The teachers were crazy about him too and awarded him the gold medal for Most Improved Pupil at the Easter prize-giving ceremony, which was greeted with derision by those students who did not hold Julian in the same high esteem as I did. Since he hadn’t even been enrolled at Belvedere College during the previous term, it was a mystery to them how he had managed to improve at all and the rumor went around that Max had granted a scholarship to the school on the condition that his son’s résumé would be padded with glory over the coming years. I was delighted, of course, for it meant that as part of his reward he would be joining me and four others—the gold-medal winners in English, Irish, mathematics, history and art—on a trip to Dáil éireann to witness the workings of the Irish parliament.
I had won the English prize for an essay I’d written entitled “Seven Ways to Better Myself,” in which I listed various qualities that I knew would impress the priests but that I had absolutely no intention of pursuing in real life (except for the last one, whose addendum wasn’t a problem to me at all). They were, in order of appearance:
1 Study the life of St. Francis Xavier and recognize aspects of his Christian behavior that I could emulate.
2 Identify those boys in my class who were struggling at subjects in which I excelled and offer to help them.
3 Learn a musical instrument, preferably the piano but definitely not the guitar.
4 Read the novels of Walter Macken.
5 Begin a novena dedicated to the repose of the soul of the late Pope Pius XII.
6 Find a Protestant and make him see the errors of his ways.
7 Banish all impure thoughts from my mind, particularly those that focused on the intimate parts of people of the opposite gender.
It wasn’t the gold medal that I craved so much as the day out, the destination of which changed every year and had previously included such exhilarating venues as Dublin Zoo, Howth Head and Dun Laoghaire pier. This year, however, things had taken a more exciting turn with the announcement of a visit to the city center, a place that, despite its proximity to our school, was out of bounds to us at all times with no exceptions according to the student handbook. As boarders we could leave Belvedere on weekends as long as we were in the custody of a parent, a guardian or a priest, none of which particularly appealed to us. However, it was absolutely forbidden to spend any time in O’Connell Street or Henry Street, which, we were told, were havens for vice and iniquity, or Grafton Street and its environs, which were the domain of writers, artists and other deviants.
“I know the city center quite well,” Julian told me on the short bus journey from Parnell Square to Kildare Street. “My father brings me and Alice there for lunch occasionally but he always refuses to take me to the places that I really want to go.”
“Which ones are they?” I asked.
“Harcourt Street,” he replied knowingly. “That’s where all the girls hang out. And the nightclubs on Leeson Street. But of course they’re not open till nighttime. I hear that the women there will do it with anyone if you buy them a Snowball.”
I said nothing and looked out the window at the posters advertising Ben-Hur that hung from the front of the Savoy Cinema. As infatuated as I was with Julian, I found his tendency to talk constantly about girls frustrating. It was an obsession for him, as much as it is for most fourteen-year-old boys I suppose, but he seemed excessively preoccupied with sex and wasn’t shy about telling me all the things that he would do to any girl who would let him have his way with her, fantasies that both aroused and distressed me with the certain knowledge that he would never want to do any of those things with me.
Did I spend much time examining my feelings for Julian in those days? Probably not. If anything, I deliberately avoided analyzing them. It was 1959, after all. I knew almost nothing of homosexuality, except for the fact that to act on such urges was a criminal act in Ireland that could result in a jail sentence, unless of course you were a priest, in which case it was a perk of the job. I had a crush on him, I recognized that much at least, but I didn’t think any harm could come from it and assumed that in time those feelings would pass and my attentions would shift toward girls. I thought I was just a slow developer; the notion that I could have what was then considered to be a mental disorder was one that would have horrified me.
“The seat of government,” said Father Squires, rubbing his hands together in glee as we disembarked the bus on Kildare Street and made our way past the pair of Gardaí standing by the gates to the courtyard, who waved us in without even a word when they saw the collar around our principal’s neck. “Think, lads, of all the great men who have passed through these doors. éamon de Valera, Seán Lemass, Seán T. O’Kelly. The Countess Markievicz who, strictly speaking, was not a man at all but had the heart and guts of one. We’ll not speak of Michael Collins and the Blueshirts. If you see any of them renegades inside, look the other way as you would a Medusa. They’re the sort of West Brit good-for-nothings that your daddy would have great time for, am I right, Julian Woodbead?”
All heads turned in Julian’s direction and he shrugged his shoulders. The Jesuits, of course, were ideologically opposed to Max Woodbead’s veneration for the British Empire and would have considered his love affair with Queen Elizabeth II to be heretical, although it didn’t prevent them from taking his money.