It's another grey, overcast afternoon.
posted by nate on December 12, 2003
We go inside, and stuffed inside the sweltering, noisy gymnasium are Ginger's divorced parents, seated as far from each other as possible, the emotional static between them rivalling our own. My family, boozed up and raucous, emit embarrasing yelps and guffaws from the top bleachers. I don't see her ex-boyfriend, but feel his eyes are boring through me. (When we first hooked up, he relayed death threats from his high-fallutin' dorm dwelling.)
My heart's terror is verging on trauma. I am blind to the day's activities, the final day in my "highschool career." We walk towards our respective diplomas and smartass commencement speaker and I see nothing & remember little but a cloud of emotional confusion.
Ah, the superdrama of teendom! The beginning of my slow process of bottling up everything until I achieve Stodgy Man.
And now, this weekend is my ten year highschool reunion. For reasons I can't quite recall, I decided to go. As I near the actual date, with various versions of what might happen running through my head, I start to consider more carefully what this event means, exactly. Why have I consciously decided to revisit the most traumatic period of my life? Does this mark some sort of legitimate cycle?
A few months ago I ran into a peer from highschool I hadn't seen since graduation. In response to my casual "what have you been up to?" he launched into a play-by-play account of everything he's done since the moment we last saw each other.
I got the strong impression he was deathly afraid I'd come to the conclusion he'd done nothing, gone nowhere, and was the small town failure everyone had expected him to be.
This makes me wonder: should I begin to craft my own play-by-play presentation so as to not reveal myself as the master procrastinator? How about if I compress it to one grammatically incorrect & longwinded sentence? Immediately fly to tech college across the continent, learn to hate computers, start reading Castaneda, become longhair & drop acid, attempt becoming inhuman, fail, land in desolate Washington fishing town, start zinemaking & painting, barely escape, some 57th bad trip leads to night in hospital and end of hallucinogens, live in desolate cabin for 6 winter months on Orcas Island, meet girl in hometown, 3 yrs together, breakup, buy computer, re-enter geekdom learning webdesign in Orcas living in solar-powered greenhouse, return to pdx and begin life as a socially-challenged artist, existing hand-to-mouth as freelance illustrator & webdesigner, doomed to singledom into unforeseeble future.
Gawd that's depressing. This reminds me of two things: looking at obituaries and wondering how my life would be summarized with a few sentences, and the reaction my 6-year-old self would have if afforded the vision to see me now. Stripping my life of all minor occurences and relationships, distilling the story to a few accomplishments: what am I left with?
"Nathan Beaty died yesterday. He spent most of his life an irritating hermit working sporadically on his offensive & irregular comic zine, with a title that thrust him permanently into obscurity: Brainfag." My six-year-old self begins weeping and drops his Legos and Transformers on the ground. "Fuuuuck," he moans.
At 14 I entered highschool at the low point of my social acceptance among peers. I managed to disappear in the cracks, periodically chasing after the tail end of various cliques, attempting friendships with the other cast offs. I was all about basketball but unfortunately, I was just good enough to make the team and just bad enough to sit on the bench for every game. The coach let us gangly misfits run around and make fools of ourselves when the team fell behind by 30 points.
At 15 I didn't make the basketball team, but I still played about 8 hours a day. I was a formless waif, still performing the thoughtless trot behind my brother while maintaining my near-4.0 grade average. Behind bushes and in cars, my peers were busy smoking pot, slurping beer and having copious amounts of sex, preparing themselves for their successful college careers. I worked on my next dance move at home, between gaming on my Commodore 64 and ropeswinging off our woodshed.
At 16 I got my license. I proceeded to crash my brothers two cars, my mom's car, and roll my first car. I got laid, barely. By a girl I wasn't even dating. It was awful. I was slowly losing my interest in basketball, schoolwork, dancing and BMX. What was left? Computers? I went to Spain for 3 weeks, but all I could think about was getting back to my computer, which I had just set up as a BBS (think website before the internet) called The Real Flavor. I decided that when I got back to the states, I was going to have a Real Girlfriend.
At 17 my prophecy came true and I embarked on First Love with my Real Girlfriend. I began eating only cheese and having sex 4-5 times a day. This was living! I slowly receded from most everything that formerly defined my life until I was completely dependent on one girl.. and then, of course: I got dumped.
I shot towards my tech college in Blacksburg, Virginia without a clue of who I was. In retrospect, this was actually a fortuitous beginning, as I was able to discover myself while being completely anonymous in a foreign environment. For six months I walked around campus, silent, listening to headphones, roaming at 3am, finding myself enraptured by seeing the world with my own eyes for the first time. I'll never forget it.
The world wide web had yet to emerge, but all the dorm rooms had a direct connection to the campus servers. One experienced the internet on a completely text-based UNIX shell. Gus, the friend who got me into Castaneda, at Westminster college in Utah, would often stay up all night with me on a two-way chat. I began self-teaching myself oil painting with awful, awful attempts at self-expression. I learned to dislike the general public, housed in a dormitory with drones who all had Beavis & Butthead memorized. I developed a keen awkwardness around girls. I guess you could say my first zine was produced in this period with Gus, called Get a Fucking Clue You Clueless Fucking Idiots. (Ha!)
At this point in my life, I felt an incredible power in my idealistic belief I'd discovered How to Live Fully: to always be in awe of the such simple things as color and matter and time and silence. Everything was amazing. Every moment.
I recognize a similar idealism in 18-20 yr olds I meet, and see the fallacy of shunning all others, especially older folk, who apparently refuse to ride this crest, constantly. I remember being angry with my parents for not recognizing and living in this amazing fashion I'd discovered. I also vividly remember my dad laughing, telling me "Oh, I used to be like that. You'll get over it." That was, to my 19-yr-old brain, the most offensive thing I had ever heard.
I guess I did eventually "get over it," but not in the way I understood it then. My awe in being alive, the concept of seeing things in a larger context than my little world, and certainly not taking things too seriously, all became quiet foundations of my self.
Another element of my self, recently formed and not all that quiet, is my newfound habit of regularly boozing myself into a stupor. The thirst for alcohol is frighteningly strong in my bloodline, and in the last three years here in the city I've found myself drinking more and more. So it was to no surprise that I awoke the morning of my reunion with a substantial hangover.
After crafting my morning sculpture, ingesting copious water and struggling to get my shoes on, I staggered out into the bright Corvallis midday sun and set out towards my past. Tres and Kelcey talked about her recent wedding festivities in front seats while I tried to avoid nausea at hearing talk of drinking. We pulled over by the Dairy Queen in Toledo so I could piss, even though we were only a few miles from Newport. After sliding down a tangle of groundcover by a stagnant waterway, I let loose, unable to avoid being in plain view of passing cars on Highway 20. I wondered about the possibility of classmates driving by, of possibly getting a head start on making a fool of myself.
Entering Abby's pizza parlour, the family-friendly event of the day, I was struck with the realization that I wouldn't be able to recognize many people. I hadn't considered this. Kids were running everywhere. I was filled with memories of my own childhood spent after school playing Spy Hunter and Star Wars while fueling myself with soda. I put on a name tag with Nate scrawled on it, resisting my urges to be a smartass and write something stupid.
My old gang was in full force. All the punkass hiphop hooligans, looking not all that different from when we hung out 11 years ago, and giving me a look that sent me straight back to our senior year when I left everyone behind to focus on fucking and eating cheese. I had turned into a WEIRDO HIPPIE on these guys. Now I was a WEIRDO BALDING ARTIST, causing the same confused, distasteful look.
So here I was, roaming around among my class which had clumped in the various cliques formed so long ago, talking to people here and there, being reminded of the one thing that hadn't changed since highschool: I'm a fucking loner.
The evening event was very similar, but with more people and booze. Tres and I helped with the quick depletion of the keg, then moved on to bottled Rogue for $4 a pop. Everyone exchanged their Œwhere are you livings' and Œwhat do you dos' while giving the ol' once-over, trying to really see who they'd turned into.
One fellow, father of three, former basketball star of our class, drunk himself sick with a few beers, exclaimed "I haven't been this drunk since highschool!" and proceeded to puke in a urinal.
Another old friend, weighing in at some 200 lbs of muscle, tan, bright silver cross on his neck, told me how he was released 3 weeks ago from a 6-year prison stint after attacking someone with the claw side of a hammer. His life was in "God's hands now" as prison had given him time to reflect, steering him back to his faith.
So many people married, so many kids: not many surprises. There weren't any doomed-to-failure types who'd turned their life around. No ugly caterpillars turned butterfly. Not even any popular and attractive types plummeting to disaster. But perhaps these were the people who had no inclination to attend a reunion.
We retired to the lounge after a series of slides. As I worked on a four-shot bourbon sampler, I was relayed the story of my old fling, Ginger, having gone through a terrible heroin period. She was now living in Denver and apparently doing better, although there'd been little contact with her. I felt all sorts of emotion hearing this: anger at her new boyfriend I'd watched her fall for so long ago during a bizarre week-long visit 7 months after graduation, relief at knowing she was ok, strange satisfaction in knowing why I never hear from her, & selfishly happy that my life didn't seem as fucked all of a sudden.
My memory of the rest of the night is intermittent. We apparently moved en masse towards the bayfront bars. Tres and I decided to bust open the $60 bottle of scotch we bought earlier and pass it around on the way. Next I remember trying to stuff the bottle in my bag and dropping it on the sidewalk. Then there were cops pulling up, telling us they'd had reports of "a large group of people breaking glass." What bullshit. Newport cops have nothing better to do than fuck with kids. Tres told them something that made them leave, then commented it wasn't a true visit to Newport unless we were harassed by cops.
Next I remember sitting in an abandoned parking lot, having apparently snuck away from the group at some point, with my head between my legs. The ol' squat and moan, waiting for the spins to disappear.
After about an hour of this, Alex spotted me on his way to his house and yelled at me that everyone was looking for me. I got up, puked, staggered to the bayfront strip and found my friends, puked again, turned towards the hotel, puked once more, then set out zombie-stomping for our room a mile away.
I awoke with an all-too-familiar hangover and we set out towards Albany after stopping at the co-op for water and snacks. Not five minutes into the drive, I tried to take a bite of bagel, and was suddenly hallucinating, feeling awful. My mind raced to understand what was happening. Bad bagel? Residual alcohol? Food poisoning from last night? Then it hit me: this was the exact sensation I had when I OD'd on mushrooms eight years ago, had my stomach pumped, and spent the night in intensive care. I couldn't believe it! How could this be happening again.. and from alcohol? It must be my liver, I thought.
It's difficult to describe what I was feeling. It's a whole body sensation, and a quiet understanding that your body is shutting down. It's over, your body says, I can't survive this. Your self-awareness of your matter seems to shrink and you feel like you're actually getting smaller. Breathing slows to almost nothing, you go from racing heartbeats to extreme calm, your ability to focus becomes elusive and all your attention turns inward. See? It's difficult not to be vague. But ultimately, you just know that you're dying. You feel this choice arising: either to will yourself alive or just let go and die.
When this happens, you also are unable to eat, piss, shit or puke. Your dick shrivels up to a scared little runt. You sweat the most awful stench. Your mouth dries up, literally sucking up any moisture available.
I can safely say this was the worst drive I have ever experienced. I felt like I needed to go to the hospital immediately, but here we were on the beginning of an hour-long trip. I asked to stop at the same Dairy Queen I pissed in front of the day before, to see if I could walk it off, perhaps puke it off. Tres pointed out I didn't have anything in my stomach, that I had upchucked all contents the night before. Well shit, what do I do? How do you treat a toxin-overloaded liver?
Walking around did nothing. We kept driving as time creep-crawled along. I tried to stay calm and not talk about it. The sensation came in waves, and there were about three short moments when I actually felt alright. Plus, I was able to piss a tiny bit at the midway rest area. So this was different than the night on mushrooms, I told myself. I must be able to make it through this.
"Jesus christ, how embarrassing would it be to die from your ten year reunion?" I squeek. Tres tries to assure me I'll be alright and to see if I can sleep it off at his parents' in Albany. He ended up being right, as a two hour nap brought me back to a good ol' nasty hangover.
Near-death moments are gifts indeed. We often don't have the balls to really look at our lives, let alone the ability to act on what we see. Where am I right now, I wondered? I revisited my depressing self-created obit as well as my reunion foibles. I know I have the ability to do something amazing with my skills, but I continually pussyfoot around the edges, not diving into my passions. The ol' question "if I were to die right now, what have I done with my life?" hung in front of me the whole drive. I vowed if I lived through this I would get my shit together.
What the hell am I waiting for, anyway?
