Back then, GW was a school where many students went to make first-year grades that enabled them to transfer to their first-choice school: Stanford or Harvard or the University of Chicago. But regardless of GW’s lack of status in the 70s, a college campus can be a social equalizer, and it provided me with an opportunity for the great reinvention. My parents’ house, along with whatever else I had or didn’t have, was irrelevant now. Although clothes, jewelry, cars, and stereos clearly indicated levels of wealth and status, and rich kids from an area of Long Island unknown to me worked overtime to advertise their privileged upbringings, everyone walked through the same entrance to the same freshman dormitory, which was called “the Zoo.” I felt right at home. College is the beginning of the merit-based period of most people’s lives. The cachet of gold chains and Nakamichi stereos was eclipsed by true mastery of an academic subject. This was especially so if your parents didn’t own some company that was holding a seat for you upon graduation.
At college, one thing remained a constant for me: fear was the invisible leash that largely controlled my behavior. There was a faint whisper that followed me everywhere, telling me that I shouldn’t disappoint my dad. I had to focus on taking full advantage of attending the private university that was an enormous financial sacrifice for my family. Throughout much of college, I practiced a caution that often resembled passivity. Also, I hadn’t yet learned that trying to be liked and succeeding were often mutually exclusive. When I played football in high school, like some gridiron Billy Pilgrim, coaches would grab my face mask and scream, “Why didn’t you hit Bob when you had a shot?” I thought to myself that I liked Bob and didn’t want to smash him. The idea that you tried to destroy some opponent for a couple of hours and afterward hugged him seemed odd to me. The nature of competition, which sometimes led to violent confrontation with someone, became clear later.
Other essential things changed for me in Washington. I fell in love for the first time. In one of the very last days of my freshman year, I walked down a dormitory hall late one night, looking to say good-bye to someone. Suddenly, there was Love, lying on the floor of the hallway, a taut telephone cord stretched out of her doorway to its maximum. In a pale silk dress, her face turned completely toward the wall, she looked as if she was in this position as some form of punishment. Her muffled crying and hushed pleadings, I later found out, were offered to her on-again, off-again boyfriend. Scenes like this are common in college dorms, where vanity is sacrificed for lack of privacy. I stood, frozen. I had never heard anyone speak that way. I had never witnessed such genuine passion. Who was this guy who elicited this behavior in her? I eventually dated her, though not seriously, and by that I mean I only saw her a handful of times, but talked to her on the phone at every opportunity and thought about her every moment of the day. She lived in Virginia and I went home to Long Island for the summer. I think she liked me, but her heart was still with someone else, and there was no getting around that. Nonetheless, she opened up that part of my life. Eventually, chasing that high of intense emotional intimacy with someone, being possessed by them, would become an addiction for me as well.
Many of my fellow students were there to party, as their performance in school had little bearing on where they would land when they finished. Instead of drinking and getting high, I walked into the offices of the student government and something just clicked for me. It’s been said that politics is show business for less attractive people, and the offices of the GW Student Association, for the most part, bore that out. But I was drawn to these kids, who were more like me and needed to extend themselves in order to compete. They had bought into the idea, not entirely wrong, that these school activities would tell other admissions offices and employers what they were made of. I volunteered one year at the office of student programming, booking and coordinating movies, speakers, parties, and concerts. At the end of my sophomore year, I ran for and won the position of chairperson of that board, which paid a tuition stipend. My father was genuinely happy about that. I did fairly well in college, majoring in political science while working at an internship at my congressman’s office and later at a law firm specializing in FCC filings.
But no matter how hard I tried to keep my costs low and tap my father’s wallet as little as possible, I would slam into the wall of reality. Colleges want you to pay your housing deposit in the spring for the following fall semester. As I stood in the waiting room of the housing office on a beautiful April day, the cherry blossoms outside every window, the lady behind the desk said, at full volume and within earshot of everyone around me, “Your parents’ check bounced, so we can only accept a money order from you from now on.” At that moment, I lost my spot in the dorm, as that bounced check was all I had. I scrambled to secure a space in an apartment in Arlington, Virginia, with some friends, all of whom would also eventually lose their patience with me because of my insolvency.
In the spring of 1979, my girlfriend, Alison, who was Jewish, was told by her parents to dump me, which she did. I was devastated. This was my first serious relationship. It had basically consisted of lying around on weekends doing nothing, which felt like everything. Convinced that someone cared about me, I was determined to hold on to that feeling. I begged a lot, as I recall. At the same time, I was running for president of the student government. People who worked on my “candidacy” urged me to come into DC from Arlington to campaign. Instead, I stayed home and felt sorry for myself. I was consumed by my need for nearly any kind of achievement on one hand and for the love of a woman on the other. I lost the election and the girl and ended up both defeated and insecure.
My girlfriend’s roommate, Shari, had transferred from GW to NYU. On a trip back home, I went to visit her and whine about the loss of Alison. Then, based solely on Shari’s playful provocation, I auditioned for the theater program at NYU. Suddenly, this was an idea that was both crazy and necessary. Admitting that I didn’t actually want to be a K Street lawyer, I felt a powerful urge to leave DC and burn a bridge again. I needed to win something. It almost didn’t matter where that need led me. City Hall or Wall Street or Madison Avenue, I didn’t care. I just wanted some taste of success.