Reunion

It couldn't have been more humid on the night of my 25th high school reunion. I'd just learned to blow-dry my hair in a way that would make my latest cut respond with a certain adult containment, which would surely signify maturity. I might finally look the part of a grown-up, wizened from years of searching, traces of recent heartache. But no, the humidity saw to it that I looked the way I had, when the air commanded the frenzied curl of a teenager too busy to blow-dry her hair now that the Curling Iron Seventies had given way to the Mousse and Scrunch Eighties. My hair was like Debra Winger's hair, which was a good thing back then, the bigger the better, the off-shoulder sweater-- a sort of Flashdance sans flash-- but this was not the eighties. So off I marched in the drizzle with nothing particular to lose and nothing reasonable to gain.

Lou, who has maintained the same big-hearted open manner and guileless smile since high school, was the perfect choice to host our fee-less reunion's Friday night get-together in this, our eighties legacy; post-economic gloom. He had thrown this reunion together with six or seven other big-hearted guys in the last few months. A scrappy troupe, they'd done a great job, winging it BYOEverything.

It was a modest yet gun-ho crowd of about thirty that gathered at his place in the drizzle. Lou and his new bride live in the back cottage apartment of the dog kennel his family has owned and operated for generations and he arranged the plastic chairs in circles around the bonfire that he spent all afternoon building. Once through the door, the familiar combo of bonfire, Bud and burgers transported all of us back to where we'd been, all those years ago, as if we were taking part in a living history experiment, the way they do at Waterloo Village, churning butter and wearing bonnets. Except our exhibit displayed the way high school kids spent their autumn weekends twenty-five years ago, awash in new wave and mud, big hair in a small town-- minus the crippling insecurity, seething resentment, paranoia, invincibility and fear.

Sadly, the rain persisted as the seats gathered puddles but we were just as happy to stand cozy, elbow to elbow, in the warmth of Lou's kitchen, just like the old days; parents on vacation, hours before the cops would arrive to tell us to turn the music down and confiscate our beer. The errant children of some of my old classmates ran, muddied, through the back yard, keeping gene pools in tact and reminding us that it's just rain, for petessake. They discovered the s'mores fixins' that Carl had thoughtfully bought that afternoon and gathered sticks with pointy ends. The rain ebbed from time to time and we ventured outside and huddled under tents and tarps, about thirty of us, chatting up a storm and laughing our brains out, guileless at last (finally, like Lou) and partied like it was 1984.

I learned a thing or two about a thing or two between Friday night at Lou's and Saturday night at our town's local bar where the turn-out grew to forty-five, maybe fifty. People came and went even as our hairstyles stayed more or less the same, and I slowly came to understand that these weren't the people I thought I knew so well. Twenty-five years before, as we rallied against the imprisonment of being stuck in a "boring" one-horse town, where "nothing ever happens," we were incubating the adults we would become and our errant ways were festering and evolving in ways I never could have imagined in my wildest dreams. These are the stories I heard about and directly from a random sampling of average Jerseyites and what has become of them so far, twenty-five years since high school.

Let's start with Ben. One of the two or three smartest guys in our class who could always be found in the "computer room," Ben emailed the reunion committee that he couldn't make it because he was in grad school in Seattle and couldn't get away. But he sent us all a link to the charming Thai website he created and manages, helping enthusiasts to learn the language and discover the Thai culture's charms. I clicked on the link and found a small photo of him there on the lower right, looking fit and relaxed, and was gratified to see that he'd done well for himself. At the reunion, I learned that he left out the footnote that he'd been arrested by the FBI for running an LSD lab and had gone to prison. (I'll say, relaxed) No one knew the time line for this episode in Ben's life, so it was unclear whether or not "grad school in Seattle" was a euphemism for jail.

Julian and Fritz, best friends in high school and inseparable thereafter, had a falling out and stopped speaking to each other after one of them tried to kill the other with a pick ax-- so the story goes-- when they were working together in the African diamond mine that Fritz's dad bought for him to manage in the early nineties, long before he bought the ski mountain in Vermont and just before he embezzled millions from the German banking system and ended up on the lamb in L.A., wearing disguises in order to leave his apartment to buy half and half at the local food mart. Fritz, who is a German emigrant from long ago, couldn't make it to the reunion, sadly, and is now a poet and real estate agent living in L.A. Julian-- who grew up in New Jersey-- still lives in Germany, we think, where he married a much older woman and was last seen managing a Ralph Lauren Polo store. This was all according to Djurmo, the Estonian.

Djurmo, the son of the local Estonian veterinarian, got his family's land back when the wall came down twenty years ago but I already knew that. What I didn't know is that the reason no one knew him until senior year is that he spent every weekend with other clandestine New Jersey Estonians, learning their folk dances, eating their folk food, and speaking their nutty Estonian language. I got to know him on our senior class trip to Disneyland in Florida where we laughed for four days straight. Who knew Estonians could be so hilarious, so numerous, and so drunk? I do.

One classmate of ours, an effortlessly popular guy throughout high school and long before, married quite young and had some kids. On his 35th birthday his wife asked him for a lady lover. It seems she'd already had just about everything else she'd ever wanted-- he'd done very well for himself over the years-- so this couple folded another classmate into their lives and loins, taking her to bed and on vacation as if she'd always been a part of the family. This big, happy pajama party worked out for everyone for quite some time until the married couple upgraded to a Florida stripper. (The Floridian ilk of stripper, it's been explained to me, is a much higher caliber than that of New York strippers.) I couldn't tell you if they're still in touch or even still married and to whom. Sadly, he didn't make the reunion.

Ilsa, who was teased for singing like an opera singer in chorus class while the rest of us sang like street urchins in a Charlie Brown special, became-- wait for it-- a professional opera singer. Ilsa didn't make the reunion either, but emailed the committee that she had wanted to come. A tall, sturdy blonde in grade school with thick, Viking ringlets and excellent posture, she sailed past us in the hallways with purpose while we all slumped around stooped shouldered and aloof. She lives in Vienna now with her husband and daughter and performs around the globe. Ilsa sings at Carnegie Hall and we don't. Now who are the idiots?

Jerry (now Gerald) showed me photos of him feeding a tiger at the local wild animal sanctuary were he volunteers in upstate New York when he's not working for the road department. Just a simple snapshot of a big lug of a shy guy putting a baby bottle to the gaping jaws of a striped tiger, for fun, on his off hours, after putting in a long day draining a sewer. Because why not. Our class, it also turns out, was lousy with lesbians. We could all name at least ten but nary a queen, (although we seemed to be in agreement on a few married guys we suspected.) I'm hoping the ladies all had a rip roaring good time back then, sneaking off after field hockey practices-- all sweaty and panting in knee socks and mouth guards-- but it's more than likely they didn't. Which is too bad, because there were a whole bunch of them and they would have had themselves a time.

Catherine and Margaret, two super-smart school friends became attorneys and moved away, which surprised no one. Two other pretty, best friends, Lisa and Amy, became housewives to local bankers, and stayed in the area although they kept in touch with only a few folks, which also surprised no one. Only Catherine was able to make the reunion and wished that she'd kept in touch with Margaret, who counsels in D.C. or was it Chicago. In a way, I'm kind of glad that Margaret wasn't there, otherwise I might not have gotten the chance to catch up with Catherine, who, it turns out, is very funny. (In high school she worked so hard that there was little time to be funny.) Lisa and Amy, sneaked out the side door of the bar half way through Saturday night, mouthing that they'd be back soon, only never to return. This, too, surprised no one.

Billy, the sweetest kid you've ever met with sunshine eyes and a wide, quiet smile, became a cop and has been policing in the same Jersey town for 24 years. My own personal hero of the night, Billy, together with Rick, who became a fireman, admitted to loving their wives and kids and thoroughly enjoying their jobs; wouldn't trade their lives for nuthin.' For a brief, glossy moment while I waited for my beer to arrive, I wondered how my life would have unfolded if I'd married a sweet guy from my high school class and stayed in town. Then my beer arrived.

There were lots of second marriages and a couple of recent firsts. Julia Gilariano got married just last year, for the first time, at 42, after having gone through a bout with cancer and skipping her first-- and possibly her second-- marriages. And no one knew what happened to Julia Reggiano, but everyone wanted to know because she was the sort of person that you just knew wouldn't disappoint. All night people asked Shelly what happened to Julia-- they were BFFs for ages-- and Shelly hadn't the foggiest, a notion that I don't think really hit her as a bit sad until she had to tell the eleventh person who asked her, "I have no idea."

Shelly really wished that she had stayed in touch with Julianne Denise Cassandra Reggiano or at least knew what happened to her. (I can't tell you my license plate number but I can still recall Julia's full name, including her communion name.) Shelly, who's son was born missing fingers, and Mary, who's daughter was born with a hole in her heart, swapped stories about kind doctors, nail-biting surgeries and the indomitable spirit of kids with moxie. Shelly, who was one of the funniest, bawdiest, Jerseyest girls growing up described what a crazy pisser her son is and how she honestly can't fathom where he gets it. (And she wasn't joking.) Mary told me that she was sorry to hear about my dad then went on to tell me that her dad died recently but was brought back to life. Personally, this sounded like a pretty neat trick, having just lost my dad to permanent death, and I wondered if my dad had been at whatever miracle spa her dad had been admitted to, if he'd still be alive and puffing on a cigar on my iphone, just like Mary's. I also wondered why someone would tell a story like that, in just that way, to someone who's dad had just died for good, until I remembered that I was talking to Mary, after all, and that it was just the kind of thing she would say. This brought me odd comfort as I moved on to talk to someone else.

Susie fluttered by with her camera, talking away as she clicked, raising the camera up to her eye, lowering it, then up again; her hands vying for air space amongst the steady stream of words that tumbled forth, crowding the area around her pretty mouth. I wouldn't have thought she would turn out to be so striking. As a child she had thick glasses with thick frames which hid her alert brown eyes; pupils big and black. Her Dorothy Do had let go of its stronghold and the baby fat that softened all of us back then, gave way to small, sculptured features on Susie's unconventionally beautiful face. I caught up with the ticker tape of her monologue just as she was talking about being in a 12-step group for clutter; which made sense, if you remembered her house growing up. All I could recall were the candy dishes on the end tables (Holy crap, candy!) and the piles of up-going flotsam along the right side of each step of the staircase. Later, Cate tried to remind me that there were tall piles of magazines, newspapers and all manner of detritus in all the rooms, on all the surfaces, with little narrow alleyways that carved paths from room to room. Oh, how I wished I could remember those exquisite images, but my visual retrieval system came up maddeningly short, yet again. (I asked my Mom the next morning if she ever went into Susie's house in all the years she dropped me off and picked me up at her house after playing and she said, "No, why would I?" God love the seventies.) But I admit that I think of Susie every time I set piles of folded laundry, smoke alarm batteries or my son's light saber on the steps to go upstairs. And I am wary.

Cate, a straight-A student and statuesque, natural blonde with flawless skin, bright teeth, and smart, clear eyes, married a Mormon-- imagine him finding her attractive. She reminded me that we didn't get our periods until we were fifteen or sixteen, a long-missing piece of information, occasionally asked for on medical forms, that I've groped for in the dark recesses of my health history but it always seemed too outlandish of an answer in this day and age when girls get their periods at age ten. Cate became an attorney with a terrific streak of chutzpah, once removing her entire family abruptly from the middle of a Sunday sermon when her priest went on a bit too long about how women should obey their husbands no matter what. She laughs a lot more now than I remember her doing then although we must have laughed a lot then, too. I wished I could remember but I can't remember much.

Phil, however, remembered everything. One of the funniest men at the reunion and the token stay-at-home dad to five kids, Phil also grew up very Catholic and went to a Catholic all-boys school taught by Benedictine monks. This much I knew. What I didn't know was that when his parents renewed their vows before the sanctity of the church after twenty-five years of marriage, under the guidance of their beloved priest-- also one of Phil's Benedictine monk teachers-- his mother fell in love with the priest and he with her. She left her marriage and he left the church and they got married at which point Phil's teacher and priest became his stepfather Father. His dad was still his dad, and sadly, out of luck, the house and his marriage. Not sure if either Phil or his Dad continued to go to that church. I forgot to ask.

Dawn and Jim, high school sweethearts, married early and had three kids who are now around 10, 12 and 14. Last year Dawn presented her family with the news that she was pregnant, which was received warmly by her husband and only luke-warmly by the older teens in the house. The recurring parents thought, What the heck! and jumped in with both feet. The newborn infant arrived just two weeks before the reunion, and Dawn, voted most beautiful and best hair for a seemingly endless run in junior high and high school, looked fabulous. Another classmate, Norman, we discovered, also bestowed his wife and three young teenagers with a fourth miracle in the last two months and so we joked at length about vasectomies. Their wives didn't laugh as heartily. They may have been too tired.

Finally, a classmate not named Melanie asked me about an absent classmate not named Jim. Seems Jim had found her on facebook and was looking to meet up for drinks and "catch up" in the city. Melanie, single and unattached, mentioned it to me remembering that he and I were friends back in the day and wondered if I happened to know much about him. I said that I did; that he was married with kids; and that seemed to surprise her. We ended the conversation abruptly with the understanding that we didn't have to say out loud what we were both saying to ourselves. I took this unfortunate news as far as my next sip of warm beer and then swallowed it along with other thoughts and judgments. It's none of my business; la, la, la, la. No one knows, not really, nor should we even suppose. So I drop kicked it from my mind and turned to talk to Mario, one of the top ten nicest guys in our grade, who suddenly and thoroughly lost all his hair a few years ago. All of it. From all points on his body. They figured out what it was and he's going to be A-okay and his wife still loves him because, as she said to me wryly, she didn't marry him for his hair.

The reunion finally wound down after midnight or so. Allison, who's dad was the local mortician and grew up above the town's funeral parlor-- and would have won the award for Changed The Least, if awards were given out-- confirmed what I had heard: that she really did compete in synchronized swimming in college. I thought I'd died and gone to heaven and could now leave the reunion a full and happy woman. I hugged and thanked our rag-tag committee one last time and walked forward into the night, back through my home town bar's portal to the present.

For years while we were growing up we complained that we were so hopelessly normal and our town was so painfully boring. We were a bunch of whiny, disaffected teens, half-giddy, half-annoyed at the specter of another Saturday night, jammed elbow-to-elbow with a bunch of classmates in the back of a pick-up, in a basement rec room; aching for action, yearning for sex, wanting something to happen; gossip, intrigue, anything that would tilt us a little further back on the rear two chair legs in our amped-up minds. How were we to know that our lives would get odder and more extraordinary and then more reasoned and sure? Only time had told who had surprised us in curiously bizarre, unpredictable, and comforting ways. Marriages and divorces, births and deaths, successes and failures-- life, it seems, is long after all. There's still room and there's still time and no one is who you think they are, not entirely. Which is excellent.