High School Reunion - 1. Chapter 1

High School Reunion

 

In California we got the right to marry legally just over one month ago, June 16, 2008. That milestone was part of what urged me to attend this 50th reunion celebration of my High School class. For most of the rest of the world and in my little home town in the mountains of Colorado, gay was still so off the beaten path that a lot of the town’s people didn’t even know that the reason Matthew Shepherd had been beaten to death was because of the homophobia of his torturers. And most of them had voted against the Straight Marriage Amendment in 2006 because they were mountain people and fiercely independent.

 

The last time I’d spent any time in town was the year I graduated high school. That was when a few of my class mates left dto join about a thousand other U.S. soldiers in Saigon as part of the early Military Assistance and Advisory Group Vietnam (MAAGV) to help the Diem government control the insurgencies in the south. This was well before fair haired President John F. Kennedy more than doubled the force to 3,500 in the early 1960s, and long before anyone had even heard of that place.

 

I had grown up here in Idaho Springs. My great uncle had been a miner at the Argo Mills & Mines and was one of the four old timers who were drowned when they accidentally opened a drainage tunnel to a water filled mine that had not been used since the turn of the century and the sludge and water poured out of the tunnel entrance along with their bedraggled lifeless bodies, into Clear Creek in 1943. The tunnel had not been used since.

 

My aunt Sheila had narrowly escaped an early death when she and her friends pushed an old car over Bridal Veil falls to initiate the new location of old Charlie Tayler’s water wheel in 1949. I was 8 and she wouldn’t talk about it with me until I got my Driver’s license and then only as a cautionary tale. It must have been a good sized bunch of kids wanting to put their mark on the world. They succeeded in pulling the jalopy up the hill more than a mile and then as they were negotiating it through the trees toward the edge of the bluff, Aunt Sheila, the only girl involved in the prank, got in to steer. She was as excited as a chipmunk with a pile of breadcrumbs. As it was her first experience behind the wheel everyone was relieved it was moving at about 1 mile per hour. What they hadn’t expected was the downward slope just before the cliff. As they pushed it over the nub of the hill with great effort, the car started rolling, gaining speed as it rolled over rocks and neared the edge of the 55 foot drop. Fortunately one of the wheels dipped into a hole literally inches before it would have plummeted to Clear Creek below and the car came to a sudden and complete stop. With seat belts, Sheila crashed into the windshield breaking it but causing only a cut in her scalp. In spite of the heavy bleeding, she was fine. She referred to it later and every chance she got as the clear proof that she was too hard headed to argue with so don’t even think about it. Eventually, they got the car lifted out of the hole and nudged over the cliff smashing on the rocks below immediately beside and narrowly missing the town’s favorite land mark. Needless to say it had the desired effect on the town causing instant notoriety.

 

My grandparents met here as teen agers when they went to the old high school on 17th St and my parents had gone to that very same high school before our new school was opened up at 13th and Miner streets. Our family had all attended our St. Paul’s, our Catholic outpost church where Father Dunleavy faithfully rode his circuit from Central City to Idaho Springs to Georgetown. On the worst weather days, when Father Dunleavy was unable to negotiate the heavy snow and ice, we shared communion among ourselves from the tabernacle which he had left an earlier week.

 

Coming back for my 50th class reunion for the class of ‘58 really did dredge up memories.

 

I arrived in town for the reunion two days early. After a good night at Aunt Sheila’s I awoke to a typical Colorado mountain summer morning – fresh cool pure air, blue sky with a few light wispy clouds, sweet aroma of pine mixed with local garden fragrances and the promise of a quick thunderstorm mid-afternoon. Aunt Sheila left to open up the Log Cabin Inn on Miner Street by 8am since beer drinking starts early in the Colorado mountains. At 77 years old she was still smoking up a storm and still serving up draft beer with just the right amount of head (3/4”, no more, no less).

 

I planned to take advantage of the day to scout out my old haunts. Looking at the map and the town from afar it didn’t appear much had changed. No new streets, no new buildings, no new people. The town had actually shrunk in size from its peak during the Gold Rush days of the late 19th century but had stayed stable since my child hood. As I drove to the house where I grew up I discovered the one correction to the “no new streets” was where our family had lived at the top of a hill off Soda Creek. Growing up, the bridge over Soda Creek and the road up to our house had been really a wide dirt path of rocks and gullies that wound its way from the creek up to our solitary cabin at the crest of the first hill and then beyond into the mine pocked mountain behind which is now a national forest. The old single lane wooden bridge without guardrails had been prone to wash outs and now it was solid concrete with a well graded, well paved asphalt road. And at the top of the hill there were nineteen homes, built it seemed in the 1970s, in a little community of all new streets – Montane Dr., Waldorf Pl., Divide View Dr., Freeland Pl., Lamertine Pl. – all tucked into the hills where our little 3 bedroom cabin had been. It did not feel like home.

 

Driving down the hill, I remembered Kelly Grant, the toe headed heart throb who lived down the hill and across Soda Creek from my house. We used to go through the ravine to the meadow behind his house playing cowboys and Indians. The much bigger than life size picture of old Chief Idaho on the Soda Creek road sign leading to the spa farther up the valley gave us the exact image we needed. Why did I always make him be the indian? And when I shot him with my pretend rifle (in those days it was really pretend…a stick I’d picked up and broken off to the right length), I’d always try to patch him up. Usually, this involved laying of hands and even at six years old, I knew where I wanted to lay my hands. My early version of playing doctor was to repair the wounds I’d created as the cowboy and I definitely liked to look at his bare body to make the repairs. It was before the social norm that boys don’t play with other boys’ bodies got into my head; before I had that fear; before I had retreated. And for some reason we stopped playing together after second grade and I have no recollection why.

 

Passing under the interstate highway I soon came to another new building in town, the tourist center. Our town used to have a community swimming pool here now replaced with this tourist center and public tennis courts. Directly to the South was the old Argo Mine where my Uncle had died in 1943. And the old movie theater had been located a few blocks west and had been replaced by a new building (see, I told myself, there are new buildings) and new concept – Tommyknockers Brew Pub – just a few years before.

I remembered that location as the old movie theater and my first date ever. Alice Watkins was the lucky girl. She was pretty good at Spanish, which we all took together as the 8th grade class, and she had a reputation as a girl who was liberal with her treasures. I was pretty good at all the other subjects and had in mind to trade my expertise for some learning opportunities with a girl – and I had in mind not just the words. Now, please understand this was motivated not so much by my native curiosity about girls, which was nonexistent, but more by my recognition that other boys seemed interested in girls and I was curious to see what was all the fuss. And, honestly, I just knew I was supposed to go out with girls – or at least a girl. Alice had buck teeth and wore glasses, so even beyond being a girl, she didn’t really have much attraction for me. In fact, her main attraction was that she was interested in me. She so much as said so. Actually, she had said she was interested in my 13 year old body that produces boners at the most inopportune time (usually watching my hot football player class mate walking down the row of desks). Alice was the one to notice and to offer to help. . “El ojo, la boca, los brazos, el pene, la vagina,” she said, “ayudarte con todas estas cosas.”

 

My date was thankfully uneventful. We went to a movie to see a monster perform serious destruction, followed by ice cream followed by my mom picking us up and driving us to drop Alice off and then home. The next day I got a call from Alice. She said, “My boyfriend George says he’s going to break your nose.”

 

“Boyfriend?” I said.

 

“Yeah, George, he’s a Junior and he says he’s going to break your nose. But I said not to because you didn’t do anything and we just went to a movie and we were just working on class stuff together.”

 

“Uh, Ok, so what did he say?”

 

“He said he’d think about it.”

 

It was a while before I decided to go on another date.

 

A little farther West from where the movie theater had been was the service station where I used to help my dad out when he worked there pumping gas –When I was helping I was in charge of the service which included washing all the windows and checking the oil and air pressure as well as pumping gas. My dad was in charge of collecting the money. There now is still a gas station (no more service) and it is still independent with a very independent name – “Kum ‘n Go”. I didn’t even need that new name to remind me of a visual as if it were only a moment ago. I saw Jerry Stark literally tossed out from the boy’s locker room door onto the front lawn on Miner Street right across the street. Not even a towel at first, there he was with his tight muscled rear end showing for everyone to see – rounded perfectly and with the delicate shadow of a depression where it merges with the hip, and bright white, just like every other body at our school. He picked himself up and without even dusting himself off started pounding on the door which auto locks from the inside. And then some other hot boy opened the door just long enough to throw out a towel. Jerry snagged the towel bending over just long enough to display the beckoning tunnel between his gluts, wrapped himself up around the middle and gingerly high stepped across the lawn and around the side to an unseen door through frozen puddles and slush. Only I knew how much I had wanted to go help him warm up, no one else. And for a moment, the car whose gas I was pumping was getting no service at all.

Seeing my old school brought on a flood of memories.

 

I remembered Josh Whitley. We were pretty much inseparable after he moved to town from Denver in 9th grade. There was no better friend. When he wasn’t at my house, I was at his. In our Junior and Senior years we double dated most of the time. My favorite times were after these double dates. I was the driver usually since my mother let me borrow her car, a Studebaker Turbo-matic drive (semi-automatic push button gear shift). It was a step up in easy to drive compared to a traditional stick shift and just what my mom had needed to get her to take on driving. Josh and I dropped off the girls, usually Elsie & Veronica, and then went to the falls overlook where Aunt Sheila had had her close call. There, Josh and I finished a second 8 pack of Coors 3.2 beer. Low alcohol beer is someone’s hair brained idea of introducing drinking to a younger age group. How could they not know that we simply would drink more of it in order to achieve the “desired” result? Then, smoking and drinking, and peeing because of the volume of beer necessary for a buzz, we’d talk about everything under the sun. We talked of girls (that was Josh’s idea), scientific developments (my idea), and we talked about our families and whatever entered our heads. We talked of everything that entered our heads except the one thing that my whole being was preoccupied with at that moment which was how much I wanted to cuddle inside of Josh’s big arms and let the moment take us away.

 

I remembered Elsie McLeod. We had dated steadily, most often on double dates with Josh. She was my only girlfriend in high school. I gave her a bracelet cleverly engraved with the word “one” as a present commemorating our one year anniversary of dating. We talked of many more years to come. She was bright and enthusiastic and interested in everything. This was the first time I’d felt trapped in a relationship. I had no idea how to end it. I asked someone else out to our grad night. I don’t even remember who it was. I didn’t tell Elsie – she found out through the “grapevine”. What a stunning display of tacky passive aggressive behavior. Actually I wish it had stopped there and had been my last.

 

And I remembered Adonis Katsaros, the apple of my high school eye. He was everything I wanted in a boy. His sparkling blue eyes, long angular face, sleek body and charismatic behavior were attractive to young men and women alike. He performed with confidence holding his slim figure up for all to admire. He played guitar, sang, wrote and recited poetry. I watched him from close and far like a voyeur. And we were occasional friends. He sought my advice and my company as he had many others. How had we ever fallen out of touch? I think our friendship was the casualty of one of my many fresh starts.

 

Behind the school the town library stood unchanged except for its patrons and staff. I entered to find a sign indicating it had celebrated it’s Centennial less than 4 years earlier – twice as old as my high school diploma. I discovered the pleasure of reading here and sought to cancel out the ultimate isolation I felt by immersing myself in the stories of Martians from Burroughs’ John Carter to Bradbury’s Martian Chronicles. Here with the embracing fragrance of aging printer’s ink I was at home, not alone, warm and comfortable.

 

Ready to leave the library I was stopped by the Colorado summer afternoon thunderstorm (starts at 3, thunder amplified by deep valley, lightning, total downpour and bone dry by 3:20pm). The instantly clear air removed the reverie and I returned to what was my principal activity of the day - agonizing over the impending reunion gathering. I wanted everyone to know who I am. Me being gay is the biggest thing in my life and the most insignificant. I wanted everyone to know but I didn’t want to make a commotion about it. It is my classic behavior – all about me. The intervening years since I’d left this town had seen me marry, raise a family, complete a successful career, retire, divorce, make my debut into the openly gay world, and start a second career. Yet at this moment, contemplating throwing myself into the reunion gathering, I was that high school kid knowing with the certainty of a high schooler that all these other high school kids couldn’t care less about me. I could envision their impatient toe tapping as I initiated some meaningless conversation filling them in on what I’d been up to all these years. And why did I care about them? And of course I didn’t care about them. So what was I doing there at all? Why had I bothered coming back? Maybe it would be better just not to bother showing up. The world will not be a better place if I go to the reunion. Why should I put myself through this? It was not worth the trouble!

 

Sheila was home when I got back to her house.

 

“You came all this way, Davey, you’d better not chicken out now. Just go. You don’t have to stay til it’s over. Put in an appearance. Maybe one of your old boyfriends will show up.”

 

“I didn’t have any boyfriends. How can you not get that? None of the guys even knew I lusted after them.”

 

“Probably not true,” she said. “I knew, or thought I did, or at least wondered. But I figured it was your life and maybe you hadn’t figured it out yet. And you know some of them are gay and used their gaydar.”

 

“Really? And they knew I was gay and they didn’t reach out? That kind of makes it worse, doesn’t it?”

 

But ultimately I had come all this way.

 

Tommyknockers Brew Pub. Our class reunion closed the place down for this occasion. I arrived and picked up my name badge – they’d put our old yearbook picture on the name badge along with the synopsis of what activities we’d been involved in to ease the conversations – the old (young) high school persona juxtaposed with the new (old) persona in the flesh. And they’d bound our memory books – the compendium of favorite memories they’d asked us to submit with our registration for the event.