The alarm on my cellphone went off at 5:30 AM, giving me just enough time to snooze it once, to grab a few minutes more of sleep.
We'd been up later than planned, the night before. We had spent most of the afternoon driving around the Portland metro area doing last minute errands on my list. First off was the costume shop on Hawthorne, where I loaded up on some crucial gear. Then I had to return the tent to the REI in Tualatin, and pick up a few more items there. Then it was on to Target. Red figured the nearest one was in Wilsonville, so we drove down I-5 to there.
I remarked on the way that it was exactly the Target where hundreds of thousands of dead bees had been found, killed by a pesticide, in early July. There had even been a memorial service for the bees. I had joked with Red at the time that we should show up there with picket signs that said "God Hates Bees." We got a big laugh out of it, but decided it wouldn't be in good taste.
So when we got to the parking lot this time, and her car rolled to a stop, I feigned a tear in my eye.
"This is where it all happened," I said, in a solemn tone. I could only hold it for a couple seconds before breaking out with a grin.
We got back home with just enough time to get my started on serious packing. Unlike my ultralight trip to Denver, this time I'd need to check some bags---two large duffels stuffed with all my gear, clothes, and food for a week.
I was mostly packed by the time 8:00 o'clock rolled around. After a quick shower, we got in the car and headed into Northwest, to the Pearl District, to catch the debut show of the Yachtsmen, a late 1970's cover band for which my friend John McIsaac is the bassist.
Jimmy Mak's was packed by the time we got there. We had to stand on the edge of the crowd, but we still got plenty of space to dance. Red is a big Christopher Cross fan, and the Yachtsmen didn't disappoint on that score, performing two of his signature hits at the end of their set.
We both agreed that the lead signer, who was wearing the same sailor cap that I had purchased at the Hawthorne costume shop, nailed all the songs very well. Like Red says, the key to a good cover band is that they sound as much as possible like the original.
Adam: Hey, it's your theme song.
Me: You should open a club...
The best part about the evening was getting to see my friends Adam and Marie again. They finally made it back form New York.
After Jimmy Mak's it was back home with a few hours in the late evening to finish packing, and do laundry. It was past midnight by the time we finally got to bed.
As of now I'm sitting in a coffee shop in the Reno Airport. I already checked into the Burner Express, the bus that will take me and my gear up to Black Rock City. Okki left me a message during my flight saying he and Ash are in Utah heading west into Nevada. Sean and Michele are probably on their way from Aspen by now.
Stefan is arriving from Zurich tomorrow. He said four of his Swedish friends, "Virgin Burners," as first-timers are called, are going to show up sometime tomorrow with an RV. That means Okki, Ash, and I will have to find a spot to accomodate all of us.
Before the additional Swedes signed up, there were only six of us making it this year---five veterans plus Ash. "The Intrepid Six," I dubbed us. Michele liked that and so that's what we are. Except now we're the Intrepid Six+Four, because of the additional Swedes.
Our plan is for me to meet up with Ash and Okki somehow later today near the corner of 7:00 and Holy (the H-ring street).
Only thirty-eight minutes to the shuttle boards. The terminal around me has a smattering of people wearing colorful spangles, boas, and funny hats. All I've got is my Captain's hat that I wore at Jimmy Mak's. It's gonna look really cool once it's wrapped in some LED lights.
Me to Red: I happen to know one of your favorite songs is coming up next.
My trip to the suburbs was quite successful at getting myself into full work mode. The new fall Starbucks music rotation includes "So Nice," among other tunes. I also had time to pick up a new tent for Burning Man at the Tualatin REI store.
Yesterday evening, Red and I decided to try our luck for dinner at Tabor Tavern, about ten blocks down East Burnside from where she lives. We had never been there before, but we had recently put it on our list.
It was lively when we walked in, a somewhat Portlandified version of a family dining and sports bar. There was a wide selection of wine and cocktails, and also two televisions showing football games.
Red, sitting across from me at the booth, looked up at the screen behind me. "Who's C-A-R?" she asked me, squinting at the scoreboard on the screen.
"Carolina," I said. It turns out they were playing B-A-L, the Baltimore Ravens.
The screen in my direction was showing a tennis match. I mentioned that I used to enjoy tennis a lot more when the men's game was ruled by the alpha bad boys like McEnroe and Connors. The new generation of men just didn't cut it for me.
"Oh, Agassi is awesome," I said. "I just heard about his new autobiography. It really made me admire him."
We discussed how he had been married to Brooke Shields, who according to Agassi was an utter airhead. His career went into a nose dive until he divorced her. His manager predicted his game would come back within a year, and he was right. Agassi was back on top.
"It's like how Bruce Springsteen had to dump his wife, the one who was born in Lake Oswego," I said. Red knows the whole story behind that.
For my first cocktail at the Tabor Tavern, I ordered the La Hing Mui, which turned out to come with a martini glass crusted with Li hing mui. It was far superior to the cocktail Red had ordered. She wound up drinking half of mine.
For the next round, we asked our server for a suggestion. "Where do you go from there?" I asked her, pointing to the empty martini glass in front of me.
She gave us a couple suggestions. Red's came with tequila, mine with with vodka and cucumber soda. It was terrible follow-up choice. I could barely stomach it during my meal.
We both agreed later that it was impossible to go anywhere else on the list of cocktails after the La Hing Mui.
"I guess you just have to order another one," Red said.
Today I very much needed to get back to a strong work mode. Having slept late, I wanted to get started as soon as possible.
The Starbucks near Red's place in Laurelhurst is not yet fit for serious work most days. It just doesn't have the right vibe. The guy who comes there every morning to put on his earphones and perform flamboyant air-drumming is enough to distract me from most work tasks.
So I whizzed right past it in the Bimmer, going further east down Burnside, all the way down to Grand. Red's gay housemate Wayson had suggested a place called Coava on Grand and Main. He said it was the hippest place in East Portland, with industrial equipment right inside the coffee shop.
"You can watch people doing things like...sawing wood," he said, slowly mimicking the gesture of cutting a plank.
He advised me to go there wearing my t-shirt with spackled baking soda that looked like white paint.
It took me five minutes circling to find a parking spot. Inside it was exactly as Wayson described, complete with a drill press where a couple hipster guys were at work on their laptops. But there was fifteen-person line for coffee, and only a few places to sit. All of the stand-up work stations along the far wall were occupied.
Nice, I thought---but not for work today. Have to come back here during an off hour.
This was a no-nonsense day. It was time to put a dent in the work tasks backlog on Jira. I needed momentum going into the weekend.
I needed a place I could concentrate. I needed my old type of Starbucks back, with its soft jazz soundtrack, and where the restroom didn't have a key or a punch code.
So I crossed the Morrison Bridge onto the west side and got on I-5 heading south towards Lake Oswego.
A wistful sadness about all of the richness of life around me
As if every molecule is a sunlight-drenched cherry blossom
distilled into its own ethereal cognac
We float like test pilot trainees at the top of the parabola
The acceleration of weightlessness sets in
Bonds freed of the net effect of gravitation
loosen and become detuned
What remembered flowers are these
from the time before
the thing that is about to happen
From the river, taken in one glance, the city betrays little hint of being such a sprawling metropolis. Each segment of its port could be an isolated town, another Longview, a solitary grouping of such ports, interspersed being small quiet rural bits of bank. Only when they are imagined in one glance, up and down the river, do they form the holographic framework of giant city stretching away on both sides.
Over the child river
the bridges come arching like catapults
The cars are fed up in a stream like blood vessels
lanes narrowing the flow
and then thrown into roller coaster summits
high above the sparkling water
in plain view of the skyline
a human-ant colosus of moving cars
the most beautiful kinetic sculpture
enacted by all those passing through
exalted as the centerpiece of the city
Astoria upstream is still the gateway to Oregon.
The town itself is the crown of the state.
Inland the hamlets and would-be cities
spring in the glades off the big river
Westport---until it was logged out
Claskanie---a miniature spin-off
Longview---mighty first entry
At St. Helen's we detour off the road
Find a Dairy Delish where they still
wrap the hamburgers in sacks within sacks
Here we peel off from the big river
and up into its huge tributary
A big city looms there
Clangy industry at its gates
A little metropolis tucked
In the crook of the hills
No building yet peeks above
A pirate's lair still
Today was the most beautiful summer day ever in Oregon---OK, it was tied for first place with many others perhaps. But I didn't get to the experience those, only this one.
The whole world seems on edge lately in a big way. Most everyone who has been paying attention sees some kind of precipice ahead. It's not hard to see why. We needn't fool ourselves that the problems don't at least appear to be bleak.
More than a few folk seem not averse to the idea of welcoming the precipice, whatever they see it as, in the idea that it will be cleansing in some way. Perhaps it would. But who's to say what form that cleansing will take place? Likely it won't be what you hope it will be. It might include some of what you want, but it would certainly be beyond any single person's imagination to understand the end result. History proves this beyond doubt.
Or maybe we'll muddle through. Maybe it will all play out like the end of a Hollywood musical comedy, where everything just comes busting out like flowers. Great heros will come forth and sing.
Is there anything one person can do, to somehow contribute towards steering the great ship of history away from appear to be horrible rocks, and towards the comedic funny shoals of the huge near miss averted? Do we dare think we have that ability as individuals?
"Extroverts are people persons, to be sure, but they derive their energy from other people, especially introverts. They depend on us to feed energy them. They need that kind of thing."
"If you get quiet, they don't understand why. They ask what's wrong? It's very hard for them to understand us."
I looked down at the dishes in front of us, that our server had just brought us. They were sitting in front of us perfect like a magazine spread, next to our drinks, lit by the early evening sun from the front window of the restaurant.
"That reminds me of something I have to do," I said.
I got out my smartphone, held it up, and took a picture of the food dishes on the table.
Then I went back to the smartphone screen and used the Swype keys to send a text message.
"I just sent Okki a picture of the food," I told Red, after I was done sending the message.
"The message was: Swedish Meatballs and Aebleskiver in Portland!!!"
I made sure to pronounce all three exclamation points.
A few minutes later, I got a reply: "Nice! And with Lingonberries, freeze it up and bring to BM!"
Yesterday evening Red and I were driving down 39th Street towards Hawthorne. At the corner by Laurelhurst Park we are waiting for the light. On the curb ahead leans a young white dude with long hair and a Rasta cap. He's bobbing his head, looking at the traffic only a few feet away.
"Do you think we should gift him our car?" I asked Red.
In the sprawling layout of Black Rock City, arranged in concentric alphabetical circles at the hours of the clock, Camp Aspen Eurotrash was located at approximately 7:05 and I. Because of the theme of Fertility 2.0, the alphabetical circles that year were named for flowers, so officially we we at 7:05 and Iris. The makeshift wooden street signs had small painted purple and gold flowers of that genus.
This location put us almost on the edge of the city itself. The streets officially went up to Lilac, but there was hardly anyone encamped beyond Jasmine.
It turned out to be a fairly good location---far enough out that we could spread out in our camp, yet not too far from the Central Camp area, which was crucial for certain supplies. Part of the ethic of Burning Man is that nothing is supposed to be for sale, or even for trade---everything must be gifted freely. The sole exception is coffee and ice, which are both for sale in Central Camp, the sprawling large open tent structure at 6:00 on the innermost ring of the playa. It served as a main central hangout area, full of wooden benches and carpets in a maze-like labyrinth, interspersed by art exhibitions and stages on which people gave impromptu performances of anything they felt like expressing.
A typical morning inside the tent at Central Camp
A typical day last year began with us waking up and emerging from our shelters and tents in various stages, stumbling over to the table where someone might be making breakfast on the propane stove. The first order of business after that would always be a trip down to Central Camp. There we park and lock our bikes in the expansive row of racks. We would go inside the huge tent and wait in the long but quickly moving queues to order a latte or a mocha or a yerba mate, depending on one's taste. It had the air of a typical urban hip coffeehouse, but entirely staffed by volunteers.
After lounging around to drink our coffee we walked across the plaza to the shiny reflective domelike structure with Arctic-style lettering. Inside the dome one felt the cool blast of fans sending out refrigerated air. It was usually only a couple minutes wait to purchase as many bags of block or cube ice as one could carry. We would them put them in our bicycle baskets and carry them immediately back to camp on Iris, dumping them into our coolers.
Coffee and ice---it shows you what is truly indispensible to our civilization. Everything else---water, food, toiletries, etc.---one must bring by oneself. But those two items are furnished at a price inside Black Rock City.
Besides all the European expatriates and their American friends, our camp at last year's Burning Man had one interesting standout, a guy who had simply showed up and wandered into camp, and had been welcomed from his arrival. He was there already and established when I showed up on Tuesday.
His name was Dan and worked for a Fire & Rescue department in Washington County, Oregon, in the suburbs outside of Portland. His fire company's service area included towns that I knew quite well. He lived on site at the firehouse for three-day stretches at a time, commuting up there from his home along the Willamette outside Salem.
He had originally planned to come down to Burning Man with his girlfriend and two other couples. He prepped his pick-up truck with all the gear he needed, including a large canvas hut and copious food. Then a few weeks before, he had broken up with girlfriend. She backed out of going entirely. He had then showed up at at Burning Man alone at the start of the week. But when he met his friends---the two other couples---they had made it clear to him that he wasn't quite welcome anymore. It wasn't right for the kind of activities they had planned. It might be better if he experienced Burning Man without them.
So he set up his canvas tent right next to Camp Aspen Eurotrash and had wandered in. He was an immediate hit. Everyone loved him. He was well built, and walked around bare crested in shorts with a straw cowboy hat. He had an American naivite about him---it was clear he barely knew what Burning Man was about until he got here, but his heart seemed genuine in wanting to make friends.
Among other things, he made himself extremely useful, cooking and serving us food around our shaded table. He seemed always ready to help out in any situation that needed it, but he was also capable of letting go and partying with us as we rode our bikes around the deep playa late at night. When we were away from booze for too long, he was the first to note that he needed to keep drinking, if he was going to keep being a happy contributor the evening's mood. Fortuantely that was easy enough to do most of the time.
Unfortunately he left on Friday, in the middle of the week. He departed with great apologies, saying he needed to get back to Oregon. It was quite understandable. It had been a big deal for him to get these few precious days off from his job. When he packed up his canvas hut, it was poignant moment of saying good-bye to all of us.
But it struck me as ironic that he had left one evening before the burning of the Man itself on Saturday night. I couldn't help think that maybe he didn't want to witness that, given what he did for a living. But that's just pure conjecture.
When the email list went around to folks about who was going to go to this year's burn, his name had been left of the list. Someone pointed that out immediately. So I dug up his email address from a thank you I'd written to him last fall, to which he had never replied, and forwarded the group message to 'nozzlemanXYZ@XYZ.com'.
In my forwarded email, I added that we all hoped he'd be there, but if he wasn't, he'd be greatly missed. It was a sincere statement.
I'd be quite surprised to hear from him saying he is coming to this year's Burn. It seemed like his one experience was overpowering and moving, that it might well last him his entire life.
"Camp Aspen Eurotrash"---that's not what the banner officially said, but that's what Okki called it informally, back in Boulder, when he was first selling me on the idea of going last year.
"Everybody in the group is a former ski-bum," he said, referring the group of his friends whom I would be meeting at Black Rock City, if I chose to go.
I liked that theme, actually. Who else better to uphold the great Aspen tradition of Freak Power in the Rockies than a bunch of European expatriates? It made sense to me. They knew what America was really about.
The camp turned out was a modest little grouping of camp structures---a long Winnebago RV, a couple tents, and a couple canvas hut shelters, one of which displayed the aforementioned banner, designed by one of hte members on their computer and printed at copy store just for the occasion. The design incorporated the Colorado state flag, the Marroon Bells, and a human fetus (the theme of 2012's event was Fertility 2.0).
It the middle was a nylon hade covering over a couple folding tables. One could ride one's bike right off the road into a small makeshift courtyard beside the covered tables, screened from the road by the Winnebago. All in all, outside of the strange banner, it looked like a typical overcrowded redneck family campsite on the Fourth of July at a typical state park. Okki's description of the group, the members of which would all have embraced the humorous self-deprecating label, was somewhat accurate. Most of them had been in the U.S. quite a while (Okki himself had first come to Colorado in the late 1980s). They were tremendous folk, and it was fun to get to know them. For the first time in a long time, I felt like it was possible not only to make new friends, but to make newgoodfriends.
Besides Tommy and Stefan, there was Kevin, from England. In his mid Fifties, he was one of the passengers in the Winnebago, along with a couple American women from Denver whom the group knew (for much of the time, I had a hard time figuring out who knew whom, and for how long).
Kevin went through much of Burning Man with a silly grin, wearing a top hat, and enjoying the great cornucopia of free-flowing booze. Among other things, Burning Man is a giant free bar---you just have to go the camp that is currently serving. You have to bring a cup of some kind with you--like a red solo cup. It is part of the standard gear that one packs at night in one's bicycle basket. The camp holding the party provides the alcohol, you provide the cup. Leave no trace.
Also in the camp were Adrian and Heike, a husband and wife in their Forties, originally from England and Germany respectively. They were the class of the group. When we went for the evening, usually an hour after sunset, venturing forth in a giant caravan of a dozen blinking bikes, Adrian and Heike were always dressed up just right for the theme of whatever camp we were heading towards, as the main party stop for that night. It's very important at Burning Man to have many variations of cool outfits. It makes it much more fun. Heike often wore feathers as decorations on her skimpy bikinicentric outfits. It was her motif. But I wondered she managed to stay warm out on the playa late at night.
Adrian and Heike had the coolest bicycles too, in terms of decoration. Heike's even had an awning over it, like a proper ladies' carriage. It was easy to find at night in the dark, when we were looking for our bikes in the giant makeshift bicycle parking lot that always formed outside the camps where the parties were in full swing.
Sean and Michelle, also from Aspen, were just as charming a couple, with always the right kinds of clothes, and accessories, although they accomplished this with much less of an upper class flair than Adrian and Heike. Michele was found of wearing sparkling make-up on her cheeks as part of her costume for each evening.
Sean was from Ireland---he looked every bit of it, and spoke in an accent that only someone who has been around a lot of Irish people could understand much of the time. We hit it off right away, and talked at length about our mutual love for Galway and other places in his home country. He was floored that I could speak Irish Gaelic even as well as I did.
Michele was Spanish by ethnicity (I think so, at least, by her last name), but she was really from London and had a lovely Posh-sounding accent. She had once been a ski instructor until she tore up her knee (a common fate for these folk). Now she worked as a massage therapist for a large upscale hotel group and had multiple private clients from the wealthy and powerful set of Aspen.
Sean, on the other hand, was proud to call himself "a true ski bum."Somebody has to uphold the old traditions.
Each of you, descendant of some passed On traveller, has been paid for. ---Maya Angelou, "On the Pulse of Morning"
It was hard to imagine how we were going to be able top last year's burn. At least for me, it was a perfect experience as a first-time, a "Virgin Burner," as they are called.
Because of my friendship with Okki, and who convinced me to come at the last minute, and sold me the ticket, I got to meet over a dozen other fantastic people in our camp.
Among them was Stefan---one of Okki's Swedish friends who lived in Zurich and worked for a large bank. Stefan was tall and thin, in contrast to Okki's expansive round build. They close by each other during much of the week.
Stefan had flown directly from Switzerland into Black Rock City (aka the Burning Man site), changing planes at Reno to a scheduled charter flight that landed at the makeshift Burning Man airport on the playa (I has a check-in procedure and everything, but no TSA goons).
I got to go out to the airport one afternoon last year with a bunch of other folks from the camp. Tommy, a short sturdy sometimes-kilt-wearing Scotsman, had towed his ultralight plane in a trailer from Aspen and was giving folks a ride during the daylight hours. He wasn't sure he'd be able to get enough lift to get yours truly off the ground, but we somehow made it up in the air.
The ten minutes we spent making a partial arc around the perimeter of the city (one is not allowed to fly directly over it) were among the most adrenaline-producing moments of my life. Considering that from the passenger seat, one can see directly downwards to the playa floor, it was quie a challenge to let go of the fear and simply enjoy the experience.
Speeding down the dark path, I followed the pair of tiny red lights in front of me as they bobbed around like fireflies, weaving through the constantly shifting shadows of tree trunks that were lit only by the peripheral glow of our headlamps. The sound of my tires on the concrete and the rotation of the spokes filled my ears in a constant whoosh.
I pedaled furiously in bursts, then coasted over for long stretches until I was almost parallel to them on the path. Then I let myself fall behind again until I needed to resume pedaling. It was a fun way to glide without effort over the little dives and dips along the creek, and also allowed me to modulate my brakes better when I needed.
My leg muscles had initially gotten sore during the first leg of the night's Odyssey, along South Boulder Creek to Table Mesa Drive. But surprisingly I'd been able to resume a good form of pedaling by the middle of the evening. I could tell that my thighs would be in decent condition the next day, not sore from too much overexertion. Still it was a gentle warning about the state of my fitness for what we were all about to do.
I was using a bike Okki lent me from his shed. The brakes of the
borrowed bike squealed loudly each time I applied them even modestly,
which
was sporadic along the gentle stretches, but nearly constant in the tight curves when the path went under a street bridge.
After ten minutes they glided to a halt at a spur of the trail that went up to 30th
Street. I coasted up the incline to come to a halt beside them on the sidewalk by the bridge.
Actually we couldn't see any street signs there, but Okki thought it was defiinitely 30th Street. Ash wanted to make
sure, since he was the one peeling off the path here, to find his way back home to his
apartment just off Tantra Drive, where he lives with his two teenage
daughters. Not a single car came by the whole time we stood there on our bikes.
Finally when Okki, using the map on his
iPhone, had satisfied Ash that indeed this was 30th Street, and he should turn right to find his
way home, Ash swiveled his bike along the sidewalk to head south. Just before he set himself into motion, he leaned over to me one last time, his headlamp
pointed right at me, offering me his outstretched handshake in friendship, almost ceremonially.
"See you at Burning Man, mate" he said to me, in his Manchester accent. I shook his hand.
Then he pedaled off up the hill to the south.
It was still a couple miles back to Okki's place. He put on his head phones to listen to music on his iPhone as he rode.
"For the last year, it's all been about the Thievery Corporation," he had said. But he'd recently switched to listening to Massive Attack.
I followed him in the dark again along the creek, my guidance now reduced to a single red tail light, trailing him as closely as safety would allow. Several times we came upon sharp curves quite suddenly in the dark, and I found myself having to apply my brakes hard, making them shriek like wild animals in the night.
Alter Ego #3
We were both relieved to finally make it back to his mobile home trailer at the end of Valmont Road. It had been a long day. We went out to the deck in back of his trailer with cold cans of Coca Cola. Okki lit the tiki torch jar on the table and then also lit an American Spirit cigarette. I drank my Coke quickly. All that bicycling, all over Boulder, and mostly after dark, had made me very thirsty.
We listened to crickets in the trees along the dark creek bed just below us.. The bike path here cuts away from the creek towards the east. On the other side of the creek is a large field.
Okki childed me for having been so silent for most of the night. I had to tell him that I get in those kinds of introspective places, especially late at night in busy social circumstances. I call it my "Harpo Marx Mode," when, out of fatigue, I seem to lose my voice but still have an energy of communication in silent funny gestures.
Downtown on 19th Street, while we were all sitting at a well-lit table next to the bar, Okki had seen me leaning over the table, bending at the middle as if doing a torso stretch. I was restless and kept stretching that way with variations of pose.
He mimicked a bullying police officer rudely interrogating me over behavior. His heavy Swedish accent made the his attempt at an authoritarian drawl especially comical.
"What are you doing, son, acting in that strange funny way?" he said.
I glared at him with red-hot coal eyes. "I'm a professional dancer," I said, indignantly. "I must constantly be warming up!"
"Oooh, that's good," he said, turning to Ash.
Now, having reached our destination and no longer requiring a reserve of any to get home on my bicycle, my voice somewhat recovered.
Okki likes to ask offbeat questions. Sitting on the back deck, he asked, "So, Matt, could you, if you had to, summarize your entire day in one minute or less?"
I took his question as a challenge, and launched into a quick improvisational spiel. He timed me with his watch.
"I woke up in Fort Collins, walked over and picked up my rental car, drove down to Boulder, and then met up with you and Ash here.
"Then we made a tour of the thrift shops all over South Boulder. We bought a bunch of items for Burning Man, including scarves, hats, belts, vests, and various furnishings for the yurt you are going to build, including a lot of cool pillows. We made a bunch of women there laugh thinking we were cross dressers.
"Then we stopped at a liquor store, got some beer and booze, and came back and drank for a while out here on the patio.
"Then we all got on our bikes and rode in the twilight to south Boulder. We went to a Czech wedding reception near Table Mesa with some people that you know. We sat around a camp fire. We did some shots of some Eastern European liquor out of paper cups and said na zdravi. I ate some of the leftover wedding cake. I asked Ash if he knew who the bride was and he said he had no idea.
"Then we got on our bikes again and followed a Czech guy all the way downtown to Pearl Street. We had beers at a couple places. We saw a live band at the first place, and a DJ at the second. "
"Then we got gyros at a late night food stand on Pearl Street. Then we find our bikes again and rode home..."
"Ding! Ding! Ding!" he said.
Later, Okki returned to one his favorite themes---his views about the way to achieve happiness. He is one of the most sanguiine people I know. I have to convince him at times that I too am happy, in my own way, although I may not look like it at times.
He repeated one of his favorite personal creeds: "If you want to be happy, it all comes down to making a decision that you are going to be happy," he said. "I truly believe it is just as simple as that---making a decision to be happy."
Early Monday morning, before my eyes were even fully open, I was lying in bed under the comforter when I heard the door to my room softly open. In my groggy state I heard a pair of giggling voices coming across the carpet towards me. A few seconds later I felt the thump of multiple soft objects landing on me. Then with more giggles, another round of objects were heaped onto me.
Alter Ego #1
I stayed in bed through all this, motionless without opening my eyes. The voices left the room, then returned about a minute later, repeating the entire process, with louder giggles this time. Finally after a third round of giggling and heaping, I realized it was time to take action.
With a great thundering roar I raised myself up in the bed and threw back the comforter.
The giggles exploded into the chorus of great laughter. Around me on the bed and on the floor were dozen of stuffed animals of various sizes, color and species, horses being the dominant one.
"Uncle Ma-a-a-tt!!" they voices cried out in unison, as if scolding me.
It was the usual custom of my twin nieces to do this each time I stayed at their house. They would even tell me about the night before. "We're going to come into your room and pile animals on you," they said.
"You better," I replied. It was one of my favorite things in the whole world. I looked forward to it each time.
One notable change during this visit was the use of the word "animals" rather than "aminals." They were growing up, now eight years old as of last week, and the correct use of this word was but one of several "grown up" changes I noticed about them since my last visit in May.
The day before---Sunday---had been their official birthday party, as they had been on vacation in the Ozarks during the actual day of their birthday. They hadn't known I was coming, or that I was even in town. My visit from Portland had been in stealth mode. I had told my sisters about it only at the last minute.
Anne had picked me up at the Hilton on Sunday morning and driven me down to Westminster in their Honda Pilot. I entertained her own young children---ages six and (almost) four---on the way. When we got to Westminster, my nieces were stunned to the point of confusion to see me walking up the driveway. Since it was their birthday, for old times sakes, I picked them and threw them into the air, catching them on the way down, as I have done since I saw them in Massachusetts when they were only three years old, and when I stayed above their garage like Fonzie, as my brother-in-law called me.
But they are getting too big and too heavy for this. The days when I can do this are numbered. In fact I dare say that this might have been the last time for that particular activity, at least for the taller and heavier one of the two.
The birthday party itself, already in progress when we arrived, was a chaos of little girls from their school, and a few boys too, but they were in the basement together most of the time. Because of this, I got to spend the best part of the afternoon catching up with my sisters and my two brothers-in-law.
Not so for the next couple days during my visit to Westminster. From Monday onward, I was in nearly constant demand by my nieces as a playmate and plaything. They have a repetoire of specialized games and physical activities that they insist I participate in during each visit. They start asking for these within minutes of my arrival.
The old standards include "horsie" (self explanatory---and hard on my knees) and "clock" (where I hold them upside-down by their ankles and swing them while making ticking noises until the chimes of the hour). Other activities of more recent vintage include hoisting them up to the cross bar of the back yard swing set, and supervising them as they hang from it and shimmy sideways along from one end of the set to the other. The variations they invent for this are amazing. Sometimes I pretend I am a gruff Romanian gymnastics coach giving them harsh training instructions. They like that kind of attention.
As always, we invented new activities this time, such as pretending they are both food items in the refrigerator. For example, one of them is bread, the other peanut butter. I then"sliced" one of them up and "scooped" from the other to make a sandwich. Then I took a "bite" out of both them. Once we established this pattern it was a good solid hour of them demanding that this be repeated in various other combinations of things found in their pantry. They got very creative with their cuisine. At times I "microwaved" them by poking them in rapid succession with my fingers. No doubt they will remember this new activity next time as well. "Let's play food!"
One of their latest passions, which they insisted on my watching, was performing along to Just Dance 4 on their basement Wii. Their best number is "Call Me Maybe," for which they know all the words by heart, followed by "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)." I did my best with a rendition of "The Ketchup Song."
Fun as it is, all this physical play is a bit taxing on me at times. Who can keep up with eight-year-olds? Like a withered old man, I am constantly having to plead that I have run out of strength, that further repetitions would be dangerous, given the fatigue of my muscles. Most of the time when I say this it is true. I love every minute of all of it, of course. But they are almost always willing to keep going on and on.
Moreover during my visit this time, I spent much of the daylight hours deep in my job for the Big Publishing Company, hunched over my laptop in my bed or on the sofa, answering East Coast emails from the moment I woke up, and also working late into the night after the New Yorkers had gone to bed.
Alter Ego #2
At work we had recently changed the servers of the publishing
app over to a new configuration, and things were still not operating
smoothly. The book editors were frantic about missing deadlines for
their various projects. Although this wasn't my fault, it was certainly
my obligation to fix it.
So during my stay this time I found myself being somewhat of a grump, having to turn down many of my nieces' pleas for another round of each play activity. I found myself relieved when they were tuckered out and just wanted to veg and watchMy Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, of which they have many episodes stored on TiVo.
At the start of each episode of this, they deem it important to announce which pony they are, although I've yet to figure out the significance of this.
The schedule for the second and final night of the reunion called for a get-together at a place called The Hideout, which folks described as a "biker bar" in the industrial flats east of town along Mulberry. It was to be part of something called 80's-palooza, an annual multi-day music event that some local folks, included some of my classmates, had organized each August for a couple years running.
Yours truly with Elaine M., Grey H., Erin O, Paul H. and Penny M.
Grey is proudly wearing his old pre-Clyde "Prancing Lambkin" t-shirt.
By the time Anita dropped me off at my hotel in the late afternoon, I was exhausted and mostly felt like holing up in my room for the rest of the evening. I briefly considered just bagging the whole thing, but I was looking forward to seeing people again, and I knew I would regret it if I didn't go.
So I cleaned up, changed clothes, and headed out of my hotel a little after six. My New York cabbie had given me his card and cell phone that afternoon, and I figured I'd give him a call. But when I got outside, I decided just to walk as far as I felt like going, and then calling the cab the rest of the way.
As it happened, I had plenty of energy to walk the nearly three miles through Old Town and across the Poudre River to the bar. I stopped along the way to dine on a burrito from a convenience store, sitting on the curb by the gas pumps, so that I wouldn't have to eat anything at the bar.
As I got near the address, I could hear the loud music playing from a block away. Over a hundred cars were parked in the gravel lot along the curbless road, and a huge crowd was packed into a courtyard by the outdoor stage.
The Hideout, on a less packed afternoon
Just about then, I got a text from Randy, asking me how things were at the The Hideout. I was just about to answer him, when I heard a chorus of female voices calling my name loudly.
It was Erin, Elaine, Kathy, and Jo. They had just arrived. They asked me if I had gone inside yet. I said I hadn't.
Erin scolded me for having walked the entire three miles to the bar. "You should have called me," she said. The other women did the same, as if in competition to serve as my chauffeur. By this time I was feeling quite good from all the loving attention.
I told them that Randy had just texted me.
"Tell him to grow a pair and get down here," Erin said, "and that Erin wants to say hi to him."
I happily complied with Erin's request. Randy immediately texted me back.
"Yes, but how *is* it there?"
"Raucous," I replied, using a word that we had learned in Advanced Vocabulary for the College Bound, taught by Mrs. Davies, during our junior year.
Right inside the entrance there was a small table set up with a bunch of FCHS and Lambkin-related mementos, including a portrait of the boy's basketball team. Why not the girls? I thought. They were the ones who won the state championship that year!
But that table pretty much summed up the organization of the event. Dee had done a fantastic job getting the events organized, but she had been almost entirely on her own. Unlike many reunions, there was pretty much nothing special planned related to the class or the school. On the first night, we had simply been a bunch of people with generic name tags----no presentations, no fun awards, no poster boards of photographs, no little films, no purple and gold decorations. The last time there had been anything like that was at the ten-year reunion in 1993, which was well organized at the Country Club. Nobody had stepped forward since then, except for Dee.
I had expected as much before arriving. During the run-up to the event on Facebook, less than a dozen people had even responded to Dee's urgent pleas to sign up in advance for the events using the web portal. To my discredit, I had been stand-offish, too cool for school, until I realized that everyone else was doing the same. At that point I enthusiastically jumped in and pledged myself to everything available. That's how I wound up being the only person to sign up and pay for the class golf tournament.
The Hideout was packed, since the 80's-palooza was a popular public event. The crowd was mixed with people not only from our class, but also folks from our old cross-town rivals Poudre and Rocky, who were also having reunions that weekend (although I didn't see many of them there---the Lambkins were definitely the largest group).
Through the thick crowd I could see Grey H. wearing his old purple letter jacket with the gold block 'C' on it that he had earned from varsity swimming. That was pretty much the extent of the overt school spirit for the entire weekend.
The four women and I threaded our way through the outdoor courtyard to the open-air bar. They found a table with some of our classmates. I went off to stand in the very long snaking line to buy drinks. The line moved painfully slow. One of my classmates was standing behind me. I commented how this situation would be unacceptable on the show Bar Rescue, which I've previously written about. I mimicked the choleric host of that show berating the manager for having only a single serving line for such a large crowd.
About twenty minutes later I returned to the table where the women had stationed themselves, setting down ten bottles of beer on the table and offering them to anyone who walked up. I had told Anita F. (who was wearing her vintage English Beat t-shirt in honor of the 80's music event) that I planned on dancing, but it turned out that I barely moved from my bar stool the entire rest of the evening, just letting folks come by while I chatted with them.
Most of the folks I talked to were people I'd seen the night before---Paul H., Scott M., Trent S., Trey S., Doug S., Dean V., Diane M., Penny M., Steve L,, Jeannie K., Kim B., etc.---but there were a few people who hadn't made the first evening, including Tim H., the tallest guy in the class and the star of the boy's basketball team. He had been on the infamous tower climb expedition, and like Steve V. he marveled with joy that Matt Trump had been along too. He gave me a fist bump of victory across the table.
Later Sherri S. and I chatted at length about language learning. It turns out her husband is an applied linguist. She made me give her my email address so that her husband and I could talk about a verb conjugation computer program I had developed.
Me squeezed between the marvelous B. sisters, Shawna and Susan.
I also got to talk to Shawna B., who had been in the drama club, and who was one of the few people still in contact with C., my Alamosa Girl, who now resided on the East Coast, as I learned. I told Shawna to pass on my regards.
Despite my text and Erin's pleas, Randy and my other old friends didn't show up. Charles and Karin had already gone back to Denver, it turns out.
More than a few people mentioned Eric S., asking where he was. I told them that I had recently seen him in Albuquerque, and that my impression was that there was no way that he was coming. He had left Fort Collins long ago and had made a new life for himself in New Mexico.
Some of us wound up chatting with folks from Rocky for a while. We had thought one of them was Tim S., one of our long-lost classmates. It turns out the guy from Rocky had actually worked at Woodward Governor with Tim, so we got an update on him anyway.
As the evening wore on, people drifted away in the night, mostly without overt good-byes to everyone. It was better that way, without forced sentiment. Among those remaining, word circulated that there was to be a bonfire out at Carol W.'s house. She was certainly one of Diane M.'s rivals for the prettiest girl in class, and was also in A Cap choir with me. After high school she married someone from the class before us, and had a couple kids, along with a musical singing career. She had recently gotten remarried to a local real estate developer who owned a large ranch outside of town near the little town of Timnath. Howard asked by email about her, since he had a crush on her back in the day.
After midnight, when I announced out loud to the table that I needed a ride to the bonfire, I immediately got multiple offers from the various women folk. I chose Erin and Elaine's bid, and rode with them in Erin's mini-van. They both said they were starving, so I told them that there was a Carl's Jr. open on Mulberry. We went through the late night drive through and got burgers and fries, cracking jokes about it like the old days. Later on Facebook Erin said that was one of her favorite parts of the entire reunion.
We got lost several times in the dark of rural Larimer County trying to follow the directions to Carol's ranch. At the ornate gate, we had to punch in an access code and then follow a long dirt road over a bridge and past a pen of longhorn cattle. The house was brightly lit in the blackness of the night. A few cars were already parked around in the driveway and along the road. The Milky Way was brilliant above the dark outline of the Rockies to the west.
The house was large and beautiful, furnished in classic western decor. About a dozen people showed up, including Kathy, Jo, Diane, Grey, and Dean V., as well as some of the women who had been on the Lambkin cheerleading squad. Neil H. started to build the bonfire outdoors, but we decided just to have indoors in the fireplace. Carol was a great hostess, serving us drinks.
Trey S. texted me, asking me if I'd gone to Carol's place. I told him to come by, but it turned out that he had to go to a (real) golf tournament early the next morning in Fort Morgan.
I wanted to talk to people, but it was well past my normal bedtime and I'd had three beers, which is enough to put me down most of the time. So mostly I just played introvert, sitting and listening to people talk with each other.
The only new person I spoke to was Brenda H., who had been a cheerleader and was our class Prom Queen. I reminisced with her about the time during the spring of our senior year when the two of us were chosen as students of the month by the local Lions Club. We both rode together downtown to the Lincoln Center in the back of a limo as honorary guests for the luncheon. We gave short speeches about our plans after graduation---mine about going to Georgetown, and hers about becoming a flight attendant.
"I think they were much more interested in your speech than mine," I told her. That seemed to blow her mind. She insisted the reverse was true. I forgot to ask her if she ever followed through on the flight attendant plans.
By that time I was starting to flag. Thankfully folks started trickling home not long after that. I said good-bye to everyone one-by-one, giving them hugs and shaking hands, and thanked Carol for being such a great hostess. I also said good-bye to Erin and Elaine too, my old/new good friends. Erin made me promise to visit her and her family some time soon up where they live near Vail. "You can crash on our couch," she told me.
Then I got a ride back to my hotel with Kathy and Jo. Under the portico of the Hilton, they climbed out of the car to give me warm good-bye hugs.
It was almost three o'clock in the morning when I rode the glass elevator up to my floor and then collapsed face-first onto my bed.
The next day there was a family picnic scheduled at the new high school. I had thought about going, but I decided that it was time to drift away into the ether again until the next reunion. Besides, the new high school is an abomination barely fit to be called a school.
The staff of Spilled Ink, 1982-83, in front of the old building. Photo by Howard C.
Unidentified: Erin O., Grey H., Dee M., Beth B., Randy S., and Eric S., among other fantastic people that yours truly (trying to look like a serious newspaper editor) has had the privilege of knowing.
As I came down into the lobby for breakfast, I saw that the doors of the hotel conference rooms were wide open and that a large crowd of older folks were gathered indoors socializing. Curious about the event I approached the reception table by the doors, mingling through white-haired people, some of them hobbling with walkers. All of them were wearing nice laminated name tags with purple and gold lettering.
At the table there was a large poster board announcing the event. It was the 50th reunion for the FCHS class of 1963.
My curiosity instantly morphed into a mixture of poignancy and horror.
We gotta run like the fucking wind, as I later told Howard in Silver Spring by email---as hard as we can, for as long as we can.
When I woke up the next morning at the Hilton, surprisingly not hungover in the least, I cleaned up and rode the glass elevator down from my floor through the giant indoor atrium to have breakfast at the hotel buffet. I heaped the plate full of plenty of eggs and bacon.
My very first byline
The first night of the reunion had been such a blast that I almost
wished it was over. It seemed as if nothing could top the evening at
Potts, and I wanted to just let it sit in my mind as is---perfect, as I said.
The only thing I had scheduled until evening was a get-together that Trey T. had invited me to as he left Potts. Actually he had simply told me an address on Whedbee Street just south of Old Town, and a time in the early afternoon. I assumed it was some kind of get-together. But maybe he was setting me up for a mob hit as a revenge for some past injury. In any case, having no other plans, I figured I'd take the random cue and drop by there.
After breakfast I decided to kill some time by meandering around town a bit until evening. I went outside through the revolving doors, thinking I'd walk all the way into Old Town, but I immediately saw a yellow cab sitting out front of the hotel. I walked over to the open window and asked the driver if he was free. Turns out he was, so I got in the back seat and told him to take me downtown to the corner of Mountain and College.
As it happens he was from New York---from Flushing, Queens, to be precise. "Oh, yeah, like the Nanny," I said. That made him laugh.
I told him I'd lived for a while in Staten Island, and that it was a pleasure to get a ride from a real New York cabbie. Once you meet any ex-New Yorker and you tell them you lived there too, it opens up a whole layer of conversation, because you know you have a common vocabulary of places and experiences.
"How long did you live in New York?" he asked me.
"Long enough to realize that everyone there is trying to escape to here," I replied, without missing a beat.
He said he lived in Loveland. "It's fantastic," he said. "I love driving
into work into the morning---the mountains, the open sky."
After he dropped me off, I walked up and down Old Town Square (built in 1985), which was swarming with a lively Saturday summer crowd. The new Fort Collins is, conservatively, fifty times more lively and interesting than it was back in high school. Say what you will about population growth, but there's no way I'd go back to the way things used to be. There was almost literally nothing to do in town back then.
Mr. Fawcett, you've changed a bit!
In the early afternoon, weary of the heat, I walked over to the address Trey had given me. It was an old house amid a well-kept pre-War neighborhood. I thought no one was home, so I sat the front porch for a while relaxing in a wicker chair until Trey saw me through the window and let me in. I turns out I was one of the first to arrive. We hung around in the kitchen drinking beers with his wife as other guests arrived, including some folks I'd seen the night before---Anita F., Marcy N., Sherri S. (the only female member of our poker group), and Susie C., among them.
But there were other people from our class, including folks whom I didn't see or get to talk to at Potts the night before, notably Amy J., who used to date my friend James, and whom I technically "won" from James in a bet over Super Bowl XVII. I didn't bring that up to Amy, but if I had, she surely would have laughed about it. She was always a good sport about those things.
At Trey's urging we went out onto the back screen porch. Most of the womenfolk peeled off to their own table to "gossip." I spent a good deal of time talking to Jephta B., who was not in our class, but a few years younger than us. She was part of Trey's larger circle of friends, which was quite expansive. I always thought of them as the unpretencious artistic folks, the introverts, the punks, and the ones involved in such things as the Society for Creative Anachronism.
Jephta is actually a close friend of my sister Kate, who was in the class two years behind me, and was part of that circle much more than I was. Last year my sister helped Jephta organize a chamber music festival in Fort Collins. Jeptha herself is a violinist an has the graceful mannerisms of a woman who plays that instrument. She decided to sit next to me instead of at the gossip table.
I reminded Jephta that I knew who she was, and that I had actually been in her house with my sister the year before to videotape some musicians for a promo. It took a few minutes for her to recognize me. She got out her smartphone and commented on one of my sister's Facebook posts, saying "Guess who's sitting right next to me?"
More people arrived until the screen porch was almost full. I didn't know most of them, or had barely known them. They were more in my sister's circle of friends than my own. Then Bill Tremblay Sr. and his wife Cynthia arrived in mid afternoon. My parents are friends with both of them and see them from time to time.
Bill's son was in my class, and was part of Trey's circle, but there was no way he was going to be there for the reunion. His lives in Boston, where he actually shacked up with my sister for a time back in the 1980's after they moved there together, and is not the type to be found at such small-talk-oriented social events. In high school I remembered that one of his ambitions was to build his own set of chain mail. He used to talk about such things in our French class, en français, when prompted about what he was going to do during the weekend.
After a couple hours the screen room was packed with people. It was about that time that dark clouds started to roll in off the mountains. I told Jephta that they looked like funnel clouds. About twenty minutes later a huge wind burst came through the screen porch, followed by a heavy downpour and then a torrent of marble-size hail that filled the backyard. It was tremendous fun. I love those kinds of storms.
Eventually we were driven inside, but by then the party was winding down. I was eager to get back to the hotel to rest for the evening coming up. Anita F. graciously offered to give me a ride back to the Hilton.
Anita used to be in drama with me back in the old days.
She mostly worked crew while I was mostly on stage.
She wanted to avoid College Avenue on the way to my hotel, so we wound up going down Remington Street, which took us right straight past the old high school. It's still so bizarre to see it now, even though I've lived in Fort Collins recently.
It's now the arts facility of Colorado State, completely remodeled inside and out, with a huge new additional auditorium on the north end, built in the style of the old building. "Our high school graduated and went to college," as I like to say.
In the lawn out front of the building is installed a giant can of Campbell's Soup built in the style of Andy Warhol, and signed by Warhol himself during a visit to CSU in 1981. It used to be on the main campus but they moved it to the new "University Arts Center" a couple years ago.
I know all this because that visit by Warhol to CSU was the very first story I covered for the high school newspaper, during the fall of my junior year. The old newspaper office was on the second floor right above where the soup can is now installed.
Moreover the CSU art professor who brought Warhol to campus for that visit was the father of a good friend of mine, one who chose not to attend the reunion.
"This play is called Our Town" (RIP Ken S.)
But what would Simon Stimson think?
Seeing the soup can there, and all the grandiose new performing arts
stuff in and around the building is a downright surreal experience, not
just for me but for all of us.
I told Anita something I've told other folks, about seeing how the building turned out.
"Imagine, having a dream about all this..." I said as we passed the old structure,
"Something like this," I said. "I dreamed that I was inside our old high school, but now it was part of CSU. And our old auditorium had become an organ recital hall. And they had built a huge brand new auditorium on the north side, where the gym was. The new one was beautiful and large."
"You wouldn't believe any of that was true," I said.
After Paul and I are done taking hits, we come back inside to the Clubhouse at Potts, and I walk over to Susie
C. to chat again. She makes a sniffing gesture around me and I can tell
what she's thinking.
I'm instantly mortified at the reek I must be giving off.
It's not that I care much about people knowing what I've been doing. It's just that I don't like the idea of it distracting them, or having to talk about it in a way that breaks the coolness. I've known a few people who, upon sensing the same thing with their noses, will blurt out, "HAVE YOU BEEN SMOKING!?"
Such a thing is definitely, well, damn uncool, because it takes over the conversation in a shaming way. It's a big buzz kill. I'd rather talk about something else.
But Susie's cool. Turns out she just wishes she had some of her own. She starts waxing about the great merits of that particular substance.
"If I had had access to it in high school, I would have been a much different person," she says, implying that it would have been for the better.
I decide it's best to hang around her for a few minutes to let the smell dissipate. After we talk a while about the strangeness of the recent legalization in Colorado, I ask her to sniff me again. She says I'm OK now.
After that, not surprisingly, I'm way more relaxed and find myself laughing and joking with one person after another. There's so many people to talk to. I make eye contact briefly with so many folk while talking to other people, and I realize that I'm only going to be able to chat with half the people I want to.
For much of the evening, I wind up talking to Kathy C. and Jo B., both of whom I barely talked to in high school, if at all. Kathy and Jo treat me like their new best friend, like a boy they are fighting over. I'm basking in this long-delayed female attention from my classmates.
They were both on the cross country team, which was pretty much the coolest sport to participate in at FCHS. We were not a jockocracy in the traditional sense. We were supposed to have arete, after all, perfectly fit in body and mind. Our school was Athens. The other schools were barbarians.
Kathy relates something we all know about our school back then---the magnificence of the architecture of the building. She says she was supposed to go to Rocky, our cross town rival built in the Seventies, but she transferred after junior high. "On the form, when they asked me why I wanted to transfer, I put down because Rocky has no windows."
The evening flies by. Towards the end, I'm talking with Trey S., who is coincidentally standing next to Trey T. beside the pizza table. I tell them they need a third Trey, of course.
Trey S. is a towering guy, well over six feet tall. I didn't hang out with him much in high school, but we became good friends when I moved back to Fort Collins a couple years back. During a rough time in my life post-divorce when many of my old friends seemed to turn their back on me, Trey was sometimes the only person in town who actually seemed to give a damn about me, and wanted to do anything with me. As such he's earned a great deal of gratitude and loyalty from me. I still get random texts from him asking if I want to see a movie. Lately I've had to text him back that I'm in Arizona or California or wherever I've been.
He mentions that Steve V., who's been sitting over the corner with his posse of friends, has a photo album from the time that we all secretly (and illegally) climbed the tower of the school at the end of our senior year right before graduation. It was sort of tradition to do that.
There were about a dozen of us. We had to break in the school one night and then shimmy out onto the roof before ascending the tower from the outside. Then we all dropped down through a trap door into the interior of the cupola, where we sat around all through the night in a circle drinking beer and smoking a then-illegal substance (my first time, as it happens). It's one of the best memories I have from my high school experience.
Steve---who lives in New Mexico now---has always been a popular extroverted guy with a big circle of friends who really adore him. I really wasn't part of his circle back in the day, but I knew people who were, like Coop. I'm not sure how I even got invited on that bizarre tower-climbing expedition. Maybe through Molly, who was the only girl along. But in any case I figured they'd all forgotten I was even along that night.
Turns out I was very much wrong. I meander back to where Steve is sitting in a booth against the back wall. He sees me and calls out my name loudly with great enthusiasm, as if he's been waiting all evening for me to cover over to see him. We give each other a big warm hug.
He can't wait to show me the photo album he has from that night back in May 1983. He flips open to the incriminating photos with all of us in it, and goes through them, pointing me out, laughing with glee with each appearance of my face. It's clear from his reaction, and those standing around him, that they can barely believe that I was on that trip. They love itthat I was there, that I was one of them.
While I'm still reeling from all this love I feel from everyone around me, midnight rolls around and the Potts Clubhouse begins to shut down. In a chaotic raucous manner of a Gatsby party, we tickle out of the clubhouse, and many of us simply cross the parking lot to the main bar of Potts, which is still open. I walk over there flanked by Kathy and Jo. Inside the main bar, about thirty of us are still hanging around, refusing to call it a night. We are intermixed with a large group of extremely attractive young women dressed in black, who seem to be some kind of angelic cheerleading squad.
I circulate and talk to some of the same people as in the Clubhouse. While I'm standing at the bar ordering a beer, I see jovial Doug S., who was on the basketball team and was also in a Hollywood movie as a kid with Robbie Benson. The movie was shot in Fort Collins. "I still get royalities from that," he says. "Every year except one."
He's a big golf and tennis player. I make him laugh by telling him that I was the only person who signed up and paid for the reunion golf tournament before Dee canceled it. I'd declared myself class golf champion by default, even though I don't even golf (very well).
After he leaves, I turn around and see Elaine M. and Penny M., whom I didn't know well at all, but whom I recognize from Facebook (half of my almost 200+ FB friends are people I went to high school with---the Lambkins of our day are a scarily tight group after all these years).
I call out both their names. They look at me as if I've just delivered some kind of stunning news to them. Elaine's mouth is hanging open.
"You remember who I am?" she says, almost staggering.
"Um, yeah, of course," I tell her. "Why wouldn't I?"
"Because you were way up here," she says, putting her hand above her head, "and I was way down here." She puts her hand down by her waist as she says that last part.
"What the heck are you talking about?" I tell her.
I tell her that I always thought of FCHS as some beautiful utopian community where everyone was perfectly equal and everything was in harmony.
"That's because you were up there," she tells me. The evening is turning into one of the most eye-opening experiences of my entire life. I'm beginning to see my entire life in a new light.
As we stand there other folk walk up and join our conversation. Elaine tells them that she can't believe Matt Trump remembers who she is. I decide to make it into a big joke.
I put my arm around her like an old pal.
"She's always joking around like that," I say, giving her a squeeze with my arm. "We were best friends back in the day."
"I'll never forget that you were the only girl to ask me to Sadie Hawkins our junior year," I tell her, in front of the others around us.
Elaine has to struggle to remember who her actual date was that year. "You had girls queuing up to go out with you," she tells me.
"Maybe like the letter Q, as in qrazy," I say.
Later, standing with Charles, Randy, Karin, and her husband John at the bar, I tell them that I feel like the luckiest S.O.B. ever to walk the planet.
"To have been born when we did---in all this prosperity, and to get to live in this perfect little town at the time we did. I feel like I got surf the apogee of civilization."
As I say this, I make a big sweeping gesture with my hand above my head, like a roller coaster coming to the crest of a hill, except at the top I just keep my hand going without letting it go down at all. Maybe that last part is just wishful thinking, but I just can't bare to think otherwise that night.
As people trickle out of the bar, leaving only a handful of us, I see Randy sitting at a table on the other side of the room with Penny and Diane M., who was easily among the two or three prettiest girls in our entire class. We were in A Capella choir together. We never spoke a single word to each other. My teenage shy self was terrified of her.
I walk up behind Randy in the booth and pull the opposite stunt that I did with Elaine.
"Randy S-----!" I say loudly, pretending as if I haven't seen him since high school. "What have you been up to all these years!? You lived in Los Angeles?" He gets a big kick out of that. He knows I have an odd-ball sense of humor.
I
plop myself down in the booth next to Diane, who has kept herself up
very well over the years and still looks very good. We strike up a long
nice conversation. She remarks how the two of us never spoke in high
school, but it's awesome to finally get to know each other. She seems
glowing from the attention I am giving her, as I am from hers, although I
am playing it cool and relaxed of course, as if it's perfectly natural
that the two of us would be hanging out.
At the table
we discuss how the new FCHS, which opened in the Nineties on the edge of
town in the midst of new subdivisions, flat out sucks. Everyone knows
that. It looks like any other modern brick suburban school. We all
detest it as some kind of abomination.
Diane says there
is a rumor that the budget for the music department is being cut
drastically. They might eliminate some of the music programs. I look at
her with an open gape of astonishment. She looks back at me with the
same expression.
"They can't get rid of A Cap," I tell her. "They just can't."
Randy, who lives in town again, and who has kids in the local school district, says that with the new school of choice
set-up, Rocky, which we always thought of as the "jock" school, is now
ironically the best performing arts school in town. The new FCHS has
barely enough enrollment to support many of the old programs.
"But we're the Home of the Champions," I exclaim, with theatrical pride. "We're supposed to be excellent at everything!"
The evening ends with me sitting next to Diane, discussing what we both have been up to over the eyars. As the bar shuts down, I wind up getting a ride back to the Hilton with Kathy and Jo, along with Randy and Charles, who is staying at Randy's place, and who is more than three sheets to the wind. I haven't seen him like that in a long time. He's in rare form, just like the old days, making jokes about how he wants to see Kathy naked (a theme he keeps coming back to). She knows him well enough from the cross country team and shrugs off his drunken jokes with casual ease. Jo is well entertained and keeps making comments asking if there are any late-night liquor stores open.
I get out of Kathy's car under the portico of the hotel, thanking them for the ride and telling them I'll see them tomorrow night. Back up in my room, with my nice view of campus and my king size bed, I think how the only word to describe the entire evening was perfection---not a single negative note the entire evening. I think how I'm being idealistic, that there are certainly people there who didn't have as good a time as I did---painful memories and all----but it's almost scary how awesome it all was.
As I lie in bed, still a bit stoned from earlier in the evening, Elaine's words echo in my head: You were way up there.
So you were right all along, C. You knew me better than I knew myself back then.But I'm so glad you didn't make it here for this. I would have been disappointed to see you there. It wouldn't have been your style at all to come back. You were meant to flee this place long ago and never look back, just as you did.
