“You are such a geek,” Patsy said. “At least you didn’t go back to Kirk.”
“Stop. I need you.”
“Sorry.”
I resumed. “Anyway, I couldn’t stop thinking about it. I’ve never kissed a girl although I’d long wanted to and now I knew that there was one girl I needed to kiss. And I knew enough about her to know, or at least think, that she was straight. Unlike you, I don’t have any gaydar, working or otherwise.”
“And when you hit on her she backed away like you had the plague?” Patsy asked. “Been there, done that.”
“No,” I said, my arms flailing about as we jogged up Cat Hill—a sculpture of a crouching cougar menaces those who pass. “It never got that far. I told her I was gay because I wanted to see her reaction to that before I did anything else. And that’s when she looked at me like I had the plague. She gave me a disgusted I-thought-you-were-normal look and without thinking I threw her out.
“I wouldn’t let her apologize. I saw her all the time in school but didn’t speak to her and avoided her whenever possible and I’m miserable. Miserable.”
“I’m sorry Suzanne.” And she stopped us, pulling me off the Drive again. We were now across the Park Drive from the Metropolitan Museum.
“It’s not just gays. Whenever anyone offers her heart to another person she exposes her essence and sometimes, you know, it’s unrequited and all you can do is try to place it back into where it belongs and hope that you get the chance to offer it to someone else down the road. Look, I hate to admit it, but I’ve never taken mine out of its slot in my chest and that’s in part because I don’t want to have to put it back. It’s safer that way but, you know, that’s not what it’s there for.”
She hugged me again and into my ear, she whispered, “And I think this is something no one can tell you about except yourself.” Backing away but holding my upper arms she finished with, “but, babe, you have a lot of people who love you. You’d be surprised how many of our gang care deeply for you as a friend as they know you do for them. And talk to your Aunt. We all love you.
“Even if you’re going to be a lawyer who will literally cut out our hearts for an hourly fee. Now go home and fail the Bar Exam.”
“I have a process server with your name baby so you better make sure you keep fast enough to get away,” I called to her as she headed up the Drive to resume her run. She knew I was too spent to do anything but jog home across the Park.
Kerry: Summertime
In the Summer I learned that I made Law Review. My grades and writing sample were good enough. I saw the list of the others but the one name I hoped yet feared to see was not on it. I had hoped that Suzanne—I couldn’t call her “Suze” after what I had done to her—had done well enough too, but apparently she hadn’t.
Back to me. Something was simmering just below the surface of my psyche every day. I could keep it dampened in school but being a Summer associate meant the chance to do a good deal of socializing. The firm tried to give some semblance of the servitude that would be expected of me were I to become a real Big Law associate but also wanted to keep its prized recruits happy with large and regular doses of entertainment. Mets games. (Yeah!) Yankee games. (Boo!) Cruises in New York Harbor. Exclusive showings at the Met. Mozart at the other Met. Billy Joel tickets. (Ugh!) And lots of cocktail parties. It truly is like one of those movies in which an average guy gets seduced by a drop-dead gorgeous blonde who turns into Lucifer as soon as there’s a signature on the dotted line.
I met a lot of nice people at these events. I still felt a bit outclassed with my non-Ivy pedigree and I was shy by nature. Some, I thought, might become friends and some connections worth developing but no more than that, including the men, real associates and a couple of partners among them, who asked me on dates. I wasn’t tempted by any of them and some were really nice and really smart and really handsome. No. No. No.
Then in August, after I left a partner’s apartment after a cocktail party on the Upper East Side and was Ubering to 125th Street for my train, I thought about the contrast between meeting these people at cocktail parties and meeting Suzanne in Legal Method. I remembered that I was shy and felt even more outclassed then and that she was really nice and really smart and really pretty, beautiful actually, and it was yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. I wanted more dates with her, although she did not call it that but that’s what our just being-close-to-one-another-doing-our-own-things was.
Later that month I was at school for some Law Review prep work and finished early. I decided to enjoy a walk down to 87th. It was a sunny Saturday and hot-and-humid. I wore a Grateful Dead T-shirt, shorts, and trainers, and with now-battered Columbia backpack, of which I had become quite fond, over my right shoulder.