Arrival at E.T.A.: the Allston scholarship boy and "Michael Penisless"

texture · UNDATED (~B.S., arrival at E.T.A. at age 11)

• When: UNDATED (~his eleventh year, arrival at E.T.A.); the hazing dates to "when Pemulis first arrived at E.T.A. at age eleven"
• What: Pemulis came up through Inner City Development as an Allston tennis prodigy and enrolled at E.T.A. on scholarship; his parents' first question was reportedly what E.T.A. would pay "up front" (scene 048). On arrival at eleven he was hazed by the older Miles Penn, who "christened him Michael Penisless and had had Pemulis convinced for almost a year that if he pressed on his belly-button his ass would fall off" — the origin of Pemulis's lasting enmity toward all Penns (a grudge that flares in the Eschaton scene, event 15, against Miles's younger brother J. J. Penn). The "Penisless" tag persists into YDAU (Orin uses it, n110). The enmity was repaid in kind: Pemulis is "a good friend and a bad-news enemy" (n129 p. 1024) and "a thoroughgoing chilled-revenge gourmet" (n129 p. 1025) — capable of dosing water jugs, wiring doorknobs, or rigging a mirror — and his mirror prank on M. H. Penn left Penn permanently rattled and unshaven, "never been quite himself since" (n129 p. 1025).