ABSTRACT
LOOKING back on that appalling period of my life I do not feel, as I did then, that it was my fault; nor the fault of my contemporaries, or the local school authorities. The parents, staff, all were caught in a web of undirected menace. Sex, 'wiggling' of whatever variety, was the only redeeming thing in our lives. It was not the cause of anything; it obtruded because it shone out—as anything that brought relief in that dreadful darkness would have done. Since it obtruded it became the target for hostile attention. It did not dawn on me that it was 'wiggling'; it glowed into realization; first darkness, incomprehension; then an incandescence in my reddening cheeks—they knew even before I did. They always did. "Nothing! Nothing!" I would say, "I haven't done anything!"
