I dated, on and off for four years, a vivacious, gemini attorney. I will call him Doug, because that is his name. I met Doug when I was twenty-one years old, at work as a stylist at the J.Crew Men’s Shop on the corner of Broadway and Broome. Doug was twenty-eight and had gone to law school after the market crashed in 2008, before that he worked as a consultant in Hong Kong. I sold him two suits and four shirts for his new Serious Law Job. In the shopping bag, I added a handwritten note, “Doug, thank you for coming in today! I look forward to seeing you very soon! Xx Hannah” He emailed me to ask me out that night. We went to a Yaesayer concert in Central Park.
Doug and I were similarly outgoing and chaotic, I was obsessed with him and he liked me very much but thought I was too young and too impractical. (I was too young and will always be impractical.) Once, when he wasn’t answering my texts quickly enough, I went to his building and convinced his doorman I had been invited. He lived with three other people in a penthouse in West Chelsea, the kind where the elevator opens into the apartment. He was in the shower when I arrived and was surprisingly unbothered when he opened his bathroom door and found me sitting on his bed. Is there anything as fun as being uninhibited and twenty-two?
When Doug and I finally broke up- a real, final break up- I had just left my wholesale sales job and was working part time as an LSAT tutor. I remember walking down 5th Avenue, smiling to myself, repeating in my head- and probably out loud a few times- “I can do whatever the fuck I want.” I had never felt freedom like that.