So I perked up when I read the letter from Piste Off, because I too am a
fencer (foil and sabre) and have been dealing with obnoxious older men for
as long as I can remember, just as I’m sure nearly every woman in every
fencing club across the country has been. There is a Galahad in every
club. At least one. So switching fencing clubs probably wouldn’t help her
all that much. Anyhow, I thought I’d throw in my advice. There are some
other ways she can fight this guy that have worked for me.

For one, if he
ever directs her again and says anything disparaging, call the bout
committee and repeat to them exactly what he said. They will have to remove
him from directing her. The same holds true even if he isn’t directing but she
is at a tournament. She can simply ask the director to remove him from the
strip if he starts to harass her. Directors are all-powerful, but the bout
committee is next to God. More importantly, though, off of the strip, she
simply needs to stand up for herself. As I said, women fencers (and
generally the younger, the more so this is true) are constantly harassed by
old men in one way or another, so this has nothing to do with her fencing
ability or her as an individual, so she really shouldn’t let it get to
her. Your “fuck off” advice was right on, and has definitely worked for me
in the past. Not much else will probably get through to someone like him.

No longer foiled

Hopefully you can provide insight into a problem I’m having. I live in a
typical upper-middle class suburb of Hartford, Connecticut (I rent and live on
the town’s one bad street, only in my dreams can I afford a house here). The
kids are entitled and the center of the universe. The adults are no different.
Nothing unusual, but that doesn’t make it right.

About two months ago, there was a truly horrible accident on a local street in
our town. Daniel Palmer, a 17-year-old driving his newly purchased used BMW
at 70 mph, crossed the double-yellow line and hit an oncoming car. He killed
the driver of the other car and seriously injured the two passengers. He and
his two passengers — also 17-year-olds — died instantly. It was a Friday
night, so of course he and his two passengers were drunk. And they all had fake
IDs. And a 30-pack in the car.

The three kids are being memorialized all over the place, even the
driver/killer. The fourth deceased person, the innocent “by-driver,” has been
all but forgotten since he isn’t in high school and only high school kids are
important.

My problem is that I can’t deal with the injustice. If he had taken a gun and
shot the other three people and then shot himself, people would think of him in
the same way. If that punk teenager had lived, he’d be facing serious prison
time for killing the other driver. Because he’s dead, he’s been practically in
line for sainthood. The kid killed a man who also lives in our town, who was a
husband and a father to three children. This asshole deserves to be remembered
for the last act of his life.

What is appropriate for me to do to this end? If I could have an impact on the
town’s high schoolers so that they think twice about doing the same, that’d be
great, too.

Thank you for your help,
Enraged in the ‘burbs

Reasons 1 and 2 are from her side of the equation. The first is that her mother hates me. Reason #2 is her ex-boyfriend. He not only gets freakishly jealous, but he’s also sort of manic-depressive, and has attempted suicide a few times. When my friend dumped him, he suspected her of having been cheating on him (she wasn’t), and said that if he ever found out that she had dumped him to be with someone else, “there would be trouble.” He kept the threat vague, and she still isn’t sure what he meant. Either way, she doesn’t want to find out, and I completely understand, since it is possible that he meant he would try to hurt himself again, and we obviously wouldn’t want that. Anyway, the point is that, since we were already friends when she broke up with him, if she were to tell him that we are now a couple, it would be very easy for someone as paranoid as him to decide that she had been having an affair with me while they were together, and then “there would be trouble.”

Reason 3, the heaviest one, is mine: This girl was the first person I ever slept with, and my first serious relationship (even if we are not officially “a couple,” we spend so much time together and are so committed to each other that I sort of see it as a relationship). And I’m just a sophomore in college, so even I had been with dozens of girls already, I couldn’t be sure that I can make the relationship last. I have so much yet to go through, I’m going to meet so many women in the future, I can’t be completely certain that someone else will not make me tempted or curious enough to ruin my relationship with her (I don’t think I’d ever cheat on her, but entertaining those kinds of thoughts too much, always thinking “what if?” could be enough to affect a relationship, I think — and I don’t want to be thinking “what if?” while I’m with her, she deserves better than that). Also, even if I don’t meet anyone else that I love as much, I don’t know if I have the maturity to make a relationship last for the rest of my life, since the rest of my life (unless something unfortunate happens) is so much time, and so many things can happen. This reasoning ultimately made me decide that I didn’t want to have a relationship either.

Of course, it doesn’t work that way. Since we keep having sex, the only thing that distinguishes our relationship from a “real” one is the lack of the title, and the fact that no one else knows we are together. We know that won’t work, that if we don’t stop this aspect of our relationship we will be as much hurt if things don’t work out as we would if we were actually a couple. We have tried to stop having sex and just act as friends to see if we fall out of love, but we can’t. We always end up kissing, and then sleeping together.

Now here’s the climax of the situation (finally). She has been gone on a trip for nearly a week. I’ve had a lot of time to miss her and to think about our relationship, and have missed her so badly that I’m starting to change my mind. I’ve realized that…well, that a lot of those clichés that are associated with being in love apply to me: I can’t stand being without her, she makes me feel complete, she’s the best thing that has ever happened to me, et cetera. I’ve realized that I can’t picture meeting someone that I like more than her; I can’t picture even being interested in another woman when I have her. I think. That’s the problem: I don’t know if I can be sure. And even if I were, that only eliminates the “what if I’m tempted by someone else” part of the problem. There’s still the problem of maturity, of all the other stuff that can go wrong in a relationship aside from “another woman.” I don’t know if I can keep a stable relationship through all the years that we have left to live. I’m nineteen, for god’s sake. I should be dating different women and sleeping around, not being with the one I’m going to spend the rest of my life (or so say all those TV shows). There’s a lot at stake if I’m wrong. If we enter a relationship and screw it up, I’ll lose my best friend.

I write like it’s up to me despite all the other inconveniences, because I think my problem is really the issue that has kept us from going for it — her mother and ex-boyfriend will get over their stuff with time, and until then we could easily keep our relationship secret from them. So this is why I’m coming to you for advice. Should I go for it? And if not, what can we do to keep our hands off each other and get rid of our deeper, non-friendship feelings, so that our friendship has a chance? Please don’t suggest spending some time apart. Like I said, it’s too hard for us, and besides, we have just spent some time apart this last week (involuntarily, because her mother made her go on that damn trip to keep her away from me — I’m not being paranoid; that was the actual, honest-to-god reason) and it didn’t work, it just made me want to be with her more. Talking it over would probably not make much difference either, because we already have discussed it, many times. In the end, I think it’s up to me. So what should I do?

Living the Cliché

My boyfriend and I just moved in together in a nice two-bedroom town-home/apartment. We are second from the end of the building, so while we
have neighbors on both sides, one of our neighbors has only us. Said
neighbors have a son who (though I’ve only seen him a couple times)
looks to be about two or three years old, and a new puppy. We’ve not formally met,
because my boyfriend and I mostly keep to ourselves, and frankly, we don’t
enjoy being overly neighborly just “because.” We have seen
our neighbors a couple times on their way into or out of the building, but it’s
only been smiles and nods.

Here’s the problem: Almost every single night we can hear the child
screaming through the walls. Not just tantrum screaming (like I thought
it might be at first) but blood-curdling screaming. The child must have
some huge lungs!! I was first worried about child abuse — of course —
but I never hear sounds of spanking or beating, just the child screaming
endlessly, and he screams for HOURS at a time. The few times we see the
boy outside, he’s usually with one of his parents, walking the puppy. He
doesn’t look to have any visible bruises, and he’s not skinny — he has
that healthy chunky kid look that most two- or three-year-olds have — so I don’t
think he’s being starved. But I have no clue what to do about the
screaming.

If the kid is being abused, I want to report it, because I do not want
to be one of those people you see on the news reports saying, “I knew
they were having problems, but I never thought they’d [fill in terrible
thing here].” But what if the boy has some chronic disorder or something
and he can’t help it? As I see it, here are my choices:

1. Knock on their door one afternoon and ask to speak to them about it
as a concerned neighbor. This would be okay, but I hate confrontation, and
as we live right next door, if they take it as an insult, they obviously
are in a position to make things pretty rough on us.

2. Call the apartment complex and file a complaint. We could do this,
too, but if the complex goes to check them out, again, we’re their only
neighbors, so it becomes obvious who complained (see repercussions from
Choice #1).

3. Call social services and tell them what happens. The only problem
here is that I don’t know the neighbors’ names, and I don’t have any clear
evidence of abuse except for the endless screaming.

I spoke to a health official friend of mine, and she said that if there
was obvious signs of abuse to report it to child services. But other
than that, she was not much help. I’m leaning toward simply reporting it
to the apartment complex office and asking if they can follow up with me
after talking to the family. What would you do?

Thanks in advance,
Not trying to be nosy, but still a concerned neighbor

I chose my college based solely on excellence in my field of study. I love my classes, yet I’ve never been so unhappy in my life. I am a liberal Jewish northerner stuck in the middle of Christian white-bread America (I’ve seen more graces being said in Burger Kings than African Americans). I made some nice friends, yet even the most liberal of them is still a Republican!

I had a minor breakdown this summer, which let my parents and friends know how grossly unhappy I was, and things went poorly. My parents, although extremely supportive, feel that I’ve made great inroads and that not everyone is happy in college. They want me to suck it up for the degree, and then I will be able to go wherever I want for grad school. I am on academic scholarship and the dean’s list. My high school friends say to “get the hell out of Dodge.” Should I foresake quality of life for another four semesters to receive an excellent education with a degree that will “take me places,” or run to Berkeley and have to retake at least another year of school?

Damn Yankee