Two Stories

Tree Surgeon

Back in the day, campus diversity was a question of geography. Yale College had to pull at least one student from every state every year. I was Idaho 1978. My hometown, Wallace, didn't have a dirty bookstore, just cattle and sugar beets and crosses along the highway for friends who died of boredom and a need for speed. When I started college, I was needy for something else.

My first week in New Haven, with my grandmother's birthday fiver, I bought an issue of Blueboy magazine that I hid in the bottom of my travel trunk. After six weeks of talking to the hand with it, I wrote a facsimile of my first name inside a toilet stall in the Cross Campus Library men's room with the words "17-year-old virgin wants to change all that" and my phone number. For forty-eight hours I stayed out of my suite from fear, then forgot what I'd done enough to be suitably unnerved when a voice asked for Kevin one afternoon.

"This is K-K-K—he.""I read your message.""Y-y-ye-es."

I think if I hadn't stuttered through my teens, I wouldn't be an academic; I'd be a newscaster. Instead I'm terse and righteous and apt to be taken the wrong way.

________

"Maybe we could get together. Are you cute?""S … s … s … some. Are you?" I knew that sounded too defensive. "I'm twenty-six," he answered. "Are you there, Kevin?""My n-n-name is really Kuh-kuh-kyle.""I'm Jim."I asked him where we should meet."Do you have a roommate, Kyle?""I have three." My voice cracked on that one."How about in front of Ingalls Rink?""The Yale wh-wh-wh-wh-Whale when?""Seven forty-five tomorrow.""How will I know you, Jim?" When I get a full sentence out, it can sound snide."I'm blond. I've got a car."

________

As I walked north on Whitney Ave., scuffing any leaves I saw, I repeated to myself that I was free not to step into his car. The first thing I decided when I spotted him leaning against an open Pinto door was that he didn't look like one.

Jim Willits, with blond waves and a mustache, greeted me with, "I can tell right away you're not Jewish."

(I'm going to stop stuttering for you now.)

"I am a Catholic. From Idaho."

We exchanged a look under the streetlight, and I knew I'd be safe. Jim was a big guy, very solid, not to mention 26 felt established in a major way. Although I was free not to, I stepped into his car.

We drove north to East Rock Park. He was a psychology grad student, a fellow at Berkeley College, who worked part-time in Wallingford in a home for male juvenile offenders. Many were genetic morons built like bears. He often had to restrain them. My hands dancing all over my lap, I wondered whether Yale boys were a change of pace for him. I had no idea where we were, except deep in the woods, when he asked:

"What do you think you might like to do?"

And damn me if I didn't say like some ingénue, "What do you mean?" I knew what he meant, I was fidgeting so hard in that bucket seat, waiting for the segue, I almost bucked my head through the roof when it came, but it was suddenly so bald.

"I mean with me," he said in a low voice.

"Why ask?"

"I don't want to scare you. There are different things to do. I wanted to talk to you first, make sure you got to know who I was."

I stammered out what I knew might interest me, and he listened, making comforting psychology moves with his voice, face, and body. He didn't ask or refer to my stutter even when it took what felt like seven "b's" and forty-eight "j's" to get...