ALMA MATER
Going off to college required a strength I didn’t think I had but managed to pull from somewhere. Maybe I just walked through the fear, and It was even harder for my parents letting go. My mother told me my father sat on the curb and cried. He who had always been so remote and consumed with work. Pills had taken a cultural backseat to alcohol and coke—the burgeoning relief of the times—and since I was always culturally connected the drug of the moment, my pill taking decreased and I found myself ever more dependent on alcohol, but not so much so that I didn’t get good grades or make it to class.
I was lucky, my best friend, Jackie Cooper came to Sarah Lawrence with me; my buddy since the fifth grade. My parents, feeling the pain of parting from me, sold our Miami house and moved to New York City at a time when I needed to be able to go home to Miami to touch home base. By my senior year they bought a house in the Lawrence Park West section of Bronxville which was a part of the Sarah Lawrence Campus. Their separation anxiety clearly deeper than mine and mine was bottomless. Plus Jackie and my parents had very good friends also living a stone’s throw from the main square of Sarah Lawrence: Doris and Bob White, they were funny and fun and had a son, Douglas also going to Sarah Lawrence. We went every Friday night to a wonderful Italian restaurant in Tuckahoe called Roberto’s so it was still like living at home in terms of coziness and ritual.
Jackie’s mother Grace and my mother took us up to college—one of the artsy-ist colleges in America—in a huge limo as the other kids pulled up in their parent’s Suburus with their belongings strapped to the top. Grace and Frances exited the limo in front of our dorm, called Titsworth, in their fur coats and looked around for a bellman to unload our belongings as Jackie and I tried to remain invisible if not dissolve altogether. Suddenly my mother ran back, “I’ve found this lovely young man who’ll take everything up for twently dollars.” The young man beamed, “Twenty bucks! Gee thanks!” I turned to look at the “lovely young man,” who was your typical—at the time—Sarah Lawrence lesbian. Short hair, plaid shirt, work boots. I wanted to die, but she was helpful and appreciated my mother’s tip.
To be continued . . .
HAHAHAHAHA
Can't wait for the next installment!!