New York City is both a real destination and an imagined future in Bret’s story. Manhattan is where Thom visits his father after his parents’ divorce, while for Bret and Ryan the prospect of leaving Buckley for a distant city represents the possibility of beginning again. Yet when Bret later visits New York with his parents, the city does not free him from the past: his fear that Robert is monitoring him follows him there.

Family and Early Connections

After Thom Wright’s parents divorced, his father relocated to Manhattan, and Thom lived with his mother in Beverly Hills. Visits to his father were the principal periods when Thom was not in close proximity to Susan Reynolds, who had been his girlfriend since sophomore year. New York thus enters the story first as a place that briefly interrupts the everyday closeness of the couple, rather than as a setting for a major event.

Thom’s trips also became part of Bret’s memory of their friendship. After one summer visiting his father in New York, Thom returned to Buckley having changed in ways Bret noticed immediately. The city itself is not described as causing that change; its significance lies in the before-and-after structure Bret attaches to Thom’s return and in the distance it places between the boys and their familiar school life.

A Destination for Reinvention

For both Bret and Ryan Vaughn, leaving Los Angeles after high school offered a way to start over. Ryan planned to get away from Buckley and Los Angeles, attend college far from home, and reinvent himself. Bret recognized the plan as his own as well. Their shared future remained an intention rather than an established plan to move specifically to New York, but the city later appears among the places Bret imagines where their relationship might have continued after graduation.

The future they pictured was constrained by the secrecy surrounding their attraction. Ryan had cautioned that being together required discretion, and Bret understood that the two of them could not openly be themselves in 1981. In retrospect, New York—and other places beyond Los Angeles—stands for a life that might have allowed them more freedom, even as the narrative makes clear that no such shared future came to pass.

The 1982 Visit with Bret’s Parents

In October 1982, Bret’s parents met him in New York in an attempt to celebrate and perhaps repair their relationship after two years of intermittent separation. His father had recently completed a real-estate deal, and his mother traveled from Los Angeles; Bret came down by train from Bennington. They stayed at the Carlyle, attended a preview of Cats at the Winter Garden, visited galleries, and ate at Le Cirque. Bret was frequently drunk and presented his parents with the new identity he had formed at college.

The reunion’s polished itinerary did not make New York feel like an escape. His parents’ presence kept Los Angeles in mind, while Bret feared that Robert Mallory was somewhere nearby, watching through binoculars or a telescope. He experienced that suspicion in several public settings, including Barneys, the edges of Central Park, and the crowded bar at P. J. Clarke’s. The city offered distance from home, but not relief from the sense of being followed.

Narrative Significance

New York City is framed by departure and return: a place Thom visits during his adolescence, a possible site of reinvention for Bret and Ryan, and the setting for a family gathering that cannot restore security. Across those uses, distance promises a break with the past but does not guarantee one. Bret’s account turns the 1982 visit into a contrast between the outward signs of a successful family weekend and his inward conviction that Robert remains present, even far from Los Angeles.