Another weekend of debauchery at Jamie’s cabin in the woods by the lake was in full swing…

Jamie’s parents are 4th-generation stinking filthy rich, and Jamie was the baby of their 5 children, each one more spoiled and petted than the last. The day Jamie was born, his parents set him up with a trust fund, the annual interest alone being more than my parent’s combined gross income. They were all old Harvard men, and Jamie enrolled there, but his grades were so dismal that he was barely accepted in the first place, and after 6 weeks of missed classes, no assignments turned in, and 3 drug busts, he was politely encouraged to seek his education elsewhere. After a stint in some luxury detox unit somewhere, the only accredited university in the country that would take him was the small upstate one that I attended (on a scholarship), and that was only after an extremely generous donation to their scholarship endowment fund by Jamie’s parents.

It worked out well, because Jamie’s late grandfather owned the northern half of the rural lake, at the southern tip of which our college is located. He had built a hunting lodge there, but Jamie’s father had not been into hunting, so as a tax dodge, he deeded it to Jamie when Jamie turned 18. Jamie lived there while he was supposedly attending classes, and on the weekends it quickly became Party Central for his college chums – and of course, everybody on campus rapidly signed up as Jamie’s best friend, whether they knew him or not.

Jamie was so stupefyingly rich, and had been so all of his life, that he didn’t care – he just wanted people around to have a good time with, and the more the merrier. I guess the extremely rich really do think differently than the rest of us. From Friday afternoon until sometime Sunday, everyone who could get there trekked up to the northern end of the lake, past the gatekeeper’s cottage at the private drive, through the deep woods to the clearing on the lakefront. Jamie owned 500 acres of prime forestland, which was bordered on all sides by National Park land for another 75 miles in any direction. Jamie’s cabin by the lakefront, the gatekeeper’s cottage, and the road leading up to it, were the only man-made structures on his whole tract, so his guests could make all the noise they wanted without fear of complaints from the neighbors. The only real rule was No – ABSOLUTELY NO DRUGS!!! After 3 busts in one month, if Jamie was found with anything around, he was going to jail, and all his money wouldn’t get him out of it. Alcohol, yes, rivers of beer and wine and booze – but not even grass, and the live-in gatekeeper – a burly former F.B.I. agent – saw to it that this rule was kept as unbroken as a virgin’s hymen.

It was also a rule that clothing was not optional – it was banned! Everyone stuffed their clothes into trash bags piled on the porch by the front door before they walked in the place, and picked them up when they left. Nothing had ever been reported stolen, either – I guess even party-crazed college kids have some sense, and they knew a good thing when they saw it.

Jamie was enrolled in my freshman English course. He lasted two whole days before he disappeared, never to be seen again in class that semester. Luckily for me,