I never went to a high school reunion. I used to imagine that I would show up with a beautiful woman — I would have rented one if I had to — and if not a beautiful woman than a spitfire of a woman who would get into everybody’s face. I also used to imagine that I would have had a book deal, or somebody big was appearing in a movie that I had just written. I also imagined that I would fill out my clothes really well, that I’d be dressed in Armani and that nobody would recognize me but when they found out it was me they’d all be impressed and sorry they weren’t nicer to me when I was a kid.

But of course they wouldn’t have recognized me because I had recreated myself so far away from who I used to be.

I used to shuffle. I used to stare at the floor. I had braces of course. One time, in some kind of identity fit, I wore white pants to school. Only the once. One time, while I was making some sort of speech to the school, to the entire school, I had my hands in my pockets, and, nervously, unconsciously, I played with my zipper. I didn’t zip it up and down. I guess I just jangled with the zipper bit. I learned about this later. Much to my horror.

I understand it was really important for Janis Joplin to go to her high school reunion and rub her success and glory in other people’s faces. It didn’t work. It went terribly wrong. And my former fantasy — even if it had been true and it is so far from true now — would have gone terribly wrong too. First, I wouldn’t have impressed anyone. If the woman, if the money, hell, if the Armani suit were true, nobody would have been impressed. And they shouldn’t be. But more importantly, it’s a serious error to want to prove something to people who passed out of your life fifteen years ago. They didn’t care so much about me then and I didn’t care about them. So it all works out.

I have quite some time ago given up that fantasy. I don’t need to prove to my graduating class that I can fill out a suit. I don’t need to prove to them that I have nice teeth now, that I can dance now, that I can walk with my head up, that — quite unlike then — I’m getting some, that I’m not shy anymore.

Of course I am still shy. Of course I still don’t fill out an Armani suit, not that I have one. But I do not have to prove anything to a memory, to phantoms of a memory. And more than anything else, the realization is liberating. And hell, if a twenty year reunion comes up in four years, I might just go as myself. Now if I happened to be dating a spitfire of a woman, that would be sweet; but I promise I won’t rent one.

SS