Fagmaster
A British Story about a British Tradition
And in celebration of the word "Fag"
By Maryanne Peters

Worthing School may not be as well-known as other ‘public’ schools in England, nor one of the oldest, but it was a proud institution, modelled on the classic private boarding schools of the nation – schools like Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Winchester and Charterhouse.

One tradition that was entrenched in those schools in the 18th century was what was known as ‘fagging’. Under this system, junior students, new entrants to the boarding establishment, are required to act as personal servants to certain seniors. To some extent, this reflected the fact that servants were common in the households of the wealthy students, so there was value in their understanding of the duties and responsibilities of those that served them.

Worthing adopted the tradition when it was established in the 19th century, and it had been a part of the school since then. It still is today. Fagging is no longer acceptable in other public schools in England, having fallen out of favour in the 1980s. Worthing may even consider itself as being better for preserving the tradition.

That tradition was based on the traditional relationship of squire and knight from medieval times. A senior pupil who was considered as being a ‘fagmaster’ had won his spurs as a knight and was entitled to enlist a new entrant as his squire, or fag.

It is said that the duties and responsibilities of a squire and his master were well understood from the earliest of times. The master is the protector of his squire, responsible for his protection, welfare and good conduct. The squire must attend to the comforts of his master and the preservation of his honor. A shortcoming by a squire may result in punishment, and this was where fagging had got its bad rap. Cruel punishment, and also suggestion of sexual abuses, had been a thing of the past and caused the collapse of the system elsewhere. Worthing comes down hard on that kind of thing.

Certainly, I respected that. And I considered myself wholly heterosexual.

Most fagmasters only take on the role in upper sixth or seventh form, but I was a third generation ‘Worthy’, so I had the opportunity to have a fag allocated to me at the beginning of my sixth form year. I was 16 and Keith Sidebotham was a third former, barely 14. Still a child, really.
He was commended to me by the Deputy Headmaster, Mr. Dunning. He told me that the boy’s family were middle class, but sound, and they were worried that their son might find the rough and tumble of boarding school a bit tough. He was small and puny, and clearly in need of the kind of protection and support of an older pupil such as me. In return, having to make my tea or polish my shoes seemed a small price to pay, given the bullies said to predominate at Worthing. It was not true, of course, but it is just as well that a fag believes that he is getting value for the work that he does.

But the other aspect that struck me about this boy, was just how ‘pretty’ he was. There is no better word for it. He had a mass of blond curls – hair far too long for Worthing – and big blue eyes. I have to say that I found the first sight of him, biting his lip nervously but charmingly, made me feel awkward.

“So, Sidebotham, you are ready to be my fag?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” he replied respectfully. Somehow I knew that this relationship was going to work for both of us.

“I really need a name for you,” I said thinking aloud. “With those woolly blond curls of yours, it really should be Bo-Peep. Or just Bo.”

“I suppose that I need a haircut,” he said.

“Nonsense,” I told him. “I have influence. Grow it out even longer. I insist. We’ll test my ability to have the teacher look the other way.” I was confident that I could arrange it. Somehow I just felt that this mop of hair defined the boy – Bo.

I introduced him my classmates as Bo, and it was not long before the other fags were calling him by that name. It’s not a bad name. It’s not derisory, or effeminate. He quite liked it. It just seemed a fit. Some boys in his year called him “Front Bum” or just “Fronty”, but to me he was always “Bo”. Well, for as long as he was “Bo”, that’s what I called him.

Some of the other fags were required to be totally subservient to their fagmasters. We could sit around to drink a pot of tea in the house shell of the senior common room with our feet up on our ‘fag stools’, but I never asked that of Bo. It was more of a partnership, but with me as the very senior partner.

I enjoyed my schooldays immensely. I excelled at both rugby and cricket, being a natural sportsman, and I was an athlete as well. That counts at Worthing.

Bo had talents, but they were not physical. He was musical and could play several instruments with competence, plus he still sang soprano for most of that first year. But his best talent was in looking to my needs.

It is a strange thing to meet somebody who seems to know you so well that he knows what you want before you know that you want it. That was Bo for me. If his aim was to render himself indispensable, then he achieved that in double-quick-time.

Fags should be like the servants we have at home – attentive but not obtrusive. They should be there, but you should not notice them. Initially, Bo was better at this than most. The other lads complimented me on how well I had done scoring Bo as my fag.

But the problem grew in that I did notice him – for all the wrong reasons.

God knows that being attracted to a servant is an appalling dilemma at the best of times, but when that servant is one of your own sex… well, that’s perverted. It was just that Bo seemed so not to be male. His grace of movement and delicate hands made all that he did seem feminine, although all of my mates appeared not to see it.

Even when I looked at his face to confirm that it was a male pouring out my tea, that blond hair and those big eyes… I could not see any man in him. Well, that was when he was a boy, well short of puberty. But even that did not seem to change him much.

At Worthing, the established cure for improper thoughts was cold showers and vigorous masturbation – more accurately, the other way around. I also dispensed myself with a healthy and hearty helping of good old-fashioned pornography. Women, of course. I never doubted that I was thoroughly heterosexual. My problem was just Bo.

As a rule, I do not get ill. I put it down to my upbringing, which involved plenty of physical exercise and outdoor activity. However, I did come down with something in that first year, and Bo was at my bedside attending to things.

A fag will normally sleep in the thirds’ dormitory, but on that occasion, Bo was allows to sleep on a stretcher bed in my room, which was mine alone. As I may have mentioned, I enjoyed privileges through my family’s connection to the school. Having Bo there was just a comfort.

We helped one another through the exams at the end of the year, too. I’m not particularly academic, but I do have a retentive mind and in third form, it’s all compulsory courses, so I knew the stuff. In return he helped me with English – not so much in the learning, but in the inspiration. It seemed to me that much of literature is hard to understand unless you have feelings. I had been woefully short of those. I suppose my upbringing had a role to play in that.

I did very well, and so did he.

We went to Greece for the summer. There’s a family place on Corfu – the only Greek island where they play cricket (of a type). There’s plenty to do, and there was a small building project on the terrace to add to that. Still, I spent time thinking about Bo. And as time wore on, my thoughts tended towards the unnatural.

Doubtless, the reader might consider my attitude towards my fag was becoming queer, in every sense of the word. But I cannot stress enough was that this was not how it seemed. I spent most of the summer break trying to rationalise it. The truth is that I thought about Bo all the time.
In the end I resolved that there were only two ways of dealing with the matter, and they are these:
1. Acknowledge that I am a homosexual and invite him to join me in some kind of sexual liaison, probably involving oral and anal sex, but only utilising only my penis, of course.
2. Suggest that Bo might not be a boy at all, but one of those poor wretches who is born in the wrong body, in which case to invite her to join me in a sexual liaison, probably involving oral and anal sex, but only utilising only my penis, of course.

When I got back to school, I could see that Bo was delighted to see me again, although I did my best to conceal those same thoughts. I had received a letter from his parents thanking me for “sponsoring and supporting our precious son.” Why they thought to call him precious in a letter to me, I do not know, but that’s how he was to me. They said that they had been uncertain about the fagging tradition, but were now convinced that it was a good thing. I now had my own doubts on that score.

I busied myself with cricket. We did very well in our first match back, and I scored a good knock and took three wickets, so that confirmed my approach to the Bo situation. I needed to bury my instincts – to keep it formal. I did not want to lose the boy generally regarded as the best fag in the school. If I were to turn him away, there could be only one explanation, and my reputation was important to me.

Bo was hurt by my colder attitude, and that in turn hurt me. I had to reassure him that we were still more than just fag and fagmaster. That opened the floodgates in my dreams all over again.

Over the Easter holidays, I started to give more attention to Solution 2. Bo was a year and half older and through puberty, but still only barely affected by it. He remained still girlish; in my eyes, anyway. I felt that I needed to see whether this could be the answer, but it took some weeks before I was ready to broach the subject with him.

I told him that I was getting a weekend pass and that if he liked, he could join me. We would be going up to the city where we’d stay in my cousin’s digs. As a third, Bo would need his parents’ consent to such an outing, but I was sure that he would prevail upon them, which he did.
Then I told him that the outing would require him to adopt a particular manner of dress. A young man can hardly explain the presence of a fag tagging along in modern society. In any event, my proposal was that he not accompany me as a servant, but as a partner, if you will. But the manner of dress that I was referring to, was female.

I was not sure whether I was worried or amused by his responding look at me. I was not sure whether he was worried or amused, either. There was a pause of extraordinary length. Then, with a serious rather than happy look, he agreed. I decided to respond the same way – with a handshake, as if a deal had been struck.

I had prepared myself for this eventuality with an outfit taken from my sister’s “no longer my style” closet, together with the materiel and paraphernalia which seemed the thing. I wanted the change of look to be effected straight after school on Friday so that we could get on the train as a couple. The village had a hairdressing salon where this could be effected.

Bo was dispatched there after lunch by arrangement, and I was to collect my new travelling companion just before school got out in order to catch the early train. I was to take both bags, but I left Bo’s behind. He had a parcel with my sister’s stuff; anything else needed, we could procure in the city.

I put on my mufti and walked down to village to wait outside the hairdresser’s. I was not about to go inside. One of Bo’s best features was punctuality, so I was not concerned… until I was, that is. Time was marching on. We would be late
.
Then she appeared. I say “she” deliberately. I suppose the most remarkable this was that Bo’s curls had been straightened to show that his hair (when straight) was really quite long. It was parted on the side and held with a simple clip, and just fell down to his shoulders. The dress was perfect. The legs polished and shapely. The face made up with dark eye make up that made those blue eyes look enormous, and simply wonderful.

My suspicions were confirmed. This was no boy.

She asked me whether this was what I wanted. Her tone seemed a little awkward. But when I told her that it was, but so much better than expected, those painted lips smiled as wide as the ocean. She reached out to take my hand. We had to break into a run to catch the train, but because of the heels, I needed to almost carry her part of the way.

A British boarding school such as Worthing is not conducive to relations with girlfriends, but I had term dalliances and summer holiday relationships. But nothing was like that weekend. That was on another level. Perhaps it was the exotic nature of it all. Here I was, with my beautiful sissy-boy girlfriend, wandering through the city arm in arm, with nobody having any idea what lurked in her knickers.

My cousin was away, so we had her flat to ourselves. Her clothes were a fit for Bo, too. That included lingerie and nightwear. Bo probably should not have, but she was learning about feminine clothing for the first time, and going nuts about it.

Of course, there was sex. Bo was a virgin, so special treatment was needed. But I can be gentle, and when you care for somebody you take special care. I wanted her screams to be those of joy rather than pain. We got there in surprisingly short order.

At that point I knew that I was deeply entangled, but I loved every moment of it.

When I got back to school I felt invigorated, but for Bo it was as if he his latent effeminacy had been released, and he got an awful time. As fagmaster, I was bound to defend his honour, and I did, regardless of any potential effect on my reputation. I had the advantage that in my seventh form year, I was Deputy Head Prefect and the school’s renowned all-rounder, so few would question my sexuality. I was just seen as a sound fellow protecting his gay fag according to custom.

But Bo must have made it clear to his parents that I was more than that to him. I did not get another letter from them, but I got one from my father, calling me to a meeting. To protect my reputation, it was off school grounds, in the pavilion of a golf club near to the school.
In his disgust, my father told me that I should dismiss Bo as my fag, but I pointed out why that could be done. My father said that steps would be taken to accelerate my entry into the army, where he could keep an eye on me, even from his exalted position in it.

My father’s attitude was the buggery was fine, but there was only one kind of relationship a man could have with another man, and love of anything other than the brotherly kind, could never be involved.

I suppose that the dressing down I got was the equivalent of an ice shower. Bo got the same from his mother and father, but it sounded to me if they were a little more liberal than mine.

I looked the door and took her to bed. It was her, not him.

We matriculated, and that was that.

I went into the army, and Bo stayed at Worthing for another two years, passing out with A levels without the need for a seventh form year.
The military is a wonderful place to focus your attention away from matters sexual. There are emotions of a very different kind in constant play, not the least of which is fear. You are surrounded by men (or I was in my regiment) who depend on comradeship for survival. It is easy to store memories rather than dwell on them, so that the crisis of the moment can be dealt with dispassionately.

Death has its place to, when on active service. Death focuses the mind like no other thing. People say that fear of death makes you cautious. Actual death makes you understand the difference between caution and cowardice, and between recklessness and courage.

I never gave Bo much thought. But curiously, I received a letter from Bo’s mother shortly after the final results of the examinations at Worthing came through. She told me that Bo was glad to be out of the place, but even after I had gone, Bo had been able to cope, and it was down to me.

I had to reply, and that resulted in my seeing Bo again.

We had arranged to meet at a pub in London – one not too busy, where we could have a private chat. I was not sure what to expect, but I certainly expected to see a young man, possibly one who looked gay. But when I saw those curls, I knew it was Bo.

They were his blond curls except so many more of them. You could fill an FSIB with that much hair. Visible through it were those unmistakable blue eyes, and below those his larger than girly mouth. And below that? The perfect little woman’s body straining against the fabric of a red and white polka-dot mini dress with matching red heels.

She was beaming. My chin was on the table, only rising as I did. It seemed natural to embrace, but all I could feel was my face in her hair. I am sure that all she could feel was the erection growing in my trousers, against her little belly.

I think that we both knew that this was how it would be from then on.

She told me that she had made some other changes, but that we would need to find a room before I could see them. We did not even stay for a drink.

She described those changes as just a little something that I would like.

She was right.

The End
© Maryanne Peters, 2020

Author's Note.
My recent blog expressing surprise that somebody was so affronted by the use of a word (which was inserted precisely because it was derisory to show self-loathing) was met with a vibrant discussion of the differences between American and British English. It reminded me that a couple of years ago, I wrote a story for a British commissioning patron, on this very subject. I tried to make it as British as possible as I hope readers from over there can appreciate!