The Odd Woman and the City: A Memoir

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Reader beware: All names and identifying characteristics have been changed. Certain events have been reordered and some characters and scenes are composites.

Leonard and I are having coffee at a restaurant in midtown.

“So,” I begin. “How does your life feel to you these days?”

“Like a chicken bone stuck in my craw,” he says. “I can’t swallow it and I can’t cough it up. Right now I’m trying to just not choke on it.”

My friend Leonard is a witty, intelligent gay man, sophisticated about his own unhappiness. The sophistication is energizing. Once, a group of us read George Kennan’s memoir and met to discuss the book.

“A civilized and poetic man,” said one.

“A cold warrior riddled with nostalgia,” said another.

“Weak passions, strong ambitions, and a continual sense of himself in the world,” said a third.

“This is the man who has humiliated me my entire life,” said Leonard.

Leonard’s take on Kennan renewed in me the thrill of revisionist history — the domesticated drama of seeing the world each day anew through the eyes of the aggrieved — and reminded me of why we are friends.

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