Fast Times at John W. North High

Of all the people from the John W. North High School Class of '97 stupid enough to plunk down $75 for a reunion, apparently I'm the one who HAS CHANGED THE LEAST. By crowd reaction vote, no less.

Oh sure, I might have pleaded, But, but...what of my crippling back problem and battle back to health? My gain and subsequent loss of some forty pounds? My dripping-with-drama severance from my dictatorial dad? It would have been no use.

I figure if anyone wants to tell me I still seem eighteen, hell, I'll take it. And despite my grumbling about how I had! changed, in point of fact I enjoyed feeling popular and pretending I was following the classic high school reunion narrative of triumphant return.




[In despair with my "I Changed The Least" button.]

But that narrative really requires one to have been a big nerd in high school and I was not. I fought my way hard out of nerddom, disappointing the old dadctator, who desperately wanted me on Academic Decathlon.

There was a huge contingency of unreconstructed nerds at the reunion. And I'll kill a sacred cow here and say that they annoyed me. These may have been the pitiable and picked-on in high school, but they're now full adults with intellectual superiority complexes and no social skills.

Oh, how they disdained the superficialities of the once-popular with their hair and their make-up and their ability to dance. As if the nerd patrol alums don't cling to their own petty shit: techie job titles and enforced-frump outfits and gadgets bought with their new money. Awkward and antisocial just doesn't age well. That classic high school reunion narrative is really about growing out of it.

My friend Shaun was pretty much a nerd when I met him in fifth grade, but that didn't stop me having a fat crush on him. (He responded by throwing rubber balls at me and my sister and shouting, "Big butts! Big butts!") We stayed friends through high school, commiserating over our five hours of nightly homework. And he was the person I most wanted to see at our reunion, because, unlike those unreconstructed nerds, Shaun is a good swan story.

Right around the time I had my back problem, Shaun suffered a medical crisis that left him essentially blind in one eye. I didn't know it then, but he was also struggling with his identity.

The once skinny, slumping salutatorian showed up to the reunion a proud gay man in Diesel jeans, standing his full six feet five inches. He lives in West Hollywood (even!) and has been with his boyfriend for five years now. (Which he says = 30 monogamous gay man years.) And best of all, both our boyfriends are maniacal reef aquarists, which means we'll all have to get together so they can do tank talk.

It's been a tough decade for the Clebster, and it meant a lot to reconnect with an old friend after we've both come such a long way. It also meant a lot when we hit the dance floor and he said I seemed the happiest he's ever seen me. He's known me for eighteen years.




[Sorry ladies, he's gay.]

Lest I get too weepy, though, one more bit of commentary. After my reunion, Bri said my relatively healthy understanding of race made sense. Riverside is a real middle class haven. People who don't have a lot of money move there from LA and Orange County to buy a tract house and nab a slice of American dream pie. The second generation Riversidians are mostly black and Latino (okay, Mexican) and many are upwardly mobile.

Virtually all of the black North alums at the reunion were doctors, lawyers or on their way there. Of course reunions skew to holders of i-Phones, but still. At my high school there was no racial majority and it just wasn't such a thing that white people were richer and black and Mexican people were poorer. Not utopia by a long shot, but not as segregated as New York or, sad to say because I love it so, Oakland.



[Riverside. Not giving a fuck about race since 1992. Or thereabouts.]

When it was time to drive back up to the Bay, Brian unwittingly gave me a poem:

Take the 60
To the 15
To the 10
To the 210
To the 5

We're both native SoCalians, and when we talk freeways down south, the definite articles kick back in. (Nobody in the Bay says the 580.) I made him repeat it a few times, and not just because it's been a while since I've driven out of the Inland Empire.

It sounded like home.

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