Reunions are strange when you really think about it. Certainly part of the weirdness is listening to a kid you spent many a night getting violently and vomitfully drunk with talking about his kid(s), the reminder that your derelict friends have officially moved from being somebody's son to being somebody's father. Then there's the "proximity to death" of it all - that is, each subsequent reunion is a stark reminder of how much stronger and more athletic and indestructible you used to be compared to how out of shape and mortal and balder you now are. Then there's the simple fact that everybody's gone off in his own direction and so the things that have come to constitute a big portion of your life have no place in the lives of the others you once used to share everything with. I could just imagine how eyes would glaze over should I start rambling on about Russian novels and Bobcat Goldthwait movies - hell, just bringing up Hunter S. Thompson's first collection of essays "The Great Shark Hunt" elicited hesitant nods and a general blanket statement along the lines of "that sounds interesting but most likely none of us will ever read it."
A story needs an arc; a beginning, a middle, and an end, and what is life if not the most important story to the person living it? And while the second act's the meatiest, the real turning point is just around the end of the first. That's where as a reader you get hooked on the raw character, the person far from finished and the story wide open to all possibilities. Along those lines, at least for me, and I would assume most people, those college years and early 20's are the end of the first act. It's when our characters are laid bare, free from the protection of parents but still shielded by university walls from the rules of society; mounds of clay ready to take shape.
Maybe that's why I still count these guys as some of my best friends in spite of hardly ever touching base, why I see them once a year at most and yet socializing and talking story with them feels a thousand times easier than my day in day out networking and drinks and parties up in L.A. We've seen each other before we could start accumulating the shells of adulthood, the walls we put up to survive in this world and the costumes we don upon manhood (businessman, scientist, soldier, father, husband, so on, all these crazy costumes like Don Draper and where am I buried below?). We know to trust each other because we've been there during the depths of our mutual most depraved moments and, in the particular case of our shared ambitions on the lacrosse field, because we fought together and bled together and sweated together and celebrated together and lamented together. Over a lifetime a man will meet thousands, millions of people. And as we get older and the walls thicker and our shells harder the people we meet will mostly be like glancing blows off a shield. Maybe they'll stick and we can go forward. For most of them we will be little more than a snapshot of the shell we were wearing at that epoch, a plot point perhaps but not a fully-fleshed character yet. As we get older it will be harder for others to know us and, as such, the relationships with the ones who knew us back when we were becoming the men we have become will make up in large part the contingent of humans who understand it. Our friends from back when. Our brothers.Like picking up a TV series mid-run. You miss so much of the groundwork that it's hard to understand these character's motivations or the importance of certain events. The difference is, in life you can't Netflix the first few seasons. Either you see 'em or you don't.
So back to the reunion. We played remember when. Found out what everybody was doing (teaching helicopter flying, digging up Indian artifacts, turning algae to crude, running auctions and flying a hobby plane to the desert, learning how to take care of a fat little sack of protoplasm you created from your own twig and berries). And laughed. A lot. And drank. Way more than any of us drink anymore. And for a few moments I think we all actually caught it, that elusive feeling of invincibility and lightness of being, that careless joy one can only finds during the glory days of young adulthood. Life at its most simple and pure.Therein lies the essence of the reunion. Even if fleetingly, to recapture that glory is something all men need to do or else risk growing preternaturally old and dead too soon.
For that reason I was filled with a sense of security, a contentment with the state of the world I rarely feel anymore. Regardless of political belief (a couple hardcore Republicans in my midst) I bore none of the animosity that filled me when I watched the RNC. Regardless of their success I never for even a second felt even the slightest tinge of jealousy, refreshing compared to Los Angeles where it feels like everybody's clawing for the top and somebody surpassing somebody else is always met with a level of envy disguised as happiness for the other person. Regardless of the fact that some of them seemed like fully actualized human beings and, even more, had created the type of family my wife and I want there was no resentment. These were good people. Doing good things. And for all intents and purposes I felt like they were making the world a better place. Maybe it's because I've seen them locked up or dinged up or simply fucked up, whatever but seeing the men they've become made me proud to know them and to have followed the arc from the first act.
The laughter and smiles and maddening rounds of drink, the ease with which we fell back into our old defense and our roles on the field, the ability to simply converse and know the other person will understand where you're coming from makes a man realize that, yes, there are still good people in this oh so cold world and there might just be a future for this country.
Kyle talked about the bond of bro-dom once before, about how in the end we need some brothers we can really trust or else we'll explode in this insane trip we call existence. Many of my greatest trips, as I think about it, have been reunions of one sort or another - visited a friend in Hawaii I haven't seen in a decade, climbed Rainier with a new friend (a rare example of how, yes, even in act 2 in L.A. one can make a good friend or two) but also with Kyle (my oldest friend) and Coleman from the lacrosse team, had one twisted fucking reunion in Las Vegas for my bachelor party, so on. Even my wedding, my groom's men were all old friends and as such the fun of getting married on an island was having a reunion in the goddamn el Caribe.
In the end, getting together with the old lax heads will always remind me of what my coach, A. Norman Webb, one of the greatest men I have ever had the fortune of knowing, told me about friendship:
"Throughout this life, you'll meet a lot of people. And they'll say they're your friends, especially if you're successful. But a true friend is somebody who you say 'I have to go down that dark alley, and I don't know what's down there, but I want you to come with me.' And without question they will."
The weekend ended and I got a call from some current student from my alma mater asking for more money and using sales techniques I would've fucked with had I not been so medicated and exhausted at the time she called following the draining weekend as it was that I just wanted to get through it and get back to watching DEXTER. And I realized as the call ended I don't necessarily miss the school (though, yes, it's possibly the most beautiful place I've ever regularly spent time in my life). Or the parties (though goddamn were those co-eds we saw beachfront on Avalon st. Saturday night fuckin' smokin'). Well maybe the parties a little. But mostly I miss my bros.
Reunion 2k12, Glory Days, gettin' crazy on the beach.
So I'm a hopeless bromantic. You got a problem with that? Go fuck yourself. My boys got my back.
- Ryan
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