To Know, Know, Know You Now

I sort of accidentally attended my high school reunion last night. A "save the date" postcard in flame orange had arrived at my house fully six months ago, the date of the reunion unfortunately hidden under some skinny adhesive strip the post office affixed for no apparent purpose other than to add an uninformative barcode and eliminate the vital information of the mailing. A more formal and informed invitation never arrived, however, and I'm now suspecting that innocent looking barcode may have actually contained important details.

No matter. I kept the faith and waited. After all, one of my very best friends from high school was on the reunion's planning committee; surely she would make sure I got an invitation. But months went by, and I didn't, she didn't. Apparently, our friendship had changed. High school friendships can do that suddenly and without known provocation. I sort of forgot about it.

One or two small things happened in the meanwhile: I went to Egypt for a life-altering visit in the post-revolutionary months, which is the political equivalent to riding the curl of a wave  if you're a surfer: the experience of total jubilation. I had a bike crash that was particularly gruesome, hence awesome. I had a Chinese family visit me for a month and my world grew larger again. I took in a lodger when the new Republican government of my state lopped twelve percent off my paycheck. I finished plastering my upstairs hallway as well as my oil painting, "Romania." I saw tons of good plays, had a few good dates, and wrote some mediocre poetry and lots of blogposts. Time passed somehow with remarkably little tedium.

This Saturday I went to visit my dad, who still lives in the little northern city aka hamlet where I went to high school. Entering town, I stopped by a friend's apartment to deliver some flowers for his mom and see if he was ready to marry me yet. He accepted the flowers but declined the marriage option. Then his younger brother stuck his head out the doorway. I'd never met him before because he went to the rival high school but he was in from New York for the reunion, too, the two schools having finally made their peace for reason, as is usually the case, of economy. His wife had declined his invitation to make small talk and drink too much with people she'd never met before and would never meet again. "Do you want to go with me and use her ticket?" he asked.

Eight hours later, encouraged by my dad and spruced up as much as you can when you're not at home and have no wardrobe options or drawers full of dried up twenty-year-old make-up, mascara that's the thickness of tar, concealer that's so ancient it comes with its own irregular pigmentation problems, I was back to pick up Brother Rob. He looked gorgeous. Made me wish I could move to New York, not for him personally, but for all the men with arty ponytails hanging casually down the back center seam of impeccably tailored suitcoats above dress slacks of just the right cut and fabric. You know. The kind that billows just the slightest bit when they walk down city sidewalks with that urban purposefulness that makes men worth the difference in the sexes.

And we were off. Neither of us had ever attended any of the earlier reunions, and neither of us felt particularly well connected to our classmates either now or in our fading but still vaguely uncomfortable memories. But together we had a little buttressing, a small fortress even, and through the hours that followed, that was just enough to make the whole night pleasant. Really, it was like having a treehouse where you could sneak with a flashlight late at night. Refuge and adventure wrapped up in one.

Hanging out with Rob was the best part, when all was said and done, and probably what I'll remember best about this night of really bad, sweet wine in those damned plastic highball glasses. But there were some other nice parts to the night, too, even once I put aside the smug fact that I was not in the two-thirds of the class who'd completely lost their youthful body proportions somewhere under accumulated subcutaneous fat. Remember, this is Wisconsin. The women, it must be noted, looked much better as a whole than the men. Part of this is hair dye and make-up. Another huge part of it's social pressure: We have to keep looking good or we lose our social capital. Whatever it is, it works. Aside from my "date" and a few others, these were men who had walked their final runway and who were now content to sit at the furthest end of it, trolling a fishing pole in the somnabulent waters of middle age. The women, by and large, looked a lot better.

Best moment: A classmate I hadn't seen once since high school came up and said she'd seen some of my poems and loved them, wondered if I had a book of them. Said one of them made her cry and pick up the phone and call her mom for what was a significant change in their relationship. If I was still in high school with this "girl," she would be my new best friend. Since I don't work on publishing my poems, I'm always absolutely thrilled and surprised to find that anyone finds them, let alone finds them worth reading.

Second best moment: My very first boyfriend, the one-time short and scrawny seventh grader with whom I was inevitably paired when lots were drawn since I was equally short and scrawny, had grown up handsomely. (Why is this somehow gratifying? Does it vindicate all the silly impulses we followed back then? Do other people find satisfaction in discoveries like this, or is it just my unabated shallowness?) We dutifully exchanged nods across the crowded room, then smiles crossing the distance, and cheek kisses up close. I met his wife; he met my scrutiny. I found out what he did (he did well); he found out what I do (I do largely as I please). A few hours later, he walked up to where I was sitting with Rob and whispered in my ear, "When I saw you walking with your date down to the lake on the boardwalk, I was intensely envious of him."

So it goes. In some obvious ways, I have not matured enormously, despite the furrow deepening by the month, I swear, between my eyebrows. But in one important way I have grown up. I can appreciate all these people now, the ones I went to school with forty years ago, the fat ones and the ones who look like models, the ones who showed up in worn down white walking shoes with velcro as well as the ones who came in with Gucci or Ann Taylor. I watched the couples out on the dance floor, swaying their ample trunks to the rock and roll we still loved cause it made us feel young again, and I was so happy for each of them, including myself, that they were still out there, embracing it, having a good time, keeping up friendships, laughing in the face of old age.

Sometimes those old friendships actually turn out to be deeper than you ever realized they could be.