answered, matter-of-fact, as usual. But if she dies and it comes out that we checked her in without ID or a credit card, won’t we get in trouble? Isn’t there some law? Kelly looked at me in that way that she does, that way that makes me feel like a ridiculous child who’s asked to stay up an hour past her bedtime. She looked at me this same way when I first brought up leaving Seattle and moving here. And she kept on looking at me this way until she finally came around. One thing about Kelly is that although she’s deeply set in her ways—up at six fifteen every morning, black coffee and a boiled egg with the newspaper down the hatch by seven, Levi’s cords and L.L. Bean flannel shirts and nothing but nothing else—she is also brave. If she has a good enough reason to set a new course, she will. In this case the good enough reason was me.
I wanted to leave Seattle because of my friend Penny. She was my closest friend and I’d known her sinceI was a little kid. We grew up a few doors down from each other in Worcester, Massachusetts, in big Catholic families, and went to the University of Massachusetts together after high school. We never had a fling because neither of us could back then admit to ourselves or each other that we were gay. Not in high school, not in college, and not for a while after. You have to remember, this was the seventies and early eighties, and though it’s not that long ago, for gays it’s like another millennium. Especially in Worcester, Massachusetts, and especially in our neighborhood, which was 100 percent Catholic and 100 percent straight, at least on the surface. After Penny and I graduated from college, we went to New York. She wanted to work in advertising, and neither of us could face returning to Worcester. I had always planned on Boston, but Penny could be pushy when she wanted to be, and so New York it was. We lived on the Upper East Side at first, and in many ways, not good ones, it felt like places we’d been. Mostly families, straight couples, and hard-partying college graduates living five to an apartment. It took us a while but we found our way to other parts of the city, and eventually to other women like us. But, boy, we were slow! Or at least I was. Once she found it, Penny took to that scene quick and within a few months had a girlfriend, a job as a bartender at Henrietta Hudson, and was on a softball team. I didn’t like the bars so much, the hard drinking and the drugs. Those girls were wild. Most of them, like us, were from somewhereelse and had whole lifetimes of loneliness and anger stored up. Once they hit the city, and each other, they let it all out, and often it was messy. Penny started to get messy, and after she moved in with her girlfriend, a young girl named Chloe, we drifted apart. I was working at the Lowell Hotel on East Sixty-third at the time as a check-in clerk. It’s a beautiful art deco gem, and many of the rooms are actually apartments where people live either year-round or when they are in town for shopping or shows or business. I loved the order of the place, the fresh flowers, the crisp staff uniforms, the history. It felt like nothing bad could ever happen there. I got promoted twice in that first year, and by the time I was twenty-six I was an assistant manager. Nothing had ever really worked so well for me—not childhood, school, family, or the gay scene in New York. In all these places I had always been the odd duck. But at the Lowell, I fit. I knew where I was useful and where I wasn’t, and so I spent most of my time there, on and off the clock. Meanwhile, Penny was bartending and boozing and giving up on her dream of working in advertising. She’d gone on some interviews and sent her résumé around when we first got to New York, but once she moved in with Chloe, all that stopped. Chloe had been raised in Brooklyn by two hippie parents and was out and proud since high school. She was nineteen and had already dropped out of Barnard
I wanted to leave Seattle because of my friend Penny. She was my closest friend and I’d known her sinceI was a little kid. We grew up a few doors down from each other in Worcester, Massachusetts, in big Catholic families, and went to the University of Massachusetts together after high school. We never had a fling because neither of us could back then admit to ourselves or each other that we were gay. Not in high school, not in college, and not for a while after. You have to remember, this was the seventies and early eighties, and though it’s not that long ago, for gays it’s like another millennium. Especially in Worcester, Massachusetts, and especially in our neighborhood, which was 100 percent Catholic and 100 percent straight, at least on the surface. After Penny and I graduated from college, we went to New York. She wanted to work in advertising, and neither of us could face returning to Worcester. I had always planned on Boston, but Penny could be pushy when she wanted to be, and so New York it was. We lived on the Upper East Side at first, and in many ways, not good ones, it felt like places we’d been. Mostly families, straight couples, and hard-partying college graduates living five to an apartment. It took us a while but we found our way to other parts of the city, and eventually to other women like us. But, boy, we were slow! Or at least I was. Once she found it, Penny took to that scene quick and within a few months had a girlfriend, a job as a bartender at Henrietta Hudson, and was on a softball team. I didn’t like the bars so much, the hard drinking and the drugs. Those girls were wild. Most of them, like us, were from somewhereelse and had whole lifetimes of loneliness and anger stored up. Once they hit the city, and each other, they let it all out, and often it was messy. Penny started to get messy, and after she moved in with her girlfriend, a young girl named Chloe, we drifted apart. I was working at the Lowell Hotel on East Sixty-third at the time as a check-in clerk. It’s a beautiful art deco gem, and many of the rooms are actually apartments where people live either year-round or when they are in town for shopping or shows or business. I loved the order of the place, the fresh flowers, the crisp staff uniforms, the history. It felt like nothing bad could ever happen there. I got promoted twice in that first year, and by the time I was twenty-six I was an assistant manager. Nothing had ever really worked so well for me—not childhood, school, family, or the gay scene in New York. In all these places I had always been the odd duck. But at the Lowell, I fit. I knew where I was useful and where I wasn’t, and so I spent most of my time there, on and off the clock. Meanwhile, Penny was bartending and boozing and giving up on her dream of working in advertising. She’d gone on some interviews and sent her résumé around when we first got to New York, but once she moved in with Chloe, all that stopped. Chloe had been raised in Brooklyn by two hippie parents and was out and proud since high school. She was nineteen and had already dropped out of Barnard
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