The older boy from Whooton School whom Holden meets for a drink is Carl Luce. Luce is several years older than Holden and has already moved on to college, which makes Holden view him as someone with greater experience of the adult world.
Holden contacts Luce and meets him at the Wicker Bar. He repeatedly tries to steer their conversation toward sex, recalling Luce’s reputation at school for knowing about sexual matters. Luce finds Holden immature and intrusive, especially because Holden is drinking and speaking loudly in the bar.
Luce eventually tells Holden that he needs psychoanalytic help and leaves. The encounter highlights Holden’s loneliness: he seeks out someone familiar, but his neediness and hostility prevent the conversation from becoming genuine companionship. Stradlater and Ackley are Pencey classmates, while James Castle is a student whose death Holden remembers; none is the older Whooton acquaintance in this scene.