The Great Gatenby Read Online Free PDF Page B

conversations that went on in the dorm after Lights Out. I mean these guys were pretty crude! In fact some of them were definitely rank! The one who stood out, needless to say, was ole Rockhead Clune. But the competition was keen and there were times when even he was eclipsed, Evan Simpson being one who had an interestingly dirty mind. He claimed to have read a story in some medical magazine about a guy who had gained such control over his body that he could actually defecate through his mouth. I mean, can you believe that? Through his mouth? Imagine the job he’d have brushing his teeth. Anyway, it started up a whole big discussion in the dorm about whether he’d have to sit on his food to eat it. That topic raged for four consecutive nights. Is it any wonder that I sometimes thought I was going crazy, living in there?
    I asked Melanie what the girls talked about in their dorms, and she said, ‘Mainly boys’, so maybe things weren’t that different. We didn’t see the girls after supper each night — well, not legally anyway — so I wouldn’t know. But one thing I remember, within twenty-four hours of Melanie and I starting to go together, every girl in the place knew about it. I hate the way girls do that.
    After about a week of life at Linley I’d had my first phone call from my parents, checking up on how things were going. I told them all the stuff they wanted to hear, and not necessarily the stuff that was really happening; but I don’t even know why I wasn’t more truthful. Maybe deep down every kid knows his parents want him to be the Pride of the School, the Captain of Cricket and Tennis and Rowing and Darts and Knitting and anything else that’s going down. They don’t want to know about the fact that you’ve had more dets than any other new student in the history of the school (which is what Gilligan told me), that you’re going with a girl who doesn’t wear a bra to PE, that the Head Swimming Coach is some kind of Nazi, whose last job was training the shark in ‘Jaws’. They don’t want to hear that! Even though they tell you they’re proud of you no matter what you do, and just to do your best and that will be good enough, you know that secretly they want you to be the biggest star that ever was, so that you’ll be walking around everywhere in a kind of golden glow.
    â€˜How’s your swimming going?’ my father wanted to know. ‘What kind of times are you getting for a hundred?’ That stuff was really important to him. He’d been a star footballer and my swimming had always been a big deal in his life. When I was little he’d done all the organising and driving and even coaching when Mr Ho couldn’t make it. There were plenty of times I’d got sick of it, especially the last twelve months, but Dad was one of the main reasons I kept going.
    â€˜Keeping away from those girls are you?’ my mother said, kind of joking, but I knew she really meant it. She’d never been too impressed with the girls I’d brought home from Gleeson High, especially Janine, who’d had a tattoo of a penguin on her shoulder — God knows why a penguin. And in fact they’d tried to get me into an all-boys’ school, but they were full and besides, I wouldn’t have gone anyway.
    So I told them how I’d been burning up the pool, how I’d been training at 6.30 every morning, how I was doing triple the school work I’d been doing last year (though triple nothing is still nothing), and how the Headmaster was calling me in every other day to consult me on school policy. By the time they got off the phone I guarantee the only question left would have been which magazine they were going to sell their story to: ‘We were Erle Gatenby’s Parents’. Well maybe. Maybe they knew me a little better than I thought; that was another possibility.
    The call did make me feel bad though: I