The Class (15 page)

asked.

"I'm talking about the fact that while almost every guy I know got at least one invitation to the first punch of a club, I wasn't even asked by the lowly BAT. 1 never realized I- -was such an asshole."

"Come on, Jason," Newall said reassuringly. "Final Clubs are a bunch of crap."

"I'm sure they are," he replied. "Which is why you guys

are all thrilled to be joining one. I just thought that being tuned to the club mentality, you might have some notion as to what precisely they found so obnoxious about me."

Newall, Wig, and Andrew looked uncomfortably at one another, wondering who would have to explain to Jason what they had assumed was obvious. Andrew could see that his roommates weren't up to it. So he made a stab at the

not-socommendable facts of Harvard life.

"Hey, Jason," he began. "Who are the guys that mostly get asked to the clubs? Preppies from St. Paul's, Mark's, Groton. It's kind of a common bond. You know, birds of a feather flocking together and so forth. You can see what I mean?"

"Sure," Gilbert retorted ironically. "I just didn't go to the right prep school, huh~"

"Yeah," Wig quickly agreed. "Right on target." To which Jason replied, "Horseshit."

There was a deathly silence in the room. Finally Newall grew annoyed that Jason had broken their mellow mood.

"For Christ's sake, Gilbert, why the hell should a Final

Club have to take Jews? I mean, would the Hillel Society want me?"

"That's a religious organization, dammit! And they wouldn't want me. I mean, I'm not even-"

He stopped, his sentence half-completed. For a moment, Andrew thought that Jason had been about to say he wasn't Jewish. But that would be absurd. Could a Negro stand there and suggest he wasn't black?

"Hey, listen, Newall," Wigglesworth piped up, "the guy's our friend. Don't piss him off more than he is.,,

"I'm not pissed off," Jason said in a quiet fury. "Let's just say I'm uncomfortably enlightened. Good night, birds, sorry to have interrupted your flocking together."

He turned and left the room.

That called for another round of brandy and a

philosophical observation from Michael Wigglesworth. "Why's a neat guy like Jason that defensive about his background? I mean, there's nothing so bad about being Jewish. Unless you really care about stupid things like Final Clubs."

"Or being President of the United States," added Andrew

Eliot.

November 16, 1955

Dear Dad,

I didn't get into a Final Club. I know in the scheme of things it's not that important, and I really don't care that much about having another place to go and drink.

Still, what really bothers me is that I wasn't even considered. And most of all the reason why.

When I finally worked up the guts to ask sOme of my

friends (at least I always thought they were my friends) for an explanation, they didn't pussyfoot around. They just came straight out and told me that the Final Clubs never take Jews. Actually, they put

it in such a genteel way that it hardly sounded like prejudice.

Dad, this is the second time I've been rejected for something simply because people regard me as Jewish.

How do you reconcile this with the fact that you've always told me we were Americans "just like-everybody else"? I believed you-and I still want to. But somehow the world doesn't seem to share your opinion. -

Perhaps being Jewish is not something you can remove like a change of clothing.

Maybe that's why we're getting all of the prejudice and none of the pride.

There are lots of really gifted people here at Harvard who think being Jewish is some kind of special honor. That confuses me as well. Because now more than ever I'm not sure exactly what a Jew is. I just

- - know lots of people think I'm one.

Dad, I'm terribly confused and so I'm turning for help to

the person I respect most in the world. It's important that I

solve this mystery.

Because until I find out what I am, I'll never find out

who I am.

- Your loving son, Jason

His father did not answer this disturbing letter. Instead, he canceled a full day of business meetings and took the train straight up to Boston.

When Jason walked out of squash practice he could hardly believe his eyes. -

"Dad, what are you doing here?" -

"Come on, son, let's go to Durgin Park and have one of their super steaks." -

In a sense, the choice of restaurant said everything.- For the world-famous chophouse near the abattoirs of Boston had no booths or private corners. With its inverted snobbery, it placed bankers and busmen at the same long tables with red checkered cloths. A kind of forced democracy of the carnivorous. -

Perhaps the elder Gilbert was sincerely unaware that inti mate communication was impossible in such a setting. Perhaps he chose it merely out of an atavistic feeling of

protectiveness. He'd feed his boy to somehow compensate for all the hurt he felt.

In any case, amid the clatter of heavy china plates and shouting, from the open kitchen, all that Jason came away

with was the fact that Dad was there to back him up. And he'd always be. Life was full of disappointments. The only way to deal with minor setbacks was to fight back harder still.

"Someday, Jason," he had said, "when you're a senator, the boys who turned you down now will be mighty sorry. And

believe me, son, this painful incident-and hey, I really hurt with you-won't mean a thing."

Jason accompanied his father to South Station for the midnight train. Before he climbed aboard, the elder Gilbert patted Jason on the shoulder and remarked, "Son, there's no

one in the world I love more than you. Always remember that." Jason walked back toward the subway feeling strangely

empty. -

~C"~ To."

- I%I"Yes." I ~"No!"

Sara Harrison sat bolt upright, her face flushed.

"Come on, Ted. How many times in your life have you refused to make love to a girl?"

"I take the Fifth Amendment," he protested.

"Ted, it's dark here and you still look embarrassed as hell. I don't care how many girls you've slept with before me. I just wish you'd let me join the club."

"No, Sara. It just doesn't seem right in the back of a

Chevrolet."

"I don't mind."

"Well, I do, dammit. I mean, I want our first time to be somewhere a little more romantic. You know, like the banks of the Charles."

"Are you crazy, Ted? It's freezing! What about the Kirkland Motel? I've heard their policy is pretty lax." Ted sat up and shook his head. "No go," he sighed despondently. "The guy that owns it is a family friend."

"Which brings us back to this lovely Chevrolet." -

"Please, Sara, I want this to be different. Look-next

Saturday we can drive to New Hampshire."

"New Hampshire? Have you lost your mind? You mean from now on we'll have to drive a hundred miles every time we want to make love?" -

"No no no," he protested. "Just till I can find a decent place. God, if ever 1 wished I lived in a House, it's now. At least those guys can have women in their rooms in the afternoons." -

"Well, you don't, and I'm stuck in a Radcliffe dorm that only lets men visit once in a blue moon

"Well, when's the next blue moon?"

"Not till the last Sunday of next month."

"Okay. We'll wait till then.-"

"And what are we supposed to do in the meantime-take cold showers?"

"I don't see why you're in such a hurry, Sara."

"I don't see why you're not."

In truth Ted could not explain the qualms he felt about

the prospect of "going all the way" with her. He had grown up with the notion that love and sex were for two completely different kinds of women. While he and his buddies took swaggering pride in their exploits with girls who "went

down," none of them would ever have dreamed of marrying anyone who was not a virgin.

And though he dared not admit it even to himself,

something subconscious in him wondered why a "nice" girl like

Sara Harrison was so eager to make bye. And so he welcomed the delay till Visitors' Sunday at her dorm. It would give him more time to reconcile the antitheses of sensuality and love.

Still there was a nagging question in the back of his mind and he searched for ways to broach it delicately.

Sara sensed that he was anxious about something.

"Hey, what's eating you?" -

"I don't know. It's just-I wish I'd been the first."

"But you are, Ted. You're the first man I've ever really loved." -

ndrew-are you busy tonight?" Ted asked nervously. "I mean, could you spare me five minutes after the library closes?" -

"Sure, Lambros. Want to go downstairs to the Grill for a couple of cheeseburgers?"

"Uh? Well, actually, I'd prefer someplace a little more private."

"We could take the food up to my room."

- "That would he great. I've got something special to drink."

"Ah, Lambros, that sounds really interesting."

At a quarter past midnight, Andrew Eliot placed two cheeseburgers on the coffee table in his suite, and Ted produced a bottle from his bookbag. -

"Have you ever tasted retsina?" he asked. "It's the Greek national drink. I've brought you some as -a kind of gift."

"What for?"

Ted lowered his head and mumbled, "Actually, it's sort of

a bribe. I need a favor from, you, Andy, a really big favor." From the embarrassed look on his friend's face, Andrew was sure he was about to be hit for a- loan.

"I really don't know how to say this," Ted began, as

Andrew poured the retsina. "But whether you say yes or no, swear you'll never tell a soul about this."

"Sure sure, of course. Now spill-you're giving me a heart attack from the tension." -

"Andy," Ted started shyly, "I'm in love...," He stopped again.

"Uh, congratulations," Andrew responded, uncertain of what else to say.

"Thanks, but you see, that's the problem."

"I don't get it, Lambros. What's the problem?"

"Promise you won't make any moral judgments?"

"Frankly, I don't think I have any morals that I know of."

"Listen, could I borrow your room a couple of afternoons a week?"

"That's it? That's what's giving you a brain hemorrhage? When do you need it?"

"Well," he replied, "house parietal rules let you have girls in the room between four and seven. Do you and your roommates need this place in the afternoons?" -

"No sweat. Wigglesworth's got crew and then eats at the Varsity Club, Ditto for Newall with tennis. I work out in the JAB. So that leaves you a clear field for whatever you've got in mind."

Ted was suddenly beaming.

"God, Eliot,- how can I ever thank you?" -

"Well, the occasional bottle of retsina isn't a bad idea. There's only one thing-I'll have to know this girl's name so I can sign her in as my guest. It'll be a little tricky at first, but the super's a good guy."

They established a system that would enable Ted and his inamorata ("an absolute goddess" named Sara Harrison) to enjoy the hospitality of Eliot House. All he had to do was give Andrew a few hours' warning. -

Ted was effusive with gratitude and floated out of the room as if on a cloud.

Andrew was left wondering, as that clever Yalie Cole

Porter put it, "What is this thing called love?" He sure as hell didn't know.

T

he spring belonged to Jason Gilbert.

He finished his initial season of varsity squash undefeated. And Went straight on to unseat the current

captain for the number-one singles slot on the tennis team. Here, too, he did not lose a match. He then crowned his sophomore achievements by winning both the IC4A and Eastern College titles. -

These ultimate exploits made him the first member of The

Class to have his picture on the sports page of the more widely circulated version of the Crimson, i.e., The New York Times. -

If he had suffered any psychic damage from the unhappy experience with the Final Clubs, it was in no -way apparent-at least to his athletic opponents.

In every American college there is always a figure known

as the BMOC-"Big Man on Campus." Harvard prided itself on not recognizing this as a valid designation.

Semantics notwithstanding, at this moment in the drama of undergraduate life, the undisputed hero-or in Shakespeare's-words "the observed of all observers"-was indisputably Jason Gilbert, Jr.

Danny Rossi's esteem in the tiny music community could not counteract the chagrin he felt after the humiliating destruction of his piano. He hated Eliot House, and even at times began to resent Master Finley for bringing him to this den of obnoxious pseudo-sophisticates.

His disdain was reciprocated by most of the house members. And he ate almost every meal alone-except -when Andrew Eliot would catch sight of him, sit down, and try to cheer him up. Ted Lambros's growing involvement with Sara demonstrated

the validity of the platonic notion that love draws the mind to higher planes. He got straight A's in all his classics courses. Moreover, he no longer felt himself a total alien from campus life. Perhaps because he was spending so many