Loretta Buckley, Law Student

What's your name, where do you live and with whom, and for how long? Where do you consider your 'hometown'? Tell us a bit about it. Do you spend any time there now?
Name is Loretta Buckley. Live by myself in Manhattan for two years now. Before that I lived year and a half in Ireland, year and a half in Spain; also lived in France seven months and Italy four months. My hometown is a small college town in upstate New York. I never go back. The only reason I would go back now is to put flowers on a grave.

What do you 'do'?
I am a law student.

What are your plans for after school?
I want to do something good, something that helps people who need help, before I die. I also want to leave the United States.

There is a pervasive vision of law school as a place of relentless competition, dry subjec matter, rote memorization, and a lot of being called by your last name by professors who are ‘out to get you’. Describe your experience relative to this 'myth.' Everyone ends up in law school these days. Like our society itself, law school is designed to break your spirit, but you are not powerless. Nietzsche said that one should laugh at least once a day and dance at least once a day. For dancing, think Rosie Perez to “Fight the Power” at the opening of “Do the Right Thing.” Repeating mantras to yourself is always calming. My personal favorites are, “Jump up, spread out/ I’ll put your head out” or “Punks jump up to get beat down.” These are especially effective if repeated under your breath in the library during exam time, while staring at fellow students. Feel free to use prayer beads. One last trick: when other law students are passive-aggressive with you, as they invariably are, respond with naked aggression. Example: when some one asks, “So, where were you working this summer?,” a simple “I’ll kill you,” hissed venomously into their ear, should suffice as a response.

What's the worst, best, or most remarkable experience you've had involving transportation in New York?
The loveliest experience I have ever had on public transport was drunken making out in a deserted subway car at 7 on a Sunday morning, riding the express train to Harlem. That bastard. This is not my own transportation story, but do you remember that this summer there was a girl who drunkenly passed out in the back of a cab and when she woke up, a man was having his naughty way with her, and she asked him, “Who are you?” and he replied, “I’m your cabbie.” Now, around this same exact time, Gwyneth Paltrow gave birth, and her husband, Chris Martin of Coldplay, posted a song on his band’s website to celebrate his daughter’s birth. The refrain of the song went, “I’m not a baddie/I’m your baby’s daddy.” All last summer the punchlines to these two stories bounced off each other in my head until I was a whirling dervish: “I’m not your cabbie/I’m your baby’s baddie/I’m not your daddy, I’m your baby’s cabbie/I’m not a baddie/I’m your cabbie’s daddy.” And so on.

What, if any, publications do you read regularly?
The Economist, The New York Post, The Literary Review, US Weekly, In Touch, Time Out New York.

What’s your poison?
Foreign men and vodka.

What three things piss you off the most?
(1) People who moan during yoga class. (2) People who ask me if I have ever been in a threesome. (3) Rich, aggressive mothers of toddlers who jab into you from behind with their giant-tank baby strollers.

Interview by Laurie Woolever