An Ivy League Reunion - Climate Change, DEI, And Call Girls

It was Bill Baxter's college reunion, a late one if not his last. "Getting up there", he and his classmates joked as they tried to drum up attendance.  This reunion would see fewer people, given natural attrition and a growing indifference.  What more could be said about the climate, affirmative action, and gender?

 

Yet Bill was planning to go, and had been asked for his advice about the program.  Already there had been many proposals for presentations, and he had been asked not so much for a topic he might like to present, but for his overall thoughts on the cast and tenor of the event.

 'Are we missing something?', asked the event planner, the longtime Class Secretary for whom every five-year occasion was a validation of his tenure, a show of the solidarity and spirit that he had encouraged; and for which he alone had been responsible.  

Without Lincoln Evans, editor of the Class Notes, attendee at all Board meetings, and on the road soliciting legacy donations from the wealthiest members of the class, his class would have become like any other, loyal but indistinguishable. 

Reunions under his watch had always been intellectual affairs, worthy of the premier university of which the class was a part, and even more worthy of its many nationally recognized members - a Senator, two Presidents, three Congressmen, authors, scholars, and scientists.  The presentations were never public university stuff, light fare, humorous anecdotes about grandchildren or retired life in Tucson.  No, Lincoln's class was serious and deeply concerned about the state of the world. 

Bob Lessing, an old Freedom Rider, peacenik, turned climate activist had proposed Our Dying Planet:  Earth's Last Hurrah - a rehash of what he had presented five years ago, and little more than his own last hurrah, a screed about death and destruction. 

Henry Plainfield, like Bob, a veteran of the social justice wars, hoped to present The New Sexuality - Fear and Loathing Of Trannies and Queers a piece on the reluctance of the Old Guard to recognize the legitimate claims of the new sexual order. 

Brandon Byfield would discuss The Welcome Demise of Wall Street - Crony Capitalism And The Fate of the Black Man. And so on. 

"Something is indeed missing", Bill replied to Lincoln; and here he hesitated, knowing that he was about to upset the applecart.  "We may be on our last legs", he said, "but not done for yet".  Lincoln was nonplussed, quizzical, unsure of what his classmate was getting at. 

Ah, he thought, he must be referring to one suggestion that had come out of left field - focusing not on what to do for the planet, but to prepare for death.  After all 500 white, male, wealthy, patrician cohorts had a lot in common. and sharing thoughts on what might be their final decade would be valuable.  

Lincoln had quickly dismissed this idea, a downer, a bummer when enthusiastic rhetoric about the state of the world, as dismal as that state might be, would be rousing.  After all, his classmates had spent decades in the trenches fighting for right, so their last gasps would be even more resonant than their full-throated voices of the past. 

Bill went on to talk about Anna Karenina, a book they had both read in Professor Marshall's course on Russian literature; and Bill reminded his friend about Konstantin Levin's plaint about God's greatest irony - having created Man as an intelligent, perceptive, creative, and artistic being only to consign him after only a scant three decades of life, to the cold, hard ground of the steppes.

"And....?" replied Lincoln. 

Here was the opening that Bill had hoped for.  God's real irony was far worse.  He had created men with a lifelong obsession with sex but gave them only a few short years to satisfy it.  Both men knew this was true, for along with disquisitions on pipelines, Artificial Intelligence, innovative financial instruments, and so on, they and their classmates spent hours scrolling Facebook for pictures of Taylor Swift, Scarlett Johansson, Eva Green, and Margot Robbie, a bit of a guilty pleasure, but pleasure nonetheless; and all of them without exception rued the day that their opportunities with beautiful women like this were over. 

Not exactly of course, since Cialis and Viagra had changed the sexual calculus, and men of their age could still perform.  Bill himself had benefitted from the little blue pill and had had a December-May affair which had not only rejuvenated but transformed him.  It was an epiphany, a glorious two years of rutting like a ram, all to the delight of his young partner who had never known such patience and staying power. 

"What I mean is...", and here Bill knew he was in uncharted territory, “Why not invite 'special entertainment'?  The girls could easily enter the affair as servers and chambermaids then quietly join the men at cocktails and dinner.  These women would be top of the line, no expenses spared, Catherine Deneuve Belle du Jour classic beauties, Jane Fonda Klute sensualists. 

They could be hired through the Lamont Agency in Washington.  For decades Peggy Lamont had been the Capital's madame and had run the most successful dating service in town, known for its absolute secrecy and full deniability. Any breach of privacy would mean the ruin of any girl who even whispered about her clients. 

The Lamont Agency was not only known for its reticence but for the beauty and sexual talent of the girls who worked there.  They were, despite their youth, consummate professionals who knew how to please and were unintimidated by the credentials of their clients.  They would be perfect for the reunion. 

Lincoln was dumbfounded.  He hemmed and hawed, forayed and retreated, mumbled and declaimed, and finally managed a 'You've got to be kidding'; but was clearly interested. What did he or any of the other old men in the class have to lose? The days of AIDS were long past, and even if they acquired the virus something else would kill them before it did.  As importantly, no one would find out, especially the few wives who made it to these late-life events.

Classmates could hammer about the climate and the rightful place of the black man atop the cultural pyramid, bang on ad nauseam about equality and integrity, but during intermission they would have what every older man wants and has always wanted, uninhibited sex with a younger woman.  The suspension of disbelief is a piece of cake. Sexual delights however packaged will always outweigh reality.  Paid sex at this age is sex, end of story, 

And so it was that the Class Reunion was one for the ages, one talked about forever, the one reunion that would always be remembered, the only one that ever counted.  Few of the attendees could even remember what Bob Lessing had talked about and for that matter climate change was thuddingly boring anyway. Let the world burn up, they smiled, for they were changed men, satisfied men, happy men.