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Downtown Uber-Yuppie Debunks Myth of Human Vulnerability NEW YORK - Ever since he was a small child, precocious New York-based corporate attorney David Kelcher has set a simple standard for himself. "I simply want to better my fellow man in whatever endeavor he foolishly chooses to challenge me." Interviewed from the living room of the sunny Boho gallery he co-owns with the hotelier Andrew Agrippe, the baby-faced 26-year-old might appear an unlikely candidate for the nagging insecurity and unrelenting work that defines his existence. Yet his life path is that of a man with only one thing on his mind: ripping flesh from bone en route to the top. Having earned his B.A. from Stanford in only 3 years, Kelcher took the road less traveled by and enrolled at Columbia Law School. "Columbia had the intellectual challenge I might have expected at Yale, but with far better corporate internship opportunities. I was able to start putting in 20 hours a week at DeLine, White, Struck, by my second year. I'm working about 100-110 hours a week right now, but I've found that the human body can work a lot harder than you think it can. And the really heinous stuff I can always give the paralegals." Kelcher spent his childhood speed-skating in the entombed silence of rural Connecticut. He placed eighth in the U.S. Olympic trials in 1990, fast enough to be his school's first ever state champion, but not fast enough to make the U.S. Team. "It was one of the great failures of my life," Kelcher said. In order to resurrect some meaning after this sorrowful collapse, Kelcher journeyed west to Stanford, where he could put his personal speed-skating demons behind him, and where, gratefully, there is no snow. His first step upon embarking on a new life was to try out for the baseball team. "I displaced the starting centerfielder easily. He was weak." And it was his smooth stroke and nimble glovework that caught the eye of Claryl Cadenza, a world-class miler on the track team, majoring in business and mass communications. After a few late nights at the Stanford coffehouse and some serious 90210-watching, things began to get serious. People wondered what life with such a beautiful, irresistably brillant woman was like? David was nonchalant; his standards had been high ever since he had been deflowered by the women's crew team as a freshman at Hotchkiss. And Claryl certainly measured up. David was to make it to the Olympics all right, but it would be vicariously, through his new fiance, who qualified for the 1994 U.S. squad. "She kind of stopped sleeping with me once her training got really serious, but it got us used to shunting sex aside in favor of our work -- most of the time we're too tired. Besides, I find that the thrill of going into opposing counsel's office and handing him his ass is a lot more satisfying anyhow." Claryl is more than just a friend, lover, companion -- she's also a client. David serves as corporate counsel for her motherboard-etching business, a Teaneck-based company known as Entelechy. "But if she ever gets fat, I'm leaving her," David says, ever the rapscallion. Whatever storm clouds may be on the romantic horizon, his professional prospects remain bright. The resurgent stock market has offered a plethora of opportunities for handling mergers and acquisitions at DeLine, White, and he could receive a promotion to head up the firm's department as early as next October. "Head of M&A is nice," Claryl said. "But if he ever gets fat, I'm leaving him."