The entrance to the now infamous Phoenix Club.

I assumed from all the promotion that Mark Zuckerberg was actually a member of the Phoenix SK Club at Harvard. Then I stumbled across this bit of misinformation.

Vulture has an interview with an anonymous former-Final Club member/Harvard grad which clears up many of the questions you may have. But the basic gist is that they are like a frat but are “not affiliated with a larger national organization, and nobody lives in them.” The name Final Club is “a relic of a different era” because “back in the day, you would join the freshman club, then I forget what the middle stage was, and then you join the final club your senior year. So the name is. As for what is real and what is created for the movie, this is what he said:

They get the overall feel right. Obviously it’s a little sensationalized. The biggest final club scene is at what they claim is the Phoenix. The exterior shot is the Spee, not the Phoenix, and the interior shots are neither the Spee nor the Phoenix. But of course, who cares — they’re buildings. They have the bouncer at the front who’s got an ear piece waving in all those girls … obviously that doesn’t really happen. There aren’t really buses of BU girls that come in. And they certainly don’t look like the girls in that movie. And then the parties themselves are less debauched than in that kind montage. There are generally fewer naked girls. Everything’s a little tamer.

This is all ridiculous. I haven’t been at Harvard in a long time, but the history of Final Clubs is nothing like this. They were never fraternities, and I can’t think they have drifted all that far away from their origins. They never had many members. They never went through elaborate hazing rituals. One night of initiation that involved too much drinking and that was it. In black tie, of course. After that you were one of them. Lunch was served every day, and there was a chit-bar, and sometimes you went to dinner at the Hasty Pudding. In many ways it was quite innocent. The big deal at the Phoenix was lobster luncheons in our fairly small brick garden on Fridays. Members only. No chance to impress a girl. We talked about things. The Wiki entry of notable PSK members is a joke. (The ones without links are the ones who deserve thanks.)

When I was there we had Arthur Waldron, class valedictorian and now a conservative luminary at Commentary magazine, and Philip Core, the late author and artist who did more than most to make being gay respectable and sometimes glamorous. We had a Rhode Island rogue who tried, and frequently succeeded, in bedding every woman he met (before going on to a brilliant career in marine biology) and a genuine lothario related to Jim Thorpe who is now in power at some major prep school. Also at least a pair who had gotten perfect 1600 board scores that nobody listened to except when they lowered the boom on us. We were an eclectic bunch.

That’s scratching the surface. Who knows how many members belong on the notable list? Somebody’s determined to keep a low profile.

Overall, the final clubs were actually kind of priggish. Consider their common rules. Here’s a picture of the real Phoenix SK Club.

The attached building is the old Iroquois Club, no longer in existence even in my day.

At left, there’s the main entrance shown up top, accessible only by key, and on the lower right the Guest Room entrance. Non-members, including women, were only permitted in the Guest Room. Which means no one but members were allowed into the upper chambers, which were tremendously sybaritic. Like the Main Lounge, and the intensely dark and beautiful bar just two steps away.

Was there Champagne? Yes. Was there abuse and exploitation of young women? No.

That was the way all Final Clubs operated. Beautiful within, but only for members.

I don’t know what’s changed. I’m still amazed that my prep school and my Harvard club have become so unfairly famous. Was Mark Zuckerberg really a member of the Phoenix? I doubt it.

Facebook is the rottenest piece of software I have ever seen. The people I knew at the Phoenix would have done it better. And they weren’t really snobs or elitists. In my day they were simply hiding from sixties nonsense. Most of our best conversations occurred in the basement, which was about as simple and plebeian as you can get. Our pool table looked like this, but more shabby:

Most of us knew there was more to life than lobster. I once played pool with a Korean journalist in the employ of the Boston Herald American who told me he had dripped freezing water onto the faces of North Koreans to extract information and told me the single scariest thing about Americans was how they would keep coming for ONE of their own. I kicked his ass at pool. And I hated him. Still do.

We watched TV too. A guy would flop down with a pizza and we’d watch old movies.

Yeah. Antenna. Guy showed up with pizza. No to anchovies? Shit. So we watched all the old old old movies late into the night. Is there a synonym for Rita Hayworth?

No. But like all Ivy League drunks, we had a bar. Only it wasn’t so fancy.

Domestic beer and memories of life the way people really live it.

Yeah. We had one foot in the Ivy world and the other in the real world. The way I remember it. And if you’ve taken the Bubble Quiz, you’ll find I’m in, and have always been, in the real world. Cause the Phoenix was the Mercersburg of clubs. We were all just who we were. Unlike almost all the rest of them. Why we had the biggest brain and the biggest queer. We did not care. Isn’t that the best definition of liberty?

Or is this what’s happening? The Spee was always worse than the Phoenix. Jack and Robert were frequently there in tuxes on their top half and nothing on their bottom half, gasping for air.

Hell. Who knows? The new upper class may have finally triumphed over my old Mercersburg and my old Harvard. We were such naifs in those days, weren’t we? I once danced for an hour with a Smith girl who thanked me and left. I spent close to a weekend with a Mount Holyoke girl of another race without making a move. I was right in line with the new affirmative sex legislation. Come right out and tell me you want me out loud to have sex with you. I’d have been there in a second.

Actually, that’s how it finally happened. One girl said, “Stop teasing me. Just do it.” So I did. Beautiful Jewish girl. She told me she was a 5. Of course, Jewish girls have a scale that goes all the way up to 12. She was actually a 10. Screw the numbers. I was in love with her, which is how it should always be.

The only 12 I ever met is still just a dream. No longer beautiful. Because beauty comes from the soul. And the soul can sour. Doubt if Zuckerberg has learned this. Things billionaires don’t know yet.

They just wish they ever had this view when they were young.

Easy to get dumb.