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Friday, August 23 Rossi and M.E.'s High School Reunion
Very few people who know me these days can believe that I ever lived anywhere besides New York City. I am often called by my pals "The Quintessential New Yorker" and they're right. After 21 years in NYC, I more than live in NYC; I am NYC. The fact that I ever lived anywhere else, was just a freak of nature. I was born to live in New York. I grew up (in another life) on the Jersey Shore. If it weren't for the fact that my parents had some sort of white-trash wanderlust that kept us perpetually taking off on road trips around the country, I might have gone mad, well ... a little sooner. You see, no offense to you Jerseyettes, but I was always way to ... um ... avante garde to live on the Jersey Shore. Especially in a town called Rumson, which was and is very beautiful and evidently is NOW having some sort of moment in the sun as a New York Ex-patriot Camelot these days, but back then it was so conservative you could get run out of town on rail for flipping the color of your Izod alligator shirt up. I hated alligators and I certainly didn't want them on my shirt. I spent my high-school years determined to wear only two things, black t-shirts and blue jeans. For accessories; a bandana wrapped around my neck (rockabilly style), a pink fuchsia feather earring hanging off one ear and shoes had to be either Frye boots or California hikers. My t-shirts proudly bore the emblems of my favorite bands. Some were deemed acceptable by my peers. ... (Led Zeppelin, The Rolling Stones) and some not (Blondie, The Sex Pistols). Having an interest in punk rock was a tad too "out there" for my high school circa 1978-1981. There were other things that seemed far to out there for my high school, too; I remember distinctly the time I walked across the freshman cafeteria (white kids only) to sit in the sophomore lounge (black kids only). Every perfectly coiffed white head turned as I walked across that barrier. It was the best lunch I ever had. Have no idea what I ate, but the pride was delicious. Don't get me wrong here, I had a lot of friends there. Some of em are still in my life. It was a strange place to grow to young adulthood. Two-thirds of my peers, might just as well have been the same person. The dressed the same, talked the same, listened to the same music, went to the same beach clubs and country clubs. Their parents drove the same cars. They were destined to have the same jobs (stock-broker, lawyer, doctor or junior vice president in Dad's company). It was an eerie feeling to walk past a hundred or so kids all wearing either alligator shirts or cashmere sweaters, all wearing corduroys and either dock-siders or Bass shoes. I wasn't like you had to die your hair pink to be different. All you had to do was not buy from the L.L. Bean catalogue. The good news was that the kids who did manage to exert their individuality had to be ballsy as hell. You had to more than go against the wave, you had to smash it to smithereens. I'm still proud of my gang of no nonsense nuts. I had great friends: Lauren the diva of punk rock who never ever backed down, Jenny the preppie with the cool edge, Sue, the ballet dancing hippie, Carolyn who turned every occasion into a party, sweet Joan from grammar school who never said a mean word to anyone, ever, Sandy V the rocker from hell, the list goes on and on. These cats were just cool to their soul.. They had to be. I think "rebel" must have been stamped on my forehead in those years. Between my conservative town and the fact that my folks were trying to get me to be an Orthodox Jew, there just was no were to turn. So I lit a joint, cranked up David Bowie and put safety pins in my clothes. A girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. I think of this part of my life like a past life, something I might remember in hypnosis, but it all came crashing back into my world this weekend when I went to that strange right of passage known as High School Reunion. Since you've probably already done the math I might as well tell you it was my 20-year reunion. Yeah ... I'm gorgeous but I'm no spring chicken, more like an autumn hen. I'd been to my 10-year reunion and found it to be somewhat dull except for Carter who had become a wild child fashion model since her high school days I coerced my old pal Lauren of punk diva days who lives in NATCH Manhattan to come with me. My babe the Cuban rented a limo and off we went. I was prepared We arrived late, but it was fine, they were all there. A sea of folks in their now late 30s most of whom looked like they'd never left Rumson. Preppy L.L. Bean button up shirts, khaki pants ... the whole shebang. But there were surprises. Cary who'd been a 4-foot-tall nerd boy the last I saw him, turned into a 6-foot buff hunk who owns an "adult novelty company." Cary the porno mogul ... I just loved it! There were some of my ol pals; Joan dressed head to toe in black (how chic) showing pictures of her gorgeous 17-year-old daughter. Carolyn who (damn it) hadn't aged at all since high school ... and yes ... there she was again. ... Carter ruling the dance floor and nearly dropping dead when she saw Lauren and moi. "Yay!!!" she screamed. Later on Carter told me that Lauren and I were her The bar was cash (cheapos) the food was ... well, let me just say that my cubana gave me a bite of what they were calling dinner and I think, days later, I am still digesting it. Yech, how can you burn the outside of a turkey breast and leave the inside raw? Everyone was friendly although I didn't recognize most of the people who seemed to know me, even after I looked at their name tags. "Who the hell was that?" I asked Lauren all night long. "Not sure." I think some of the kids from the Izod army just didn't make a lasting impression on us. A woman who had been my worst enemy in the 7th grade came up to me and hugged me as if we were long lost best pals. It was so strange I just had to walk away. The rocker dudes who had been my smoking buddies in high-school were there. Jamie who still looked like a hard core rebel, long hair, beard and all, had never sold out, as he might have said. Ricky's long blond hair was now (oddly) short black hair, but he was still mellow as ever. Jill was wild and perky and I'm pretty sure I saw crayon red highlights in her hair -- you're as young as you dress I always say. Jenny who coaxed Lauren and I out on the dance floor by screaming our names into a microphone must have had some sort of voice change. She made Kathleen Turner sound like a soprano. Who was that man hiding inside Jenny's throat. I told her to do voice-overs immediately. The dramas of the evening were: Lauren kicking some jerk named Ricky in the shin because he managed to insult her while apologizing for insulting her 22 years ago and me making the aforementioned worst enemy cry when I reminded her of how evil she'd been to me when I was 12. There was also an odd moment when this sweet guy named Willy reminded me that I'd actually gone out with his older brother Billy and I'd completely deleted the memory from my files. "Billy who??" I asked at first, and then I remembered. We had d gone out for about 3 months and I had just removed him from my brain. Kinda made me feel like a big blonde HO. The highlights were when we crammed Carter, Jill, Joan, Lauren, M.E. and moi into the limo and drank ourselves silly. Also loved finding out that two cheerleaders were lesbians and so was the young lady standing next to me who seemed to know me very well. I have no idea who she was, but she was cute. Don't worry I just looked, well maybe smiled a little, too, but my cubana was waiting in the limo. I never had that shocking French kissing close dance with my babe, actually she and most of the other spouses wisely disappeared while we all played, the "who looks better" game, but it's ok. Funny enough, whenever I told anyone I was there with my girlfriend, they just thought I meant a girl that I'm friends with. Ha. ... Oh well. The sad part of the evening was all the short (not short enough) chats I had with people who had been uptight boring preppies and had grown into uptight boring yuppies. I guess I was hoping for a few more surprises, but it seems that most people really didn't change that much. "Wow, you live in Manhattan!" they would say as if it were a distant exotic land. They lived in Rumson, only an hour and fifteen minutes away, faster by ferry. Anyway, I was glad I went and glad to catch up with my old excellent pals and glad that Lauren lives like 15 blocks away and now we're back in touch and mostly, mostly, mostly, glad to be back in New York Fucking City!
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