Love, Harvard-Style
Did any of you happen to read the Wedding of the Week in the Times Style section on Sunday? It highlighted the vows of two Harvard grads, Rebecca Whitney and David Mandel, class of '92, I think.
They started dating at Harvard....but only after Whitney dated Mandel's roommate first.
“I was sad and shy and not exactly sure what one is supposed to do,” Mr. Mandel, also 36, said. Over their first summer break he sent her newsletters and mix tapes. But she didn’t get the message. During winter break in their sophomore year he invited her to a New Year’s Eve party at his parents’ apartment in New York, which he gave solely to see her. As she left the party, he handed her a puzzling gift. “It was the screenplay of ‘The War of the Roses,’ inscribed ‘To my own Barbara Rose, who can hit me without hurting me and hurt me without hitting me,’ ” she recalled.
Smooth move, David!
Eventually, Mandel confessed his love.
As Dr. Whitney remembered it, “Dave said we either had to marry each other or never speak again.” She panicked, telling him she preferred to take things slow and stay friends.
Ah...the impulsive, all-or-nothing ultimatum, followed by the inevitable panic...a classic story.
He gave her the silent treatment, for the next four years.
Well, of course. What else would one do?
In New York after graduation, they bumped into each other at Gray's Papaya on 72nd and Broadway, which recently raised its prices. Pretty soon, they had a fight over what had happened in college. Mandel finally did the smart thing: he kissed her.
It was their first kiss, and, Dr. Whitney said, “it meant everything.”
The next day he left for California.
Oh, ambition! Mandel had been hired to write for Seinfeld.
They began a long-distance relationship, but soon he was working around the clock. Within a year they had broken it off.So Mandel did what all somewhat immature ex-boyfriends do: He humiliated Whitney by writing an episode of Seinfeld about her. A very funny episode of Seinfeld, you will recall, in which Jerry starts dating a woman with "man-hands."
Whitney...winces when he mentions it.....
(It's not online, but the print edition of the paper—sneaky!—runs a close-up of Whitney's left hand. It lives up to advance billing. On the other hand, that's a big rock!)
Nonetheless, while at med school at Tulane, Whitney found that she missed Mandel, despite the fact that he had some issues.
He lives in a dark Los Angeles apartment with blackout shades covering all of the windows to protect his collection of comic books, toy robots and “Star Wars” stormtrooper helmets.
The course of true love—it's not smooth!
“If I could have found any way to live happily without him, I would have done it,” she said.
In some ways, one thinks that she should have tried just a bit harder.
When Whitney moved to LA to do her residency, they got back together (again!) and, after a series of fights—love not smooth, etc.—they got married. To their credit, the band played the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows," which is an excellent choice. (The greatest pop song ever written? I leave that to you to decide.)
These two are either going to divorce in a year or have one of the great marriages in the history of the Sunday Styles section. I hope it's the latter. Congratulations, Rebecca and David!
