This was inconceivable to me, that even mother and father were to be considered as beneath Dragos now, and they should now also obey him as I did. Father, as always, spent most of his time alone in Washington and if he ever 'submitted' to this new household authority, I never saw any signs of it in those days. He was uncommonly proud of his boy, however. Mother, who always seemed quite weak willed and invariably followed the guidance of her sister, quite suitably submitted to his rule of the household. Any pretext of 'parental discipline', however minor, was soon long gone.
***********
I had thought my Junior High School years would be a slight improvement, as I hoped my brother would find interests to occupy him in High School, but if anything things got worse. If I somehow made a friend at school, it would take just a few minutes of my brother's time to turn him instead into my most implacable foe. I never could understand how he did it, either by persuasion or by gifts of money, but soon I was also most definitely the pariah of my school.
My teachers soon began to hate me, considering me a 'troublemaker', and the other boys and girls learned that I could be bullied with complete immunity. Even new students learned that I could be either safely beaten upon, or utterly ignored, giving me a wide berth. With little reason to play, my recess hours became increasing occupied with finding a quiet hidden corner where I could avoid trouble and read a book alone for a few moments of blessed peace and quiet.
Books became my constant companion. I could read them openly while at school, but I learned to keep them well-hidden at home, as anything that appeared to give me pleasure or happiness was relentlessly suppressed. I learned to live a life of duplicity, where I would pretend that my favorite foods were indeed my least favorite, and vice versa, and my 'pleasure reading' instead became another odious 'homework assignment' that I had to read for a heartless teacher and give an oral report upon the next day.
**********
When Dragos went off to our father's elite Ivy League college just as I started High School, my life did indeed begin to slightly improve. Out of sight = very much out of mind, at least for awhile.
My new classmates and teachers seemed to offer me at least guarded neutrality, rather than the outright hostility I was used to, and my studies thrived. I became a straight A student for the first time in my life, but this won me no favors at home, and I resumed my act of 'indifference' to school and I complained of over- work and attempted to look harried and miserable. I was allowed even to join the school newspaper, as this was deemed useful to our family's large publishing business. I found that I wrote well, and soon started to receive local awards and some minor regional recognition from peer organizations such as "Quill and Scroll." Naturally, I withheld any mention of these minor successes that would displease my stern family at home.
I also began to discover girls, and found that being far from 'icky', they could be pleasantly soft and made my stomach go all a flutter if one happened to kiss me. I lost my virginity at sixteen to a girl a year older, in her bed at home. I thought I was in love, but it was probably really just teen hormones (and lots of them). It's also quite impossible to disguise a teenager in love in any household, let alone mine where it was the family industry to keep me ground underfoot. With a week or two of determined investigations, my girlfriend's name was discovered, and Dragos was requested to come home for a weekend and 'attend to the matter'.
That he certainly did; the girl was invited to our house and within five minutes she was upstairs and naked in Dragos's bed 'being given a proper education'. Needless to say, that when I saw my former love at school the next Monday, she wanted nothing at all to do with me and made it her mission for the remainder of the school year to 'warn off' other girls about me. God only knows what she told them, but not a single young lady for the rest of the year would even look at me!
My 'spare time' was also now being managed more carefully, to keep me out of trouble and more suitably oppressed. I spent my afternoons after school and weekends now working in one of my father's press rooms 'learning the trade from the bottom', so I could be of assistance to my brother later. If there was a nasty or unpleasant job to do, I was just the young man for it.
Worse still, I spent my next two summers working at a logging camp in the northern wilds of Maine, learning the other end of our business. Very far away from any possible feminine distractions.
Twice, I persevered and started relationships with young ladies at school, both times with the same end result. My brother would effortlessly seduce them before my very eyes and make them his own lovers, ingraining upon them in the process that I was lower than the dirt beneath their feet, and much to be avoided.
**********
I was at an utter rock bottom emotional low point by the end of my senior year when I got sudden miraculous news that seemed to offer me an opportunity for escape. A small College far away on the west coast with an excellent Journalism program, offered to provide me with a full scholarship, including a dorm room with meals. This was a gift from heaven and I was going to accept it! My family had absolutely zero plans for any sort of a college education for me. On the contrary, it would be "absurditate and stupiditate" for me to go, Tante said, as it was 'unnecessary' for my future career on the lower rungs of the family business, especially as my old brother was intended for its highest rungs.
Seeing the writing very clearly on the wall, I told no one at home of my luck gaining the scholarship, and I rented a private PO Box to handle all of the correspondence for accepting it.
I saved every penny that I earned from the sweat of my brow in the lumber camp that summer, and on the day of my eighteenth birthday I cashed my final paycheck, closed my bank account and PO Box, and took a bus and then a train to the college. Nearly my first action was to go to the campus student Legal Aid office and have a young pre-law student type out for me a "Letter of Emancipation" stating that as I was over the age of eighteen, and a legal adult, I would now be making my own life decisions and would resent in the strongest possible way any further interference in my life whatsoever, thank you very much... and may you all go to Hell, via the express lane. That summed it up, more or less.
Free to be myself, I threw myself into college life and enjoyed every moment of it! I did not go home for Thanksgiving, or for Christmas, or indeed for any holiday, vacation or any other reason, for the next three straight years. Until the summer of my junior year, when my lover and fiancΓ© Wendy, asked for at least the eight hundredth time to be allowed meet my parents.
We had met while taking a class together in the spring of our freshman year, and within weeks we were dating. By the end of the semester, we were more or less living together, alternating nights between our two dorm rooms. She was in the journalism program too, as newspapers had been their family business for over three generations. We soon started to make plans for life together after graduation to work on her family's paper after graduation.
Over time I had told her about my family and their 'stupid Romanian mountain customs' that had ruined much of my life. She seemed sympathetic, but I don't quite think she really understood everything that I had dealt with.
About Easter time, I had received my first message from my family in well over two years, and it was quite terse. Both of my parents were apparently not in good health, and it would be appreciated if I could come home, even briefly, for part of the summer vacation. I showed this letter to Wendy, and told her that frankly I had little desire to see any of them again.
Dying? Great! Hurry and do it! That suited me just fine because they were both already quite dead in my heart.
I was admonished for the next few weeks for my 'callousness', and I at last relented - but only when it seemed that we would breakup over my 'selfishness'. I never could quite get her to quite understand just how badly I had been hurt and that my grudges were not childish ones. As we were going to be married in less than a year now, she was utterly insistent on coming with me and meeting everyone. In the end I caved in, to everything, but my heart was already worried about what I knew would happen afterwards.