The Reunion Trip

I was on classmates.com a month ago or so, and noticed that my high school graduating class was having its 20th reunion. Even though I’d only gone to that school for my senior year (I moved into a very close-knit community and class the day before school started), I still thought it would be neat to “go back” and play some of my music.

My high school is in El Dorado Hills, a kind of posh suburb of Sacramento and an advanced form of gentrification – the kind that tears down the old supermarket and puts in a swanky stripmall with hyper-manicured pathays between the Starbucks and the day spa.

The reunion was held at a country club in the middle of a new, upscale land development. It was kind of like Levittown meets Dallas. Hummer-sized tract homes – like ENORMOUS homes being built in modular gated community pods with names like “Centex” and “Equinox. A long, rolling ribbon of asphalt strolls over hills that used to be nothing but fields. And by long, I mean the clubhouse was 3 miles in. This devleopment just went ON and ON.

Anyway, I came over this hill, and the small valley between my hill and the next is a giant driving range. Green everywhere, sprinklers tch-tch-tch-tch and a line of golfers dressed in khakis (who paid between $10k and $35k and $2-500 a month for the privelege). One of whom is an older, portly woman wearing giant sunglasses and a huge sun visor out of which poofed a spew of orange/yellow/blond curls. She was whackin the HELL out of the green. It was hilarious.

The clubhouse sits atop a hill overlooking both the golfcourse and the rest of the manufactured exclusivity of the development. The signs said “Dress Code Strictly Enforced”, which I took to mean the faded jeans I’d worn all day weren’t going to fly. Good thing I brought a pair of dark denim pants. “No Denim”, indeed.

I got to the reunion itself and tripped out at seeing faces I hadn’t seen in 20 years, none of whom I had a particularly close relationship to, and most I didn’t know at all. I set up to mic and record my performance on a ProTools system I have on loan. I’d forgotten a very key adapter for the computer it runs on, so I ended up just using it as a mixer and wasn’t able to record any of the performance.

Which is probably just as well. It was as bizarre as anything else that night.

I was scheduled to play after cocktails and as dinner was being served. I missed my setup and soundcheck due to traffic which stretched from Berkeley to Davis. It was crazy. I had about ten minutes to relax from setting up, which was perfect. Everyone was seated for dinner, and the organizer introduced me. I didn’t think much of the fact that no one applauded after my introduction. I just started playing my set of 5 songs while people got up to the buffet and started eating.

I finished the first song fairly satisfied with my performance, and not one person (out of a hundred twenty or so) offered applause. My second song was met with an equally dreamlike silence. I looked at the DJ, who had soundchecked me between songs during cocktail hour, and he kept giving me the thumbs up whenever I’d look at him. Same with my third and fourth song. Nothing. People weren’t even looking at me. Well, that’s not true, one of the hottest women there (a “friend” of a classmate, who was ESCORTING him to the reunion) gave a gracious smile as I started Unamerican, my last song.

So I’m in the middle of the third verse when one of the stars of the class (then AND now – with Adonis-like looks, he was a star jock in school and later went on to play professional baseball for two major league teams) approaches the piano as I’m singing and starts waving his hand and talking to me.

Well, I couldn’t listen to him AND sing, and it was clear he wasn’t going to go away until I acknowledged him. Which I did. I stopped singing mid-verse and looked at him.

“After this song, we’re going to do a toast. One of my friends, our classmate, is going to make a toast, OK? AFTER you’re done with this song”. As if by stressing “after”, he was trying to be polite.

Honestly, I’d googled him a few years ago, trying to find out if I was one-degree removed from a professional baseball player. Couldn’t find him. Other than that, hadn’t really thought much of this person in the last 20 years. But in that moment, I remembered how he struck me as totally clueless in high school, too. Some things DON’T change.

Some things inevitably do. Hairlines receded like the treelines in this “community”. People didn’t really look very different than I remembered them. They certainly didn’t ACT differently. The loud “popular” chicks were still loud and “popular”. Given that it’s 2am on Sunday, and I’m blogging, I guess I can say that the geeks are still geeks.

The toast in question was a gentleman I only remember as being a football player and kind of an intense guy. Turns out he’s now a sniper for the SWAT team. He said something to the effect that we (as in the class of 85) had built El Dorado Hills into what it is today. All of us. We were the foundations of what EDH had become. I was hunched over my equipment bags, wrapping cords and not looking around nervously. I didn’t (and still don’t) understand the logic, but I DID raise a glass to the class of ’85.

By the time I had put my computer and borrowed equipment away, I went to get some dinner only to find that everything had been cleared. Feeling my bloodsugar start to get whacky (which turns me into kind of a tweeker), I decided I was gonna get something to eat even if I had to pull it off the plate of some overfed catering staffmember. Fortunately, the nice gentleman got me a plate “A little of everything”. I was happy to be eating food, but marvelled at the cost/quality ratio ($60/not so hot).

I finished my dinner (well, I’d *almost* finished eating) when I had a nice conversation with someone I don’t remember who said I’d written how much I admired and looked up to him in his yearbook. After that, I stepped outside to get some fresh air.

At that point, the still-to-this-day best friend of my first girlfriend, first True Love and first soul-wrenching heartache came spilling off the dancefloor to get some air, too. I didn’t recognize her at first, and she wasn’t wearing a name tag. But as soon as she mentioned my first’s name, I instantly remembered her as one of my girflriend’s two best friends (together, they were “The Triad”). I kept remembering a couple of pictures of “The Triad” my girlfriend had sent me while i was in the Navy.

Here was someone I hadn’t talked to for 20 years, and who probably knew more about me than anyone in the room. And whose recognition dredged all kinds of past memories and feelings.

In the few days before I’d left for the reunion, I tried to put a video crew together to document this milestone in my life. I thought the footage would be an interesting story to tell – returning to my roots to share my new talents.

I’m not so bummed I decided at the last minute to not spend the money or effort. Although I think it might be funny someday to see the tape of me playing my heart out to a totally ambivalent, inattentive audience. I was laughing last night, and just laughed again as I wrote this.

But I’m not sure if it’s funny “ha-ha” or my natural reaction to trauma (whenever my back goes out, for instance, I can’t help but laugh at the absurdity that I consider myself such a strong and able person, yet I can’t even stand up). Cognitive Dissonance, I think it’s called.

And yeah, last night qualifies as congitively dissonant in my opinion.