The Higher Education of Matt Griffith

Chapter 17: Rumspringa

Saturday, September 23, 1995

Copyright 2024. All characters in this story are fictional and are not meant to represent any living persons.

Note to readers: This chapter has 3 scenes. There is no sex. All 3 scenes advance the plot and/or develop the characters. The first two scenes are more light-hearted. The third is dark but involves the anticipated showdown with Colton.

The next two chapters, 18 & 19, will be fun and mostly sexy. Chapter 18, “Bella Bottoms” is the fall break field trip to the Gayborhood, Matt’s first drag show, and a sex romp. Chapter 19, “Rocky Horror”, involves the Halloween party at the home of some gay alumni. It has a gripping erotic sexual encounter.

Chapter 20, “Bah Humbug”, will be the darkest of the entire story. We say goodbye to a major character. Colton seems invincible. From there it will only get better. I hope that in the end you will agree it was worth the read.

Almost final note: thanks to the commenters on chapter 16 for alerting me to an unforced error on my part (tennis jargon, not soccer). I did not mean to give the impression that the fishnet stocking and man panties found in the locker room had been planted by anyone. They weren’t. Matt and Todd overlooked them. I was merely trying to convey Matt’s confusion and near certainty that he and Todd had policed the area before leaving. Mea Culpa!

Final note: in case anyone has wondered, Oklahoma Christian University is a very real place, rife with homophobia. Many of the events described herein are based on real events discoverable in any google search. The characters are fictional. Sadly, so is the Gay Mafia. This is not a memoir. Any religious animus on my part is intended only for the narrow band of fundamentalists described herein.

***

Matt had needed directions to Debbie’s neighborhood but guessed her house by dead reckoning. On a street where one bungalow blended with the next, where residents occasionally bumbled into the wrong house, where the lawns were boring patches of over-fertilized Bermuda masquerading as putting greens, Debbie’s was None of the above.

Matt was reminded of Sesame Street segments where there were three similar items (fruits, for example) and one dissimilar item (a toy truck). The Muppets would sing One of these Things, and by the end of the song you were supposed to pick which item didn’t belong in the set. Debbie’s house just didn’t belong—in a good way—among these poseurs.

It was a neighborhood of small houses, all built in the ’40’s when 1,200-1,400 square feet was plenty for a family. Detached single car garages. That was where the similarity ended. Debbie’s was a brick cottage with a steep roof and landscaping that rivalled Van Gogh’s fever dreams: vibrant blues, yellows, and oranges. A crowded palette. Garden gnomes. Whirligigs. Butterflies flitting among the blooms. Bees doing their pollen thing. A sprawling oak tree surrounded by ivy. No putting green. Maybe some cat graves tucked here and there. It was hard to tell.

The house was well-built, solid, meant to last. Good bones, like its owner. Uniquely accessorized, also like its owner.

Debbie was hosting her first team party. She’d been at that morning’s game, cheering them on to a 2:1 win. Now this.

It was 1:45 p.m. Matt was early, the first to arrive.

“Mustang!” Debbie greeted him. Swamped him with a bear hug. Her pillowy breasts brushed his abdomen. Her teased-and-pouffed ’80’s-style hair tickled his nose. On any other woman in her late 30’s, such hair would seem like a desperate grasp to hang onto her fading youth. Not so with Debbie. There was nothing faded about her.

“Hi mom!” Matt gushed. He hugged her back.

Debbie jerked with surprise, disentangled from the hug, and looked up at Matt. “What did you say?”

Matt grinned, told her to stand straight. “Debbie,” he began in an officious tone, then had to ask her last name. “Debbie Ford, in recognition of your outstanding efforts as Den Mother to our team, I hereby dub thee…’Mom Debbie!'”

Debbie’s eyes watered. “Stop that!” she tutted. “You’re going to make my mascara run. Then I’ll look ridiculous! Like Phylis Diller on Hollywood Squares!”

They were standing in her Barbie-pink living room.

“It’s a shame you didn’t get to play today,” Debbie said. She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue she’d retrieved from her iron lung of a brassiere.

Matt shrugged. “I was benched.” Matt had played at Thursday’s away game, but Coach had decided he could safely burn one of Matt’s two suspensions for that morning’s game. Coach had been right.

A white shag area rug in front of the seen-better-days couch looked like a splat of wet paint against the hardwood floor. Three cats assessed Matt from their perches on the couch. The smell of freshly baked desserts permeated the air.

“Benched because of this?” Debbie patted Matt’s still-bruised hand. “I heard about that fight you had. Sounds like that other fella deserved it. If he messes with you again, I’ll scratch his eyes out!” She held up one hand. Its painted nails curved menacingly.

Matt laughed self-consciously. His scabbed knuckles were nothing more than a cautionary tale against punching walls. That—and a reminder that Idabel was no longer his friend.

“There was no fight,” he said, which was true. What was also true was that he needed to change the subject. This talk of fighting just reignited thoughts that had troubled him all week, namely that Colton Langley deserved an ass-kicking and Matt wanted the honors. Not a locker room one-and-done dustup that was five minutes of posturing, thirty seconds of punching. What Colton needed—what he deserved—was a vigilante beat-down like Matt’s dad had delivered to the youth pastor who had molested his son. Missing teeth, broken ribs courtesy of a baseball bat.

Aversion therapy writ large, painted in blood.

Colton’s atonement for Adam’s expulsion and near suicide; for Gay Chapel, which had resulted in the dismissal of two gay freshmen (one male, one female) naïve enough to believe that going forward for prayer was a safe thing; and for dragging William to OC, then breaking his heart.

Yeah, Matt was in a dark place. Had been for the five days since Paul had shown him the letter, told him about Colton’s little extortion plot: if Paul did not report Matt to the Dean, Colton’s toady would report Paul. Either way one less fag on campus.

In roughly six hours, at 8:00 p.m., there was a scheduled showdown with Colton. William’s plan might work—might–but it was wrong-headed, weak. Matt’s superior plan had been soundly voted down by his peers in the Gay Mafia.

He itched to go rogue but was beginning to realize that not all his instincts merited action. Still…

Debbie wanted to talk about the fight that hadn’t happened. “Not the way I heard it. You’re a hero with all the girls. You know, my social ranking soared when word got out that I’m friends with ‘Mustang’, the tall, movie-star handsome, soccer jock! They come to my office and pepper me with questions about you.”

“TV,” Matt corrected her jokingly. “Mark Paul Gosselaar hasn’t graduated to movies yet.”

One of Debbie’s cats had jumped off the couch and was rubbing against Matt’s leg. He bent down and gently petted its calico fur. It sniffed his hand. Matt noticed that one of its eyes was clouded over.

“That’s Cleopatra,” Debbie said. “I named her that to boost her self-esteem. Don’t talk about the e-y-e,” she whispered. “She’s self-conscious. The e-y-e was like that when I adopted her. Poor thing. Has depth perception issues.”

The doorbell rang.

It was Idabel and two other teammates. They spilled into the house, still high on that morning’s victory.

Idabel gave Matt a curt nod, then followed Debbie to the kitchen.

Matt heard Debbie explaining to Idabel that she’d made him his own cherry pie—with real cherries, not some jellied glop from a can. It was stashed on top of the ‘fridge away from the other food. The crust was her grandmother’s recipe. Very flaky. She hoped he liked it.

The doorbell rang again. And again later. Eventually almost half the team was there, eating, talking excitedly, reliving the game.

Idabel stayed in the kitchen—whether for the food or to avoid Matt not easily discernable. Maybe both.

Matt stuck to the couch. Cleopatra took up residence on his lap, purring as he softly stroked her fur.

The party drifted to Debbie’s backyard and a frenzied game of croquet where everyone played simultaneously. Sunlight and sound streamed through the living room’s back windows, which were behind the couch.

Matt heard it all, a sort of fusion of hockey, croquet, and dodgeball. Smack talking. The soft thwuck of the mallets against the balls. Idabel’s laugh.

Debbie sank onto the couch beside Matt.

“You seem sad.” Debbie patted Matt’s arm. “Girlfriend problems?”

Matt heard the screen door bang shut. Someone had come in from the backyard. Opened the freezer. Plunked ice cubes into a glass. Turned on the faucet.

Matt shook his head. “I don’t have a girlfriend.” There were a lot of things troubling him. That was not one.

“That’s not what I hear,” Debbie teased.

The kitchen was to Matt’s right. Its entry was behind Debbie. The person in the kitchen was Idabel. Matt saw him reach for the pie on top of the ‘fridge.

“Not everything you hear is true,” Matt said to Debbie. “Trust me. I’m pretty sure that if you asked Ava, she’d say the same thing, that she is not my girlfriend. People see us together and just make assumptions.”

Matt locked eyes with Debbie, willing her to hear the hidden message he had just communicated. He also saw Idabel, standing in the kitchen entryway, pie in his hand, fork halfway to his mouth, frowning. He’d also heard what Matt had said.

***

Matt’s dorm room felt like a prison cell. Cinderblock walls painted a muted silver, maroon institutional carpet–silver and maroon being the school colors and all. OC had marked even this tiny space as theirs, pissing their colors on the walls and floor, filling the room with the claustrophobic stench of conformity.

It was 6:42 p.m. Matt had nothing to do until the 8:00 handover with Colton. Nothing to do except brood. Debbie’s party had temporarily raised his spirits, but his mood had ultimately collapsed back upon itself, like a cake that had reached too high and then cratered.

He considered jacking off, if for no other reason than to kill time, relieve stress. That, and he wanted to christen his new poster.

The poster hung in the spot once occupied by the Dallas Cheerleaders. Matt had found this beauty, oddly enough, at the campus bookstore. It depicted a guy climbing a steep rock outcropping—free solo style. The climber was young, hot, sweaty, wearing only cotton shorts, climbing shoes, and gloves. Downy legs. A lean, muscled torso.

One hand and one foot clutched at the sheer rock face. The climber’s other arm and leg swung free in space, providing a lovely view of his chest, which probably wasn’t his goal.

The photo’s focal point was the climber’s tenuous, one-handed grip on reality. One slip and he would plunge to his death.

The photo’s subtext was a teasing glimpse of the climber’s crotch. Or so it seemed to Matt. The guy’s shorts were stretched by the pull of the one leg on the mountain and the other leg sucked down by gravity. A practiced eye—guided either by imagination or expertise in such nuance—could discern the hint of scrotal bulge and, exactly where such a thing would be, the possible snaking curve of cock. Or was that just an odd crease in the fabric? A shadow?

To someone like Matt, who had spent a large portion of his post-pubescent years pouring through the men’s underwear section of the Sears and Roebuck catalog, sussing out its secrets like a paleographer squinting at an ancient manuscript, this photo was homoerotic art of the first order. Proto-porn in the sense that cuneiform was a proto-semitic script. (Shoutout to Dr. Farris’ Old Testament Survey class.)

Proto-porn only to Puritans and modern fundamentalists who took umbrage at Michaelangelo’s David.

In any other context such a poster would have been flagged by OC’s morality police, the poster confiscated, its owner sent packing. But, because the printers had slapped an inspirational Bible verse at the bottom, all was forgiven, so much so that it could be offered for sale alongside their other Christian paraphernalia.

Organized crime had its money laundering; this was proto-porn scrubbing.

Matt loved it! Having it on his wall was a secret “Fuck you” to everything the room represented.

There was a light knock at the door.

“Come in,” Matt said half-heartedly.

Seth’s head bobbed into view. “Got a minute?” he asked.

Tall, gangly Seth named after Adam and Eve’s third son who was famous only for having been Noah’s great, great grandfather. Bible Seth almost certainly had not been red headed, as was his modern namesake.

“Sure,” Matt smiled. “Pull up a chair. Or will this be a therapy session, and you’d prefer the daybed?”

Matt liked Seth. At the beginning of the semester, the kid had self-consciously wrapped a towel over his tighty-whities before and after his morning shower, mortified someone might “uncover his nakedness” as the KJV described it.

That awkward kid had surprised them all. He had been the first to follow Matt’s lead and stroll around naked. (Okay, just the fifty or so feet to and from the communal shower, but at OC that was akin to streaking.) Now, he organized a weekly “Lip Sync in the Loo,” where guys did makeshift nekkid karaoke! And he had a girlfriend!

Seth straddled a chair. “It’s a therapy session, but I’m good sitting.”

“What’s going on?” Matt asked. This had to be about girls. Matt was considered an expert in the opposite sex, his having been openly courted by Ruth and now supposedly dating Ava. Both girls were hot. That both were linked with Matt gave him instant hetero cred he hadn’t asked for but wouldn’t refuse.

“Okay. Here goes.” Seth took a deep breath. “Um. Well.” Another breath. “Don’t judge me, but…” Sigh. “I’m struggling with…”

Seth’s voice dropped to a bare whisper. “…purity. Maintaining it, you know? Any advice?”

“Yeah,” Matt laughed. “Here’s my advice: Don’t struggle. You’re gonna lose the battle every time.”

“WHAT???”

Matt shrugged. “I was planning to jack off right before you knocked.”

“But—”

“I know ‘sin of Onan’ and all that,” Matt interrupted. “Look. You asked for my advice. You can go on feeling guilty for every boner. Ashamed of every wet dream. Or you can do what I’m doing.”

“Jack off?”

Matt grinned. “Sometimes, yeah. But I’m talking about a concept. Ever heard of ‘Rumspringa?'”

Seth shook his head.

“It’s a German word. Rolls right off the tongue like all their others: ‘Blitzkrieg.’ ‘Wehrmacht.’ ‘Konzentrationslager.’ You get the point. Anyway, this particular Kraut word has been appropriated by the Amish. You know, buggies, beards…those Amish.”

Matt had Seth’s attention. He continued. “The Amish don’t just herd their teenagers into the faith like we do. They let them go explore the outside world, drink alcohol, have sex if they want—for a limited time called ‘Rumspringa.'”

“No way!”

“Way,” Matt said. “It starts around age seventeen and can last until the person is in his—or her—early twenties. If the kids return to the fold—and nearly all do—that’s when they get baptized and become lifers in the community.”

Seth was gob smacked. “Wow! Just wow!”

“Exactly!” Matt said. “Which leads me to my point. I’m on ‘Rumspringa.’ You should try it, too.”

Seth looked thoughtful.

“Now get out,” Matt smiled. “Therapy session is over. Close the door behind you. I’m gonna ‘wank.’ ‘Choke the chicken.’ ‘Onan’ all over the place. ‘Burp the worm.’ ‘Polish the banister.'”

***

Beam Library did not live up to what the name implied—the beaming, smiling part. Its entrance was covered by a thick concrete slab of a portico supported by four squat concrete pillars. Hospital emergency rooms had more charm.

Matt was on the second floor where a bank of glass provided a sentry’s view of the entry below. He was watching to see if Colton came alone or tried double-crossing them.

Five days earlier, Colton’s little extortion letter had lit up the Gay Mafia. As in all-hands-on-deck EMERGENCY MEETING, which had sucked, because they had all been focused on their upcoming Fall Break field trip to the Gayborhood.

The extortion part was straight-forward. Paul was to write a letter to the Dean denouncing Matt as a fag who had tried to seduce him, which had a veneer of believability since everyone had seen the two of them together for ostensible tutoring.

Otherwise, if Paul refused to go along, Colton’s toady, Mike, would write a letter to the Dean denouncing Paul as the fag who had tried to seduce him. That also had some credibility since Paul and Mike had, on several occasions, been observed going into Paul’s dorm room. They had been playing chess, but—really—who would believe that?

The Gay Mafia had to decide whether to sacrifice Paul or Matt. Both were innocent of having made the alleged advances. Both were guilty of being gay, though Colton was just acting on a hunch. He was, after all, a self-hating gay with impeccable Gaydar.

There were five options:

Option 1: Wave goodbye to Matt, which would be the result if Paul wrote the letter to the Dean. No one liked this option, including Paul. He would not betray his friend.

Option 2: Sayonara Paul, which would be the consequence if Paul refused Option 1 and Mike wrote his letter to the Dean. This was a non-starter, too. Even William was beginning to like Paul.

And here was the thing about both options 1 and 2: whichever person got expelled for being gay—Matt or Paul, faced dis-fellowship by their churches and families. No safety net. Financially and emotionally blacklisted.

Option 3: Paul could write a letter denouncing Colton’s toady, Mike, accusing him of being gay, of having made advances on Paul when the two of them were playing chess in Paul’s room. The idea was to beat Colton at his own sneaky game, turn the tables, accuse his toady before the toady could accuse Paul.

William had argued against this plan. He knew how Colton’s mind worked, having gone to high school with him, having fallen in love with him their senior year, having watched the guy’s machinations at OC for the last three years.

“Trust me, dahlings,” William had said. “Even if Paul gets to the Dean first, Colton will still have Mike make his accusation against Paul. The most likely outcome is that the Dean believes Mike and expels Paul. Mike is vice president of SGA. More importantly, he’s Colton’s toady, and the Dean knows that.”

“Alternatively, the Dean expels them both. Either way, Paul will be gone. Colton is perfectly willing to risk Mike’s expulsion. Loyalty is not a word in Colton’s vocabulary.”

So here Matt stood, peering out of the wall of glass, surveilling the entrance below, lest Colton double cross them in their own double cross.

Colton sauntered up the steps. He was alone. He was taking the bait, as William had predicted he would.

Had Colton had company—the Dean, for example, Matt would have dashed to the conference room and warned William and Paul. They would have aborted and escaped down the back stairs.

Matt took up a new position behind a double-sided row of bookshelves. He peered through a gap in the books, waiting for Colton to approach the conference room.

Matt still thought Option 4 would have been their best choice. That option involved Matt’s vigilante beat down of Colton. Lure the guy off campus. Hurt him good. Let him know that if he persisted, there would be a second, even more painful encounter.