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.
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.
“No.”
“Yes.”
“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 I 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.”
“Andrew — 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?”
