Fifty Years Later
May 13
Tomorrow’s the 50th multi-year reunion. Tonight was a gathering of just our class. Happiness and warmth all around. Everyone seemed in good health, even Mark Balven, who had aortic surgery four days ago and was supposed to be home recovering, not out partying. Sixty-seven doesn’t seem all that old when the room is full of people that age and happy.
I managed to have good conversations with most of the people there. Long ones with Claudia, Terri Wilson, Kathy Kossman, Cabbie, Mark Ditch, Dennis Ross, Rusty Bond, Tim Holt, Ron Steffens, Bob LaPlant, Talu, our buddy Kevin Brown, Bob’s wife, Rusty’s wife, Joyce’s husband, Terri’s husband. And short but good conversations with Wendy Wood and her husband, Dawn Dozier and her husband, Carol Hassler, Barb Helfrich and husband Steve, Jill Althage, Mary Frankenberg, Phyllis Basham, and some others—but I think you get the picture.
It was very satisfying. The affection was uninhibited, not disguised behind jokes and teasing as it might have been our first time around. We’ve finished growing up. It was people who have reached retirement or soon will. I saw and heard the relaxation. I asked most of them how life had been for them, and heard their summaries. They sometimes asked me the same. A few of the men asked if I had married. There was interest in a life lived in New York. Some of the women gave me hugs or half-hugs immediately, they initiating it—Claudia, Terri, Phyllis, Carol, Joyce. Claudia took to me like we’d once been close friends, a gratification worth the 54-year wait. Most of the ladies looked better to me than I would have expected.
All across that room I saw not only distinctive facial features but distinctive mannerisms, backs, legs. Bob’s slouch, Claudia’s in-turned knees and shapely calves, Talu’s slenderness, Kevin’s straight torso and crossed arms. I had no shyness or inhibition. I showed who I was and activated conversations. I told people how good it was to see them, not wanting there to be any doubt. I got a lot of laughs. I feel bad that I had a memory lapse on one girl’s name and her smile turned to a mock frown. I’ll seek her out tomorrow and greet her by name and embrace her.
My rum and cokes were only $3.50 each, a blessing of the Elks Club, where the party was held. Bob said he would sponsor me if I want to become a member, and maybe I will. I’ve never belonged to a club, but maybe in this town, at this time of my life, the belonging would be nice. No requirement to wear Elk horns or recite things in Babylonian, according to what I got from Bob.
Balven didn’t remember me, but some others did whom I barely used to know. My long hair was the main thing people remembered, and Joyce at one point took my head in her hands and combed my remembered hair with her fingers to show someone the length. She’s the same sunny presence she used to be, but now uninhibited with her attentions, everyone’s mother and girlfriend both, and looking quite good in blue jeans. I loved standing next to Claudia as we talked, seeing that she’s tall but still below my height, thinking “We would have had exactly this height differential in high school,” feeling her embraceability, then and now, as an almost inevitable next movement of my arms.
May 13
Terry Askay wasn’t present. As of a few years ago she was reportedly doing well somewhere. She did indeed cut a most attractive figure when we knew her. Steve Batman has mentioned that she’s the girl he most likes to recall. My conversation with Talu was mostly a walk-through of her marriage, schooling, and jobs. I was a little more my New York, artist self with her, felt more of like soul with her, the way I also felt Lee was “one of us.” Talus had an interesting smattering of schools and cities and ended up an art teacher for kids. She announced to others that I was her “school bus buddy.” She remembered you after I described your hair (“a big pile of dark hair that leaned a little to one side” with hand gestures to illustrate). Yes, Steve Balven was Mark’s older brother, tall, big biceps, celebrity handsome. Did he say hello by throwing his head back? Haha, that sounds right. Mark was a remarkably welcoming and chummy guy in high school. Made me feel included a number of times, which I still inwardly thank him for. I might mention it to him. Was surprised he didn’t remember me. I get the impression he is understood to have declined in some way, maybe by way of drinking. He is known for his vocal, coarse politics, but is still warmly regarded, listened to with fond indulgence. Word rippled through town that week that he was undergoing surgery, and people last night were relieved to see him in attendance. Another of my dream girls was present last night, Sherie Tegler, but I didn’t get to speak with her. And I was in love with Wendy Wood for awhile but only got to speak with her briefly last night. In recent weeks I’ve remembered that Terri Wilson was a significant love of mine in junior high, succeeding Lee as the girl I exchanged love notes with. I remember that on many evenings in seventh grade as I put in my two hours of mowing grass I was in a state of dreaming bliss, not minding those hours of work because they were a time to to muse wantonly, thinking “Terri, Terri, Terri.” Her pretty face and body, her smart mind, her shiny brown hair, her young-woman shape, her penmanship (“Luv ya, Terri”). I think I must have stood close to her at times, because as I feel myself riding the lawn tractor on those warmly cool Holiday Ranch evenings, singing bits of love songs to the backing harmonics of the engine, thinking “Terri, Terri, Terri,” there is a remembered presence of a certain feminine fragrance—I can almost summon it to my nostrils now. And I got to sit beside her last night and have a rambling meeting of minds with her, with Terri Wilson! leaning into one another at times, again seeing her bright, open mind in action—we took a few moments to say how we ache over the puzzling politics of our dear classmates). She introduced me two or three times with, “Tom’s a writer.” She told me, “I love your writing. I really do. I love reading your Facebook posts. No, I really do. I love reading what you write.” She said all that not in one lunatic string, like I’m making it seem, but over the course of maybe two minutes, wanting to make sure I had registered how sincerely and strongly she meant it. It was like talking with a fellow enlightened New Yorker. It was impressive to see how thoughtful she was about others, very explicit in saying she was glad to see them or wanted to talk with someone before they left (“well bring your wife over here so I can say hi to her.”) There was a special chumminess between her and I that I felt I had earned let’s say 56 years ago at Locust Street Junior High, when she saw on the “W” side of the room and I on the “B” side and we bridged that gap with love notes folded into heartfelt triangles. We were too young to go on dates yet, so we could believe a romance conducted solely on notebook paper was real enough. I can remember pretty, smiling Wendy, Terri’s best friend, handing these notes to me and the starts and ends of classes and receiving mine. I was too shy to make the exchanges myself, but who knows, maybe that shyness was part of what girls liked about me then. I’m not shy now and last night I said, “Terri Wilson, Terri Wilson, Terri Wilson. Tell me about your life. How has your life been?” And she told me. Then we sat side by side drifting through other topics. She punctuates her remarks with eye-compressing smiles of frank enjoyment, and her voice still has a certain usual appealing timbre that in seventh grade was as much the reason I adored her as her pretty face and short skirts and shape-revealing sweaters and intelligence.
My description to Talu was actually “a crazy pile of dark hair…”
Ah, I don’t think Chris was here. Would love to see her. She was such a doll, such a zesty female force. I’ll look for her tonight.
Joyce: Do you dance?
Tom: Do I dance? I’m famous for my not-dancing.
Joyce: Oh, come on!
Tom: I’ll dance with you, sure, if it’s okay with Dennis.
Joyce: Oh, Dennis doesn’t care.
She takes my hand and leads me to the dance floor. It’s a slow dance. and she’s very close. I feel two points of contact on my chest. We talk in the comfortable way we have. She laughs in all the right places. The slow song ends and a fast one starts.
Tom: It’s over already?
Joyce: We just got in at the end.
Tom: I wait 49 years to dance with you and that’s it?
Joyce: That’s the way it goes.
Tom: Well, just wait another 49 years. I’ll show you dancing.