO AND A BOTTLE OF RUM
FIVE OR SIX, WHICH IS WHICH?
KYLE LEVECQUE IS NOW MY BITCH
THIS IS HIS HAT, ISN'T THAT RICH
IF HE WANTS TO CATCH I'LL GLADLY PITCH
YOU PROBABLY THINK I'M A SICK FAG
BUT THIS IS JUST AN ELABORATE GAG
IT'S MORE FUN THAN A PORNO MAG
AND REINHARDT WILL BE LEFT HOLDING THE BAG
RIP THE JACKER
On the sticky note that I would attach to the Xerox I would send to Royce, I wrote:
I TRIED TO GIVE YOU A COPY OF MY LAST LETTER TOO, BUT I THINK REINHARDT'S CRONIES STOPPED THE PRESSES.
R.T.J.
On Wednesday, after third period, I went into the bathroom--in fact into the very stall that the Noah Sandoval attack had occurred in--and took off my hat. I stuffed it deep into the bottom of my backpack. At lunch I rubbed my bare head several times and said to Paul, Greg and Jeremy, "Has anybody seen my hat?"
"Your hat's missing?" said Paul, an eyebrow raised quizzically.
"Yeah. I haven't seen it since third period."
"Did you take it off?"
"Yeah, you can't wear hats in Kanarek's class. I left it on the radiator, but it was gone when we came back from the library." That day we had left Kanarek's English class to go work on our research papers. I decided it would be a golden opportunity to pretend the hat had gone missing at that time, because the classroom stood open all period, and anybody could have come in and taken it.
"Hm. Well, I'll keep an eye out for it," said Paul.
I could already see the gears turning in his head. I wondered if he suspected I was about to become a target of the Jacker. I didn't care if he did. If being a target of the Jacker didn't prove that I wasn't him, then what would?
That afternoon Claire and I went out to the Manhattan Diner again, and once more I bemoaned the loss of my hat. "I've looked everywhere," I said. "I guess somebody must have filched it. If I figure out who, I'm going to pay him back with a knuckle sandwich."
"Well, there are a lot of thefts going around the school," she replied. She kissed my head. "You look different without the hat, honey. Sexy!"
On Thursday morning, during the third-period break, I went to the office. There was a lost-and-found for the school down there, and I figured I had to make an appearance. "Excuse me," I said to Miss Crane, the secretary--she was no relation to John Crane. "Could you check the lost and found for me please? My baseball cap is missing."
"Missing a hat, are you?" she said. She got up from her desk and went to the cabinet where a large plastic laundry-type basket was kept with the lost and found items. "What does it look like?"
"It's dark blue with a yellow logo on it. St. Louis Blues. I haven't seen it since yesterday morning."
She pulled out the basket and we pawed through it, but of course the hat wasn't there. "I've looked everywhere for it," I said, shaking my head. "I heard there was a thief around the school."
"That's what they tell me. Well, I'll make a note of it." She wrote something down on a clipboard tacked to the inside door of the cabinet. "We'll let you know if it turns up."
The Friday morning attack couldn't have been easier. Once more I caught a city bus to the shopping center with Kinko's, made a Xerox of the letter, put it in an envelope and mailed it. I had chosen the second-floor bathroom again, and figured the early morning was best--the fact that most students had left the school at the time of the last attack had probably made it far more likely that the mess would be discovered by a janitor instead of a student. I jerked myself off through my pocket as I walked into the building and to my locker. I'd decided to stick the note to the bill of my hat with a straight pin. Standing at my locker I came alarmingly close to shooting a load right into my pocket. I could feel my dick tense up and the spasms start from deep in my balls. I gritted my teeth, knotted my stomach and tried mightily to hold back. I held my breath. The glorious quiver of impending orgasm shuddered through my body. I'd gone too far. But I narrowly came back from the brink. I slammed my locker shut and headed for the second floor.
The bathroom was deserted, as I expected. I was in and out in less than thirty seconds. I took the hat out of my backpack, unzipped my jeans, held it out under my dick and shot a huge and very satisfying load into it. It wasn't quite as staggering as the previous orgasms, but at least it was better than Dominick Petra. A jet of cum had landed on the underside of the bill. I dipped my finger in it and wrote the letters "K.L." on the wall. Then I put the cap on the part of the toilet mechanism where the pipes met at the back of the toilet, from which the flush handle protruded. I could already see my cum dripping down the chrome-covered pipe. I zipped up and fled.
I had never seen the Jacker phenomenon from the point of view of a target, and I was curious to learn what had gone on. I also thought that, if the administration talked to me at all, I might gain a sense as to how much they knew about the Jacker and how close they were on my trail. I figured it was likely they were a good distance behind Paul, whom I saw as the greatest threat. But it would still be very interesting to find out what they knew. Alas, as I half-expected (more than half, even), the administration never contacted me. During third period English class, a page from the office came to our classroom. When I saw her I hoped against hope that she would say, "Excuse me, Mr. Kanarek, can you excuse Kyle Levecque for a moment?" But she didn't. She came for another student, Cammie Hartwell. It was two hours since the attack. I knew the mess had to have been discovered and Reinhardt must know by now. With each passing hour of the day I grew angrier and angrier. That son of a bitch knew that my hat had been recovered, but he didn't even have the decency to notify me that it had been found. The Jacker was persona non grata, and if that meant the school had to steal from the Jacker's victims, I guessed Reinhardt was perfectly OK with that.
I heard nothing for the rest of the day, and the weekend. On Saturday afternoon Claire called me. "Let's go to the mall," she said. "I'm going to buy you a new hat." We went to Pro Image and she bought me a St. Louis Blues cap exactly like my old one. We had sex that evening, and it was wonderful. With her in my arms after it was over again it seemed, as it had previously, that I was entirely hetero and that the reality of being the Jacker was just a distant dream. I realized that being bisexual was a mysterious and enigmatic state of consciousness. It's as if your left brain and your right brain don't know what the other is doing. Some people characterize bisexuality as being "half gay, half straight." It's not. It's like being 100% gay, and 100% straight, at the same time. When I had sex with her that night it was glorious. I was pumping on her pretty good, but at one point I stopped, and felt the muscles of her pussy contracting around my dick. There's no other feeling on earth quite like that one. "Oh, Kyle, that feels so good!" she gasped, wrapping her arms around my bare back, crushing me in a loving embrace. When I came it felt like the entire universe was shuddering to a halt. In that moment I did not even remember that I was the Jacker. Noah Sandoval, John Crane, Joe Carallo, Ronan Samuelson, and Dominick Petra were completely forgotten. The universe began when I started coming inside of her, and ended when my orgasm finished. I was pleasantly exhausted, sweating, shaking. I kissed Claire's neck. "That was so good, honey." Even the Tenets did not address the situation I'd just experienced. My pathetic little notes had attached a great deal of importance to what I ejaculated on, who it belonged to and what it meant. But coming inside of somebody--that was another thing altogether. What did that mean? Did it mean I had to love Claire? It seemed there should be some spiritual consequence to it, but I couldn't figure out what it was. For the first time in my life, my mythology regarding masturbation failed me. It had been replaced by the realities of real sex. That was a very sobering moment, and in some ways a disturbing one.
On Monday morning in homeroom I got a note from Royce: "MEETING IN THE ILIAD OFFICE TODAY AFTER SCHOOL. VERY IMPORTANT. CONFIDENTIAL. BE THERE. R." I knew he had gotten the Jacker's letter. I still had heard nothing from the office. As far as they were concerned, the Jacker didn't exist. I grew more indignant with each passing hour.
After school I went to the Iliad office and found Royce there. No one else was in the office. He looked drawn and pale. When I came in he said, "Close the door." I did. From his backpack he took an envelope--the envelope I'd addressed and stamped at Kinko's on Friday morning. He didn't hand it to me right away. "Kyle, I have to tell you something that's--um, pretty weird for me to talk about. And it's kind of...scary, I guess you'd say."
I tried to act as I would think someone with no knowledge of the Jacker would act. "Scary?" I said. "How so?"
"Has anything been stolen from you in the last week?" Royce asked.
"My Blues hat went missing on Wednesday. The one I have on now is a new one, my girlfriend bought it for me."
Royce looked very pained as he handed the envelope to me. "I think Reinhardt has an idea of what happened to your hat, but he's not telling you anything," he said. "I got this letter in my box this morning. It's from--um, that pervert guy. Rip the Jacker."
I took out of the envelope the Xerox copy of the page I had worked so hard on last week. I read it over. I was secretly thrilled, and excited. I grew hard. It was working! No one suspected me. I must act the part of the victim. As I read the note I tried to take on an angry expression. I gritted my teeth. My brow furrowed.
"I don't get it," I said, handing the letter back to him. "I'm his 'bitch?' What the hell does that mean?"
"Kyle, there's been another Rip the Jacker attack. The administration isn't saying anything about it. But it happened. I think they found your hat somewhere in the school. Probably a bathroom somewhere. I think this guy--um, I think he--well, I can't even say it."
I maintained the angry expression. "He fucking shot his wad all over it," I grunted.
Royce nodded. "You're the newest victim. First Carallo and his pager, then that freshman kid and his sweater, and now you. The guy is obviously at it again."
I got up from the desk where I'd been sitting. "Shit!" I paced. How would I act if I found out some random, anonymous person, about whom nothing was known, was sexually fixated on me? My behavior in the next few minutes wasn't an act. It was at least partially real. "How could the administration not tell me? How can they do this?"
"They don't want word of this to get out anywhere. They're keeping you in the dark. Reinhardt thinks he's doing the students a favor by not panicking them, but he's really on the Jacker's side. He's covering for him now. Whoever this guy is, he's real smart. He knows what's going on. I bet Reinhardt shit his pants when he saw this letter. I don't think he knows that the Jacker sent a copy of it to the paper--to me, personally. He mentions that he sent an earlier letter but it was confiscated, probably by Mrs. Brune. That means there was another attack, recently, and we don't know anything about it. Reinhardt's been suppressing it. This is a big deal, man. I mean, people could lose their jobs over shit like this."
A burst of anger blossomed inside of me. It wasn't an act. In that moment I hated Reinhardt. I kicked a desk; it fell over on its side. I stood there staring at the wall.
"So this psycho is targeting ME now?" I said.
"Let's not jump to conclusions. The Jacker hasn't hurt anybody, at least, not that we know about. It's some kid, some student, he's trying to get a rise out of people. Who knows if he's dangerous or if he's just some dumb kid. But we're involved now. YOU'RE involved. I don't know what we're going to do, but we have to do something."
I paced. "Well, we can't go to Mrs. Brune. She'd confiscate the letter and threaten to throw us off the paper if we told anybody about it."
"Right. I don't think she knows it was received. The letter was addressed to me."
"We gotta go see Reinhardt, then."
"I don't think that's a good idea, Kyle. Reinhardt is scared. If he finds out we know about this new attack he'll do the same thing Mrs. Brune would do--he'll try to threaten us into not talking about it. We'll probably end up suspended."
Royce's paranoia was playing right into my hands. I stopped pacing. "I can tell my parents," I said. "My mom is active in PTA. My uncle's on the school board. Do you think the PTA or the school board knows about the Jacker?"
"If they do, they're keeping it awfully quiet," Royce replied.
"I CAN'T let this go, man. This son of a bitch is after ME now."
"No, you can't let it go. We gotta do something. But just understand that, whatever we do, we're going to get in a hell of a lot of trouble for it."
For the first time I felt guilty, truly guilty. Suddenly I could put myself in the shoes of Joe Carallo, called into Reinhardt's office, pleading with them to believe him that he didn't steal his own pager out of Lowery's desk. I understood the reaction of Andy Kamen, the freshman who came across the Jacker's second attack, and ran from the room, gagging with nausea. I never thought I would feel violated, victimized by my own actions, but there I was. I had turned good people who had done nothing wrong--Royce, Paul, Carallo, Ronan Samuelson--into people who had to risk the wrath of the Homer High administration in order to do the right thing. I had put other good people--Reinhardt and Mrs. Brune--into the position of covering up my own crimes, out of fear for their own jobs. Suddenly I began to get it. What I was doing was wrong. It had started as harmless fun, but it had grown way beyond that, and people were now going to start getting hurt. I may have hated Reinhardt, but if he lost his job over the scandal that would inevitably erupt over the Jacker incident, would that not violate Tenet 9?
But on the other hand, I was too deep into the morass to give up now. My own unruly dick had gotten me into this mess, and I had to get out. Reinhardt was still doing the wrong thing. The Jacker's attacks had to be publicized. Dominick Petra had to get his gloves back, whether he would want them or not; it would be nice to have my hat back too. I still had a chance to make a difference. It awed me that a teenage boy masturbating could cause so much anxiety. I had no choice but to go on, if only because to do anything else, to react to the news that I was a Jacker target with anything other than indignation, would cast suspicion on me. I may have been guilty, very suddenly, about what I was doing, but I still didn't want to get caught.
"I'll tell my parents," I said. "Don't say anything about this to anyone. Can I have a copy of the letter?"
Royce handed it over. "You can have this one," he said. "Just don't lose it. We might need it as evidence."
I folded the letter and put it back in the envelope. I was totally not aroused. I began to realize that the Jacker attacks had to end, if only because I was pushing my luck now, and I had to save my own neck. There was still work to be done--and, if the Jacker hadn't yet been discovered in the act, it was probably unlikely his identity would ever be discovered--so I felt the last act of the drama could afford to be played out. But it would be the last act--so long as I could control myself.
I wasn't sure I could.
The reaction was a firestorm beyond that which I could have imagined.
I told my mother. I showed her the note. I knew I was skating on thin ice now, flirting dangerously with the final brazen acts that would get me caught, but I had already decided that Kyle Levecque would be the Jacker's final target. I was getting tired of the whole thing. Even when I came out of the bathroom after ejaculating into my own hat I had looked forward with dread to picking a new target, trying to find a suitable artifact, trying to cover my tracks and trying to keep the whole thing alive. It seems strangely obtuse that I didn't understand, until the scene in the Iliad office, that I DID have a choice, and that the matter of whether the Jacker would attack again was entirely a matter of my own willpower. But I felt driven, compelled, as I had been throughout the entire situation. On that day in late January I began to regain some sense of myself. A strange madness had overcome me, but I was starting to come out of it.
My mother called my uncle. My uncle called the superintendent. The superintendent called Principal Reinhardt. Then the shit hit the fan.
One of the strangest moments of my entire life occurred, four days after my interview with Royce in the Iliad office, when I was lying on my bed in my bedroom watching a local news broadcast, and I saw a graphic appear above the anchorman's left shoulder, reading "HOMER HIGH STALKER."
"In other news, officials of the Mandan City School Board are asking tough questions tonight about whether the district has done enough to warn students and teachers that a sexual predator may have been stalking Homer High School for the past two months. Channel 7 news has learned that a number of, quote 'suggestive notes' have been received from an anonymous person, mentioning students by name and threatening sexual assaults against them. While police confirm that no sexual assaults have been reported, officials are concerned, and the school board wants to know what Homer High Principal Edward H. Reinhardt knew about the notes, and when he knew it. Channel 7's Marissa Tomlinson reports."
My face went white. Threatening sexual assaults? That was outrageous! I never threatened anybody. I suppose I couldn't have expected Channel 7 news to go into the details of the incidents, no more than we could have expected the Iliad to, but I felt totally wronged and misrepresented by the report. I was sexual predator? Upon whom had I preyed? The Jacker hadn't even so much as exposed himself to a single person at Homer High, which was far less than many schoolyard perverts did. Yes, Carallo felt violated enough to throw away his pager, Ronan ditched his jacket rather than clean my cum stains off of it, and Andy Kamen had lost his lunch at the discovery of Crane's underwear. But who had been permanently harmed by my actions? I had observed the Tenets scrupulously until Reinhardt's meddling had interfered with them. I shut off the TV set in disgust. This had all gone too far. I was glad it was over.
The administration's response was amusing, in a perverse kind of way. All in all the Jacker "scandal" wasn't big enough to cost Reinhardt his job. The next week, Mrs. Brune sat down with Royce, Jennifer, Paul, myself and several other members of the Iliad, and she told us that Reinhardt had authorized us to write a story on the Jacker for the next issue of the paper. "It's a sensitive subject, and Mr. Reinhardt has demanded approval on all copy that goes in the paper," she said sternly. "But he agrees this is now a matter of importance that the student body should know about." After nearly a week of work on the copy, we ran a very modest, toned-down version of the story, with the headline, MYSTERIOUS VANDAL CAUSES STIR AT HOMER. The article contained no mention of any sexual details, and, as before, Mrs. Brune drew a very firm line in the sand in making sure that no mention of masturbation appear in the paper.
But by then it was too late, because everybody knew who the Jacker was and what he did, regardless of the sanitized version. When that issue of the Iliad hit the pavement of Homer High, the Jacker suddenly became a household word, even though the actual words "Rip the Jacker" did not, of course, appear in the article. It was ironic that it all happened after I had decided to cease the attacks. Students in the halls told Jacker jokes. People in class traded scandalous whispers over who they thought the Jacker could be. Some of the more inventive theories I heard was that the Jacker was a girl who had been spurned by her boyfriend and was trying to frame him in order to get back at him, to the supposition that the Jacker was in fact Reinhardt himself, a secret gay pedophile who couldn't resist leaving his "presents" for everyone to find. The whole school was abuzz with Jackermania, and the administration was powerless to prevent it.
My mother was completely up in arms. She was on the phone several times over the next week. "You don't understand!" I heard her shouting into the telephone one night. "My son is the victim of an assault! This person is dangerous! I want something done about this, and I want it done now!" She overreacted severely. Both my brother and I were forbidden to go out. We could go to school, and I could do extracurricular activities--but only if one of my parents personally picked me up at school when it was over--and nothing else. It was even more of a shame because in mid-January my dad had made good on his promise to buy me a car if I kept my grades up. It was a beat-up old Honda, but at least it was mine. And now I couldn't drive it. Jeremy's birthday was that week, and I couldn't even go to his party. This status put a severe damper on my relationship with Claire. "I can't go out," I told her on the phone one night, with genuine chagrin. "My mom is afraid there's some guy in a trench coat hanging around in the bushes waiting to jump on me as soon as I set foot outside the house." In my opinion this was the greatest irony of the situation, that I was essentially grounded, imprisoned in my own house, as a direct result of a wave of hysteria that my own actions had triggered. It was completely ludicrous, but I didn't protest much. After all, I had to pretend to be outraged, scared and more than a little disgusted.
"I can't imagine what that must be like," said Jeremy at lunch one day, shaking his head. "I mean, knowing some fag jerks off thinking about you all the time."
"What can I do about it?"
"Nothing, I guess. It would just freak me out, that's all."
"It's fucking disgusting," I said, grimacing. "I don't even want to think about it. It's too gross." Paul, who was sitting with us at the time, was curiously silent during this exchange. He just kept eating.
I'm glad he won't be nipping at my heels anymore, I thought.
The agitation of my mother and my uncle had another result, one which was frankly pretty hilarious. About two weeks after the Jacker story broke, every P.E. class in the school got a visit from Mr. Bush, the "health" teacher. The drill was the same in every class, from freshman up through seniors. It happened in my own gym class; all the girls were sent off to play volleyball and all the boys in the class were gathered at one end of the gym in a little circle and Mr. Bush gave us a lecture. "Now, I'm not gonna be a Polyanna to you guys," he said, trying to be tough and tell it like it was. "I'm here to talk about masturbation. Almost all males do it. Every single one of you does it. But there's a time and a place for it." He proceeded to give us, fifteen boys from the junior class, a stern lecture on self-control and the line between proper and improper expressions of our sexuality. "What you do in the privacy of your own bedroom is your own business," he said, with a look on his face that made me feel genuinely sorry for him. "But what you do on school grounds affects other people." He did not specifically mention any of the Jacker attacks, but he talked to us as if each and every one of us was guilty of running around the school, whipping our rods around like swords at a jousting tournament, ejaculating all over the place. When class was over all of us broke into hysterical laughter. Jeremy almost had to be given oxygen. "Did you see the look on his face?" he gasped. "Jesus, that was funny! It's almost been worth three years of high school just to see that!"
One night not long after that Paul called me in a huff. "Dude, you've got to see this," he said. "Are you on line?"
"No."
"Get on line. Go to yahoo.com. Click on news. Down at the bottom they have a 'news of the weird' section. You won't believe it!"
I already knew what I'd find there, but I didn't want to believe it. I got on the Internet and followed his instructions. "Wow," I whispered. My dick was at full staff, straining my boxers. The third headline down read, MIDWEST HIGH SCHOOL TERRORIZED BY SERIAL MASTURBATOR.
It was astonishing. The article took a decidedly tongue-in-cheek approach to the news, which I guess was the only appropriate way to deal with it. I simply couldn't believe my eyes. Yahoo got millions of hits a month. My dick and I had made international news. It was shocking, thrilling, and a bit frightening, but in a way it was also very encouraging, very redeeming. I was a nonentity, a teenage boy in the Midwest who had never done anything even remotely noteworthy in my life--and yet people all over the world were reading about my masturbation habits. I went to bed wondering if the boy I had seen masturbating in the locker room at the health club four years ago read the article. That would be pretty cool if he had. If not for him, none of this would ever have happened.
I was so aroused I couldn't sleep. Finally I took down my shorts, took my stiff member in hand, and slowly stroked off to a shuddering climax, coming all over my stomach and my chest; a jet of cum even flew up and landed on my lips. I was thinking about that boy from the swim club. At last I'd come full-circle.
*** TO BE CONTINUED ***