Many lawyers and other legal professionals will gladly tell you that they form some of the strongest and longest lasting relationships of their lives in law school. Its really a kind of bunker mentality. Law school begins by throwing its matriculants in a pit and forcing them to stand on each other as they claw their way out. The Socratic method forces a different kind of critical thinking with its endless series of what-ifs, while the examination process reinforces those grade-school play ground lessons about winners and losers. To be fair, the deck is evenly stacked and virtually anyone can succeed in law school, it's just that for some the successes come easily and others find success only after opening a vein into a casebook.

In such an environment it is human nature to seek comfort in the struggle one shares with those similarly placed, and though the structure of the classroom environment in law school forces individuals to the fore, the preparation necessary for successful individual performance in such a class can do nothing but foster community. Of course, I'm primarily describing the environment of the first year, but it makes sense that you'd make friends right away the first year instead of totally wall-flowering the first two years and then finally shaking a few hands during the third.

In my first year, I bonded quite tightly with a number of my classmates, two of which I can't imagine surviving law school without. One of those has become my sometime roommate.

She's taken a job fairly near me and very far from her home. It's a temporary job, a job with a clock, so moving closer would be inappropriate. My couch is awfully cushy and remains unused over night, so I offered, she took me up on it, and now three or four nights a week I have a roomy. We'll call her Melanie.

Melanie is a lesbian and as she was one of my closest and dearest friends through law school, she became known to my family, at first via stories of my adventures, but soon they were communicating independently of me via email and phone calls. When my parents finally met Melanie face to face, there were no strangers in the room. My parents exchange Christmas gifts with Melanie, they've even slept over in her apartment when it was not possible for me to put them up. Heaven only knows what information they exchange about me behind my back.

I don't remember adding an account of coming out to my parents in this journal, though I may have buried it under a photo of Chante somewhere.

It is a spectacular story, seemingly ripped from a Three's Company script and scarcely believed by those who were witnesses. Remind me to tell you about it someday. For now, let me just give you the upshot. It was four years ago, it was abrupt and much more public than I'd wanted it to be, my parents are Southern Baptists who have difficulty with the situation but love me dearly, and over the course of the four years they have grown considerably more comfortable and accepting.

The last time my folks paid me a visit, there was to be dinner. The guest list read Mom-Sooner, Dad-Sooner, Sooner, Melanie, and Tommy. For logistical reasons unimportant now, there were to be two cars for restaurant transportage. I rode with Tommy in one, Melanie, Mom-Sooner and Dad-Sooner rode in the other.

It was a ten minute drive.

Dinner went smoothly; there was good natured laughter, tortellini to die for, and copious amounts of red wine to grease the wheels. At the end of the evening, Mom-Sooner, Dad-Sooner and I took our leave of Tommy and Melanie and went back to my place.

The drive from the restaurant to my apartment again took ten minutes.

The next morning Melanie called me. "Ok, Brian, are your parents up yet?"

"Yeah, the get up with the sun."

"Are they right there?"

"Yeah."

"Ok," Melanie said, "I'm going to tell you a story about your parents and you can't react, ok?"

"Check," I said. Then I held my breath.

You see, Melanie's approach to my parents is complete honesty that pulls no punches. This is not a bad approach, but differs slightly from my own. I prefer, when it comes to the details anyway, to be gently honest with vague open ended sentences.

"In the drive on the way to the restaurant last night, your mom asked me a question."

I pasted a neutral look on my face. "Which one?"

"She asked me how you and I met."

"Oh," I said. "Very interesting."

And it was, you see, because in the car on the way home that night my mother asked me the same question without mentioning that she'd already privately queried Melanie. I'd told her the truth so I wasn't worried about our stories not jibing, but I found it odd the she'd ask us both the same question independently of each other.

As I recall our meeting, I'd just taken a seat in a large lecture hall for the first hour of law school orientation. I'd not really had the opportunity to meet anyone yet, so I was sitting by myself, looking around the hall, quietly judging my new classmates. I have often said of Melanie that she is never among strangers because she can befriend anyone fairly instantly anywhere she is. I have fairly good people skills, but she's the most accomplished extrovert I've ever met.

Regardless, Melanie came right up and sat beside me. She effortlessly started a conversation and before I even knew her name, I'd been recruited into a study group she was forming. It was as simple as that. It is my recollection that we were fast friends immediately following. She quickly became my confidant, surrogate mother, fashion advisor, and fellow gourmand.

"How did you handle that?" I asked her in a voice I hoped would convey the sub-textual message, Jesus, Mel, what the Hell did you tell her?

"Well, I said, I came into the big lecture hall where we had orientation and I didn't know many people yet, so I had every intention of making a few friends. I told her that I knew gay boys made good friends so I looked around the room and the first gay boy I saw was you, and you were sitting by yourself, so I walked up and introduced myself and we've been friends ever since."

I can only imagine how this must have sat with my mother. "Oh?" I coughed a little. "How did you make the determination regarding the criteria?"

"Oh, I didn't go into that with your parents, but I saw your pride rings on your book bag. I should probably have told her that. Here, put her on the phone and I'll give her that detail."

"You too," I said. "Bye now." I hung up the phone.

Two months later my sister called me. "Brian, mom just told me the most disturbing story."

"What?" I asked.

"She said that when she was out visiting you last, for some reason Melanie was in the car with our parents and you weren't there. So she asked Melanie how you two met."

"Oh, yeah," I said. "Mel told me."

"I think mom was a little disturbed."

"What? Why? As I recall it, that was a pretty tame story."

"About how you were the gayest?"

I paused a minute. "Huh?"

"Mom said that Melanie said that you were the gayest boy in the whole school and so she thought you could use a friend and that's why she sat by you."

"The gayest? Are you sure you're getting the story right?"

"That's what she said, Brian. Mom said Melanie thought you were the gayest boy in the law school, so she knew you'd be lonely, so she wanted to be nice and be your friend."

"No way! There's no way I'm gayer than that Frederich Steinheimer! He's way, way gayer than me!"

"Look," my sister said, "I'm just the messenger. I'm sure Frederich Steinheimer is totally gayer than you. I bet he's like totally gay, like Match Game gay. I'm just telling you what mom told us at dinner last Sunday. You should have seen the look on Grandpa's face! I was going over the steps they taught us in that CPR class silently in my head."

I have not bothered to disabuse my mother of the idea that I am the gayest boy to graduate in my class. It would probably just confuse her anyway. But Melanie and I giggle over this interpretation of her remarks with some frequency. Melanie has even begun introducing me to strangers as the gayest boy in law school.

This morning, as we were dressing for work, we had The Today Show on. I make no secret of the fact that I dislike television news. I think reliance on pictures and the advent of the Action News format have done more to harm the American public's perception of the world, and of their own neighborhoods, than enhance it, because the infotainment aspect of news forces producers to impose a dramatic narrative with a beginning, middle, and end on every news item, whether it's a complicated, on-going event or not. I've ranted about the news before.

Anyway, this morning The Today Show featured Katie Couric interviewing this guy who founded a troupe of jumpy-jumps. We were slack jawed.

"Katie," he lisped. Yes, I know there's no "s" sound in Katie, but he managed the lisp anyway. "Katie, I founded this jumpy-jump troupe, Katie, because there is no place for professional athletes to go, Katie, especially eXtreme athletes, Katie, once they are out of college. So I developed this show, Katie, and it's opening, Katie, in Los Angeles next week, Katie, and we want to invite everyone to come on out and see us, Katie, at the Henry Ford Theater, Katie!"

And then Katie Couric and the guy with the oral fixation on her name stepped aside and these men on what can only be described as stilts with built in pogo sticks came out onto this mat and the jumped around in a jumpy circle and they kicked their jumpy legs out and there were flashing lights and lots of loud techno music as the big jumpy-jump troupe played ring around the rosie and it just went on and on and I could hear Katie Couric yelling "Woo! Woo woo! Woo!" in the background like a fucking steam engine because the tech forgot to kill her microphone.

Melanie set her coffee down on the coffee table and turned slowly to face me. "Well, Brian," she said. "I guess you're not the gayest any more."

Posted at 3:53 p.m.

previously on Sooner � next on Sooner

last five entries

making Sense of the State of the Union -- 2

Making Sense of the State of the Union -- Pt. 1

But I'm Willing to Learn

Rough Draft

Political Action