Class Reunion: A Novel by Jaffe Rona

Author:Jaffe, Rona [Jaffe, Rona]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781504008365
Publisher: Open Road Distribution
Published: 2015-03-24T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

In New York, it was the year for big smash hit musicals on Broadway: Hello, Dolly!, Funny Girl, Fiddler on the Roof, Golden Boy, and the new Max Harding offering, Penrod!, based on the old Booth Tarkington novel. It was Max’s first musical, and it was sold out for three solid months a week after the reviews came in.

Max was living on Fifth Avenue now, in a one bedroom apartment that overlooked Central Park. For the past four months he had shared his apartment with a beautiful blond nineteen-year-old boy named Phillip, an actor who had a small part in Penrod! Max couldn’t take their relationship too seriously. He felt the generation gap looming between them even though he was barely ten years older. One night he had overheard Phillip on the phone describing him to a friend–‘He’s twenty-nine, but he’s still good-looking.’

Max knew the value of youth and beauty in his world. He had chosen Phillip because of the smoothness of his almost hairless skin, his sensuous mouth and guileless eyes, his arrogant, hipless, sinuous body. Certainly not for his conversation or his education, which were limited to what was good for Phillip. Phillip was as open and selfish as a child. He looked exactly like the young men Alexander always liked, and probably still did. It was strange, Max sometimes thought, how he and Alexander had avoided duplicating each other in their lovers, as if to keep their own love special.

The first time Max had ever seen Alexander they were both fourteen years old, their first year at prep school. He had fallen in love immediately: an electric shock of desire and the deeper emotional certainty that they were going to be lovers. Even then Alexander had been secretive and unhappy. At fourteen Alexander thought he was the only boy in the world who was queer, as they called them then, and Max already knew differently.

They became inseparable, best friends and lovers. They planned to go to Harvard together and room together, and they did. But at college Alexander’s guilt began to tear at their relationship. He hated being gay. Max, who enjoyed the company of women and was in love with Alexander, liked being what he was, and had planned his future life. He would become a famous person and people would admire him for what he had accomplished. They would accept his private life, if they knew about it, because they would want him to be their friend. And for those who couldn’t understand, he would remain discreet. He would grow old as one of those charming bachelors who are in constant demand as escorts, first for deb parties, later for single girls, and finally for divorced women and those whose husbands hated to go out. He assumed that well-planned life would also include Alexander.

At Harvard it was Max who encouraged Alexander to date girls, had told him to be nice to Chris. He never thought that Alexander would use Chris to try to go straight.

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