The Anti-Reunion Reunion
By WordyGrrl
Ever get bored and ruminative at the same time? Listing off your favorite personal accomplishments can kill some time and give your ego a life. Among my fave victories is getting the hell out of Mississippi after high school and never going back. Sure, I've driven through the state, rolled down the windows long enough to enjoy the song of cicadas and that sweet, heavy lemony scent of full-blown magnolia blossoms on a steamy summer night. And then I held it until I could find a nice, clean gas station just over the state border.
For some reason, my southern alma mater has apparently become reunion crazy, throwing fests yearly instead of just humanely stopping at the 20-year mark back in 2005. Looking at the class website, it's pretty sad and somewhat shocking to see who's died, including a girl I had a major silent crush on. We're not that old yet, but we ARE getting older and who wants a reminder of the aging process? The elephant in the middle of the room that is our own mortality and lost youth?
But in 1983, there were no cell phones, no internet and no chance of keeping in touch if numbers were lost or somebody moved without having a forwarding address to give you. And so shortly after graduation, we were blown to the four winds and lost touch with each, left alone to create our own lives, develop our own personas, careen madly through our 20s, reassess the damage in the 30s, and start getting invites to join AARP in our early 40s.
Sure, I had some really good times and a great bunch of friends in high school, but in all honesty, there were only two classmates I really gave a serious damn about meeting up with again after all these years. And thanks to the internet, I just found them a few months ago. We re-met via Classmates.com, coincidentally by cheating that site out of membership fees by posting pics of ourselves with our emails superimposed on them.
These were my main buds. My boys. And both of them were as out as one could be in Mississippi in 1983. That is, they were out to me and whichever boys they could furtively fumble with on the downest of the down-low. I listened to their stories and kept their secrets, interviewed them with a red Panasonic cassette recorder and did fashion shoots with a 110 camera. But I never came out to them. What can I say? I just wasn't ready to be as out as they were. The Klan was very openly active then and African Americans weren't the only groups being lynched in Mississippi then. Queers were, too. And besides, what if I was only a phase?
Turns out it wasn't. I am indeed a big, ol' flaming lesbo, among other things. A lot of other phases have come and gone since then, and "my boys" and I have been firing off the emails like mad. We're burning up bundles of bandwidth, trying to fill each other in on the phases, twists and turns our lives have taken since we spray-painted "Class of 83" on every available stop sign in Meridian.
David was an insecure, shy, skinny boy with a big nose and unruly mop of curly hair, overly concerned with wearng "the right labels" in order to be "popular." He recently appeared semi-nude for the cover for a coffee table book called "Men of the Sierras" and has a steady job in film production with Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks studio. Brad, an 80s version of Oscar Wilde with a penchant for blasphemous discourse, weed and canned wine coolers, gave up drama school for a gig with the state government as a health educator.
We overwhelmingly decided to blow off the official class reunion in favor of one of our own. The Anti-Reunion Reunion. Taking incomes into account, we decided to meet in the place where the one least able to afford travel lives. Having received no offer of a raise in 10 years, Brad was the "winner," meaning we'd all meet up at his place. In Gulfport, Mississippi.
Brad says Gulfport is different, that it's some kind of blue-minded oasis in a red state. And we are different now. My boys are men now, fully grown and entering the real prime of their lives. And I'm not that skinny, anti-social kid anymore, who relied on humor or conducting interviews of others to deflect questions about herself.
And so in September, I'll be flying to the Magnolia state I fled so many years ago, vowing never to return. I'll be coming out to the very people I should have come out to first -- those who came out to me, in a time and place in which it felt damn dangerous to do so. But I'll be back, older, wiser and far stronger than before. I'm a grown woman now. Since graduation day 1983, I've lived in a lot of different countries, been in a war, seen amazing beauty and heart-wrenching squalor (often in the same place). Learned the difference between bullshit that amuses me and bullshit I won't tolerate.
So here's to good friends and that old hometown of mine: The people who shaped my persona because they reveled in being different. And to the place that made me what I am simply because I refused to become a part of it.
Ever get bored and ruminative at the same time? Listing off your favorite personal accomplishments can kill some time and give your ego a life. Among my fave victories is getting the hell out of Mississippi after high school and never going back. Sure, I've driven through the state, rolled down the windows long enough to enjoy the song of cicadas and that sweet, heavy lemony scent of full-blown magnolia blossoms on a steamy summer night. And then I held it until I could find a nice, clean gas station just over the state border.
For some reason, my southern alma mater has apparently become reunion crazy, throwing fests yearly instead of just humanely stopping at the 20-year mark back in 2005. Looking at the class website, it's pretty sad and somewhat shocking to see who's died, including a girl I had a major silent crush on. We're not that old yet, but we ARE getting older and who wants a reminder of the aging process? The elephant in the middle of the room that is our own mortality and lost youth?
But in 1983, there were no cell phones, no internet and no chance of keeping in touch if numbers were lost or somebody moved without having a forwarding address to give you. And so shortly after graduation, we were blown to the four winds and lost touch with each, left alone to create our own lives, develop our own personas, careen madly through our 20s, reassess the damage in the 30s, and start getting invites to join AARP in our early 40s.
Sure, I had some really good times and a great bunch of friends in high school, but in all honesty, there were only two classmates I really gave a serious damn about meeting up with again after all these years. And thanks to the internet, I just found them a few months ago. We re-met via Classmates.com, coincidentally by cheating that site out of membership fees by posting pics of ourselves with our emails superimposed on them.
These were my main buds. My boys. And both of them were as out as one could be in Mississippi in 1983. That is, they were out to me and whichever boys they could furtively fumble with on the downest of the down-low. I listened to their stories and kept their secrets, interviewed them with a red Panasonic cassette recorder and did fashion shoots with a 110 camera. But I never came out to them. What can I say? I just wasn't ready to be as out as they were. The Klan was very openly active then and African Americans weren't the only groups being lynched in Mississippi then. Queers were, too. And besides, what if I was only a phase?
Turns out it wasn't. I am indeed a big, ol' flaming lesbo, among other things. A lot of other phases have come and gone since then, and "my boys" and I have been firing off the emails like mad. We're burning up bundles of bandwidth, trying to fill each other in on the phases, twists and turns our lives have taken since we spray-painted "Class of 83" on every available stop sign in Meridian.
David was an insecure, shy, skinny boy with a big nose and unruly mop of curly hair, overly concerned with wearng "the right labels" in order to be "popular." He recently appeared semi-nude for the cover for a coffee table book called "Men of the Sierras" and has a steady job in film production with Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks studio. Brad, an 80s version of Oscar Wilde with a penchant for blasphemous discourse, weed and canned wine coolers, gave up drama school for a gig with the state government as a health educator.
We overwhelmingly decided to blow off the official class reunion in favor of one of our own. The Anti-Reunion Reunion. Taking incomes into account, we decided to meet in the place where the one least able to afford travel lives. Having received no offer of a raise in 10 years, Brad was the "winner," meaning we'd all meet up at his place. In Gulfport, Mississippi.
Brad says Gulfport is different, that it's some kind of blue-minded oasis in a red state. And we are different now. My boys are men now, fully grown and entering the real prime of their lives. And I'm not that skinny, anti-social kid anymore, who relied on humor or conducting interviews of others to deflect questions about herself.
And so in September, I'll be flying to the Magnolia state I fled so many years ago, vowing never to return. I'll be coming out to the very people I should have come out to first -- those who came out to me, in a time and place in which it felt damn dangerous to do so. But I'll be back, older, wiser and far stronger than before. I'm a grown woman now. Since graduation day 1983, I've lived in a lot of different countries, been in a war, seen amazing beauty and heart-wrenching squalor (often in the same place). Learned the difference between bullshit that amuses me and bullshit I won't tolerate.
So here's to good friends and that old hometown of mine: The people who shaped my persona because they reveled in being different. And to the place that made me what I am simply because I refused to become a part of it.
Labels: lesbian writers, WordyGrrl
posted by LNewsEditor at 9:19 PM
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