Almost thirty years ago, I lived for about ten months at the Beacon Hill Friends House (it was cheap enough to make hanging around with Quakers semitolerable [don't get me wrong: they're a worthy bunch, just a little too earnest and consciously good for my tastes]). Among the residents was a young fellow from Maryland, one of those prematurely middle-aged types, glistening with privilege and startlingly smug, who used to defend the class system on the grounds that it made life so much simpler to know ahead of time with whom one should rub shoulders. One night, I drank a wide variety of imported beer with him (there was a small bar on Charles Street that prided itself on its inventory, and we were on a mission to sample the lot [we failed, of course]). As the alcohol overtook him, I realized that his sense of entitlement was so supreme that he had it in him to morph into a rapist, much like Aarfy, in Catch-22. Had it not been for the presence of another of my housemates, a wonderful, funny, fucked-up English guy who worked for Oxfam, I fear my virtue might have been at risk.
If LNS existed all those years ago, I think Mr. Charlie D. would have been a charter member.
