Activity

I promptly cashed the check and booked a plane ticket to Amsterdam for the holidays. Out of the country for the first time in my life, loose on the Continent with a Eurail pass, I spent every dime of that dirty money as frivolously as I could — champagne in Paris, dope in Amsterdam, ephemeral pleas…

In practical terms, his example — the first such of my life — made me reluctant to pursue my sexual attractions with any gusto, which prevented my college years from becoming the sexual smorgasbord they were for a lot of my contemporaries. I had seen a man’s face contorted by lust unconsummated — I…

I dropped out for lack of cash, worked three jobs, returned to school for a couple of years, dropped out broke again. When the friends I’d met as a freshman graduated to begin their careers in corporate finance and accounting, and my girlfriend left for a magazine job in New York, I mostly sat arou…

Despite the many hours I’d spent admiring college catalogs from Tucson, Seattle, and Boulder, I experienced a failure of nerve in the end. I’d made a visit to a fancy Catholic college in St. Paul, where the Mercedes and BMWs of rich suburban kids gleamed in the dormitory parking lots, and was insta…

I doubt I could have told you at the time why I let him do it, but from twenty-five years on the answer is as clear as day. This was one part of my life where I had the upper hand. In school and at home I was subject to rules devised by others. I thought I was an adult — the overnight job, the car …