Is Chris Corcoran the Devil?

I lived at Admiral Farragut Academy, in Pine Beach, New Jersey for most of the year in 1978. Everyone in the 8th Grade was staying on the top floor of Farragut Hall, which is one of two main housing areas at the then-all boys military school.

There are any number of ways for cadets to billet. The way the academy powers that be chose was to put cadets in rooms ranging from single-occupant to four-person. I was always very flexible when it came to living arrangements, by and large. I didn't mind a four-person room. I liked most of the people I went to school with. Sure, there was no privacy. But, at 12 years old, what is anyone going to do with privacy anyway?

I shared my four-person room with Alfred Bibeault, Luciano Licursi and Chris Corcoran. Bibleault was a new guy, while Licursi and Corcoran had attended the previous year, which was my first year. After the long march of time, I can say aloud that Chris was considered an absolute genius by some of us, myself included. Among everyone in the junior school, it was Corcoran who figured out and implemented a program of fermenting fruit juice and turning it into alcohol. It wasn't wonderful tasting alcohol...but it was alcohol.

This was strange coming from Corcoran, actually. Because Corcoran, who was from Florida and blonde, was the very stereotype of a laid-back, future surfer guy who was easy to get along with, had a good sense of humor and absolutely avoided trouble or anyone who went near trouble at all. Still, he became our class's rough equivalent of a 'moonshiner.'

He had found the perfect place to ferment the juice. As it turns out there were two large windows in our room that looked into a quad. So, the scene was unremarkable, at best, when someone looked out they saw the window across from them on the other side of the quad: that was it. And, I don't think any of us -- or the cadet cadre or adult staff -- ever really bothered giving the exterior quad area a look. After all, the doors were sealed-up downstairs and it was very difficult to see anything wandering in and breaking a window in the quad or in anyone's room.

Even a lone, deranged bird would have great difficulty breaking a window in the quad, because it wouldn't have the room to really build up a head of steam before it hit the glass in what would have to be a (theoretical) kamakazi attack. So, there was nothing going on there...except darkened bottles of fruit juice hanging out of my room's window, tied together with a thin, but strong, rope and lowered down, in-between the outside of our room and the downstairs, along the side of the building exterior (where no one observed or inspected).

Indeed, our room was inspected many times, and Corcoran's homemade hooch was always there, a thin rope attached around a nail inside the window pane. Meanwhile, Corcoran and the rest of us were always very cool during inspection. I have no idea why. I think I was confident because Corcoran and Licursi were.

It was brilliant! The darkened plastic bottles (Corcoran explained later the fermenting process required a dark place) were outside, occasionally clunking into one another during bad weather, and producing Corcoran's own version of a wine cooler. This was a closely guarded secret in our little community and such a secret required not only no one ratting Corcoran out to the cadre or the administration, but also for all his roommates to shut up and not tell anyone else. Even if we didn't rat on Corcoran, anyone else we told might have ratted him out. So, it was strictly a TOP SECRET project. And, since we were in a military academy, I equated the need for security for this project with the same need to keep a military secret in the real world, especially against the 'hated' Russians: 'The fortunes of lives hang in the balance,' I dramatized in patriotic fashion to my roommates, who rolled their eyes at the sentiment.

In a few months, each of us were moved to single- or two-person rooms for one reason or another. Meanwhile, four new guys moved into my old room. Interestingly enough, Corcoran kept using the same room for the process -- without the current residents even being aware of it: they never bothered to open the window and look down. They had no knowledge of the distilling process going on right next to them. I asked Corcoran what something like that was called and he said, "Plausible deniability. I learned about it on television."

Corcoran befriended the new inhabitants of our room also, so he had a regular cause to be there. And, since doors were kept open anyway, if he were caught in the room with no one there, Corcoran would just say he was waiting for someone; truly, an evil genius. Sure, it was against the rules to wait in someone’s room when they were not there. But, it was far from a hanging offense. Usually, a member of the cadet cadre or adult staff would just tell the waiting cadet they couldn’t wait there and to wait somewhere else.

In fact, Corcoran, who might have been taken as vacuous because of his manner of speech and demeanor, was a closet intellectual: amazingly smart and very quiet about it. He had my vote for 'most likely to own the world' after school days.

Before we moved out and went our separate ways, though, Corcoran had yet another idea. He came into the room on a Saturday afternoon: we were all there. He brought in an empty garbage can from the hall; OK, he has my attention. Corcoran placed the garbage can in the rough center of the room. Then, he withdraws from his pocket a can of Copenhagen snuff. It was a kind of chewing tobacco.

"Guys! I found the most incredible shit! Get this, you put this between your cheek and gum -- don't swallow! -- and then spit it out," Corcoran said.

Licursi was the first one to comment: "Why the hell would we do that?"

Corcoran explained that, as the tobacco rested in someone's cheek, the tobacco mingles with saliva and mouth tissue to transfer nicotine to the bloodstream. He said the transfer was quick and very powerful and that this transfer would result in us "getting high."

Everyone was doubtful, but Corcoran was the class evil scientist. If science has taught us nothing, it has stated the need to venture forward and try new things. So, Licursi said, "Alright, let's give it a try."

We all placed a chair next to the garbage can and took a pinch of snuff, some of us more than a pinch. While we were doing that, Corcoran said, "OK, let's try to fill up the garbage can with tobacco juice we spit out." I don't know why that sounded intriguing at the time, but it was a boring enough Saturday to do something stupid. It just happened.

So, the four of us talked and joked with each other as we chewed this tobacco. At first it was awesome! It made us each feel really high and good. It was a friendly feeling that was very nice. Sure, the taste was terrible -- but the effect was good. If there was a Nobel Prize for science, we would have conferred it immediately upon Corcoran, without delay.

Corcoran was the first, however, to spit out all of the tobacco he had after choking on it. He washed his mouth out with a soda he had squirreled away, spit the vile liquid into the garbage can, and went to bed unceremoniously. Not long after that, in succession, Licursi and Bibeault did the same thing, leaving me the sole survivor of the 'Great Experiment.' I wasn't feeling all that good myself, though.

Looking into the garbage can, we hadn't managed to fill it all the way up with spit -- but we managed to create quite a bit at the bottom. It sloshed about in a sickening display of grossness, which could easily make someone heave.

I looked down into it and ended up puking in it as well. If I looked in a mirror at that point my reflection would have been green. I washed out my mouth with an orange drink I had in my footlocker and was in the process of crawling back to into bed for some much-needed sleep. The other guys were out like a light and I was going to get there too.

Well, it was Saturday and no one was there and so, when Corcoran came in and started all this, none of us thought to close the door. Before I managed to get back into bed, a cadet petty officer third class, his last name was Kelly, walked through the door out of nowhere and went to the trash can.

"Hey, you guys don't get a personal trash can. This is for everyone in this side of the wing," said Kelly to me, as the only conscious person in the room. I nodded and said I was sorry. The teen-aged petty officer quickly inspected the can and then took note of the most vile concoction ever brought into being at the bottom of the big trash can.

"What the hell is this!?" Kelly asked.

I thought, 'How can these guys be sleeping through this? They're awake...jerks.' I told Kelly we were playing a kind of game and I would get one of the other guys to help me take it out after I woke up.

Not good enough.

"You're going to get your ass down here right now, and bring this downstairs and empty this shit onto the grass outside is what you're doing!" he said.

Really?

I asked, 'Are you sure this can't wait until someone else is awake to help me? This thing is pretty heavy and it's disgusting on top of that.'

Kelly was firm. OK.

I grabbed the trash can and waddled outside and down the black, metal staircase to ground level; ironically, next to the chow hall. I have never been so sickened. I put the sloshing trash can down momentarily on the upstairs landing just so I could puke into it again -- but all that came up this time was bile.

Unable to puke anymore, I dry-heaved once or twice as I brought the trash can to ground level. I dumped out the hellish soup into the grass and then rinsed the can out with a green hose not so far away. I drank some water from the hose too, and it stayed on my stomach and made me feel a little better.

Then, I brought the trash can upstairs and placed it back where it belonged, and even put a trash bag in it (which did not always happened). Kelly was gone also, satisfied I did what he said.

Finally, I went to bed, sick and with the distinct taste of ass on my lips.

So much for killing some time on a Saturday.

It is for sure that Corcoran was not the Devil. He was a precocious, inquisitive, bright youngster who was adventurous and a leader. Sometimes, adventure meant great things, and other times -- not so much. This was just one of those latter times. In the end, though, it just went to show that all of us just have to take the good with the bad. In this case, the bad was really, really bad. But, even then, I knew it would make one heck of a story one day.