Before Finny, in my first semesters at Devon, I'd encountered no real happiness; and by the same token, no particular unhappiness either. There had been work and organized play and weekly organized religion. I hadn't minded any of these and if I wasn't satisfied (or unsatisfied), being so hardly seemed to matter. I hadn't been sent to school for happiness.
Encountering Finny began my shift out of this docile limbo, showing a glimpse of the fresh, unorganized atmosphere in which he lived. I was ambivalent about it; it wasn't for me, but I liked the sight of him in it.
For a long while in the glamorous school days of Gene Forrester, Finny remained a bit player. He was seen, most days. It was nice to know him by name and to have an occasional smile returned and that was about it. Our paths didn't cross in any serious way. He was not in the chess club; he was not in the math club. Our lives and interests failed to overlap. He was an acquaintance; by report a brainless athlete whose interests outside of play were short-lived and shallow-rooted.
I heard this assessment, but even not really knowing him, never particularly accepted it. I imagined him rather as an anomaly, and in the course of things, that's very much what he turned out to be.
So, he was another sort of creature from me; from anybody I'd encountered. I suppose I've already made that clear. Along with his particular otherness there was for me a tidelike pull. The more contact with him, the more I sensed it, but I didn't stop to consider, recognize, understand or resist. There were other followers; boys subject to the same tide, attracted by his charisma, so I wasn't alone, but I felt no kinship with any of them.
He was a powerful draw, an anomaly, but not yet one that would necessarily lead me anywhere. I would probably outgrow him and move on and away.
So, but for blind fate or (less likely) the perverse humor of a housemaster pairing us in the same room for the upper middler year, there would have been no Gene and Finny, no Finny and Gene.
I'd been a vaguely pleased observer with a head full of things unacknowledged and submerged in Finny's regard. Now roommates, he had me off balance from the start - using my hair brush (well at least he was using it on his hair and not on something else) on the first day. That there was an unspoken expectation for me to return the favor was obvious. I halfheartedly resisted for a while, and once past that stage, occasionally having taken and slipped one of his belts around my waist, his odd presence became less odd. Being in close quarters, hearing his voice first thing in the morning, and last at night, in all the various moments in between left me with a pleasant persistent wanting; and not a wanting to be free of him.
Simply being in the air he breathed became at some low level a pleasure. Gradually becoming more aware of this mild happiness, it disturbed me once or twice, then I turned away from the crazy idea. He was wholesome, there was nothing illicit, forbidden about him, us. We were pure in intent. Meanwhile I used him like a subtle drug, he became a comfortable mild addiction. Gradually (or had it been like that from the start?) he turned into someone I wanted, wanted as a … what? A friend? Wasn't he that already?
Things proceeded along these lines until the summer, when with most of the class gone home, our mutual focus increased, and on my side things fell all out of balance, when the tide of him rose in me, panicked me. Loosed all the hell I had in me, loosed it, then killed it.
Imagination never being my strong point, it never occurred to me that knowing him would lead toward knowing what made me tick and why.
