The Best Yale Law School Class Ever

I went to law school to escape from Utah. Killing myself was Plan A. I ended up going with Plan B instead.

I’ve endured anxiety all my life. But on two occasions I also faced suicidal depression. The first time was when I was twenty-two years old and finishing up my English degree at Brigham Young University. I’d entered college in 1981 as a Spencer W. Kimball Scholar, BYU’s most prestigious scholarship. I graduated as the university’s valedictorian. By the summer of 1986, I was worn out from years on the treadmill as the Best Little Mormon Boy in the World. So of course I committed to another crazy year in Utah. I taught freshman English at BYU; performed in multiple shows at the Hale Center Theatre; finished the coursework for a graduate degree in linguistics; and was the founding editor of Student Review, BYU’s longest-running student newspaper. At night I would run for miles, hang with queer street kids, and resist the temptation to drive off an overpass.

I also signed up for the LSAT. I scored in the 99.9th percentile. For no extra fee you could send your score to five schools. I picked Harvard, Yale, Stanford, the University of Chicago, and the University of Washington.

Midway through the year I hit rock bottom. Fortunately, I got help. I had support from friends, family, and sympathetic local Mormon church leaders. Unlike many suicidal queer youth, I found a way out of the darkness.

I needed to leave Utah so I could continue making progress on my mental health. Without suicide as an option, law school was the only escape I could think of. So I compared my acceptance letters.

The University of Washington was my safety school. I enjoyed classes in UW’s English grad program when I moved to Seattle a few years later. But I needed to see more of the world before settling down in the Pacific Northwest.

Stanford looks like a golf course, and triggered my anti-California prejudices. It’s the best law school in the West, but it was time for me to head back East.

Harvard is a great university, and Boston offers more than New Haven. But Harvard Law School was too big, with over 400 students in each entering class rather than 165 students like each of the other schools on my list.

The University of Chicago has a lot of conservative Mormon connections. I had a wonderful experience living in Chicago when I became an LGBT rights lawyer with the ACLU of Illinois several years later. Nevertheless, law school at U of C would have been a grind, and terrible for my mental health. Interesting, my financial aid package at every other school involved graduating with the same $35,000 in student loans. In contrast, the University of Chicago offered me a “merit” scholarship and a full ride. I’m glad I didn’t make a bad decision based on money.

Instead, I ended up choosing Yale Law School. I had pretty good reasons.

First, if you must go to law school, you should go to the best law school you can. Yale has been recognized as the top law school for generations. Privilege has its privileges.

Second, I needed to experience the East Coast. New Haven is a 90 minute train ride away from New York City, which gave me access to Broadway shows, gay bars, and great museums.

Third, Yale Law School doesn’t have grades. Dean Guido Calabresi gave our class a welcoming speech with the title “You’re Off the Treadmill!” The Dean told us “Our goal at Yale is to get 90% of you into the Top 10% of the class.” You can’t tell 165 overachieving nerds to turn off their competitive brains. But you can encourage them to define 165 individual paths to success.

Fourth, in preparing to leave behind the Mormons and Utah, I was looking for a new community that shared my values. Professors like Guido Calibresi inspired me to embrace the legal profession as an instrument of truth and justice. Guido offered an enchanting vision for the law school and its graduates: Excellence and Humanity. Without humanity, a highly skilled lawyer is a menace to society.

Finally, although I was clueless about lawyers and law school, I knew several earnest pre-law students at BYU. My friend Greg was a smart political science major. After touring each Top 20 law school campus, he insisted on wearing his Yale Law School sweatshirt everywhere. Greg said I’d be an idiot to go anywhere else.

Greg didn’t get into Yale. He ended up at University of Chicago instead. When we left BYU, he insisted on giving me his sweatshirt: my first Yale Law School swag.

I bought my son the same classic grey Yale Law School sweatshirt last week at our 35th year reunion.

It was only my second time returning to New Haven. Ten years ago I attended our 25^th year reunion, where I heard about the prior reunions. Two stories stood out, both involving the special class-specific slots in the Alumni Weekend schedule. On Saturday evening, members of each reunion class gather for a private cocktail hour and posh dinner. The women and the East Coast men dress up. (Northwestern guys wear jeans.) The Alumni Office staff choose various local restaurants based on anticipated turnout. That year our class dinner was held in a terrible restaurant in the suburbs. My classmates still complain about being stuck on a bus to Hamden. The Class of 1990’s response? Two of our class members infiltrated the Alumni Weekend organizing committee. Last Saturday we dined at New Haven’s finest restaurant.

The Alumni Weekend schedule always includes another class-specific slot, on Saturday afternoon. Most classes meet in an Ivy League courtyard with an open bar, fancy nibbles, and cater-waiters. Some classes plan a group tour to a museum. Others gather for a commemorative photo. This year I saw many alumni on the New Haven Green, which happened to be the location of the local No Kings protest march.

The Class of 1990’s bonding time is identified in the printed schedule as “Two Minute Memoirs.” The venue is always an out-of-the-way classroom in the law school. Several of my classmates told me versions of the same story. It was their first time at Alumni Weekend. They saw the schedule and took a pass. (“Sounded like a tedious corporate ice-breaker.” “I’d never been to the Yale Center for British Art.” “I thought it would just be guys bragging about their careers.” “Who needs a roomful of lawyers?”).

Each truant class member confessed they’d made a terrible mistake and vowed never to repeat it. Hearing my classmates’ memoirs was indeed the highlight of my 25th year reunion weekend. No one wasted their two minutes on resumes. Instead, we heard deeply personal stories about excellence, humanity, and family.

Everyone who ever attends our class reunion raves about the life-altering experience of hearing these extraordinary stories. Like the time in law school when the Rolling Stones secretly played Toad’s, the small nightclub across the street from my dorm room.

This year more than sixty members of our class reunited in New Haven. Other than pathetic outliers like myself, the Class of 1990 is a privileged cohort at the peak of professional success. Yet we convened during a time of existential threat to the rule of law, even as many class members face major life transitions. Everyone talked about what really matters.

The last time I visited Yale was a few weeks before I received my PTSD diagnosis. A decade later, I told my classmates why I’d disappeared.

· The most important thing that happened to me since our last reunion was my ex disappeared and I became a full-time single dad with three teenagers and two dogs. Becoming a father twenty years ago was the best thing that ever happened to me. But becoming a single father thirteen years later gave me the experiences of a lifetime, and left me with the kind of shared memories and relationships with each child that few parents will ever know.

· The second most important thing that happened was getting the right diagnosis, which put me on the path to recovery. I live with complex PTSD symptoms every day. But I am in the best mental and physical health of my life.

· If I had been blessed with supportive co-workers at the State, I could have recovered from complex PTSD in six months. Instead it took more than six years – because my former employer and the state’s lawyers publicly accused me of faking a disability. Gaslighting abuse reinforced the traumatic impact of the Mormon’s refusal to acknowledge LGBT people exist, and triggered my second suicidal episode. Their attacks made me an unemployable pariah in the legal community where I used to be a distinguished bar leader.

· As 2025 began, I still was an unemployed disabled gay single dad, raising three teenagers and living on food stamps. Fortunately, in February I found a position with an online family law firm that has been a good fit for my legal and life experience.

I’m grateful that I can finally support my family while helping ordinary people solve their legal problems. I could also afford to get on a plane for the first time in ten years. Joining the Yale Law School Class of 1990 for our 35th year reunion was an important part of my healing. It reminded me the legal profession can demonstrate both Excellence and Humanity.

Each year the admissions office and the faculty select an extraordinary entering class. Yale Law School cohorts have become increasingly diverse. Many students come from lower socio-economic brackets, but will have their tuition and costs paid in full by generous donors. The law school leadership and the alumni community have invested immense energy and financial resources to ensure that no one misses out on the Yale Law School experience because of money. The largest donation in the history of the law school came from one of my classmates.

Three decades ago, the Class of 1990 was just as diverse as any of the law school’s carefully curated recent classes. Part of that achievement was a fluke of timing and demographics. But the diversity of our class is amplified because everyone is some kind of two-fer or triple threat. For example, it’s no surprise that I got the “Earnest-Mormon-BYU-Valedictorian” slot that’s available most years. But I also ended up contributing to Yale’s diversity as a mental illness survivor, LGBT advocate, showtune enthusiast, Trailer Park Single Dad, and Canadian.

Reconnecting with my classmates reminded me that our time together in New Haven was a transformational opportunity. I lived in the law school all three years. The first year I was a liberal Mormon, and my dormmate was a bright conservative from Texas. He grew up in the same Houston neighborhood as the Bushes, and spent a weekend in New Hampshire volunteering on George H.W. Bush’s primary campaign. The other two years I was a liberal ex-Mormon who had recently tasted coffee and alcohol for the first time. My new roommate was a J.D./English PhD candidate and Martin Luther King’s nephew. He had a vast collection of video-taped movies. There was always a crowd in our living room. Like everywhere else in the law school, the conversation never ended.

The Yale Law conversations continued beyond the walls of the law school. Many of our classmates found housing off-campus. Several groups shared houses near the beach. A posse of bros known as the “Tall Boys” hosted notorious parties – including the first time I tasted tequila, which led to the first time I threw up out of a moving car.

During his Supreme Court confirmation hearing, I kept seeing the same photo of our classmate Brett Kavanaugh that appears in the law school facebook. Brett wasn’t at the reunions. As I wrote in my essay “About My Yale Law School Classmate Brett Kavanaugh,” I realized “he may be the only member of our law school class I never met or interacted with.” Despite his prominence on the Supreme Court, in many ways Justice Kavanaugh is even more of an outlier than me as an exemplar of the Class of 1990.

My previous essay also recognized the diversity of our law school:

Despite its decidedly liberal overall bent, Yale Law School is extraordinarily diverse. (Although there may be an excessive number of Yale College graduates who linger in New Haven, including Brett Kavanaugh, Yale ’87, Law ’90). The rest of my classmates hailed from all over the country and the world, bringing their varied backgrounds and interests to the melting pot. In addition to the occasional pesky law class, you could spend your time with student legal clinics, cutting-edge academic journals, and endless philosophical arguments. My closest friends at law school included evangelical Christians, unreconstructed libertarians, prep-school Republicans, and even bros.

On paper, the diversity of Yale Law School’s carefully groomed recent classes may rival the Class of 1990. But folks who have observed the new Yale students in action say they prefer to talk to their own kind. In contrast, our class’s “endless philosophical arguments” have always been open to everyone. All weekend long at the reunion, I would sit down at a table with classmates I hadn’t seen or thought about in years. We would dive into fascinating conversations with the same old Excellence and Humanity.

At Yale Law School, the Class of 1990 learned to talk with attention and empathy to people who are different from ourselves – an essential gift that is increasingly rare.

My suicidal breakdown at BYU didn’t happen because I was beginning to figure out that I was gay. I hit rock bottom because my disability made me believe I was unworthy of anyone’s respect or love. Despite escaping to Yale Law School, I still had a long way to go.

Now that I’ve made more progress toward mental health, I realize I contributed to the disconnect with Brett Kavanaugh. I probably avoided him in law school. I know I avoided the Tall Boys. They look like the kind of bros I expect to toss me in a garbage can. During the cocktail hour before our fancy dinner, I found myself avoiding the Tall Boys once again, as well as everyone else. The acoustics in the reception room were deafening and triggered my disability. 

Fortunately, listening became easier once we sat down at the dinner tables. The four of us sitting together probably hadn’t seen each other since graduation. Hiram spent the decade since our last reunion as a college president. David, an orthodox Jew, moved his family to Israel fifteen years ago. Paulene never practiced law, instead getting a Ph.D. in Asian literature from Princeton. But she still took the bar exam to please her Chinese mother. As usual with the Class of 1990, the conversation was fascinating, witty, and kind.

When Paulene stepped away from the table, one of the Tall Boys took her chair. He thanked me for sharing my experiences as a disabled single father. During our Two Minute Memoirs that afternoon, this Tall Boy disclosed the most devastating loss in the room: the death of a child. And yet he reached down from the heights to make me feel welcome. Even in a fractured world, it is possible to sustain community by listening to other people with radical empathy.

In former dean Harold Koh’s toast to our class before our delicious dinner, he described some of my classmates’ extraordinary achievements and outsized personalities, including the Tall Boys. After forty years on the faculty, he confessed that he remembers us as his favorite class. But he’s not allowed to admit that the Class of 1990 is the Best Yale Law School Class Ever.

Rip Van Winkle, Esq.

 

The coat of arms of Yale Law School. In heraldryspeak: “Per pale Or and Sable, in dexter a greyhound gorged of a collar Gules, in sinister seven staples Or 3,2, on a chief Vert a crocodile Argent."

Ten years ago I flew back east for my Yale Law School 25th year reunion. I got a cheap red-eye flight to Newark, saw some Broadway shows, closed the sing-along piano bar at Marie’s Crisis in Greenwich Village, stayed in an expensive closet in Manhattan for a couple of nights, then took a train to New Haven.

One of the highlights of my law school reunion was when our class gathered in a classroom to share “two minute memoirs.” Jeb Boasberg, one several federal judges in the class of 1990, was timekeeper. (Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh skipped our reunion.)

I was one of the last members of our class to have kids. I shared my experience adopting three kids in my forties, then breaking up with my gay partner. I told my classmates the dirty little secret of divorce: alternating weeks is just about the perfect amount of time parenting. I could give the kids my full attention, then spend the next week recovering, working, running errands, and trying to be slightly fabulous.

I described my varied legal career in Seattle, plus five years in Chicago as a LGBT rights lawyer with the ACLU. I shared that I’d recently moved to the college town on the Canadian border where my parents have lived since 1981. My ex and his new husband had also moved to Bellingham, so we were all living nearby. As I told my Yale Law classmates, I’d found my dream job with the State as general counsel to Washington’s third largest university.

My “dream job” turned out to be a nightmare.

This week I flew back east for my Yale Law School 35th year reunion. Once again I got a cheap red-eye flight to Newark, bought tickets to Broadway shows, closed the sing-along piano bar at Marie’s Crisis in Greenwich Village, and stayed in an expensive Manhattan closet for a couple of nights. I took the train to New Haven on Friday morning.

On Saturday the Class of 1990 will be gathering to share “two minute memoirs.” Jeb Boasberg, now the Chief Judge of the D.C. District Court, will be keeping time once again. Here’s the story I’ll share with my classmates:

Stephanie Foo is a successful public radio producer who grew up in an abusive home. In her memoir What My Bones Know, Foo describes debilitating anxiety symptoms and relationship dysfunctions that sidelined her career. Eventually Foo’s therapist gave her the diagnosis that let her begin the process of healing: “complex PTSD.”

Soon after I started my job with the State, I began exhibiting strange physical and mental symptoms that eerily paralleled Stephanie Foo’s experience. A few weeks after my law school reunion, I met with my new Bellingham physician, who gave me the same diagnosis as Foo.

As the Department of Veteran’s Affairs recognizes, “Many traumatic events (e.g., car accidents, natural disasters, etc.) are of time-limited duration. However, in some cases people experience chronic trauma that continues or repeats for months or years at a time.” In 1988, Dr. Judith Herman proposed a new diagnosis of “complex PTSD.” Rather than a single traumatic event, complex PTSD is a consequence of ongoing trauma that occurs over an extended period, such as childhood abuse and neglect, domestic violence, and religious trauma. Because these types of experiences tend to involve betrayals by an individual’s most trusted authority figures, the resulting symptoms focus on impaired interpersonal relationships, as well as anxiety symptoms that are similar to ordinary PTSD.

In my case, a toxic workplace triggered debilitating symptoms. But my underlying traumas involved growing up in a Mormon culture that denied the existence of LGBT people.

I have no memories of the last show I saw on Broadway. This week I was back at the St. James Theatre to see Kristin Chenoweth in Queen of Versailles.

Something happened to me since my last law school reunion that was more even more important than my disability diagnosis.

Every gay man needs a hot cop story. Mine starts when my kids took a roadtrip vacation with my ex and his husband during the summer of 2019. My older kids were about to start high school, and my son was starting middle school. We had been amicably co-parenting and alternating kid weeks for several years. But when they got home from their California road trip, my ex and his husband grimly announced they were getting divorced.

I was already busy coping with my disability and career frustration. My ex didn’t have a clear plan for the future. A few days later we were at the house having a painful discussion about what would happen next. We went out to the backyard to get away from the kids.

We were interrupted at a particularly heated moment when the doorbell rang. On the porch were two hot Bellingham cops. My nine-year-old son stood behind them on the front lawn. Apparently his bedroom window was open, and he’d overheard our argument. My son had never heard me raise my voice before. So he called 911, like they taught him to do at school.

My ex and I sheepishly explained the situation to the police officers. The parental conversation resumed more quietly. A few days later my ex moved across the country to start a new life. The kids occasionally visit him. Both my ex’s ex-husband and my parents still live in town, and they provide an essential safety net. But I’ve learned to parent alone.

For the last seven years, my life has centered on being a full-time single father. I’ve been lucky enough to raise a wonderful daughter, son, and child. One of each.

Complex PTSD symptoms occur when a victim endures betrayal by a trusted institution. I was betrayed by beloved Mormon leaders who refused to acknowledge that gay people exist, even as I shared my queer generation’s collective trauma from coming out of the closet at the height of the AIDS epidemic.

Fortunately, I’ve made huge progress managing my disability. I’ve even made my peace with the Mormons. A couple of years ago I drove my daughter to college in Arizona and visited Utah for the first time since 2006. I had a wonderful time showing my kids where I’d lived and gone to school, without experiencing nausea or chest pains like the last few visits. My mental desert has finally blossomed like a rose.

Unfortunately, other aspects of my disability have only gotten worse, particularly some of the physical side effects. After my healthcare providers figured out what was causing my debilitating symptoms, I promptly disclosed my PTSD diagnosis to my employers. When I sought a reasonable accommodation, they rejected my request. Instead, the State used my complaint about workplace homophobia as pretext for firing me. Even today, former Attorney General (now Governor) Bob Ferguson and his lieutenants publicly insist that I am faking a disability. As a result, I was effectively blackballed from the Washington legal community – another betrayal that triggered ongoing complex PTSD symptoms.

After my ex moved across the country, I focused on raising three teenagers as a single parent, finished my original legal battle with the State, and worked on my recovery from complex PTSD. A couple of years ago my kids said they were ready for me to find a job. So did my banker. Unsure whether I was fit to practice law again, I started volunteering a couple of times a month at our local low-income legal clinic. Helping ordinary people solve their real life problems restored my faith in the law.

Because I’ve enjoyed a remarkably diverse career, I’m the only volunteer lawyer who’s willing to meet with clients from any of our clinics, regardless of whether the cases involve Employment, Landlord/Tenant, Homeless Youth, Family, Indian law, Guardianship, or General Law matters. Working through clients’ family law problems has been particularly rewarding, and led me to new opportunity.

I’d applied for a lot of different kinds of positions over the last few years. The job search has been tough, particularly because I wanted a role that would let me stay close to my family in Bellingham and my friends in Vancouver. At the beginning of the year I applied for family law positions for the first time. I quickly was invited to interviews, then offered a job with a primarily online firm that covers the entire state of Washington.

Three times during the search process, people told me something like “We never get resumes like yours!” This is true in at least two ways:

First, most people with Yale Law degrees do not spend the decade of their fifties as disabled unemployed gay single fathers – living in poverty, relying on food stamps, and learning to navigate the mental health and legal systems. Today most of my disability symptoms are manageable, and I consider myself healed. But my strange mix of life experiences makes me a sympathetic and effective counselor for family law clients. I know what it feels like to be overwhelmed by life and trapped in system that is beyond anyone’s control.

Second, I used to be a snob. Family is a low-status, low-pay corner of the legal profession. One of my small group classmates at Yale, the late Cheryl McCall, went on to be a prominent family law lawyer in Nevada. But I don’t know of anyone else who ended up in our low-class pink-collar ghetto. Somehow family law firms never get resumes from other members of the Yale Law School class of 1990.

Over the years I told a lot of other people besides my Yale Law classmates that the “dirty little secret of divorce” was how alternating weeks felt like just about the perfect amount of parenting time. It turns out I was wrong.

Becoming a father twenty years ago was the best thing that ever happened to me. But becoming a single father thirteen years later gave me the experiences of a lifetime, and left me with the kind of shared memories and relationships with each child that few parents will ever know.

Although many of our symptoms overlap, my complex PTSD differs from Stephanie Foo’s in one very important respect. Like many trauma victims, Foo’s symptoms were rooted in the pattern of abuse she suffered at the hands of her own family. I am a mental illness outlier because I was betrayed by two different kinds of trusted authority figures: first the Mormon priesthood leaders who told me homosexuality was a spiritual disease that could be “cured,” and then by the lawyers and judges who erased my disability and drove me out of the legal profession.

Families are forever. Fortunately, unlike most people who struggle with complex PTSD, I had then and have now the support of the best family in the world. I come from good people. And they taught me to be a great father.

New Glasses

 

I’m wearing glasses for the first time in over a decade.

Last weekend I came out by posting a glasses selfie to Facebook. It was a picture of me with my son. (You can see my half of the selfie above.) We were sitting behind right field at the Seattle Mariners’ first playoff game. As I wrote in Seize the Day,

Oliver chose our tickets to last weekend’s Mariners game. When we got to T-Mobile Park, I realized that in all the professional baseball games I’ve seen, I’d never sat behind the outfield before. I loved our seats – it turns out a baseball game is more interesting when you’re looking toward the batter.

Maybe it was the playoff excitement, or sharing an amazing experience with my son. Or maybe it was my new glasses.

I never wore glasses as a kid. My mother, my brother Doug, and my child Kamryn are the ones who grew up with glasses. But in law school I realized I was having trouble reading the blackboard. Then one night I had trouble distinguishing between a truck and a mountain.

It turns out I’m nearsighted. “Myopia” is not just a metaphor – it’s a common eye condition where distant objects appear blurred, while near objects remain clear. For the next two decades I needed a mild prescription to pass the driver’s test, drive at night, or enjoy theatre performances from further away than the tenth row.

I didn’t need glasses to read or interact with people. Instead, I got into the habit of taking off my glasses whenever I came indoors, just like I switch from shoes to slippers and from pants to sweats. Mr. Rogers is my role model.

I found freedom in my forties. When I renewed my driver’s license, I was able to pass without wearing glasses or cheating. My ophthalmologist explained that my eye muscles’ natural aging had canceled out my myopia. I remained entirely glasses-free for the next few years.

My ophthalmologist warned me the eye’s aging process eventually leads to reading glasses. I told him reading glasses are for old people. 

I have the same definition of “old people” as my son Oliver: “people my parents’ age.” My father buys big clunky reading glasses in bulk from Costco, then leaves them lying around the house and in the car. They’re hideous.

Although I’m a dad, I’m still a fabulous gay man. When I finally accepted it was time to wear reading glasses, I found a slim pair of lightweight tortoiseshell readers. I’ve stuck with them ever since. (Search for “Fisherman’s” or “Dr. Dean Edell’s.”) I only use my glasses to read, so I’m always taking them off and on. Nowadays I only buy shirts with pockets so I always have somewhere to put my glasses.

The workstation in my home office has a huge monitor. It turns out my reading glasses are too fabulous – I can only see a small portion of the screen clearly. So I bought a pair of lightweight IMAX-sized reading glasses to use at my desk. They’re not hideously clunky like my dad’s. Nevertheless, my daughter Eleanor made me promise never to wear them in public.

All good things come to an end. This year when I got a new job and could finally afford to go the theatre again, I realized the actors’ faces were getting blurry. Driving at night had gotten more stressful. When I went in for my first eye exam in years, the ophthalmologist said my aging eye muscles had reached the point when they need a little help. So he wrote me a new myopia prescription.

When my son was young, he needed glasses for lazy eye and cross-eyedness. Even though he outgrew these conditions, he still gets a new prescription every year. But he never wears his glasses. He says he doesn’t need them.

I used to nag Oliver about wearing his glasses. But now that I have non-reading glasses of my own again, I understand where he’s coming from. I thought I would enjoy wearing glasses while Bear and I walk along the waterfront. My new glasses let me see details in the beautiful islands and mountains that surround Bellingham. But our view is stunning enough without magnification. Glasses created a distracting frame around a small portion of the panorama view.

Because I only use my new glasses for driving and going out to shows, they now live in a case in the car. Meanwhile, something changed in the last twenty years: I have to put on reading glasses to use my cellphone.

When my children were taking driver’s ed, I told them not to look at their phones while driving. I try to model good behaviour myself. Perhaps too well – I feel vaguely sinful whenever I put my new glasses on in the car.

Several Baby Boomer friends recently had cataract surgery. They raved about suddenly seeing a whole new world.

When I mentioned these friends’ experience to my ophthalmologist, he told me I shouldn’t expect to be stunned by a similar sudden vision. Instead, the cataract process will gradually unfold over a couple of decades, and then I’ll see mild improvement when I finally get around to surgery. That’s what recently happened to my eightysomething father. Getting a new prescription this fall after a couple of decades without glasses might be as close to an “I was blind and now I can see” moment as I’ll ever get.

Oliver chose the tickets to our recent playoff game. Before this month I’d only seen the Mariners play while sitting in some law firm’s skybox, or from infield seats with a good view. The seats behind right field that Oliver picked were a lot further way from the infield than I’d ever been before. Nevertheless, as I explained in Seize the Moment, “I loved our seats – it turns out a baseball game is more interesting when you’re looking toward the batter.”

Maybe baseball really does look better from the outfield. Maybe I felt the magic of a special night with my son. Or maybe I just have new glasses.

Seize the Moment

This year for Oliver’s birthday I promised we’d see the Mariners. We didn’t make it to a regular season game. Instead, last Saturday I drove to Seattle to watch the Mariners’ first division championship series game in 24 years.

Our tickets cost exactly as much as each of the Broadway shows I’m seeing on the way to my Yale Law School reunion later this month. On the drive south we stopped at Alderwood Mall so Oliver could buy an unconscionably expensive Cal Raleigh jersey. After finding street parking on Capitol Hill, we took the light rail to T-Mobile Park. I ate a hot dog at the ballpark, then Molly Moon ice cream on the way back to the car. Detroit won 3-2 in extra innings. We got home at midnight.

I would be telling a slightly different story if the Mariners had won. But despite the disappointing final score, I had an amazing day. 

The first time I saw a Major League Baseball game I sat in the owner’s box at the old Kingdome. I was spending my last summer of law school working at the Seattle law firm that represented the baseball team. Mariners’ Night was one of several recruiting boondoggles the firm used to lure summer associates into accepting jobs after graduation. It was like watching professional athletes play in your living room.

I never became a big baseball fan, but during my years in Seattle I took advantage of other opportunities to see the Mariners. I usually sat in some law firm’s less glamorous skybox, or in infield seats with a good view. Eventually I brought my children. One year Oliver and I went to a classmate’s birthday party in his family’s season-ticket-holder box. And when Seattle Men’s Chorus sang the national anthem at Safeco Field, I bought two extra tickets to the game so I could bring along my father and my son.

I moved to Bellingham a decade ago to take what I thought was my dream job as chief legal counsel to Washington’s third largest university. Unfortunately, then-Attorney General (now Governor) Bob Ferguson had created a homophobic and abusive workplace. My co-workers’ conduct triggered debilitating physical and mental symptoms.

My doctor promptly diagnosed me with complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Rather than resulting from a single traumatic event, C-PTSD is caused by an ongoing pattern of traumatic experiences, such as sexual abuse or childhood neglect. In my case, the original PTSD symptoms were the result of growing up in a Mormon culture that denied the existence of LGBT people. Later, my symptoms were amplified by the legal system’s refusal to acknowledge I have PTSD. Even today, Bob Ferguson’s lieutenants publicly insist that I am faking a disability.

At the end of 2023, I made a list of that year’s ten most triggering experiences. The worst event occurred while I was waiting in the veterinary Emergency Room with a seriously wounded Bear, while I happened to receive notification of a particularly dishonest ruling by a lazy judge. Most of the other triggering events that year involved misconduct by the State’s lawyers. But one outlier on the list stood out: I had a complete meltdown while playing a board game at my parents’ house. I thought I’d caught my son cheating.

With my healthcare providers’ help, I’ve learned how to tease out the relationship between past traumas and present triggers. For example, after my Family Game Night meltdown I remembered the only time in my life when I hit someone. I was a freshman in the Honors Program dorm at Brigham Young University. While playing a boardgame involving the War of the Roses, I became convinced one of my floormates had cheated.

For various reasons, I grew up without becoming properly socialized to deal with competition in a healthy way. I never learned proper boundaries. Instead, I became a sore loser and worse winner. I treated every competition as either meaningless or a matter of life and death.

I’ve learned to live with my disability, slowly finding healthy boundaries. Nowadays I can help clients in their contentious family law litigation matters without losing my own perspective on life. And I can play or watch intense games and enjoy the experience – win or lose.

I’ve seen a lot more plays than baseball games. So have my children. When I was a lawyer in Seattle I had season ticket subscriptions at multiple local theaters. I often found it easier to take one of the kids instead of getting a real date.

The Christmas before covid, my mother bought tickets to the Broadway tour of Dear Evan Hansen for my daughter, nephew, and me. When we got to the Paramount Theater in Seattle, Eleanor said “Papa, I’ve never sat in the balcony for a play before.”

Oliver chose our seats to last weekend’s Mariners game. When we got to T-Mobile Park, I realized that in all the professional baseball games I’ve seen, I’d never sat behind the outfield before. I loved our seats – it turns out a baseball game is more interesting when you’re looking toward the batter. Maybe someday I’ll learn to be a great parent without being such a terrible snob.

My ex and I amicably alternated kid weeks for years. As I wrote in Peak-End Parenting, “All I need to do to ensure my kids end up with memories of an idyllic childhood is to make sure each kid week includes some memorable peak experiences, and that we end the week on a high note.” It worked: while we were waiting for the playoff game to start, I asked Oliver what he remembered about our prior Mariners games. He said, “We always had box seats.”

Then seven years ago my ex moved across the country, and I became a full-time single parent. We spent most of this era living in poverty. During those years I learned to live with serious mental illness while being relentlessly attacked by the State’s lawyers. My new goal is for the children to grow up without being irreparably scarred by their childhood traumas. Fortunately, I have the support of the best family in the world. And even though I’ve failed at almost everything else in my life, I was born to be a father.

During the Mariners game I posted a much-liked picture on Facebook showing Oliver and me at T-Mobile Park. One friend commented “Great day except for the final result....” Actually, I had an amazing day. I think Oliver will remember it that way too. Regardless of the baseball score.

The Whiffenpoofs of 2025

 

As I waited for my mother in the lobby of the Bellingham High School auditorium last fall, Facebook reminded me we’ve been going to musical performances together for a long time. Mom and I started by seeing shows like Saturday’s Warrior and Anne of Green Gables at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in 1970s Vancouver.

According to Facebook, my mother and I saw the Broadway musical Wicked on tour in Seattle exactly twelve years earlier. To celebrate her 70th birthday, I’d bought tickets to a special performance benefiting the marriage equality campaign. When Mom turned 80, we saw Kristin Chenoweth at the Mount Baker Theater. For her 60th birthday, I got tickets to see the incomparable Barbara Cook sing Sondheim at Benaroya Hall.

At Bellingham High, I was waiting to share another unique musical event with my mother: the opening concert of the Whiffenpoofs of 2025’s World Tour.

The Whiffenpoofs are North America’s oldest collegiate a capella singing group. Fourteen tenors, baritones, and basses are tapped from each Yale graduating class. They sing a repertoire of elegantly arranged standards along with contemporary songs, all in tight harmonies. In addition to their concert tour, each year’s crop of Whiffenpoofs makes an album showcasing their talents. Together with my ancient vinyl and CDs, iTunes can fill an entire weekend with a guilty pleasure playlist. It’s my favourite kind of music. 

The reason the Whiffenpoofs of 2025 started their World Tour at Bellingham High School is Logan Foy. He’s the student chosen as this year’s music director (called the “pitchpipe”). Logan graduated from BHS, where he was the star of its music and theatre programs. He was also a proudly out member of the high school’s Gender/Sexuality Alliance. Each Whiffenpoof got a solo during the concert. Logan assigned himself the group’s classic arrangement of “Midnight Train to Georgia,” with he/him pronouns.

The Whiffenpoofs sounded great, and Logan basked in the hometown crowd’s love. As my mother and I walked out of the auditorium, I overheard a middle-aged man tell someone that Logan began studying with an opera coach while he was still in elementary school. It was Logan’s beaming father. I usually don’t talk to strangers. But I went over to Mr. Foy and introduced myself as a gay PFLAG dad. I said I’ve been going to Whiffenpoof concerts for 37 years, and told him he should be proud to hear and see what his son has accomplished.

The Whiffenpoofs of 2018 - L.W.W.B.

The last time I saw the Whiffenpoofs perform live was in 2018, when their tour included a stop in Seattle.

In 1975, President Ford signed legislation opening the service academies to women. Four years later, the Air Force Academy Class of 1979 adopted the motto “Loyalty, Courage, Wisdom, Bravery.” However, the Commandant cancelled their order for class rings engraved with the initials “L.C.W.B.” when he discovered the letters actually stood for “Last Class With Balls.” (At best – according to a Congressional report cataloging misconduct at the academy, the Class of 1979’s real motto was either “Last Class Without Bitches” or “Last Class Without Broads.”)

Yale College was founded in 1701, but women weren’t admitted until 1968. Similarly, after a 110-year wait, the gentlemen I saw perform in Seattle selected the group’s first female singer as a member of the Whiffenpoofs of 2019.

This year’s tenor section includes four women. It was my first time attending a co-ed Whiffenpoof concert. As someone who generally prefers his harmonies in the bass clef, I expected to be a curmudgeon. But the inclusion of a few women was not enough to tip the overall balance, and did not spoil the familiar arrangements. Instead, their voices added to the power, range, and variety of the performances.

Still, the concert sounded different. Our brains process male and female voices differently. Hearing a woman’s voice “triggers the auditory section of an audience’s brain,” which is “the area that’s used to analyze.” Because female voices are “more easily decoded,” they seem “clearer than their male counterparts.” Sure enough, this was my first time at a Whiffenpoof concert where I felt like Cole Porter’s lyrics were being beamed directly into my head.

“Singing Can Be a Drag” is Vancouver Men’s Chorus’s biggest annual fundraiser. Talented and extroverted members of the chorus don spectacular drag outfits and sing show-stopping numbers. No lip synching allowed.

I’m not the kind of guy who sings solos or wears drag. Instead, every year I volunteer at the event as an usher. This year a woman came up to me as I guided patrons to their seats. She said “You've shaved your beard since the holiday concert, but I recognized you. I wanted to let you know you have the best smile in the chorus. Whenever I watch you sing, the word I think of is ‘joyous.’”

In the classic fairy tale “The Ugly Duckling,” the hero of the story is the supportive duck mother – not the awkward swan who was lucky to find himself in the most affirming of nests. No parent expects a Whiffenpoof. But I will be eternally grateful for a PFLAG mom who raised me with the joy of music.

Happy Mother's Day