I met Nick my freshman year.
He was a unicorn prancing down the dorm's loud linoleum halls at Brown University. I'd never met anyone my own age remotely like him, head to toe. For one thing, he wallowed in eye contact; by then I'd learned to avoid it.
Nick was instantly likeable: delightful, open, self-deprecating, even-tempered, smiling, charming, funny, with innocent floppy hair. His wardrobe, elite home town, and preppy accent reeked of privilege. Yet he was unpretentious and welcoming. Right out of a novel. Not a junk novel, either: a novel of truth.
Unicorn Nick stepped from a tapestry. He lived just down the hall. Was there any chance I could melt into him, like servant butter into a stack of royal pancakes? The thought flitted across my discouraged, exhausted, broken, freshman self-esteem: just maybe I could fit into Nick's world. Just maybe.
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Sure: there's always the counter-narrative. Were Nick's blemishes there ... but well hidden? Along the cynical, untrusting lines of: Normal isn't normal. Weird is typical. This is veneer.
I dunno; doubt, benefit of.
Nick was soft and preppy. He wasn't a just-last-year-star-high-school-athlete, as other Brown freshmen were (me included). His charisma was different. Had he one morning walked naked to the showers, an Episcopalian halo hovering gently over his head ... me? I'd have thought: Sure, yeah, OK, of course. I'd have shouted, "Looks good on you, Nick!"
I was more than a bit in awe, a lifelong (mostly good) habit.
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Nick belonged.
If not himself born to the biggest, best house in his wealthy, accomplished, intellectual enclave; still, Nick was by birth and ancient standing welcome/at ease in all those biggest, best houses; without question.
Soon after graduation from Brown, he married an heiress; a condiment heiress; her dad was the Cardamom King or something. She and Nick had been poetically in love since adolescence. And that was just the beginning to my marveling eyes. Soon after marrying, they moved into the best address in Providence, Rhode Island. He commissioned her portrait. They hatched a family. He became a senior executive in an old concern that valued tradition. She became a hard-charging entrepreneur. They were remarkable together.
If you're still reading: please contrast Nick's world to my mental state at the time. My mom committed suicide in my mid-sophomore year, leaving more than one clue that I was to blame. Why wasn't there an entire SWAT team of psychologists at Brown devoted to my caste and out-cast problems?
Maybe there is now. So many, many, many, many, many, many, penny, many solutions come too late. And they're no more than condiments anyway: momentarily tasty.