“I couldn’t say anything to my father because if I did, he would have gone to the school and then everyone would have found out that it was me who had told, that I was a snitch. The masters back then would name and shame you. And the boys, they would make you feel ashamed for telling. If you told, you weren’t going to be part of them any more and they would leave you out of everything. It was hard to decide whether to make friends there by saying nothing, or say something and not have friends.
“Some of the matrics were okay – they were chilled out – but other matrics made you feel uncomfortable; they asked you questions like what kind of porn you watched. I’m not comfortable talking about what else they asked.
“They would try out stuff that would be painful and uncomfortable. Like, you know that machine they use in physiotherapy for your muscles? They would put it on our cheeks and turn it on. They put it on my cheeks and one boy’s privates. It hurt like hell. We couldn’t say anything back then, so we had to just keep silent the whole time.
“In Grade 8, I was planning on committing suicide at the beginning of the year. I was so shocked by how the hostel people lied to me about how it was, and I couldn’t take how they treated me in hostel any more, how my peers treated me and how all the other grades treated me.
“On your birthday, you had to stand on a chair in the dining hall and sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to yourself. And you also got wedgies. So I didn’t let anyone know when my birthday was that year. Which made it kind of not special. The things that my old pot [matric mentor] did to me … He was mostly cool and stuff, until one time I failed in my report. He took a cricket bat and hit me 11 times with it on the butt. It hurt worse than a devil poking you with his fork. I was sore the whole night. It happened towards the beginning of the week, so by the weekend the bruises had faded. There were two old pots per Grade 8, and the other one hit me once because I didn’t do well that term. I didn’t do good at all because it was first time I’d ever written mid-year exams and you wouldn’t expect them to happen so early. But he could have just told me to stay on my game, instead of hitting me. I was scared about the next time I failed; I was really scared.
“I couldn’t take it any more so I decided I was going to kill myself. I didn’t know what else I was going to do. But I just realised this: if I committed suicide, what about the people I would leave behind, like my dad? He had no one else, he had no one else … My mother had died just before then and if I died he would have no one.
“I miss my mom a lot. It was ridiculous how people insulted her at the beginning of the year. Some people said, ‘She died because she was sick of you.’ I lost her when I was in Grade 5, but you can’t change the past. I was in a very dark place back then, losing a person who I had so much in common with. We played games together; she did care. My dad, we don’t have that much in common. It’s hard to think about her sometimes.
“I was an easy target back then. I was quiet. No one noticed I was there most of the time; when people did notice, they were very surprised because I was like a ghost. But there were times I was driven over the edge. Once when I was in Grade 8 I broke a broom over someone’s leg. I was shocked at myself. It was the constant bullying and insults. Every night before I went to bed, I would hear the insults. Yep.
“The rest of Grade 8 was okay. But it was also when the You Know Who guy came in here. I don’t want to say his name. He was okay at first; he was a cool guy, but later he became more and more aggressive around us. He said it was fun and stuff, but I could see it was very aggressive, the things he was doing. He started with twisting arms, pinching and wrestling. He put me on the floor and twisted my arm and he would grab some boys by their nuts and say, ‘Whistle.’ I don’t know how that was okay. But he mainly went for the waterpolo boys because he knew them. Some of the boys he was worse with. And the boys would put on a happy face, just because, but I could see it was an act.
“He came for me on rare occasions. Once we were in the swimming pool, playing water rugby, and he bit me on my hand and his teeth sank into my hand and you could see my muscles and the white tendon. It hurt because of the chlorine. He didn’t apologise. This was when I was in Grade 9.
“He would just put on a face of innocence every time after that. He would come in at night, because no one would see him. He would close the door, because no one would see him in the room at all – the curtains were closed because it was night. There were no cameras yet. And that was … urgh. He didn’t come to me that often, but he did come to me sometimes. I felt uncomfortable around the room when he started doing sexual stuff to other boys, hearing him do all those sexual things to them.
“When we got told he got arrested I was like, ‘Wow! They finally did it.’ I was surprised when I got asked to make a statement. I was down at Mrs Bossert’s house at the time and I had to tell, which was nerve-wracking because I had to remember every bit of truth about it and I didn’t want to think about it at all. Mrs Bossert took me to the Teddy Bear Clinic and that helped. It was a bit scary; they wanted a blood sample from me and I hate injections. They looked for injection marks under my testicles to see if I had been drugged or anything, because I don’t remember how I got these scars on my back. My dad remembers that I had them in Grade 8, but I have no memory of how I got them at all. And apparently it’s actual scar tissue, not stretch marks or anything, like something hit me there. And I don’t remember it, not a bit.
“I was nervous to go to court. I was really nervous. We had to make a few statements after he was arrested because of all the processes and stuff, but by the time we finally went to court, it was a nerve-wracking experience. I didn’t have to go into the courtroom itself; we had a separate room, but it was still nerve-wracking because they were still asking you questions and because you knew this could very well determine a person’s future for the rest of their life. They asked a lot of questions. A lot.
“After he went to prison, I thought it was over. I thought it wouldn’t be mentioned again. I think the only guys who knew I made a statement were the other guys involved. When I heard about the sentence I felt like that seemed way too short at the time, because he’d been doing that for a year and a half technically.
“I decided to stay at Parktown Boys’ for matric because there was no point going to another school in matric. I couldn’t really move and make new friends, and I had made some friends – not hostel boys, but the day boys – and it was very nice there sometimes, being there and being with them. I couldn’t really leave and make new friends … I couldn’t do that.
“I want to go to culinary school just because I like cooking. I love it. It’s a way to do my own thing, with no one judging me. I like art a lot and I could use that in cooking. I’m very sure I want to do that. I had another option to become a vet, but I’m allergic to dogs.
“Cooking makes me happy, away from everyone’s complaints and judgement, and in my own space. I think it could be better with my dad; give it time. I think it could.”
*Michael is tall. Very tall. He was as quiet as his son. On the day I met him, he made me coffee and we sat in his townhouse. James was housesitting another unit at the time, so Michael and I spoke alone, watched with disdain and suspicion by a large dark fluffy cat, roughly the size of two normal cats.
“Is it friendly?” I asked cautiously.
“On its own terms,” Michael said ruefully.
Michael ran his own small business from home and, since his wife died, it had just been him and James rattling around inside, two lonely men in a lonely house, all three needing a woman’s touch.
“It was James who chose Parktown Boys’,” says Michael. “His mother, my wife, died when he was 11 and in her last days in hospital, he told her he wanted to go to boarding school, because he wanted