How to Leave the Group
Alice Graves
The Sullivanian Group was an experimental “psychotherapeutic” milieu which existed, in evolving forms, from the mid-1950s to around 1992 on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The Group, according to many accounts, can be summed up in one word: CULT. To this day, there are former members who do not share the reality of their experiences with their spouses or adult children out of shame or denial. There are also those who rationalize and justify instances of coercion and continue to insist on the ultimate goodness of the leadership. Such an enduring schism points to the awkward reality that it is impossible to tell a cohesive story about the Group. There are as many stories as there were members—hundreds of people came, stayed, and went over the years. People joined because the Group offered a viable form of life in community, an alternative to the nuclear family, and a frame for experiencing ourselves as part of a vibrant revolutionary project. The phrase we used was “We are the vanguard of the revolution.”
I joined the Group in 1972 as a 21-year-old college drop-out. I stayed until I was expelled in 1984. My book, Don’t Tell Anyone: A Cult Memoir, recounts those years. This piece is excerpted from my book. I chose not to analyze, but rather to tell stories from those years.
When I became part of the group, the only requirement was that everyone was in psychotherapy within the Sullivan Institute. Saul Newton was the director. There were several “trainees,” who had no formal professional training and therefore none of the negative baggage that comes from graduate school. They provided low-cost therapy to those of us who couldn’t afford to see one of the PhDs. The trainees were in their twenties. We were all in our twenties, except for a very few people.
Many of us had been active in the anti-war movement. Feminism was new and exciting. We had the Pill. Abortion was legal and available in New York, and soon it was the law of the land. We had left our suburban and outerborough homes for the excitement of Manhattan. Did I mention we were young?
*
It’s March 1979. I am lounging on a chaise by the pool of a Howard Johnson’s Motor Lodge in Orlando, Florida, listening to cars whiz by on the highway beyond the hotel’s chain link fence and smelling the jasmine that grows along it. I am surrounded by two hundred people I know quite well. Most are in some stage of inebriation.
We have come to Florida from Manhattan to escape Three Mile Island, the nuclear reactor just outside of Hershey, Pennsylvania that has ruptured, releasing radioactive gas into the air and water. I imagine the Susquehanna River brown with melted radioactive chocolate kisses flowing into the Chesapeake Bay.
We are members of a psychotherapy community that we call “The Group.” At this point I have been involved for four years. Our therapy is based on the theories of Harry Stack Sullivan, who developed a radical, interpersonal psychotherapy that says we must master each developmental hurdle before we can move on to the next. We are encouraged to drink alcohol to release our social inhibitions and have sex with lots of people. Monogamy is forbidden. We live in gender-separated communal apartments on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, from 72nd Street to 106th Street and from Broadway to Riverside Drive. We don’t believe in traditional families. We are led by Saul Newton, a political radical who we have been taught is charismatic; by his former and current wives, Joan and Helen; and by Joan’s husband Ralph. They all live together, along with their children from different marriages and from adoption, in a large house on West 91st Street.
I came to this group because I wanted to live with other women in a communal setting, like when I was upstate at college. We lived, studied, and ate together, and we supported one another. I could not find that in the real world, but I found it here.
We are in Orlando because the leadership ordered us to go to Orlando. We also know that the evacuation is not so much to protect us, but to protect the children of the leaders.
I look around at small groups surrounding the pool area, laughing, drinking, talking, and splashing in the pool. Cathy comes over with her camera and tells me not to smile, don’t even look at the camera, and she snaps a photo of me, then moves on and takes pictures of other people. A few weeks later, when she gives me the photo, I think how perfect it would look on the jacket of my first novel, yet to be written.
My roommate Jeanne plunks herself down next to me and asks if I have a cigarette she can bum. I take the pack of Marlboros from my purse and hand it to her.
“I just had a very heavy session with Saul,” she says, lighting up and exhaling a plume of smoke. I breathe it in as it wafts past me.
“He’s so brilliant,” she adds. “He gave me some feedback about my rage and depression and said I have to become a computer programmer because our revolution needs all of us to earn the money that we need to buy our own theater where we can educate the masses about the dangers of all the nuclear power plants that the ruling class is now building at a record rate. The big lie is that if another one blows up like Three Mile Island, there are enough escape routes that no one will be in any danger at all.”
“But you just got your MFA. And you were in a show.”
“I can paint in my spare time. I need to make money. Saul says being financially comfortable is revolutionary. Don’t you see? They want us to be poor.”
“They” means everyone in the straight world.
More and more people in the group have been taking computer classes. My next-door neighbor in college was a computer science major, always carrying around piles of those holey cards. He once showed me the computer room. It was huge and freezing. And the noise. I’ve heard computers are getting smaller these days, but I still don’t want to program one.
Saul emerges from his room. He only comes out to address us. He doesn’t lounge by the pool, and he is never alone. He is always accompanied by his “body guards,” a few of the larger men in our group. Saul, around seventy, is compact and crusty, sort of like Popeye without the biceps. He has long white hair and a white beard. He always wears overalls and t-shirts and he is always serious, never smiling. He walks with a limp that he says is from an injury from his days in the Lincoln Brigade fighting against Franco and fascism in the Spanish Civil War. He is our self-appointed leader and, like God, I fear him despite the slight tremor in his gestures, and I am in awe of the power he holds over all of us.
Saul believes the government wants to assassinate him because of his radical politics. That’s why he never leaves home without a few large men. I don’t believe the government really cares about him; it has better things to do. But I can’t tell anyone, especially not Jeanne because she thinks he is the Bob Dylan of psychotherapy. She sees him for several sessions a week, and I suspect that she’s sleeping with him because sometimes, late at night, the phone rings and she dresses quickly and goes out. She has a clerical job, but she always has enough money for pretty clothes.
Maybe I am the only one; maybe everyone sees the ridiculousness in his claim. But no one says anything. When we talk to each other, Saul is always a god; we never say anything bad about him. Everything we say to anyone in the group gets back to their shrinks and then to our shrinks, who are all supervised by Saul. Say the wrong thing to the wrong person, and you are banished. So I keep my thoughts to myself because this group is my life. This is where my friends are, and I like living communally, buying and cooking food together. I lived with a roommate before I got into the group. We each had our own shelf in the refrigerator and her bedroom door was always shut, so even when she was home, I felt lonely.
According to The Conditions of Human Growth, the thick tome written by Saul and his second wife, Jane Pearce, which articulates the theory behind our therapy: Most of us have never gone beyond the need for a “good mother,” someone who loves us unconditionally. The more the mother withholds love, the more the child becomes tied to her and will neglect to fight for what he wants in the world. He alienates and avoids others who offer friendship and becomes increasingly paranoid. This community is the good mother.
Unconditional love is hard to find because no one person can satisfy all our needs. In theory, and because we are so young, we believe in having lots of friends, lots of lovers, but not in falling in love. But many members have “that special someone,” and much later, when it all ends, everyone will marry everyone else and have children and live in nuclear families.
“I am good at being secretive. I pretended my family was normal and happy. Now I also pretend I have a normal life, when it is anything but normal.”
There have been, and still are, successful artists, dancers, and musicians among us, some of whom are famous or will be famous in decades to come. Jackson Pollock and other abstract expressionists saw Sullivanian therapists in the 1950s and ’60s. Judy Collins saw a Sullivanian therapist, Ralph Klein. Stephen Stills’ song, “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,” is about their relation- ship while she was in therapy. Jackson Pollock was also a patient of Ralph’s. It is worth mentioning that drinking alcohol is encouraged in Sullivanian therapy, and both had problems with alcohol. Alcohol killed Pollock, while Collins overcame her addiction.
Outside of the group, we are secretive about our lives. I tell people at work that I live with roommates on the Upper West Side, but that’s all. I cannot betray our secrets by becoming close friends with anyone on the outside. I can make small talk at lunch, but I don’t reveal the details of my life. I am good at being secretive. I pretended my family was normal and happy. Now I also pretend I have a normal life, when it is anything but normal.
“If people discovered how we live they would try to destroy us. We are a threat to capitalism. We are the vanguard of the revolution,” Saul has told us many times. “The revolution is our lifestyle, so radical it is un-American.”
Saul begins speaking. His voice is gruff and deep, and we lean in to hear him. We are told that he’s brilliant and that he cares about us. Our shrinks tell us Saul is the only one of us who truly knows how to be empathic and to love. I don’t understand how this can be so, especially since I am scared of him. But I keep my mouth shut to stay out of trouble and to stay in this group.
“In a few days we will return to New York,” Saul says. “We have to make lots of changes in the way we live, or we will die. The area around Harrisburg has lots of dairy farms. The cows eat the plutonium-soaked grass and so their milk is irradiated. If we eat these products, we will get cancer and die.” He tells us we must pay close attention to where our food comes from. “When you go to a restaurant, ask the waiter where the food comes from. If it is from an irradiated area, walk out.”
I don’t think the waiters actually know where the food comes from, but Saul’s words frighten me. I’ll have to stop going to my favorite pizza place on 91st Street; no more falafel from the stand on 116th Street. Not so much because of irradiated food, but because someone from the group might see me and tell.
*
On the morning of December 9, 1980, I open the apartment door to retrieve The New York Times and I walk back to the kitchen unfolding it and my heart falls to my feet when I read the headline: “John Lennon of Beatles is Killed: Suspect Held in Shooting at Dakota.” I bring the paper into the kitchen where my roommates Denise, Carly, and Marla are chatting, buttering toasted bagels, and pouring coffee. In the last seven years I have had seven new sets of roommates. Stunned, I place the paper on the table. We all stare at the headline and the one word that is so final: “killed.” We exchange looks. This is too horrible to be true.
On warm spring or autumn Saturdays, I have wandered down to 72nd Street from wherever on the Upper West Side I was living that year, and east to Central Park, and gawked at the magnificent Dakota and its iconic towers. You can see it in paintings of the West Side skyline. Movies have been shot in and around it. Books have been written about its tenants. I have walked past the gate so many times and looked up at the windows. I always fantasized about seeing John on the street and how cool and wonderful that would be and I would just say, “Hello, you changed my life.”
I loved the Beatles the minute I first heard them when I was twelve. I watched them on The Ed Sullivan Show and in person at Shea Stadium, where I couldn’t see or hear them, but I knew I was breathing the same air as they were.
All day on December 9th, the radio stations play the Beatles and John’s solo records and announce a vigil to take place that afternoon at the Dakota. Fans bring flowers and light candles in his memory. My plan is to get home from work, grab some food, and take the bus downtown to join the vigil. It’s too cold to walk.
That afternoon, I am scarfing down a grilled cheese sandwich when the phone rings. It is the Emergency Communications System.
The Emergency Communication System (ECS) was set up after Orlando, and it is a phone tree of sorts. We receive phone calls from our personal ECS person, Dave. He reads a message from Saul. Someone in each apartment has to write it down verbatim so it does not get miscommunicated, like in that game where you whisper a sentence to the person next to you, and they whisper it to the next person, and so on, and in the end the sentence has changed.
I listen as Dave reads that we are not to be anywhere near the Dakota or take part in any activities honoring John Lennon’s memory. The reason is that John Lennon was not a true revolutionary. He was not a Stalinist (whatever that means) like Saul. “Lying in bed for peace is not a radical action,” Dave reads.
I don’t know if John Lennon was a Marxist or Leninist or whatever, but I know he stood for the things I believe in. He believed in a world where we could all live in peace, where people were not separated by political, social, or religious boundaries. His song “Imagine” said it all. John did not deserve to die the way he did, shot in the back as he walked home with his wife.
The music of the Beatles hit the scene during a time of profound changes in my life. The morning of the Beatles’ premiere appearance on television, I woke up with my first period. I will always see their emergence as the beginning of a new era in history. We had just lost a beloved president; we needed the excitement and exuberance of the Beatles. The Beatles blew in on the wind of the sixties.
As much as I want to, I am afraid to go to the Dakota to join the vigil. I am afraid someone will see me and I’ll get into trouble. I am afraid of people who hold power over me. I was always terrified of my stepfather, who beat me when I talked back to my mother or didn’t listen to her. I was afraid to speak in his presence. I was afraid to eat in his presence, because he made fun of the size of the bites I took and the sound of my chewing.
I want to be at the Dakota with everyone else, but I justify staying home: I am tired after teaching. It’s too cold to stand outside. What if I have to pee?
I listen to one of John’s records and take out papers to grade. Denise will be home soon. We both usually get home around the same time on Tuesdays and hang out before dinner.
If we could have best friends in the group, Denise would be mine. We both love literature and poetry. She taught me how to use eye makeup. I first read Edith Wharton because of her. She first read Frank O’Hara after I discovered him. Like me, she teaches writing. We both love the Beatles and the Who and Neil Young. Denise grew up in Queens like me, and we are both Virgos, born exactly two weeks apart. I gave her Rust Never Sleeps on her last birthday, and she gave me Ariel, by Sylvia Plath. The only other person I exchange birthday gifts with is Bill.
But on December 9, Denise does not get home when I do. She doesn’t get home an hour later or two hours later. She comes in at ten o’clock. She walks into the kitchen where I sit at the table with student papers spread out in front of me. I look up and see her looking at me. I know she’s been to the Dakota. She is a dedicated Beatles fan and nothing could keep her away. The look in her brown eyes, with her purple eye shadow fading, means she knows that I know. I feel betrayed and hurt, but I don’t say a word. I envy her for having the tenacity and the fearlessness to follow her heart. Without words, we both agree that we will never talk about this.
She returns to the vigil for the next few nights, while I stay home, hating, envying, and admiring her.
In the Sullivanian group, we are made to feel that we can’t trust anyone, even our closest friends. There is a limit to how close you can be to another person, because a slip of the tongue can get someone into trouble. You tell your shrink someone disobeyed a rule, your shrink tells the other person’s shrink—or, worse, Saul. Saul might call you in to yell at you and call you a traitor and tell you that in the Spanish Civil War someone like you would be shot, or you could be banned from being in a play or babysitting or from your apartment and have to find your own apartment. Or you could be banished.
*
Homosexuality is suppressed in the group. Gays and lesbians are encouraged, even required, to date people of the opposite sex. No one identifies as gay or lesbian. As much love as he has for all the world, Saul is homophobic.
Around 1981, we started hearing about the spread of AIDS, a deadly virus that afflicted mostly homosexual men—at least, that’s all we knew at the time. We are all concerned about safety and recognize certain common enemies: the government, radiation, and now AIDS.
Every apartment in the group receives a call from the Emergency Communications System: “Saul says that we must protect ourselves from AIDS by taking extreme precautions. First, we are not to eat in restaurants because many waiters are gay. As they carry food to your table, they may touch it inadvertently. The waiter may have a cut on his finger, and if you come into contact with that blood, you will contract AIDS.” However, we can eat in Chinese restaurants, because, Saul says, the Chinese don’t tolerate homosexuality and would never hire a gay person.
On a Saturday afternoon, after lunch at Hunan Balcony, Bill and I take the subway down to Astor Place to get haircuts. We all used to see Kevin, who worked at a tiny hair salon on West 97th Street. Because of us, Kevin’s clientele increased exponentially in a short period of time, as word got out that you couldn’t get a bad haircut from him. We all adored Kevin. Over the years, he and I got to know each other. He told me about his partner, a medical student, and he knew Bill because he cut Bill’s hair.
But Kevin is gay.
According to the new policy, it is possible that a hair stylist could accidentally cut his hand while cutting your hair and blood could drip into your hair and seep through your scalp. So, we may no longer get our hair cut by gays.
We abruptly stopped going to Kevin. There were no explanations; he would have thought we were crazy, and now I know we were. When I walk by the little salon, I can’t bring myself to look in the window. I rush past because I don’t want Kevin to see me. I miss him and like him and he deserves to know we don’t suddenly dislike him, but our leader forbade us to get our hair cut by gay people. Within the year, the salon closed. In a way I was relieved, because I didn’t have to see it or think about how we betrayed Kevin.
We started going to Astor Barbers because most of the haircutters were Italian, and we knew that Italians have no tolerance for gay people. We’d get a good heterosexual haircut there. Riding home on the subway—three trains—I have the thought: I am nearly thirty and I fear the authority of the group the same way I feared my parents. They controlled me. Will I ever break out? And even if I do, it’s so hard to make all new friends that you can really talk to.
One evening, Saul calls a mandatory meeting at the theater. His hands are trembling and his face is twitching. He looks older than he did in my meeting two years ago, like those calendars they show in movies with pages ripping off and flying away to show the passing of time. His voice is shaky, but as he paces the stage holding the microphone, I think about Mussolini, Hitler, Pinochet, and dictators in general.
Saul begins, “I don’t want my children to get AIDS. You will not give my children AIDS!” He sounds accusatory, as if the audience were in a grand conspiracy to make his children sick. His children and no others.
“We have some precautions in place,” he continues, “but besides the ban on restaurants, haircuts, public laundries, and requirement to use Lysol, there will be one more. You might think it’s radical. And it is!” He raises his arm and shoots his finger into the air for emphasis.
“I’m not in the group anymore, I think to myself. I can do anything I want. I never have to Lysol the bottoms of my shoes again.”
“Because I don’t want you to give my children AIDS! We have some members who work in the medical field. They could very well have contact with AIDS patients. Even if you are a hospital social worker, you could have contact with AIDS patients. I want all members who work in hospitals and medical clinics to move out of their group apartments immediately. We will set up an apartment for these people. They may visit other apartments, but they are not to enter the kitchen, bedrooms, or bathroom. AIDS may be spread by urine and feces. We do not know and we are not taking any chances. They may only remain in common areas, like the living room.
“These people will be called ‘Fellows.’ They are not full members because they can’t participate in the theater or food co-op, but they are still dues-paying members.
“Further, you may not have any physical contact whatsoever with these people. If you date someone who works in a hospital, you may still date but stay in common rooms and there will be no physical contact whatsoever. No sleepovers. No sex. I hope everyone understands this. If you disobey, I will deal with you.
“But first, to make sure we all agree with these radical changes, we will take a vote. All those in favor of these restrictions, raise your hand.”
AIDS is so new and scary, but I don’t want to stop dating Bill. He’s in his fourth year of medical school, doing clinical rotations at the hospital.
I don’t want to raise my hand, but Saul’s capos, the larger men in the group who guard and protect Saul, are walking up and down the aisles to make sure we all raise our hands. These are guys I once kidded around with and danced with at parties. Now I’m scared of them. One of the guys, Arthur, told me at a party when he was really drunk that Saul has guns. I don’t know if it’s true. Arthur was very drunk. My hand goes up.
Bill, sitting beside me, keeps his hand lowered. I hope no one notices.
“Unanimous,” says Saul.
“You didn’t ask if anyone votes against,” calls Bill from his seat. I cringe because he says what I am too scared to say.
Saul shrugs, as if he sees no reason for this, but for appearances, he asks, “All those opposed.”
Bill’s raised arm is the only one visible.
“The policy passes,” Saul announces.
No one says anything about Bill’s vote. I go home; it’s late and tomorrow is a work day. But I know this is not over and I wait for the second shoe to drop.
I wait for Bill to be told he’s not in the company any longer. But in a way, he’s already out, because he’s quarantined.
Bill moves into the Fellows’ apartment on 99th Street and West End Avenue. One evening, I visit him and we watch a movie on the sofa in the common area. Bill is exhausted from his work on the wards and leans his head on my shoulder. A minute or so later, I know he’s asleep, and I don’t wake him. I keep watching the movie. One of the other Fellows walks into the room, looks at us on the sofa, looks at the movie, and walks out.
A week later, Bill moves into his own apartment. The apartment with the Fellows is too crowded and they don’t wash their coffee cups after using them, just rinse them out and put them on the counter for the next person. I find this odd for a group of people studying to be doctors. Haven’t they heard of germs?
He has given me momentum. I want to move.
Bill’s one-bedroom apartment is in a recently renovated building on Broadway and 100th Street, which was rehabbed into studio apartments. The building has new windows, high rents, and a grand new lobby.
I go in and ask to see the manager. I feel like a child pretending to be an adult, but I am almost thirty-three. I tell him I am friends with Bill, who just moved in. The manager, a large man dressed in a golf shirt and chinos, shows me a studio for $600 a month, and I take it. He says I can move in as soon as I want.
I tell my roommates that Robert, my shrink, told me to live on my own for a while. No one doubts the advice of a shrink. They wish me luck.
$600 is a lot more than what I’ve been paying in a group apartment, and I only have enough money for three months’ rent, so I move in and hope for a miracle. I’m desperate and willing to take the chance because I need to get out. It’s my first step to freedom.
I pack my clothes, my typewriter, and most of my books and I move two blocks away to my new studio apartment. When I don’t have a date, I keep my thirteen-inch black and white TV on just to hear another voice. I have never lived alone before.
I’ve only been living in my apartment for a week when, on an early spring night in 1984, I’m at work. It’s Sunday. I work nights and weekends word-processing at a law firm. It’s easier than teaching students who are not interested in writing or reading. I’m keying in a brief for the lawyer I least like in the firm. He’s a procrastinator, so there’s always pressure to get the work done before the final Federal Express pickup. It’s due in court in D.C. first thing in the morning.
It’s getting dark out. When I work for other lawyers, we order food, but no one else is working today and this one never seems to need to eat. The Cajun restaurant downstairs is closed so I can’t even get a quick sandwich. The phone rings. Who calls a law firm on a Sunday night?
“Hi, Alice, this is John. The Leadership Committee has decided that you are no longer in the company.”
“Why?”
“You already know why.”
“No, I ...”
He hangs up.
I take a deep breath and look at my feet. I’m wearing white Reeboks, blue tights, a dungaree skirt that ends just above my knees, and a red and blue sweater that Bill gave me for my last birthday.
Suddenly I have this feeling that I am beautiful and I can fly, and, at the same time, that I am completely alone.
“Alice, I have more changes!”
“Ok, I’ll be right there.”
His office is two doors down. I take the pages off his desk without looking at him and go back to my wordprocessing machine. I have energy I didn’t have a moment ago. I quickly make the changes.
I’m not in the group anymore, I think to myself. I can do anything I want. I never have to Lysol the bottoms of my shoes again. I can go back to my favorite pizzeria. I don’t have to pay dues or assessments. The money I earn will be mine. No more mandatory midnight meetings listening to Saul’s bluster.
I moved into my own apartment as a first step in leaving the group. I thought it would take months. I am relieved. I am terrified.
Now I have to make all new friends.
I key in the corrections and wait for James Moss, Esq., to give me the rest of the pages so I can finish and call Federal Express. While waiting, I call Bill.
“It’s okay,” he says. “You’ll be okay.”
“I’m happy about it. I think.”
We plan to get together after work. We live in the same building now, so it’s easy.
At home, I call Robert, my shrink, and tell him. I like Robert. He is not a trainee; he has an actual PhD in clinical psychology. He is less doctrinaire than the trainees, and I sense that he and I have a lot in common. He tells me to come in for a session the following day.
Robert knows why I was dismissed. “It’s because of Bill’s vote against the AIDS restrictions. Saul figured Bill would follow you if you were kicked out so it wouldn’t look like retribution for Bill’s vote.”
It makes perfect sense to me. I was expecting Bill to get thrown out. This is more politically sophisticated.
Robert’s office is messier than usual. Piles of papers, books, and some boxes hug the wall opposite the large window.
“I’ve been cleaning up and getting rid of junk,” he says.
Then he tells me that since I am not living in a group apartment anymore, and I am not in the group, I don’t have to be in therapy.
“Really?”
He smiles and nods, like he’s happy. This is a relief, and in my head I try to calculate the savings and how much I’ve wasted. Robert and I officially part ways, but I stop in the doorway and turn to him.
“If you see me on the street, will you still say hello?”
“Absolutely.”
I walk down Broadway feeling naked. I am no longer protected by the group. I’m not clothed in the safety of the Sullivanian community. I’m completely unleashed —from the group and from therapy, which was never really therapy as much as it was being taught to be a good Sullivanian.
Over the next few days, I pass people on the street who used to be my friends, but I turn my eyes away and keep walking, so as not to embarrass anyone. I have done the same thing with people many times, when I was still in the group and they were pariahs, so I know how it’s done. Like that time when I saw Lily on the 96th Street crosstown bus. She gets on at Amsterdam, the stop after me. I’m sitting toward the back. Does she see me? I think we see each other for a second, and then we both turn away. She wisely takes a seat in the front. Shunning is perfectly choreographed.
A few days later, in the Red Apple, I’m trying to decide between two packages of chicken when I run into Alan, a guy in the group. He smiles and comes over to me. He obviously has not gotten the official message yet.
“Hi,” he says. I once had a date with him at the workshop, based on the fact that we had the same initials.
Alan asks how I am and says he hasn’t seen me in a while. I look around because if anyone sees him talking to me, he’s in big trouble. Finally, I just blurt out, “I’m not in the group anymore,” and walk away. For his protection.
Then weirder things happen.
I’m walking down Broadway and about to pass Mike, a shrink who is Robert’s best friend. I always thought he was cute, but I never had the nerve to talk to him, and for eleven years he completely ignored me. So I keep walking, and suddenly, Mike says hi as he passes me.
My face almost falls to the sidewalk.
I know he knows because he’s Robert’s best friend and there are no secrets in the group.
The next morning I’m running across Broadway to get a black-and-white cookie at Cake Masters. On the island in the middle, crossing from the opposite side of the street, I run into Lisa and Amy, who are best friends, and to whom I haven’t spoken in years.
They go out of their way to say hello. Again, a surprise. I was once friends with them, but it’s been years since we’ve spoken.
A few days later, I hear from Bill, who heard from Zelda, that Mike, Robert, Amy, and Lisa left their group apartments in the middle of the night and moved together to Brooklyn.
That’s the way you leave the group—secretly and in the dead of night when your roommates are asleep.
A few months later, I move into Bill’s apartment. Two years later, we marry.