Tag: Straight

The next morning at breakfast I let my parents know I’d be staying over at Timothy’s again that night. They seemed to be very pleased at my newly active social life and repeated their earlier suggestion that I should ask him over myself at some point. Truth be told, I wasn’t thrilled at that idea. I couldn’t imagine my parents being able to engage in interesting conversation with Timothy around the dinner table the way his mother did with us. And, after staying over at his modest apartment, I was suddenly sensitive, in a way I’d never been before, of what he might think if he saw the rather grand building that we lived in. I understood of course that we were reasonably well off, with Lily going to a private school and everything. I’d gone to a (different) private school myself for elementary school, and most of my friends, near as I could tell, came from even wealthier families, going on ski vacations every winter and to Europe in the summer; we’d never done that sort of thing. But the contrast between our doorman building, huge (by New York standards) apartment, and genteel neighborhood on the one hand, and Timothy’s Lower East Side, fiftth-floor, converted-one-bedroom dilapidated walk-up on the other was uncomfortably in the forefront of my mind after successive nights at each. I felt like I had entered a different world — not at all in a bad way! — when I’d visited them: a world in which the surroundings were rough, tight but cozy, the conversation was intimate and meaningful, and of course the cooking was fantastic. I wanted to experience more of that world, not to invite Timothy into my own, not very interesting world. Nevertheless, I promised my parents that I’d have Timothy over sooner or later, and, stuffing a change of clothes into my backpack, I happily escaped early enough to find him in the auditorium and hang out, covertly holding hands again, for a good half hour before class. Read more »