The Ellerslie Effect

They hadn't spoken in the car from north of Allenton to the bypass around Philadelphia on their way south from Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, on Interstate 476. The argument hadn't been a new one. It had been going on all semester, where Neal Jacobs was a creative writing program professor at Hamilton College and Bud Washington was his junior-year teaching assistant and protégé. Bud, a young black man from the streets of Harlem in New York, had come to Hamilton on a football scholarship and intending to major in physical education to become a high school coach, but he had shown a writing talent that had motivated Neal Jacobs to have his major changed to creative writing and to move out of the dorm, into his house—and into his bed. This didn't impede the junior from playing football and hanging on to his scholarship through the year.

"I don't know why you're sending me away—why you keep shoving the Columbia University program at me. Why do you want to get rid of me? Haven't I done everything you want? Don't I please you in bed? Is there someone else? Trevor Ingram?"

"No, of course not, Bud," Jacobs had said as they sped south on I-476 in Jacobs's Lexus coupe, with Bud driving. "There's a scholarship worth more for you there and you don't have to play football to get it. You can concentrate on the writing."

"I like playing football. And I'm doing fine on the scholarship I have."

Jacobs sighed. "You need more than what I can give you here," he countered. "You have a true talent of your own. You need to apply all of your efforts to that."

This was said in exasperation and a sense of loss. No, Neal didn't want Bud to leave him. Yes, Bud was everything Neal could want. A talent like this young man came to a writing program, as good as it was, and into Neal's tutelage rarely, if ever. And Bud was everything Neal could want in bed—so much more than he could expect, at sixty-four, from a twenty-year-old divinely built young black man.

It was just . . . but the conversation was over again, Neal could tell, from the set, hurt look on Bud's face. He just turned away in the passenger seat to watch the Pennsylvania area growing housing developments and sprawling between Allenton and Philadelphia speed by.

South of Philadelphia, after they had turned onto I-95, Jacobs broke the silence.

"In a few miles, you'll have to decide whether to take I-95 through Wilmington or I-495 east around Wilmington along the Delaware River. The direct route to the hotel would be I-95, but I'd like you to take I-495, by the river, please."

"Fine," Bud said tersely. He didn't ask why, a signal that he was still pouting and didn't want to talk about it.

They took the bypass highway to the east when they came to the split. In a few miles, Neal spoke up again. "At the Edgemoor exit, take it to the east please. I want to stop for few minutes before we go into town to the hotel."

"Fine," Bud said, again saying it in a clipped tone. But when they'd made this maneuver and he wound up at the entrance of a large, but closed, industrial plant on the banks of the Delaware River with no place else to go off that exit to the east, he couldn't keep himself from saying more when Jacobs spoke.

"Stop here for a few minutes, please." After saying this and Bud had come to a stop at the obviously permanently closed entrance into the plant, identified by a sign as the DuPont Edgemoor Facility, and opened the door to get out of the car.

"What is this? It's just a big, ugly plant. And it looks like it's closed."

"Yes, it's closed. It was a DuPont pigment production plant," Jacobs said. "It closed two years ago, in 2015." He got out of the car, moved around to the front, and leaned back on the vehicle, his eyes trained on the gunmetal gray chunks of buildings, chimneys, and fretwork of piping. The raw-edged river was seen in glimpses between the ugly buildings and snaking of pipes. Bud got out of the driver's seat and came around to the front of the car to stand next to Jacobs. He noted the slight smile, but faraway look, in Jacobs's eyes.

"What?" he asked after a few minutes. "What do you see? Why did we stop here?"

Jacobs had gotten this faraway look off and on over the previous couple of weeks, after he'd told Bud they'd be coming to the University of Delaware, where Jacobs had been a student studying English composition. He'd been invited to speak at a creative writing conference being held at the university in Newark, just south of Wilmington, and had said he wanted Bud to come with him. They'd be staying at the stately old Hotel DuPont in Wilmington's city center.

"I'm looking beyond this plant and back in time," Jacobs said. "I'm looking at Ellerslie. I'm trying to clear all of this mess away in my mind and see Ellerslie."

"Ellerslie?" Bud asked.

"Yes. Ellerslie was an estate that once was right here, on the banks of the Delaware. The house dated to the mid-1800s. F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife, Zelda, rented the house in the late 1920s. He had burned through the money he got from writing The Great Gatsby and he wasn't having much success in writing screenplays. They were partying hard in New York instead. They came here for him to rest, regroup, and to work his way out of writer's block."

"And did that work?"

"No, not really. Living here was too much like living the great Gatsby life in Egg Harbor on Long Island—the same hedonist one flapper society party folding into the next. He produced nearly nothing while they were here—other than, I guess, giving him inspiration for future writing and a life of dissipation and alcoholism."

"So, living here wasn't all that helpful to him."

"Depending on the value of whatever inspiration to writing it provided, no. But there's that at least."

"I don't know why we stopped here."

"I know you don't. We seem to be in an impasse on that. You have no idea how difficult it is for me to let you go."

"But what does this all have to do with this place—what it used to be? Ellerslie, did you say?"

"I have been here, when it was still Ellerslie, just as F. Scott Fitzgerald was, Bud. I wanted you to see where this would lead for you if left to spin out in a 'maybe,' half-hearted writing life—to a closed, ugly, useless, pigment-production plant, providing a blight on the banks of what could be a beautiful river, but isn't."

"I still don't understand. Is this because you think I'm drinking too much." It was a delicate topic—Neal's drinking, not Bud's—Bud knew, but if it was being brought up, the professor was the one bringing it up.

"No, it's not about your drinking—not at least now; it could, of course, become a problem. It was with Fitzgerald and it is with so many writers."

Like you, Bud thought. He'd long thought that the drinking was what kept Jacobs from getting back into his own writing, not that he'd ever actually done much. His reputation was built on literary criticism—of Fitzgerald's work, mostly.

"I know you don't fully understand," Neal said, a hint of exasperation in his voice. "Let's get back into the car. We don't need to get back onto the highway. Take Edgemoor Road west and then Philadelphia Pike south. That will take us right into town and to the DuPont Hotel. Tomorrow we'll face the creative writing students together."

"I'm looking forward to hearing what you have to tell them."

"I brought you because I want you to carry most of the discussion with them, Bud. They'll be more receptive to hearing it from you—and I want you to start stepping out from behind me."

Neal didn't think he could define this issue any better than this for Bud. He was praying that Bud would heed the advice—and what was a sacrificial gift Neal was offering the young man, not a rejection—better than he had received in his time.

* * * *

June, 1972, University of Delaware

Nineteen-year-old Neal had wondered about the strange configuration of Professor Beardsley's office at the University of Delaware, but now he knew why when you entered there was a bookcase facing you, with the desk off to the right and a nook created behind the bookcase at the entrance with another bookcase against the wall and an easy chair wedged in between the bookcases. Clive Beardsley, in his fifties, tall and just a bit chunky, was sitting in the chair, his trousers and boxer briefs down around his ankles, and Neal, naked, his clothes neatly folded on the chair facing the professor's desk across the room, was sitting in his lap, facing him, his legs straddling the arms of the chair and his hands on the professor's shoulders, leveraging the writing program sophomore's rise and fall on the older man's cock. The configuration of the bookcases in the office hid the professor's chosen teaching method for promising young writers like Neal.

Neal had come to Beardsley's office for a critique of the short story that lay across the room on the professor's desk. Beardsley professed to be impressed with the story and, in particular, with the young man's writing promise. What he was more interested in, though, was getting his shaft in the handsome young man's ass.

They'd been working up to this from the moment Neal entered the man's writing class, and this hadn't been an out-of-control passionate encounter. Beardsley had been coaching Neal on the need for intense experiences to feed the inspiration and passion of his writing, they slowly had moved into the possibilities of their relationship built on Neal's worship of his writing master, and when it had come to this, Beardsley had said this was an experience Neal needed and the young man had not argued the point, just rising, stripping, neatly folding his clothes, laying them on his chair, and following the professor to the remotely positioned chair.

Neal had been gratified by the professor's interest in his writing and had spent an increasing amount of time with the man, receiving strokes for his talent and becoming ever-deeper attached, motivated, and guided by him. Beardsley correctly assessed Neal's potential to go with men, although Neal had never been brave enough to act on it—until now.

That late afternoon in June of 1972, Neal lost his virginity to a man, a man who professed to believe that Neal had uncommon writing talent. He certainly appreciated the young man's other talents as well, and he was to cultivate the beauty and willingness of the young man—and Neal's need for attention, validation, and strokes.

Beardsley was vocally appreciative of the young man's passion, represented in panting, groaning, and whimpering as well as writhing and digging his fingernails into the professor's shoulders in the rhythm of the young man's rise and fall on the cock. It was, of course, because this was Neal's first time more than any heat the professor's sexuality pulled out of his student, but if Beardsley had any inkling that this was Neal's first time—or the magnitude of worship represented in Neal meekly giving this to the older man—he did not express it.

As much suffering as Neal endured for his art, he was fortunate that the professor was neither specially endowed, sexually cruel, or highly demanding or that he had a great deal of stamina. Seven minutes inside and weakly thrusting up and slight stretching as Neal rose and fell on the shaft and it was over for Beardsley. Another eight minutes of Neal collapsing on the older man's chest and the professor reaching between them and stroking Neal off and it was over for a nervous deflowered virgin as well.

Both men, though, knew a threshold in their relationship had been crossed and that, without further seductions, such as they were, they would fuck again when it suited the professor to do so. Neal was fully his now.

The naked young man lay, panting, in the mostly clothed older man's embrace for some time afterward, both very much aware that Beardsley, going flaccid, was still inside Neal's channel.

"I came to discuss my short story. Will we have time to do that before you need to leave?" Neal asked.

"I haven't finished reading it yet. It's outside the class assignments and I have several of those to read and critique. Perhaps you could take some of those and write up notes for me. That will give me time to read your story."

"Sure, thank you," Neal answered. Beardsley was increasingly doing this—giving Neal papers to read and comment on on the sly. Of course no one else in the class could know the professor was relying on another student in the class like this. Neal couldn't help but be flattered and to feel like his writing talents were being fully appreciated by the man who had become his mentor—and who now, he supposed, was becoming his lover as well. Neal had seen what some the other students had gotten back on these papers and he knew that it was largely his critique work that was being passed on.

"You're a terrific writer," Beardsley had said once, "but you are a gifted at writing critique and would, I'm sure, make a first-rate professor."

That was flattering too, but Neal wanted to be a writer, not a writing teacher. When he later thought about it, this probably was where his dream had started to die. He never could assure himself that Beardsley had ever returned that short story with comments.

"I am holding a 'Fitzgerald' writers' retreat at my home the week after next," Beardsley said, as they unfolded from each other, he pulled up his shorts and trousers, and Neal went back over to the chair by the desk to dress. "There will be several writers there you should meet and have a chance to talk to, including the novelist Joseph Staples, who is about to take a position at Northwestern. You could come for the week. I live in Ellerslie on the other side of Wilmington, on the river."

"A Fitzgerald retreat?" Neal asked. "Will we be writing or should I take something that can be read and critiqued?"

Beardsley gave a little laugh. "You can bring a wrecking ball," he answered. "I move out in the fall and the house is being taken down. DuPont has bought it to put some sort of plant in. The week will be sort of a last hurrah for the old place. It was quite a mansion at one time, Ellerslie was, on the banks of the Delaware."

"What does Fitzgerald have to do with it? Is that F. Scott Fitzgerald?"

"Yes, that Fitzgerald. He rented the house nearly fifty years before I did. That's why I've rented it; it's much too big for me. I live alone—well, when I don't have company." He paused there to look at Neal, who got the message that he now would be considered company to visit the house frequently. "He came there when the money from The Great Gatsby ran out to try to get back into the traces of writing books and short stories that would make money. I've invited writers there for the week and we'll celebrate in Fitzgerald style. You're invited to come."

"Thank you, it sounds like it will be a great week. I'd love to meet and talk with Joseph Staples."

What Neal probably should have asked instead was whether celebrating at Ellerslie in the estate's last gasp in Fitzgerald style would serve the development of a writer. He should have asked if Fitzgerald got over his writer's block there or if he and his wife, Zelda, just partied until they became nearly comatose, without having accomplished a damn thing in terms of publishable writing.

* * * *

A Week and a Half Later, Ellerslie

More hellraising went on during the Last Hurrah Fitzgerald memorial party at Ellerslie that second week of June 1972 than either writing or talking about writing. There was, however, a lot of conversation about F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald's time at Ellerslie. Two of the men invited to the party, more for their social standing than for their writing and because they were helping to pay for the party, were two elderly gentlemen who had attended the never-ending parties in the house during the Fitzgerald era in 1927. One had been a literary magazine editor at the time, in his thirties then and in his eighties now, who had helped keep Fitzgerald afloat by buying completely forgettable short stories from him. The only value of this was the name on the byline and then only because readers were hoping, without reward, to see some glimpse of the world of The Great Gatsby in them. Fitzgerald was living that world here at Ellerslie; he just wasn't putting it in what he wrote in drunken stupors then.

The other guest that week in June who reminisced about the Fitzgeralds at Ellerslie had been very young then—as young as Neal Jacobs was now. And he'd been invited then for much the same reason Neal had been invited this week. He had been a rent-boy, brought in on occasion when the Fitzgeralds knew there would be a guest who desired the companionship of a willing young man.

It didn't take Neal long to realize that that was why his professor, Clive Beardsley, had invited him for this week after having initiated him to men in his university office. There were other young men there, ones who, like him, were willing to come and make themselves available because they wanted to be novelists and this was a week for novelists to let loose and provide young writers with memories and experiences to write about.

There was some discussion that was useful to the young men in contemplating the art of writing and slightly more in terms of networking with established writers, but what the younger men mostly came away with were hangovers and sore ass channels. Since this was a virtual demolition party, each man at the party—and only men were invited to the party—left with whatever mementoes of a house F. Scott Fitzgerald had lived and partied in that they wanted to pry off the walls.

Neal left with more than that, though. Neal left with a new life higher up into the strata of the literary world. It became a radical change for him, however. He had been lured to the week-long party by the opportunity to meet and rub shoulders with a novelist who had been lionized in Clive Beardsley's creative writing classes, Joseph Staples. Early in the week, Neal was rubbing more than shoulders with the man. It was eventually revealed that Staples was in heat for a willing young man of a certain age, looks, and temperament and that part of what had lured him to accept Beardsley's invitation to the party was in having seen photos of Neal that Beardsley sent along with descriptions of how inexperienced but malleable the young man could be.

There were plenty of bedrooms available at Ellerslie for the invitees if they at least doubled up, which they quickly did and, as the week started Neal was in Beardsley's bedroom. But as the week concluded, he was bunking with Joseph Staples. In the interim, briefly, there was Oliver Nichols.

Nichols was a literary agent, which captured Neal's attention right there. He also was not much over forty, extremely good looking, cocky, and a well-honed athlete. He determined the first day of the party, when both he and Neal were still reasonably sober, that the young college student played tennis. Ellerslie had a tennis court, if a bedraggled one with cracks in the clay at the edges with weeds growing from them and a rusting, buckling-in-places fence. Beardsley didn't play and there was no way the court would be maintained when the house was coming down soon anyway.

Neal was the best-looking young man brought in to entertain the more established guests in the publishing industry, and Oliver Nichols decided that first time that Neal would be his prey. He lured the young man in with demonstrating that Beardsley had let the agent read some of Neal's work and had piqued the man's interest in maybe cultivating and Neal and seeing that he'd get published. A hook-up line like that would work with any writer in the business, young or old, and it worked a charm with Neal.

"And I understand you're on the University of Delaware tennis team," he said.