Ten years later, after embarking on the aforementioned quest, I can tell you with some bitterness and depression that I failed miserably and that I was the same shallow, self-pitying child I always was. This was evident when I received an invitation to attend my high school’s ten-year reunion. My immediate response was not to go. After all, the way I saw it, going to your high school reunion was little more than an opportunity to show your classmates how great you had become, exceeding everyone’s expectations and making all the girls see how dumb and blind they were for having shunned you; to show everyone that you were not, contrary to what your classmates believed, a loser, that in fact, you were simply a late bloomer who had blossomed into a handsome rich Alpha Male capable of making all the girls exceedingly happy, so much in fact that they would immediately dump their inadequate boyfriends and audition shamelessly for your favor. But I was no such Alpha Male. I was, by all accounts, incurably mediocre. I was a mere functionary at work, a stagnant peon, ignored by my colleagues, bereft of a social life, collecting a monthly pittance, and living in relative squalor. I was pudgy, bald, dyspeptic. Mediocrity didn’t suit me well. While others accepted their lowly lot in life with a gracious resignation, I had a big ego that hungered for greater things and the disparity between what I envisioned for myself and what my crappy life had become enraged me and this rage showed in my sour bearing and facial tics, which bore the evidence of a man smoldering with shame, frustration, and discontent.
I didn’t want my former high school classmates to see me and then judge my life for the contemptible sham that it was. So what was the point of going? Showing up at the reunion would merely be an exercise in self-humiliation.
But against my better judgment, I did in fact go, if for no other reason than I wanted to know what had become of Rich Drakos who seemed to have the whole world at his disposal, who seemed, by virtue of his rare good looks, to enjoy unlimited possibilities. Whom, if anyone at all, had he married? What line of work had he pursued? What kind of license had his good looks afforded him? What divine, exquisite pleasures had he experienced that he might describe to us lowly mortals? Thus my curiosity over Rich’s fate proved greater than my fear of being judged a loser, and I attended the reunion.
The festivity was held in a game room at the Hacienda Country Club in Orinda, California. There were two rooms, a billiard room and a dance hall, adjoined to each other. I tentatively entered and, amidst the confetti, balloons and banners that read CASTRO VALLEY HIGH CLASS OF ’79, I noticed a few faces. I was relieved that I wasn’t the only one who had grown an unsightly paunch or who had developed a receding hairline. The adults—yes they were adults now, even though I still felt like the same child I was during high school—wore placid expressions, their full, fleshy cheeks gleaming with sweat, their lips wet with champagne. But they didn’t seem self-conscious for whatever physical inadequacies they brought to the party. They laughed heartily. They slapped each other on the back. They took huge swigs of champagne, wine and beer. Drunk, they guffawed, and spit flecks of potato chips with onion dip across the room. I was positively repulsed. Worse, no one seemed to recognize me. I stood alone by a pool table and, overcome by the same hurt and rejection I suffered at the high school dances, told myself that I didn’t belong here.
I was just about to leave when someone tapped me on the shoulder and called out my name. I turned and saw one of Rich Drakos’ best high school friends, Scott Maher. He was standing with his wife, a waifish woman with the bored, petulant expression of a spoiled sixteen-year-old princess. Unlike the others, Scott hadn’t changed in the slightest. Short and compact, he had baby smooth skin and undulating blue eyes. While not as handsome as Rich Drakos (for who could be?), he had been known as a “pretty boy” and a “lady’s man” and was for many years Rich’s number-one confidante. Scott’s wife (I don’t remember her name) tugged at her husband’s shirt and said she wanted to go home, but Scott seemed interested in my life, my job, my love life, or my lack thereof. I don’t know why he was so interested in my futile existence. I barely knew him in high school. Maybe I had said a few jokes in some classes we took, mocking the teachers, and this made him think I was cool. In any event, I asked him about Rich Drakos. Upon hearing Rich’s name, Scott’s expression sunk, and he shook his head.
“It’s a long story,” he said.
His wife tugged his shirt and said she wanted to go home again. He broke free from her grasp and scolded her with admonishing eyes and a clenched jaw. This was his high school reunion, he told her, and they’d leave when he was good and ready. She pouted and disappeared into the background. There was drunken laughter all around us. A former cheerleader, now married to the former quarterback, had drunk too much champagne and had thrown up, just like in the days of the high school dances. The cleaning of the vomit seemed a cheerful chore, bringing familiarity and nostalgia and reminded the Class of ‘79 of the bonds that had united us. Scott looked affectionately at the ad hoc cleanup crew, shouted some playful taunt or other to the former cheerleader, then resumed a serious expression as he began to tell me the fate of Rich Drakos.
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