We met-or, rather, our families did-at a square dance, of all places. I was a draft dodger who hated taking orders from anyone. He was a Vietnam vet (Coast Guard, with service in the Mekong Delta) who opposed the war but loved the military. I grew up in a two-family house in Brighton, one of Boston’s working-class neighborhoods. He was five years older and had grown up near Phillips Exeter Academy, in New Hampshire, where his father taught classics and briefly was headmaster. In most other respects, we couldn’t have been more different. This Chip and I both had six-year-old sons named Ben-not majorly weird, but a little-and nine-year-old daughters.
I’ve been known as Chip most of my life, except for a brief period in college when, for a reason I can no longer remember, I tried to reinvent myself as Charlie. My friend was called Chip, and so, to start with, we shared a name. I thought I was long past making friends of any kind. In the summer of 1983, when I was thirty-six, I made a new friend-something I never expected to do at that point in my life.
