Gone East

Durham New Hampshire.
January 1969.

Ah, such memories. The UNH Novice tournament. 3 rounds. One of the few debate tournaments to give out speaker awards based on speaker ranks, rather than speaker points.

I was an affirmative novice. I had been doing okay, but nothing special. I wasn't one of the novices to go to UMass, for instance. I wasn't scheduled to go to UNH either. My regular partner, a seriously disturbed kid named John Brady (on whom I had a crush -- I had a thing for bad boys), was going to go to UNH, but as a negative debater. He was going with someone -- I think Mike Festa who would grow up to become a politician --- and that person, again probably Mike Festa and I could tell the story about how he had to go thru the hot oven in PE class and how his bare butt was still bright red 40 minutes later in post class showers but I'm beginning to sound like a certain opera employee with all my divergent stories --- anyway, that person got sick. So the tournament is Saturday and on friday night I got a call from Bob Graham. He was the varsity buddy for Brady and me. He liked Brady -- Graham was not as disturbed as John, but he was into smoking dope and drinking and Brady was always down for that -- he actually got drunk during lunch at the Bishop Guertin tournament, but again, I digress and get Joannish again.... So Graham calls me and tells me I'm going negative the next day since Festa (man, his butt was sooo red, and this was after class and he got sent thru the hot oven at the beginning of class becuase he was screwing around during attendance when we all had to stand on those spots on the gym floor because there were like 90 kids in gym and isn't that a nice way to have a young boy deal with his homosexuality -- have him take a shower with 90 guys twice a week -- so the fact that his butt was still red at the end of class meant he was really really pounded during the hot oven run, but again, I act like a Scotswoman. So Graham tells me Festa is sick and I gotta debate negative with Brady. So me and Graham and Brady meet at John's house and they give me this file draw of neg evidence to learn because I'm going 1st negative and John will be 2nd Negative and that means I have to know case stuff.

And we go to the tournament and surprisingly we go 3-0. Undefeated. Brady got all first speakers, so he got a speaker award trophy. And we're on the way home from the tournament in the van, and I'm sitting up front on the engine beside Freeman. I don't remember who's in the shotgun seat. And I've already been 4-0 as an affrimative (at the Framingham North tournament and I still have that trophy) and Brady just won a speaker award so FTF loves him and he's driving and he turns and asks me "Do you and Brady want to go affirmative or negative at Dartmouth?"

DARTMOUTH! That was the peak of novice success. Freeman loved that tournament, and always wanted to win it. It was a huge tournament and it was so big that they restricted each school to a single entry, and that meant only 4 novices could attend out of the something like 16 novices on the squad. And only the best could go to Dartmouth. If you were a Dartmouth novice, you were the top. So I was in heaven, but the best part was after we got back to Melrose and a bunch of us were walking towards Brigham's in downtown Melrose, and Mike Krone (who I hated but also lusted after -- I'm telling you it was a confusing time for a young homo)was behind me talking to his own Varsity Buddy, and he started whining "I heard Freeman ask him. Boyson's going to Dartmouth, not me!" and this was real hard on Mike because he thought so much of himself and he was very cool and would ultimately get to be a class officer, and I was..well, I was a little homo nerd. It was so satisfying to hear him whine that I was getting what he wanted. But of course, fatre intervened because Brady, after winning the speaker award, decided he wanted to go negative but I wanted to still go affirmative, so FTF paired Brady with Diane Hubert (even a homo like me realized she was a hottie) and he put me with Krone. (We would go undefeated, but we were at each other's throat all tournament.)

And that's my Durham story, and do you know who Mike Krone's varsity buddy was?

John Gilbert Hodgson III.

Gilbert?

BTW, I see that we are now publicly telling racy stories about members of the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

Oh, and finally... I'm not sure that Mrs and Mr McStravick are "Gone East" readers.

The story about Representative Festa wasn't racy. It wasn't like I describe how melon-like his butt was or how at night, I would "wash my hands" while thinking of it.

Oh, that's a good one. Wash your hands? Yeah, right.

I'm not naive. I KNOW what that means. It was so hard on Jack's father and I went he went thru his hand-washing stage in junior high. No one could get him out of that bathroom.