Chapter 2 Confessions of an Economic Hitman (2)

In 1945, I was born in an ordinary middle-class family. My parents were of northern New England blood. My mother went on to become a high school Latin teacher and my father was a naval officer. During World War II, my father was a naval captain on an oil tanker in the Atlantic, leading the gunner squad. He was in a hospital in Texas with a broken hip when I was born in Hanover, New Hampshire. I never met him before 1 year old. He later taught languages ​​at the Tilton School. The Tilton School is a private, boys' boarding school in suburban New Hampshire. Perched high on a hill, the school stands proudly—some say haughtily—overlooking the town that bears its name.

This school looks a bit exclusive to outsiders. It recruits students from grades 9 to 12, with a maximum of 50 students in each grade. Students here typically come from wealthy families in Buenos Aires, Caracas, Boston and New York. My family is very poor, but we never feel that we are poor. Although being a teacher in the school can only get a meager salary, the necessities of our life: food, housing, heating, water supply, and even workers who cut our grass and snow are provided by the school for free. From the age of four, I ate in the prep school cafeteria, ran after a soccer ball on my dad's coaching team, and handed out towels in the cloakroom.

The teachers and their families here have a strong sense of superiority in front of the locals. I once heard my parents jokingly call us "manor owners" who control the lowly townspeople. I know it's not just a joke. My classmates in elementary and middle school were of the peasant class, the sons and daughters of farmers, lumberjacks, and mill workers with their backs to the loess, and they all hated the "preppies on the hills." So my parents kept me out of town girls they called "whores" and "sluts." However, since the first grade, I have mixed with them, and I share my crayons, notebooks and other stationery with them.

I later fell in love with three of the girls: Ann, Priscilla, and Judy. It was difficult for me to understand and accept my parents' point of view, but I listened to them anyway. My dad takes 3 months off every year, and during that time we would go to a lakeside cabin my grandpa built in 1921. Surrounded by forests, owls and cougars can be heard at night. Here we don't have a neighbor and I'm the only kid in the place. In my early years I thought of trees as the proud knights of the Round Table novels or as confidantes like Ann, Priscilla, or Judy (in different years, imagine them as different people).

My passion was as strong and hidden as the knight Lancelot was for Guinevere. When I was 14, I was able to go to Tilton School tuition-free. Because of my parents' interference, I had to completely disassociate myself from the town and was not allowed to see my old friends. While my new classmates returned to their villas and mansions for the holidays, I wandered the hills by myself. I saw that they all had girlfriends, and they were all ladies, but I didn't. All the girls I used to know were "sluts". I had forgotten them long ago, and they should have forgotten me.

I felt so alone and extremely depressed. My parents, who were masters of "control," said that one day I would thank them for it, and that I was lucky to have the opportunity. I will find the perfect wife, a partner who will fully meet my high moral standards. I was so excited about this. I desperately wanted a female partner—more specifically, sexual experience, and the word "slut" sounded so alluring. Despite my inner rebellion, however, I can hold back my excitement, and I strive to excel, which gives me a thrill. I was an honor student, captain of two varsity sports teams in college, and editor of the school newspaper.

I want to make those rich classmates envy me, and make Tilton School always proud of having students like me. During my senior year, I received an all-around athlete scholarship from Brown University and an academic scholarship to Middlebury College. My parents wanted me to go to Middlebury College, even though they knew that Brown University is a member of the Ivy League (Ivy League), but because my mother graduated from this school, my father is also doing a master's degree at the school Bachelor of Science. However, I wanted to attend Brown University (because I wanted to be an athlete and because it was in town).

"Being an athlete? What if you break your leg?" my father asked me. "I think you should choose an academic scholarship. Despite my reluctance, I chose Middlebury College on an academic scholarship. Middlebury, in my opinion, is just a bigger version of Tilton—even though the school is in suburban Vermont rather than rural New Hampshire. The college admits both boys and girls, and most of the students are very rich, but I was a poor kid, and I was once four years in a school where there were no girls. I lacked self-confidence, lacked experience with girls, and felt inferior.

I begged my father to let me leave here, or take a year off from school. I wanted to move to Boston to experience life and of course women. But he turned a deaf ear to it, and asked me back: "If my own children don't want to stay in this school, how can I persuade other people's children to study here?"