Did You Ever Feel Like the World Was a Tuxedo, and You Were a Pair of Brown Shoes?

I have begun seeing a new lady. She is a nurse and a licensed psychotherapist, just the person I need to attend to any infirmities and/or neuroses that may lurk in my future like Scylla and Charybdis. I am reasonably certain that she enjoys my company and is not researching a doctoral dissertation called “When alpha-males go beta.”

The lady lives on the North Shore, which regards itself--not without cause--as tonier and classier than my beloved South Shore. She is as down-to-earth as anyone I’ve ever met, but she does enjoy the accoutrements that accompany a social life that exceeds, shall we say, pizza at the Alumni Café and corned beef at the Eire Pub.

Accordingly, I have found myself in unfamiliar surroundings recently. I have been twice to the Myopia Hunt Club, a social institution that once sponsored actual foxhunts, but now substitutes fox scent as the quarry when one rides to the hounds. Myopia has polo grounds--yes, that’s right, polo…not the shirt, the game. At Myopia I was introduced to a couple whom we have seen several times since, a gentleman who is both urbane and gracious, and his charming wife with her sudden and droll wit.

This couple invited us to another club, the Algonquin Club on Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. At the Algonquin we enjoyed drinks and the sumptuous appetizers before retiring to a room where we could both dine and shoot pool. While the Myopia décor is understated (if one ignores the linen tablecloths and silverware), the Algonquin features crystal chandeliers and innumerable alcoves furnished with butter-soft leather wing chairs.

I am not “to the manner born” (no, it’s not “manor”). My father was a fireman who rose to the rank of deputy chief late in his career, and I am an English teacher who has become a department chair. To be truthful, I have always harbored a soupcon of resentment toward those whom I assumed were manner-born. Now, to my chagrin, I find that such an assumption has been nothing more than my own prejudice, for my new friends are among the most generous and egalitarian people I’ve ever met. They have simply learned to pursue and accept success without feeling guilty about it.

So last weekend, I sipped a Jameson while looking out over the shimmering lights of the North End, the Charles River, and Cambridge at the Boston College Club, occupying the 36th floor of the BankAmerica tower. I was with friends, and I didn’t feel out of place at all. I could get used to this.