You see, a life can be broken down to years, months, memories and undulating moments. Three moments defined mine.
One.
I was twelve. I spent holidays at Faust Boarding School for Young Boys, but on one fluke of a weekend, I decided to visit my mother’s house outside of Philadelphia.
She chose then to tell me. She didn’t set a date, plan the event, make it into something larger than she thought it was. She broke the news like she was firing an employee. Swift and construct.
“Your father and I are divorced.”
Divorced. As in past tense. Somewhere along the line, I had missed something dramatic in my own life. It had passed right under my fucking nose because my mother believed it meant very little. She made me believe it too.
Their separation was deemed amicable. They had grown apart. Katarina Cobalt had never let me into her life one-hundred percent. She let no one see beyond what she gave them. And it was in this moment that I learned that trick. I learned how to be strong and inhuman all at once.
I lost contact with Jim Elson, my father. I had no desire to rekindle a relationship with him. The truths that I kept close were only painful if I let them be, and I convinced myself fairly well that they were just facts. And I moved on.
Two.
I was sixteen. In the dim Faust study room, smoke clouding the air, two upperclassmen appraised a line of ten guys, stopping in front of each pledge.
Joining a secret society was the equivalent of being accepted to a lacrosse team. Dressed in preparatory slacks, blazers, and ties, the lot of us were supposed to grace the halls of Harvard and Yale and repeat the same mistakes all over again.
They asked each guy the same question and each responded with a simple submissive yes and was told to drop to their knees. Then they set their sights on the next boy.
When they stopped in front of me, I stayed relatively composed. I tried mostly to hide a burgeoning, conceited smile. They looked like two apes pounding their chest and asking for a banana. The thing about me—I was not so willing to give just anyone my fucking banana. Every benefit should outweigh the cost.
“Connor Cobalt,” the blond said, leering. “Will you suck my cock?”
The question was supposed to show how willing we were to follow orders. And I honestly wasn’t sure how far they would go, all to prove this point.
What do I get out of it?
The prize would be a membership into a social clique. I believed I could obtain this a different way. I saw a path that no one else did.
“I think you have it backwards,” I told him, my smile peeking through. “You should suck my cock. You would enjoy it more.”
The pledges broke into laughter, and the blond stepped forward, his nose nearly touching mine. “What did you just say to me?”
“I thought I was perfectly clear the first time.” He was giving me the opportunity to bend down again. But if I wanted to be led by a group of testosterone poisoned monkeys, I would have joined the football team.
“You weren’t.”
“Then let me reiterate.” I leaned forward, confidence seeping through every pore. My lips brushed his ear. He liked that more than he thought he would. “Suck. My. Cock.”
He pushed me back, bright red, and my eyebrow arched.
“Problem?” I asked him.
“Are you gay, Cobalt?”
“I only love myself. In that respect, maybe. And yet, I still won’t blow you.” With this, I left the secret society behind.
Eight of the ten pledges joined me.
Three.
I was nineteen. I attended the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League, and stood with forty other Student Ambassadors. Eager freshman filled the auditorium, hoping to be admitted to the prestigious Honor’s Program as I once was. I would take a group of them on tour of the campus before their interview with the Dean.
“Look around the room,” the Dean told them. The freshman glanced over their shoulders to meet the faces of their competition. From my place by the wall, I briefly locked eyes with a brunette in the third row. Her narrowed, brutal stare caused the girls next to her to shrink into their seats.
But she was focused only on me.
I mouthed, Hello Rose.
She read my lips well. Die Richard, she replied back, using my real first name.
Faust defeated her prep school at the Model UN Conference over a year ago, and it was her last chance to beat me at something before I entered college. The girl smoked with anger every time she neared me, every time she was forced to hear me speak.
She made me realize that nothing was better than winning. Not even sex. Although, I had never touched Rose. She more or less spit on any guy who got too close.