My Own Private Abilene -a Trilogy in Two Parts (I)

Part One--Howell

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, naked hysterical
I saw the best minds of my generation
I saw some of the best minds of my generation
I saw some of my generation--Bright shining, funny, loving
Empty or cold,
some successful on their own terms, others on those of others,
some both;
confused, divorced, hopeful
scattered, beautiful, thinner, sick,
balder, grayer, plumper, utterly unchanged,
much plumper, paled and beaten, well-weathered, angry,
generous, wanting, nursing marriage on last legs and forgiving.
Searching.

This was my first visit to this section of Central Texas in several years (my parents left sometime in '97), and much of it has not changed. War and oil boom housing of the '20's, '40's and '70's still dominates the archetecture of the central city; the McMansions of the South Side never age. I'm told the population is shrinking, which is appropriate. I expect that someday the only permanent residents will be professors at local church colleges and Air Force retirees.
Telling people that I'm spending the weekend at a class reunion commonly begs the response that they would "never attend anything like that. Why relive the pain?," they ask. I believe that past pain is just that, past, I reply. Many of these people are people I like and I want to catch up.
As further evidence that I don't pay attention enough, I arrive early for Friday night's activities an hour early. In retrospect, the feeling I get when I realize that my entrance is hyperpunctual (chunky former football players are still putting up a balloon or two and the cheery/confused woman that greets me at the door is still fishing yearbook photos out of a FritoLay box) is oddly akin to that sensation of gangly teen awkwardness that was high school. Maybe it's best that I've investigated that sensation in the first two minutes of the reunion. That feeling doesn't persist, but there still remains the need for profound embarrassment before the night is over. It is twofold.

Awkward Conversation Number One.
Scene: I stand, DietCoke in hand with a sad looking former female friend and confidant.

MEIt is really great to see you blah blah blah blah,

Here, proud of the fact that I am aware of her parent's (with whom I was quite close in high school)divorce, I will attempt to renew our lost sense of intimacy by talking with her about a harsh reality)

So, how's your mom holding up?



HERShe's okay. She loves being a grandmother, [further details omitted here] I'll see her in a little while.



MESomeone told me your dad lives in [an unnamed city]?



HERYeah. He likes it there. I don't see him very much.
There, I've almost got us back on an equal footing. Gathering my superpowers of empathy from a sketchy narrative has brought us together. My interior monologue recites the following: "I know these things about you, thus, I'm a good person worth knowing. I am easy to talk to. I matter." Now I can relax and speak freely. Watch me.



MESo, how's [your sister]?



HER[pause]She died in a car accident several years ago. [another pause]Y'know, Michael...this is really why I didn't want to come to this damn reunion...[voice trails off as she walks away briskly]

Shit. This is followed a mere fifteen minutes later by
Awkward Conversation Number Two
Scene: I move from the last disaster to a table made up of some close friends and a few strangers.


MEHello, friends and strangers.



FRIENDSHello.



ME(leaning over to speak in someone's ear, but screaming over the deejay that has spent the entire evening playing absolutely nothing we listened to in high school)
Hey, [name withheld] Did you notice [person "A"] and [person "B" that dated "A"throughout high school and later married to someone else] over there? They haven't been able to tear themselves away from each other for a couple of hours. I wonder what their respective spouses think of that?



NAME WITHHELDI dunno, Michael. Why don't you ask them directly? They're sitting right next to me and heard everything you just screamed in my ear. I believe they have already noticed. (I swear, this is exactly what Name said to me).



MEY'know, Michael...this is really why I didn't want to come to this damn reunion...[voice trails off as I walk away briskly

Thus, my investigation of teen angst and anxiety plumbed, I can enjoy the rest of the weekend. Saturday morning, I wake to (or, rather am awakened by)Mitch and Katie's four-year-old, who was ready at six a.m. for a little breakfast and some cartoon action. Lacking the heart to tell him that his parents went to bed only two ungodly hours earlier, as we felt the need to catch up on all the scars of the last eight years, I decide to fix him a bowl of cereal and we sit down for a little Angelina Ballerina. I discover that Angelina is an obnoxious little prig.
Reunion participants have been given two choices for Saturday--either kid's day on the school campus or a golf scramble. I spent three years of high school having those guys make fun of my golf game, so I opt for kid's day. I want to see everyone's progeny, anyway. Upon reflection, most of the kids are great (not surprisingly, the kids that annoy me are the spawn of people that annoyed me twenty years ago) and luckily my old friend "Billy Sol" Tong (with whom I haven't spoken since '88) comes along, thus ensuring I'm not the only bachelor in the group.

An afterthought: At the dinner that night I watch him visit with the
assembled group. While puffed up trial attorneys and car dealers wander
the room flashing Rolexi and wax successful, here's Billy Sol, one of the
most financially successful individuals in the room, who did everything as
he said he would, in the order he drafted in high school. With him, there is no
preento him--in fact, very little talk about work at all. He is exactly as
my faulty memory records him--a class act. As he talks to Mitch, (also a
moral, solid, funny man) I quietly pat myself on the back for one thing: I
may have done a great deal of stupid shit in my adolescence, but picking
friends was not one of them.

Meanwhile, as "kid's afternoon" progresses there is much more information to digest, now coming in rapid-fire, Reader's Digesty chunks now. There are mortgages, infidelities and failed marriages or engagements, failed businesses, etc. Sadly, there are infant deaths as well.
It is in this conversation, this one of especially profound loss, that I find the core value of the trip. Not because of the subject--I'm no stranger to unfair prices paid by parents (and that's another story)--but because of what I bring to it. The information comes from a woman who I've venerated over the years, raised to an utterly unrealistic avatar, my Uberfrau of brains, looks, compassion and domesticity. The girl I should have found a way with, but didn't (which is certainly all bullshit) and I am rocked by the information. It is not the news itself that rocks me, but the simple fact that it is news at all. The fact that this woman, whom I loved but didn't love well, who seemed so long ago to simultaneously understand me and know nothing about me at all endured this loss without me. Without so much as a card or phone call to her mother, much less a presence at the funeral. That these mentioned fantasies of her, destroyed the first nanosecond I tapped her on the shoulder Friday night and looked into her sad, sad eyes were further atomized by the glaring understanding of my own aloof absence.
This is important, I think. This manifestation of my natural tendencies: to compartmentalize people and events and emotions; to keep (beyond) safe distances; for acting as the polar, utter opposite of the man I conceive myself to be (and portray myself as) is what makes this trip bittersweet.
I've missed as many of the car wrecks, divorces, births and successes as I possibly could, yet drove to Central Texas, showed up hoping to be the great guy I think everyone knows and remembers--this anachronistic notion as empty and vapid as the music that deejay kept playing I've arrived expecting these people (for who I once cared a great deal) to greet me as if I've never left, that I've kept in touch, that I would matter to them, when, in fact, I've done nothing to deserve that. My emotional capital nothing more than junk bonds.
In the grand total, I'm the only person I caught up with this weekend. Exchanges with almost everyone else were ultimately casualized and shallow. I felt and expressed genuine joy and concern to my former friends, learned their histories and played with their kids, but retained no credibility. The nods and hugs, in light of my abandonment, well-intended, no more than play-acting. In the end, it was only Michael Stephens and I that got much better acquainted this weekend--the mulleted, hormonally-tweaked eighteen-year-old and this new, balding version.

Frankly, I don't think much of the guy.

There is much more about these two-and-a-half days that I could spew forth for you. There is much of these remarkable people that I think you would find funny and see them as I do.
There are dramas and comedies galore that, with a little editing, you'd smile at. The simple absurdities of reunions, etc. are delicious.
Instead, I'll keep much of this affectionate ranting to myself. To elaborate further on their grace and glory would be a form of theft, as I've done nothing to repay them for knowing how remarkable they are.

It is one thing to tell you that it is none of your business, but very much another to confess that it has become none of mine.

--31 July, 2005