Free Lauren Takes Leave by Julie Gerstenblatt Page A

him
off. In the midst of all the junk e-mails from department stores, I find his
note.
    Subject: New Video
    From: [email protected]
    Date: April 10
    To: [email protected]
    Hey All,
    I have posted my new video on YouTube. Please take a look,
and share the link if you like it. (If not, forget I ever mentioned it.)
    MC Lenny
    I’m a little bit disappointed that this isn’t a personal
message, a shout out or joke just for me. But the video intrigues me, as
always. I plug my headphones into the phone and click on the link, which takes
a moment or two to load.
    Leonard is a friend from high school with whom I
reconnected last year at our twentieth reunion. The regular rules of high
school were suspended for him. While I was stuck in my B-plus crowd of
above-average-but-not-quite-awesome people, Lenny was allowed to move effortlessly
between cliques, from the cool varsity basketball team to the hip jazz band,
from the geeky honors society to the even geekier Stock Market Club, and back
again. No questions asked.
    Good looks combined with athleticism, wit, and smarts can
do that to a person, catapult them to unfettered popularity. Everyone wanted a
piece of him and was happy with whatever time or attention they got from Lenny.
Including me.
    Only, I didn’t get much.
    Until senior year, when luck had me working side by side
with Lenny as coeditors of the yearbook. I used to cancel staff meetings and
“forget” to tell him, just so he and I would end up alone in some science
classroom after school, talking about nothing and everything at the same time.
There was one intense month of work—March, I think—when we had to finalize all
the photos and cram to get all the layouts done and submitted to the printer.
We pulled a bunch of all-nighters at my house, the cut images and graphics
spread out before us in a jumbled mess, the soft glow of basement light making
the damp, unfinished space seem almost romantic, and I’d think, Now he’s
going to kiss me .
    But he never did.
    But then he’d look at me and smile, and our hands would
touch just the tiniest bit as we passed the Scotch tape back and forth, and a
current would pass up my arm. And then I’d think, Now he’s going to ask me
to the prom .
    But he never did that either.
    Which is why this online attention I’ve been getting from
MC Lenny Katzenberg since the reunion is most unexpected, although not, in fact,
entirely unwelcome.
    Lenny’s video comes up on YouTube. He is dressed in jeans
and a graphic tee. He’s this tall, kind of nebbishy Jewish kid from
Westchester, who went to Yale and now spends his days as an accountant. He
spends his evenings and weekends putting together rap lyrics with synchronized
music. Then he records himself and edits together an iMovie to put up on
YouTube. Sometimes his skits and songs are performed alone, and sometimes with
others, like random New Yorkers, or an on-again, off-again girlfriend. A few
have been politically charged. Others have been crude or somewhat sexual.
Sometimes these mini-movies involve rather complicated choreography. They are
always really funny and cutting-edge.
    This one doesn’t disappoint. It’s about the latest health care
bill being voted on by Congress. It’s typical Lenny: left-wing and liberal,
with clever rhymes and a touch of Justin Timberlake.
    I’m slightly distracted by Lenny’s companion. A woman with
the longest legs I’ve ever seen is wearing a tight, white, short-skirted
nurse’s costume and gyrating her hips around him while he raps his way around
HMOs, PPOs and HDHPs (“How the fuck am I supposed to know which one is right
for me?”). I wonder who this “nurse” is, and if they’re more than friends.
    But then Lenny’s hazel eyes shine, and I’m back in the
moment with him. He looks right through the camera and into my eyes, like this
is all just an elaborate private joke between the two of us. A playful smile
turns up one corner of his mouth, into his trademark