Reunions

The Class of 1989/90 Reunion was in February, but I guess I never hit "Publish Post" on this. 'Bout time!

I was pretty surprised that Michelle was willing to drive all the way out to my parents' house to practice our songs for the Reunion. Even in high school - that can't have been 20 years ago already, can it? - we lived pretty far off the beaten path, but after I left for the Air Force, mom and dad bought property even further out, nearly to Wickenburg, and added a good 25 miles to their already lengthy commutes.

But Michelle said she was used to driving all over the Valley of the Sun for her job, and didn't mind. So there we were, playing music and talking about old times and recent times, and about our apprehensions of the Reunion itself. Would we remember the people who showed up? Would they remember us? Fondly? Would our best friends be there, or would they be stuck in far-flung corners of the world?

We needn't have worried.

Even 10 years ago, documenting this would have been more difficult; putting memories down in a blog or sharing pictures on Facebook would have been either unheard of, or at least uncommon. But now, roaming through a hotel ballroom full of not-so-distant strangers is a matter of recognition more than anything; how much do they resemble their profile picture? And can you read their nametag in the dim light? Most of the ice-breaking has already happened online, after all.

So, for me at least, the evening was a stream of people who looked a lot like the parents of the kids I knew in high school, walking around, being happy to see each other. They seemed to enjoy our singing, even though the PA system we had wasn't quite up to the task of filling the room, and they seemed to appreciate our effort.

I'm still not very good at capturing details, of course. I can't tell you who all I talked to - I could try, but I would forget too many names at this point - and I can't tell you who we talked about and caught up on. I can tell you there were a few missing who are no longer with us, and a few I never would have expected to make it this far (and I'm glad you did!), and I can tell you that the overall impression I had was a joyful one.

In a lot of ways, we haven't changed. The patterns of who talked to whom, who got silly-drunk and who withdrew early, the inevitable comparisons of work/hobbies, family, successes and failures; that all stays the same. But because perspectives have shifted, I saw something reassuring in all of it. I saw a truth unfold at my 20 year high school reunion that I barely dared hope would be true all those years ago.

We really are "okay".

Virgin Oil, or, The Fats Out of the Bag

I haven't always been the calm, self-assured celebrity you see before you. In fact, I'm not now. But that's beside the point: I'm here to tell you how it all began. My "big break"; my "discovery"...

We lived out in the sticks when I was a child. I blame my lack of childhood friends on this. My school was the nearest one to us, and it was a good 15 miles - and that was on a cool day. Heat expansion often stretched the journey out to 16 miles. And while my parents were not poor, I certainly was. When I got to that certain, magical age, I wanted to drive to school. Funnily enough, my parents didn't want to drive me, either. But, insurance for a 16-year-old boy is astronomically high. (How astronomically high? Click here.) So my father determined that I should pay my own insurance. And, in order to pay for insurance, I needed a job.

Since I had a pretty full after-school schedule, between band, choir, theater productions, and - uh... something really tough and manly I used to do that would scare you too much to mention here - it was difficult to find the right job.

Then one day, I noticed that one of my fellow band-geeks was working behind the lines in the cafeteria. I asked about the job, liked the terms, and filled out an application. It didn't pay much, but it was enough to make my dad happy. And I got a free lunch every day that I worked. Sweet!

It didn't start out very glamorously. I was a dismal failure at kitchen duty. At home, mom would ask me to help, and after a few clatters, a couple of knife drops, and a little broken glass, she would invariably tell me the same thing: "Go tell your father he wants you." But a school cafeteria's cookware is very durable, and can survive quite a bit of abuse from a high schooler. So with a bit of persistence, patience, and a smidgen of yelling, I got the hang of things.

After a short while, I even found my niche, my place in the universe, my Special Purpose: They made me the fry guy.

It started with a simple task: put the french fries into the paper bowls, and hand them out. Somehow, this tiny bit of social interaction brought out the showman in me. I discovered, welling from deep within my bosom, this amazing gift of repartee! I found 1,000 ways to say "would you like fries with that" and provoke a giggle. My portions became famous ("Dude, he really piled them on!") and my delivery became as polished as the reachable sections of the Blarney Stone.

My God, it was a wonderful time that I looked forward to each day. Girls smiled at me! Guys did that super-cool head-nod thing (and refrained from threatening me with bodily harm). By and large, my classmates - most of whom wouldn't have dignified me with their loathing if I had asked for it, before - actually liked to be served by me. I became a minor high school celebrity. The Fry Guy.

This position of respect led to a few new skills, as well. The boss-lady let me operate the fryer, and I learned the importance of keeping clean, fresh oil heated to just the right temperature. I learned the exact right amount of time to leave the fries down, and how long they would need to drain before serving them up.

Not only did I have insurance money, respect, and a future in the food services, I had fun. I learned how valuable my "enjoy everything" attitude was by volunteering for the seemingly mundane tasks of washing up, and was rewarded by getting asked to do really prestigious jobs, like washing out the 50 gallon cook-pot on chili or beef stew days. (You haven't lived until you've sung "I Am the Pirate King" from inside a suds-filled cauldron. It is, it is a glorious thing!) Truly, I had "arrived".

One fine day, riding on a cresting wave of popularity, and feeling on top of the world as I handed out perfectly crisped and golden potato strings to my fans and admirers, a cloud crossed over the sun. A sulky blond-haired girl came through the line, and glumly took a basket of my now-famous fries... and didn't smile. I made some witty remark - I'm sure it was VERY suave and tasteful - and instead of warming to my charm, she stared into my face with widening eyes, dropped her tray and stormed out of the cafeteria line at a near run.

I shrugged it off; every comedian has to learn to deal with hecklers. No biggie, right? It wasn't, until she came back with three large friends. The largest (but not the tallest) of them leaned over the sneeze guard, seriously encroaching on my personal space.

"Is your name 'Tom'?" she demanded.

"No," I squeaked, manfully.

"Are you sure?" she asked, taken aback. She looked confused, like when a dog licks ice for the first time. Then she turned positively fierce, and snarled, "A guy named Tom got my friend, here, pregnant!" She put her fists on her hips and seemed to be challenging me to answer for my crimes. The other two moved up to flank her, and the blond cowered behind all three of them, peeking out at me furtively.

I was at a loss for words. And, truly, it was as much a sense of shock that I couldn't speak that was keeping me from speaking as anything else. I visualized my mouth as a logjam in the North country, with lots of bearded, en-flanneled miniature Tad-loggers stumbling and slipping on the conflicting idea-logs of fear, outrage, and ill-advised amusement that were trying to flume out of my throat.

One thing I knew: a joke at this point could be fatal.

The situation called for dignity and respect, and so I drew myself to my full 5' 2" height, and looking the bully straight in the eye. "Do you know what I would have to have done with your friend for her to be pregnant?" I asked her. She nodded, again looking surprised that things had not come to blows yet. "Well, I know what I would have to have done, and I have never done that. With anyone. And if I had, I most certainly would have done my best to remember it."

They looked at each other, and at the blond girl, who reappraised me with a bit more confidence, now. What had she to fear of a virgin? She shrugged, and left, her friends straggling out behind her. The big one turned around one more time, though, and stuck out a finger.

"I better not find out you're really Tom," she said. She never really looked away; she just slipped out backwards, and the last I ever saw of any of them was her menacing index finger, waggling in the doorway.

And that, my friends, is why to this very day, I am still not Tom.

The Horrors; the Horrors

Originally posted Thursday, May 24, 2007

Our hands were clasped, and we gazed deeply into each others' eyes. We had run out of breath, our hearts were thudding with the passion of the moment. We heard music, and we were compelled at that moment to kiss.

We were barely sixteen, and a kiss like that seems like it lasts forever. But it didn't. We heard the crash of a door slamming open behind us, and we whirled around to face the one who had discovered us...

* * * * * * * * *

On the twenty-third day of the month of September, in the middle year of a decade not too long before our own, a young man was chosen to be the heroic lead in his high school's musical production of Little Shop of Horrors. In case you aren't familiar with this show, the "heroic lead" is not exactly heroic; he's more of a poorly dressed, awkward geek/dork/loser. And I was typecast in the role.

I'm not complaining; after all these years, I still love the part. I can still sing it, and could probably remember much of the dialogue. No, it was a blast, and I loved it. The whole cast did: Rick Marcus as the sadistic dentist; Keith channeling Levi Stubbs as the voice of the man-eating Plant; Paxton as Mr. Mushnik. Stacie, Julie, and... I don't remember our other girl, but Stacie could remind me... as the Brooklyn Greek chorus. And don't forget the band, tighter than any metaphor I could use in a high school setting.

But you may have noticed I didn't mention my female lead, yet. And that is because Alison, my girlfriend's best friend, was cast in the role of Audrey. Let us pause for a moment while you get all of your Jerry Springer associations out of your system, and talk about my high school romantic life.

If you recall an earlier blog entitled "The Monkee", you will have a good idea of what my love life was like during freshman year. Sophomore year looked to be a little better, as one of my choir mates seemed to take an interest in me. As thick-headed as I was, she eventually convinced me that I felt the same way, and we began an awkward, but very sweet, young relationship.

Along with this new girlfriend came something I had never had before, having grown up outside of the school district and attended a small church: a circle of social acquaintances. Suddenly, I was spending time outside of school with people my own age... and I liked it. But I came to notice that I wasn't nearly as into the relationship as the girlfriend was, and this presented a problem, since all of my new found friends were actually her friends.

What to do? I did what any socially awkward boy in my situation would probably do: I acted like a jerk. But this didn't seem to work. All it did was bring out the "concerned friend" in everyone around me, cautioning me that I wouldn't want to lose Her - the One Good Thing In My Life.

And then came the play. Being cast opposite Alison was no big deal to me, at first. I hadn't really read the play that closely. So, imagine my utter shock when I learned that we would have to kiss at the end of our big duet.

"You mean, we have to like, lean real close and just pretend, right?" I asked.

"No," said our no-nonsense director, "you are going to put your lips together and kiss for the last two measures of the song."

Everybody indulged in an "aw, cute" moment as Alison and I glanced at each other in horror. Everybody thought they knew why we were so floored, but I don't think they realized that the real problem was that I had not yet kissed my own girlfriend. Yeah, yeah, sweet sixteen and all that... I had a horrible choice to make. I had to move my relationship (which I didn't really want to be in) to a new level of intimacy that I didn't want to move to, or get my first kiss on a stage in front of who-knew-how-many people.

Alison was not enjoying the situation too much, either. You couldn't even call it a proper love triangle; I don't think it would even make a polygon. But in the end, I either summoned up courage, or I caved in to pressure (depending on how you look at it), and I kissed my first girlfriend after school one afternoon before play rehearsal.

It's hard to describe the weeks leading up to the show. My new found social status was building, and my budding romance was booming, and yet underneath it all, I was growing more and more unhappy about it all. I couldn't break up with this girl; after all, she was incredibly sweet, and loved by all. Not only that, but her life seemed to be a scary mess compared to the idyllic boyhood full of Star Wars men and long, solitary bike rides through the desert that I had grown up with.

It seemed every time I worked up the nerve to tell her that I thought we should end it, something would happen; her mother lost a job, her grandmother died, her alcoholic father came back to live with them... one thing after another for months on end. The only real escape for me was the play, where I was part of a team, doing something that we were increasingly proud of.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Which brings us to the dress rehearsal.

If you've never been in a theatrical production, you can't imagine the value of doing a "real" run-through, just to shake out all of the bugs. This is where the mistakes become apparent, and fixes can be made before opening night. For Alison and I, this was the moment of The Kiss. And for numerous reasons that I came to loathe later, our director had decided to make it an "open dress rehearsal". She wanted as many people as possible to come and watch, to see how we would handle the pressure of an actual performance.

How would you handle a "first kiss" in front of a jury of your bored peers?

We sang our hearts out, and we built that final note. Our hands were clasped, and we gazed deeply into each others' eyes. We had run out of breath, our hearts were thudding with the passion of the moment. We heard music, and we were compelled at that moment to kiss.

We were barely sixteen, and a kiss like that seems like it lasts forever. But it didn't. We heard the crash of a door slamming open behind us, and we whirled around to face the one who had discovered us... Mr. Mushnik.

Remember what I said about "bugs" in the production? Here was one: Mr. Mushnik's mustache. Paxton had insisted all along that he could grow a mustache for the production. He stopped shaving, I'll grant you, but after six weeks of rehearsal, he had only the barest whisper of hair fuzzing the vermilion of his lip. His lower lip. And so, come the night of dress rehearsal, Paxton showed up with a false mustache, and a bottle of spirit gum.

The spirit gum worked great through the first act, but after our big number, Mushnik & Son, perspiration overtook inspiration. What Alison and I did not know as we stood locked at the lip during the finale of "Suddenly, Seymour", was that Paxton had gone in search of an alternate solution to the false mustache. Thus, when he crashed through the door, startling our hero and heroine in love's stolen embrace, we whirled to find Paxton standing before us... with a "Charlie Brown" zigzag drawn on his upper lip in brown dry erase marker.

Alison was lucky; her part called for her to run offstage in tears, which she apparently found very easy to do. I, on the other hand, had to face Mr. Mushnik and look "scared", when what I really wanted to do was drop to the stage and roll around in gales of trouser-soiling laughter.

It gets worse.

Paxton's next bit of dialogue leads to the "ah-ha" moment, where Mr. Mushnik accuses Seymour of doing in the dentist, and cries "...I found THIS!" as he pulls the dentist's blood-soaked smock from a nearby trash barrel.

Instead, Paxton cried "...I found THIS!".... and frowned into the trash barrel for a moment before saying, "I must have left it in the other barrel," and dashing backstage to find his prop.

And there I stood, onstage, every emotion my hormone-riddled body could evoke, fighting for it's chance to surface. The music kept vamping -- a four-bar repeat of the "Oh, dear" music -- and I started to make stuff up.

I have no idea what I said. Something like, "Oh, dear! Oh, me!/What can it be?/What kind of evidence could he have on me?" Like Shel Silverstein on Tin Pan Alley. I was actually told by some kids who were there that when they saw the official version of the show later that week, they were disappointed that part wasn't in there again!

But the point is that, like all awkward moments, this one passed. I kept my head, somehow, and managed to survive it. The show, the kissing, the inevitable break-up... as difficult as it seemed at the time, all of it eventually worked out. Sure, it could have gone better, but then, it was all a kind of dress rehearsal, wasn't it? I like to think I did better in the "Real Show" because of it.

And the moral of the story, of course, is one that anyone with an ounce of common sense will tell you without going through all of the pain and agony: if you can't grow it yourself, you're better off without a mustache.

Kerouac and Ginsberg Grow Up and Get Jobs

Originally posted Friday, August 11, 2006, while thinking about old friends and more adventurous days.

I was absorbed in cyberspace when I thought I heard a suspicious sound in the real world.

I turned around and glanced around the cluttered office, but nothing was moving. My ears listened for the telltale sounds of the kids playing in the far reaches of the house. The last thing I wanted right now was for someone to come asking to play Nintendo or watch one of the "America's Funniest" animal clips on YouTube.com. All seemed to be quiet enough, so I turned back to the screen.

What had my attention so fixed was a message from someone I hadn't expected to ever find on MySpace.

A fellow trumpet player (for 11 years!), and a fellow traveler through the late 80s/early 90s ordeal of growing up in White Middle Class America. He was the unintentional center. He was the guy who discovered things and shared them with the rest of us.

Wanderer, explorer, welcome bum. He had roamed the suburbs of Northwest Phoenix from age 12, getting into and out of the kinds of trouble only an over-tall kid armed only with a thick Stephen King novel or true-crime/serial killer book can get into.

He was the conduit through which I discovered a love of Tom Waits, the Pogues, Wilco, Nana Vasconcelos and the Bush Dancers, the Police, Elvis Costello, Ofra Haza, Les Negresses Vertes, Chris Isaak, and Buckwheat Zydeco.

He's the guy that edged me out of childhood reading material such as the Hardy Boys and into Salinger, King, Gaiman, and even a little divertissement called "Les Miserables."

He is the guy who was there for 1993 - about which, the less said the better - and yet still considered me a worthwhile person.

And I found him again on MySpace.

All of the sense memories, and not a few images from the past, were on my mind as I read his note. A catching-up kind of missive; just enough to say, "Howdy" and yet imply that there was a lot more to say. If you can't already tell, thinking about the old days takes me back to a place that most would think of as "the bottom of the barrel." And frankly, it is.

It is the Waffle House of memories, where the coffee is bitter, the spoons are never clean, and the air is full of grease, smoke, and Hank Williams songs coming from a fascist jukebox that won't play what you paid to pick.

It is all of the porn shops, bars, and flea markets we used to visit; not so much for the shopping, but for the sake of watching the people we found in such places.

We already know our safe, suburban world, and we had always been told which way was "up"... but these places and these people were the Other Option. This was the threat our parents and teachers had always held over us. More frightening was the fact that this WAS us. If we failed, or gave up, we had every reason to expect to end up there.

And now I was chatting with this old companion of the Waste Lands from my safe, warm house full of children via a slick, silly online forum.

It felt good.

Just knowing that for all of the close calls and odd adventures, we had made it to places that make us happy, or at least to some compromise between the forced potential and the rocky alternatives.

But there it was... the old rebellious urge to show him that I was still somewhat "hip"... that I still maintained my edginess. To downplay my "Mr. Mom" role, and revel in the dark side. Like the old days...

Of course, that was the moment that I felt a breath on my neck, and realized that there was someone behind me. Not just behind me, but literally climbing over the back of the chair!

With memories of horror movies and crazed homeless people -- or even some supernatural beastie from another dimension -- fresh on my mind, I was seized by cold, wet, unreasoning fear. Lacking breath to scream, I emitted a small "urk."

Then the little girl toppled over the top of my head and into my lap, giggling like a mad little imp (see, supernatural beastie from beyond!).

"I love you, Daddy!" she said, batting her eyes, which she knew would save her from any unpleasant reaction. As my heart rate returned to normal, I pieced together the "surprise" she had perpetrated; putting the kitchen stool in my blind spot, creeping up on me. Come to think of it, all of the good things in my life have been surprises.

So, sitting with her in chair, I dash off a maily to my old friend from my old life, and tuck away the hobo memories for another day.

"Daddy," she said, "Can we watch the 'Funny Dogs' video?"

Sure, honey. Why not?