Chapter 27

Harry managed to arrive at Exeter at about 11:30. Max had emailed him, letting him know she’d meet him in the parking lot and had gotten permission to show him around, a kid of his a potential enrollee. She had even gotten permission for Harry to observe classes if the teacher was okay with that.

When she stepped out of the door, she beckoned him to her and guided him through an office door where a woman about his age, a handsome brunette of moderate height and appropriate clothing for a twenty-first century school marm, greeted him with a handshake and a folder with brochures, letting him know his request had been unusual, but trusted Max to show him around. Harry couldn’t help feeling Max was treated like a trustee in prison good at kissing ass.

They headed to the cafeteria after where the quality of food didn’t really surprise him considering how expensive the school was. He sat at a table of Max’s friends and asked them questions about what they thought of the school and how long they had attended it. Max asked if any of them wanted to meet after class at the same table.

The teachers allowed Harry to sit in, and in a Social Studies class the man even had Harry speak about being incarcerated. The last class he went to was for ninth graders to get a sense of them for Harry. A couple of them who had asked about his presence he invited to the post-class meeting.

He found the students, mostly white, maybe a third of other races, including Asian, black and Middle Eastern, lively and intelligent. They met for a little over an hour, and then Max along with a pretty young woman, a mix of Chinese and Caucasian, Max’s best friend, showed Harry the rest of the campus, including the library, the gym and auditorium, and the stadium where groups of students practiced.

He saw Robin amongst them, and Robin noticed him too, though luckily his nephew was busy practicing. Max found it curious that Harry wanted to see the area under the stands, though Harry made his reason known when he asked her and her friend, “Ever make out here?”

Neither had, but knew stories which Harry had them tell him.

He wished he could have stayed late enough to witness a game played there, Friday being the evening for high school sports.

Harry invited the two to have dinner with him.

“Could we change first?” Max asked.

Two went into the dormitory and three came out, the addition a beautiful Semitic young woman, all carrying day bags.

“What’s going on?” Harry asked.

“Don’t you want company going back to New York?” Max asked.

“Don’t you need permission being in high school and everything?” Harry asked.

“You’re our permission, being my visiting uncle,” Max replied.

“Understandable for you, but your friends? Middle aged man with two high school girls in this time fraught with stranger danger?”

“I knew it was a bad idea,” the half Asian woman sniffled.

“Just go with it Uncle Harry. I promise it’s all above board. My friends need this.”

With a sigh, Harry opened the trunk of his rental, and the young women put their bags in. Max took the passenger seat while her friends sat in the back.

It turned out Max’s friends needed an escape, however brief, from the island that was the elite boarding school that had followed an oppressive summer. In the half Asian’s case, a house full of arguments, alcoholism and passive-aggressiveness created by her parents and subjected to their only child. In the Semitic’s case, restrictiveness bordering on imprisonment. School proved just another form of restrictiveness for the latter, while the former had become depressed and despondent to the point she’d begun cutting herself. Fresh air and adventure, Max decided, would be a cure.

The diner the young ladies chose, as much to replace the patrician with the plebeian as anything, seemed to bear Max out. Sarah, the half Chinese, climbed out of her depression and was laughing by the end. Sophia, the other friend, had been all smiles from the beginning. It helped that, via Max encouraging him, Harry regaled them with his stories, from him meeting Peg soon after he got out of prison to his adventures in Hollywood.

His stories continued on their drive to Boston, shared more by Max since it got into the workshop and the eventual showcase. Somehow, perhaps inevitably and even planned as an exclamation point by Max, sex became the subject.

It began with Max telling her friends, “Lizzy Peterson co-wrote the screenplay for the featured film with Harry. One of the notorious Peterson sisters, right Harry? She wrote a play with her in it along with Harry and another of his lovers. Lizzy’s younger sister Susie told me you like to sketch your lovers in the nude. Her oldest sister is actually Peg’s and Harry’s longtime lover. I imagine there’s a few sketches of her.”

“I ask first,” Harry shrugged. Though not true of his sister, he’d actually expunged that particular one from his file of nudes, so when Max asked Harry if she might be able to prove the point, he was less reluctant to pull his smartphone from his pants pocket and hand it to her. Seeing Max’s mother in bed with Chrissy probably wouldn’t have been received well.

Max found the file without Harry’s direction, and the phone went back and forth from the passenger seat to the backseat, Harry occasionally being asked by Max who someone was whom she didn’t recognize. Harry told stories of how he met these women, some, he realized, not much older than his present company, and at least one younger one.

The younger ones brought questions, beginning with Marisol.

“How old is she?” Sarah asked.

“Just eighteen,” Harry admitted.

“And why would this beautiful girl want to be with such an older man?”

“You don’t think my uncle is handsome?” Max asked.

“This wasn’t the best idea,” Harry muttered.

“When Susie told me about the drawings...” Max started.

“An older man with three high school escapees?” Harry reminded her. “Drawing a girl not much older than them?”

“After obviously pleasuring her well,” Max pointed out. “What do all the women share?”

“Being pleasured well?” Sophia giggled.

“And that doesn’t seem inappropriate?” Harry asked.

“Only if we end up posing like that,” Max smirked. “I for one am not in the least interested in incest. Guys?”

“No thanks,” said Sarah.

“Maybe,” Sophia replied.

“What?” Sarah exclaimed.

“Well, you two are the sluts, so...”

“I’m not,” Sarah argued.

“I think she’s kidding, Sarah,” Max said. “You are kidding right?”

“Maybe,” Sophia giggled.

“There she is!” Max declared. “Tell them about Susie, Uncle Harry. Susie’s a lesbian until she met my uncle.”

“It’s not exactly like that,” Harry protested, and with a sigh, explained, “I didn’t cure her of it like it’s a disease. I guess the only way to see it is that she was hetero-curious, but she didn’t want some kid to test those waters. She wanted someone with experience and someone she could trust.”

“It was Chrissy’s recommendation,” Max clarified.

“The point was it was Susie’s decision,” Harry insisted. “She wanted the experience. Any time she wanted to stop, I would have.”

“She didn’t want to though,” Max smirked. “How many times were you with her?”

“Three, but spaced out over three months.”

“So you’re good enough for a lesbian to enjoy it,” Sophia purred.

“Sophia!” Sarah exclaimed.

“Just saying,” Sophia giggled.

“So you nailed all three of the Peterson sisters,” Max stated. “Not that I can blame you. This is the middle sister.” Max showed the drawings of Lizzy.

“I didn’t exactly nail them,” Harry muttered. “First, that suggests some kind of conquest, like they were some notch on a bedpost. It wouldn’t have happened if it were anything like that. Second, I never nailed Lizzy. We’ve never had sexual intercourse.”

“Then what did you have?” Sophia asked.

“Susie said you were intimate with her,” Max remembered.

“I guess if you’re upset with me, I can understand,” Harry said.

“Maybe I was,” Max admitted. “I was upset about a lot of things at the beginning of the summer.”

“Completely understandable,” Harry responded.

“With Mom bringing home that asshole. With my father not being there. With them separating. Then with you being with both maids so much younger than you.”

“I hope that’s not what upset you, them being maids,” Harry asked.

“It was part of it,” Max admitted. “I guess I was caught up in the cliché, older guy fucking the help, and then it compounded with Marisol being an Indian woman to my shame. But I got to know her, or more she explained things to me. And then there was how Aunt Peg was with her and with Chrissy. Whatever happened with my parents, I saw something different with you and these all too young women. I saw an intimate interaction, and with Peg too, something I realized I hadn’t seen for a long time with my parents. But it really started with Marisol. Even if she was part of the problem, she ended up a conduit for me to get through it. I may have saw her difference all too much, along with her age, but her age, being nearly the same as mine ended up being the important part. Robin had his old friends growing up at the house then, but I had no peers really.

“She was really sweet about it considering my prejudice. She told me about the fractured relationship of her parents, establishing a connection with me, if my parents had become cold with each other, hers might have been worse. Then she actually joked about you fucking the help, about her being the maid in her house before, and how that seems to have continued. But then she made it abundantly clear that she’d wanted you from the start, along with admitting how horny she’d been when you met, about her thing with being with older men can have its problems and how those problems had frustrated her. And no, she didn’t mention who that might have been, but it only made sense, and though it might have made me uncomfortable, I also thought it hilarious, although I managed to keep it to myself. I think I saw her realize her mistake, but she pushed past that embarrassment and told me the important stuff, that you respected her more than any man she’d ever met, and how you not only encouraged her to try acting, but practically pleaded with her and actually had Mom begin to coach her. I could see the love she had for you, but also the amazement in how much you respected her.

“And then there was the relationships she had with Chrissy and Peg. How there was absolutely no jealousy, but instead a sort of camaraderie, like a club of devotees to you, a fan club! But not just that, they were devoted to each other as well, friends and lovers. I hadn’t seen much friendship with my parents, and though the lover part I don’t like to think about, I have a feeling there wasn’t much of that anymore either.

“The thing is, I got over you being an added upset, and in a way, maybe indirectly through Marisol, you not only made me less upset, but even happy. I had a new friend in Marisol, and she helped me get over myself. But it wasn’t just her. Because of Chrissy I got to meet Susie and found a true friend in her, and a delight, and she ended up getting me to know Harriet, who’d I treated like I had originally with Marisol like the help, someone I could have been friends with since I was a kid but chose not to because of some fucked up elitist bullshit, even though at least her family has a great deal more money than mine does.

“So no Uncle Harry, I’m not upset with you. I had my doubts about you being with Susie, but just like Marisol she made it abundantly clear it had been her choice being with you like that. And if I was worried about you having a thing for young women, I wouldn’t have invited my friends along, would I? Although I didn’t anticipate Sophia being a horny bitch.”

“You don’t recall that conversation we had last spring when you finally hooked up with that boy you were working with, how I wanted all the details?” Sophia pointed out. “You were there too, Sarah, and we got you to tell us about your boyfriend too.”

“That was a crazy night,” Max laughed.

“Which I recall rather fondly,” Sophia admitted. “It let me know I could enjoy sex if only vicariously.”

“You were taught differently?” Harry asked.

“Hammered in more like. My folks expect me to be a virgin bride and with a good gnostic boy. At least they accepted my refusal of any arrangement. My mother brought the fear of God and not just that, but the fear of pain. The wedding night is a thing to bear, to suffer through so as to be fruitful and multiply. I suspected different, but the indoctrination definitely remained effective in suppressing that doubt until that night.”

“But you feel you have to obey your parents?” Harry asked.

“They allowed me to study at Exeter when I was offered full scholarship.”

“Our friend is a genius,” Max explained.

“I have a knack for languages and a thing for linguistics,” Sophia continued, “but mostly I wanted someplace challenging which could get me full rides in whatever university I choose. But it meant me making a promise to be a good girl, which I am finding more difficult to fulfill. Once I’m through with my obligations, then I’ll be free of that promise. Setting aside anything sexual, there’s also the pressure of acing all my classes. Most I can handle well, while others my friends have helped with.”

“We study together,” Sarah explained, “and I’d say Sophia has been the greater help, wouldn’t you, Max?”

“I’d say she’s better at more hard edged things,” Max agreed. “Softer things like literature and film studies and sociology less so. Anything to do with memorization is a plus for her, but any messy logic makes her less assured.”

“So how is it you were with Lizzy without nailing her so to speak?” Sophia asked.

“Oral,” Harry replied. “She wasn’t comfortable with penetration at least from me.”

“Too big?” Sarah asked which made Sophia giggle.

“No, and we never even tried. She found me I guess too masculine for her comfort and penetrating her would have been too aggressive I think.”

“Was she raped?” Max asked.

“Essentially, her boyfriend not taking no for an answer for her first time. But I think a part of it is how desirable she is. She needed control as a defensive response to all that male gaze and the several cocky assholes who tried picking her up. She needed her man to be passive, to almost be reluctant, and not even almost. A couple of her boyfriends were essentially gay.”