HARVARD
After college I returned to Cleveland and hung around Case Western Reserve University to keep my sanity. I wanted the college bubble. I was at Case every chance I got. At a Case party a medical illustrator asked me what I did, and I said, “I manage apartment buildings.” She walked away. Marcy — a friend at the party — said, “It’s not in her experience — apartment building management.” Marcy was a grad student in organizational behavior. I couldn’t see grad school.
A woman asked me, “Are you in OB?”
“No, I’m not in medical school.”
“OB is organizational behavior.”
“I’m not in that either.”
Apartment building management. What more could I say — want to hear my harmonica? I shut up. Docs, nutritionists, organizational behaviorists, and medical students. I went up to another medical illustrator. Illustrators are arty. She wouldn’t talk to me. (Could have been other factors — not going there.)
Marcy wrote her OB thesis on the “event of play in a closed group.” For a while, I was in her closed group. Marcy’s parents had a mansion outside of New York City with a quarter-mile driveway. I never saw the house but I heard about it. Her dad was on the board of trustees of a major foreign university. I blew it.
“So many Harvard people here!” a woman said, walking past Marcy and me. Three Harvard people: 1) The host, an OB grad student 2) my friend Marcy 3) a man who was on his way to D.C. to be a lobbyist. Harvard people were on their way, and I was in Cleveland, maybe forever. Tenants called about low water pressure and no heat. Tenants mailed in flecks of peeling paint with notes like “I”m taking $10 off my rent because of this.”
I’m in real estate. I say that now. It’s OK when you’re over 30. The night my father died, my mother and I spent hours sorting business checks on the dining room table, waiting to go to the funeral home. I’ve been dealing with bills ever since.
I Googled Marcy. She’s a professor at a college in Massachusetts. (Not Harvard.) I should message her. I won’t. Too awkward. Remembering this — also awkward.
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A version of this post appeared in Belt Magazine 2/19/15.
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I had another op-ed in the New York Times, on Monday, about Trump, taxes and me. Hundreds of comments.
I own the Times. Sulzberger > Stratton. My dad did that name change.
Stratton (white cap) surrounded by minority partners in NYT
3 comments
I remember that feeling — I still have it. No place is better than college, and if you’re not really in college hanging out as if is still good (tho a bit delusional). Didn’t you meet your wife that way, at a post-college party?
Bert, I became friends with you as a grad student (though not at Harvard).
Marcy might’ve hung on if she’d heard more harmonica licks.
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