FCHS '83 Plus Thirty (Part I)

"Potts" on W. Elizabeth.
where the employees are cool.

Kelle: See I told you I never get invited to reunions! How's it going? :)

The first thing I did at the reunion once I was inside the door was head straight for the bar to get a drink---a porter, the darkest thing they had, of course.  Not that I needed to drink alcohol at that point, but I follow the Russian model---everyone drinks.

Everyone working behind the bar is barely above twenty-one. We must all seem ancient to them.

While I'm standing there, a large guy with a smile strikes up a conversation with me. Brett T.---I barely knew him in high school, but he sets the tone for the evening. "I always admired and looked up to you," he told me. I'm taken aback.

It was something I would hear over and over the next two days. I began to feel like a celebrity. What made it even more surprising in this case was that Brett and I had had a big blow up on Facebook over a political issue a couple years back and after that he had suspended his account. All that was now forgotten completely. I didn't bring it up and he seemed to have forgotten it. We talked at length about his work in the Caribbean managing hotels. I told him I'm a fan of the hospitality business. I could have talked to him all night, but forced myself to start to mingle.

A few minutes later I run into Marcy N., whom I knew quite well. Among other things, she played my wife in the school production of J.B. during our senior year.  We'd seen each other frequently over the years, and I even had dinner at her house in Aurora recently. Bui I learned she just got divorced. We swapped OkCupid stories.

I was delighted to see Dean V. after that. He was one of my poker buddies from back in junior high. We used to play in his father's academic study, which was filled with books. "It still is," he told me. "You can barely get in the room. " Dean's not on Facebook at all. "Good man," I told him. "Somebody has to hold out." 

While we're talking, Mark L. walks up to us. He lived across the street from Dean, and was part of our poker circle too. He's still got the same marvelous grin, but his hair is all grey. He invites me to come see him down in Erie, just outside Boulder.

So I make the circle of the room that way. Susan C. is there too. It's been a couple years since I saw her. She's the salt of the earth.

There's Grey H., who lives in Maryland and works for the federal government. He's one of the guys who back in high school we all knew was gay, but you couldn't really be out about that (at least not until our senior year, when our school became known around town as "Bi High"). I saw him a couple years back in D.C. with Howard. So Grey and I only had to catch up on a few years. He's very easy to talk to.

As for Howard himself, he never said he wasn't coming, but it was obvious from his Facebook posts. Like Coop he posted a gallery of his recent art creations instead. Later that evening I emailed him: "Not too late to get here and jump into the hot tub," I said, referring to a memorable moment from of ten-year reunion.

Notorious 12th century Freak Forest resident

I'm happy to see Trey T. and his wife. They came from North Carolina to be there.  He's an attorney.  I know a lot about Trey's life because he and I had a long behind-the-scenes messaging on Facebook two years ago when I was trying to get in contact with an old friend from college who didn't want to talk to me. He didn't know the person in question at all, but I had no one else to write to about the whole thing, and somehow wound up spilling my guts to him in a cryptic detective novel form, which is my style of writing. But I stopped writing to him right in the thick of it all, leaving him hanging.

"How did your quest turn out?" he asks me.

"Perfect," I tell him. "One hundred percent success. I got in contact with that person and resolved everything in a way that allowed me to move on."

I've never met Trey's wife, but I recognize her immediately and tell her that I know she is English and that they both met in Nottingham (a great irony for me, as it happens). 

People start coming up to me that I barely knew back then, but they seem really happy to see me, and flattered that I'm talking to them. People I hardly spoke to treat me as an old friend.

Who wasn't there at first? Pretty much all of the people I called my close friends after high school. Coop couldn't make it from California, but I knew that.. He's one of the few I'm still in close contact with, and he posted a fantastic apology on the Facebook reunion page.

But as for the rest of them---Charles B., Randy S., Karin R., Sarah S., Molly M., and the gang, well the only one I still talk to much at all is Randy, who I had lunch with just a few months ago when I was in town. I'm actually more close to most their spouses at this point.

But someone says there is rumor that Charles is coming. Everyone knows Charles. They all show up together about an hour later. It was the only poignant moment of the night, to realize that they had made plans to come together, and that I'm no longer part of that circle. But I already knew that, and I'm more than OK with it by now. The rest of the entire class seems to love me and treat me with some kind of reverence.

Nevertheless I wind up talking with all the old gang as if I'm still one of them. Charles and I lean against the bar and chat for a long time with Beth B., who was on the school newspaper with me, and who looks stunning after all these years. Karin is in top form, spinning off-the-cuff jokes that make me laugh out loud, just like the old days. Her husband and I chat for a long time. He's a solid guy from Maine. Even Sarah and I share a brief pleasant conversation---we used to be really close but really haven't had much to say to each other for a long time. Her husband is the guy I bought my Bimmer from, and he's delighted and a bit jealous to hear that I've driven it to 47 states since he sold it to me.

Molly was the only one who refused to come. I haven't spoken to her in years, and she stopped returning my emails a long time ago. I would have loved to see her and catch up. It only takes a half-second and a big smile for me to forgive everything and feel like old friends with someone again. All you have to do is ask. But sadly that seems to almost never happen in such cases.

Yes/Cool--54%, No/Not cool--46%

Paul H. was there, of course.. We all knew he was coming because he announced it on the Facebook reunion group page. I was really looking forward to seeing him. He was the other guy in our class beside Grey H. who was (almost) openly gay. Now he lives in the East and works for a state government there. His Facebook posts are about such things as going to leather conventions. He asked me if I wanted to get high, so we went outside beside the clubhouse and he got out his one-hitter.

We proceed to partake of an activity that is now completely legal in Colorado. Back in the day, it was the kind of activity that some of my classmates indulged in across the street from the school in a little grove of trees known as "Freak Forest." Needless to say it was grounds for severe discipline if one was caught.

While we stand there, one of the twenty-something employees of the bar peeks around the corner at us to check on our activity. He sees me holding the one hitter and the lighter, but just shrugs it off and walks away.

I tell Paul, "I have such great love for everybody in that room. There's not one person in there that I have anything against. Not one single thing against any one of them."

[continued Part II]