THE CREW - Chapter 23
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We were impressed.
We were all very impressed.
In fact we were so impressed that most of us thought we might as well quit the contest there and then.
After all, Spike's entry had encompassed not one, not two, not three - but four members of the football team.
Who could compete with that?
Spike, though, is a good sport.
As he himself pointed out, quantity doesn't always win.
It can be beaten by quality.
And, as he also added, his entry was actually one without an entry, if you follow what I mean.
So maybe Zak, or Stevieboy, or I could still cum up with the winning result.
Zak took his turn next with the story of how he'd joined the team and had rapidly become Coach Passage's special assistant in carrying out his somewhat unconventional sports therapies.
That took some beating - as, we quickly learned, had several of the jock's dicks and asses under Zak's close supervision.
But that hadn't seemed to put the guys off at all.
Indeed, Zak proudly told us, he'd have to get away from today's Koffee Kabin meeting pretty promptly. He was expecting a visit from no less than Marty Gustavsson - the team's star quarterback and two-times winner of the annual High School Hunk contest run by the girls in our school (but in which all us Crew members had also managed to cast our votes).
We were all stunned.
The contest was supposed to be over.
What was going on?
To our complete amazement and initial disbelief, It turned out that Coach Passage had announced his retirement on medical grounds and had officially recommended that, pending the appointment of a successor, Zak be appointed as the team's interim therapist.
The Coach himself had already moved out of town.
No one, reported Zak, was quite sure where the old guy had gone.
One rumour had it that he'd shacked up with my old music teacher and Doris Day aficionado Mr Zabaletta.
In view of what some of us knew about Coach Passage's inclinations, it seemed only too likely, if that particular story turned out to be true, that Mr. Z would soon be reprising Calamity Jane's famous chorus:
Whip
crack-a-way,
Whip crack-a-way,
Whip crack-a-wayyyyyy….
Not everyone believed that one, though.
It was also said that the coach had been seen serving behind the counter in Mr Hung Lo's porno emporium.
That particular story had originated with Biff Bradley - who thereafter had the greatest difficulty in explaining what he'd been doing in such a disreputable establishment himself. But it did have a certain air of truth to it.
Particularly when the corroborating detail included a sighting of Coach P. giving the most personal attention to helping some young athletic-looking customer get his 200 lbs of pure muscle - a surprisingly large proportion of which seemed to be concentrated firmly between his legs - into a pair of leather pants with only a 28" waistband.
Zak himself confidently dismissed both these theories, attractive though they undoubtedly were.
He knew the truth.
Coach "Back" Passage, he assured us, had successfully claimed on a substantial health insurance policy and was now living quietly at the Lavender Retirement Home in Miami, Florida.
Not, Zak said, that this was a retirement home like any other you'd ever heard of.
The "Lavender Lads", as they called themselves, may have had an average age well into their 70s, but invariably seemed to gain a whole new lease of life after their arrival at the place.
Outsiders might have thought it was the warm Florida sunshine.
Or the invigorating sea air.
Or the masses of fresh local fruit in the diet.
But Zak - who, it seemed, knew everything there was to know about it - understood the secret of the old guys' longevity.
The nurses.
Male nurses.
Or, to be more precise, virtually boy nurses, specially recruited from Miami's finest hot and over-sexed Latino youth.
They may not have known much about taking blood pressure.
But they certainly knew how to increase it.
They may not have been the best at giving injections.
But they could certainly give head.
And the creamy, white medicine they each dispensed - on demand and with impressive regularity and copiousness - was literally lapped up by their eager patients who regarded it as some sort of magical elixir of youth.
Moreover, and even more importantly from Coach Passage's point of view, they all lived up, 100% and more, to his exactingly high personal standards when it came to deep internal therapies.
Of course, the question we all wanted to know was how Zak had found all this out.
It turned out, he
told us, that he'd actually got to like Coach Passage quite a bit after working
so closely - and intimately - on the jocks with him. And that he'd gone down to
Florida to visit Coach and the Lads just a couple of weekends ago.
Coach,
he assured us, was in fine spirits.
The only drawback of the boy nurses, he'd laughingly told Zak, was that they all seemed to be called "Miguel". So when you wanted one with any particular skill (in which respect, Zak didn't elaborate) and called out for him, you never actually knew who would turn up.
If you were lucky though, the coach had added, your summons would be answered by four Miguels at once.
And that offered an immense range of opportunities, even to an old and ailing guy like him.
It was, he had assured Zak, almost as good as being back at school with the jocks.
Zak himself had enjoyed the weekend too.
Not just because of the Miguels - whose various therapies he'd amply sampled and judged to be almost as fine as his own.
But also because he'd grown rather fond of one or two of the Lavender Lads as well.
They were, it went without saying, the rich ones.
The very rich ones.
And, like the kind, unselfish kid he is, Zak had, as a result, decided to devote himself, as far as possible, to making their declining years as happy as he possibly could.
© Rob Maynard /HMBoys.com 2006