‘What’s wrong, mate, what happened?’ I asked as I knelt down beside him. He lay still but turned his eyes towards me.
‘I feel shit,’ he croaked as he tried to sit up, but I told him to stay lying until I’d had a chance to examine him.
He tried to pull up his pants and I helped him cover himself, while Rachel looked away, her face reddening. ‘I was standing up, then woke up on the floor,’ he said. I asked what he was doing at the time, and he glanced at Rachel and gave her an almost imperceptible nod.
‘We were …’ Rachel stuttered, ‘we were doing, you know … it. And then he screamed, and there was blood, down there. His … his dick was bleeding.’ Kurt was feeling a bit better and again tried to move to a sitting position. I told him to lie back down as I needed to make sure his head and neck were fine but he sat up anyway. ‘It’s so fucking sore.’ I assumed he meant his head, but he very slowly put his hands in his pants and gently cradled his penis.
‘Mate, what have you done?’ I managed a quick glance and it looked a mess.
‘She broke it.’
Rachel began sobbing.
‘I’m sorry, I never meant to, I’m sorry.’
‘Is it gonna be OK, Doc?’ asked Kurt.
I imagined saying ‘No’ to make sure Kurt got the most out of the experience, but my usual kidding around didn’t seem the best course of action. There was a lot of blood down there and while I couldn’t make out what exactly was wrong, I felt sure it wouldn’t be serious – simply because I didn’t have the imagination to come up with something overly worrying that could have happened.
In hindsight he could have had a fractured penis, something I’d only read about being possible, and had no idea what such a thing would look like! With all the blood I felt certain Kurt’s problem was probably more superficial.
Kurt denied any neck or back pain, although he did have a three-centimetre laceration above his right eyebrow. I wrapped a bandage around his head and walked him slowly back to the health centre whereupon I received the whole story.
‘We didn’t warm up, it’s my fault,’ Rachel began while Kurt lay back on the couch, still cradling his manhood as he moaned in agreement.
‘Yeah, it’s her fault.’
They’d snuck off to the theatre changing rooms for a quickie between classes. ‘The floor was so gross,’ Rachel said, ‘so we did it standing up.’
‘She split my dick in half,’ Kurt cut in. I hoped that wasn’t the case. It was time to take a proper look at it, so I gloved up and shooed Rachel out the room.
‘Softly, Doc. Softly.’ Kurt gently lowered his pants and tenderly laid out his willy. The poor thing looked like it had been through a war, blood and all, but I could see the problem. I breathed a sigh of relief.
‘It’s OK, you’ve only split your foreskin in half.’
‘What do you mean only split it in half,’ Kurt exclaimed, his voice cracking, close to tears. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said ‘you’ve only’, as I’ve never had such an injury, especially considering the pain had been so bad that he had a vasovagal episode, which caused the faint, whereupon he hit his head against the sink on the way to the floor.
Most fainting by young healthy people is vasovagal. The vagal nerve runs from the head through the middle of the body. When this nerve is stimulated, as it was by the pain from his split foreskin, it slows the pulse down – a lot – from 80 beats per minute to zero beats per minute. Only briefly, of course, otherwise you’d be dead. But the subsequent drop in pressure allows gravity to take effect, and your blood pressure ends up in your boots. The good news is that when you hit the ground, you end up in a lying position, which helps the blood pressure return to normal. There are many things that stimulate this nerve, and pain is a very common one.
Poor Rachel had received such a fright at the suddenness of Kurt’s collapse that she thought she had ‘shagged him to death’.
Kurt’s mood slowly improved, although he still spent the next two hours cradling his penis. He was nauseous, pale, and would need four stitches to his forehead.
We eventually had him reviewed by the village doctor. His bleeding parts were patched up and he was kept in the health centre for the night for observation.
While Kurt may not want to speak of his experience for a few years … I’m sure when he’s older both he and Rachel will relish retelling the story of how he was almost shagged to death. Men enjoy these stories of past and mighty conquests. And of course, as the saying goes, if you’re going to die, you might as well go out with a bang …
It’s not just the kids that have a hard time finding privacy. Young, free and single faculty members have to be careful as well. Sean’s story was a lesson to us all.
The witching hour is usually considered midnight, but it’s more like 5.30am at boarding school. This is when all manner of creatures emerge from their dens of sin and scuttle home to hide their shame just before sunrise. It’s the time that Sean deemed it safe enough to risk an escape and make a run for it.
It never looks good for a male teacher to be seen leaving the female dorm area in the middle of the night. But what else could he do? He’d met the woman of his dreams, Sasha, a pretty maths teacher. He wouldn’t have been in trouble if his budding relationship had been public knowledge, or even for staying the night, they were both adults. Sometimes I think it’s simply because there are no secrets in boarding school that people try to keep them.
Marco also thought 5.30am was a safe time to escape the girls’ dorm, taking the above-ground path to safety, walking somewhat dangerously across the rooftops.
Stephanie chose the same route but was leaving the boys’ dorm, coming across the roof from the east, while the two males were coming from the west.
Their paths inevitably crossed: one teacher, two students.
There would be repercussions for everyone.
Marco was suspended for two weeks, Stephanie for one. Sean was more fortunate; in fact, it got their relationship out in the open and, many years later, he ended up marrying Sasha.
Marco’s punishment was more severe because he’d stolen a dorm key to enter the building, while Stephanie had been smuggled into the boys’ dorm in her boyfriend’s suitcase. The staff had even helped enable this feat by letting the boyfriend use the elevator. If only kids used these smarts in the classroom!
Sean did admit that he was very briefly tempted to pretend he’d never seen the others on the roof that night, especially when Marco offered him a deal: ‘You don’t see me, and I don’t see you,’ but he made the right choice.
It wasn’t all bad for Marco and Stephanie. Few escapades gain such instant fame amongst peers as rooftop wanderings in the dead of night.
For both the staff and the students, it’s hard to have a private life at a boarding school – you really have to make an effort to be alone.
For staff, being ‘off duty’ doesn’t mean a thing to the kids when you live in the same building, the same floor, the same corridor. Whether it’s a harmless secret, or something more interesting, you’ll eventually get found out.
For the students, finding a place to