How could he have known that the way he dropped his r’s, his choice of sneakers instead of leather boat shoes, and his quick and easy smile would establish him in the minds of the older, sophisticated yacht club members as someone to be tolerated but never accepted or respected. Jerry grew up in Brockton and graduated from high school there. He took courses at the community college, a twenty minute walk from the club. If it weren't for Liam, whom he met on a trek to club's dumpster hidden behind the hedge in the sideyard, he would have quit after the first week.
Liam was Liam, so fully comfortable inside his own skin that Jerry knew immediately that there would never be a need to fear condescension. Liam studied at Yale, but he wasn’t Yale, not the way his father was Yale and his mother Vassar. Jerry's parents were Stan the firefighter and Maura the dental hygienist. They had never seen the view of the harbor from the back porch of the yacht club, and they never would.
Jerry worked in the club’s basement kitchen on Wednesday and Friday evenings when they served barbecued chicken, oily salad, and chocolate cake to the members. Liam manned the bar upstairs in the rec room adjoining the spacious deck where the members sat and drank after their meal and sometimes played bridge or cribbage with cards that Liam stored under the bar. They called to Liam from behind their tightly fanned cards, ordering refills. His uniform an immaculate polo shirt as white as his perfect smile, Liam joked with the men as he poured their private labels and mixed their wives’ martinis on the rocks.
After work when everyone else had gone, in that warm part of each summer’s night when water and air seem to merge, Liam and Jerry sat on the club’s dock beside Liam’s painted wooden rowboat. They dangled their legs and feet in the murmuring waves as they shared a joint. Liam always had a joint in his shirt pocket hidden inside a folded joker. After a swim, they stepped into the rowboat, slid the oars into the oarlocks, and explored the night harbor, the rhythmic plash of the oars and the low cadence of their voices muffled by the breeze sighing from the shore.
Of course the yacht club girls loved Liam and tolerated his friend Jerry.
Two thoughts. Jerry would have known. Second, the last paragraph ends very romantic. As usual, want to know more, but as usual, push on, no stopping!
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