Reunion

REUNION

“I’ve never been this nervous in my life,” I said under my breath, entering the bar for the first leg of celebration to our ten-year class reunion. “Shit, why'd I commit to the whole weekend?”

The Grant High 1994 blue silk banner hung overhead, punctuated with scarlet letters, the irony not lost on my paranoid eyes.

This was the first time in a decade I returned to Racine, Wisconsin, opting for the fast track to Manhattan, where I rapidly ascended the Smith Barney ladder and now owned a magnificent loft in SoHo. I loved New York and couldn’t imagine ever leaving. The busy streets and crazy cabbies, neon splashed Times Square, the famous skyscrapers minus the 9/11 two front teeth, there wasn’t a thing about New York that wasn’t a magnet.

“What in the world are you doing here?” I scolded myself as I sat at the bar. “I wonder if anyone will even remember me? And if they do, will we have anything to talk about?”

“What’ll it be?” squeaked the bartender, a middle-aged man with a cartoon voice, red vest and lazy eye.

“Orange juice, please.”

The bartender spun away without judging why I wasn’t on the hard stuff, hosed my drink over some tubular ice, and plopped it front of me without eye contact.

I grabbed my drink and nurtured it while a whirlwind of anxiety filled my stomach, reminding me how many times I thought this was a bad idea. “Relax,” I coached myself. “This is important.”

I had purposely arrived early, hoping to get a drop on my ex-classmates. I wasn’t popular but did have a handful of friends in my junior high and early high school years. By my senior year I was more or less a loner, though I remained a vital part of the Grant baseball team, starting as varsity catcher my final two years on State playoff squads.

Truth be told, I guess I’d mostly come to see if Ramon Rodriguez would be there. I’d caught him since junior high and he’d gone on to pitch some minor league ball. I was curious to catch up with him.

Suddenly, a group of rockers came in, faces I recalled but names long forgotten. They were loud and already drunk. “Fuckin’ ay!” shouted the one with the still infantile Sex Pistol locks, “where’s the booze?!” Then he stumbled on his own misstep before his pals caught him.

“You are fucked up, Frankie! I’m cutting you off now!”

“Fuck that!” cried Frankie. “I’m the designated driver, so I can’t be faced!” He pulled out a flask and drained it until he created a suction on his lower lip.

Now the rockers were bobble pigeons on a live wire, guffawing until the bar’s wooden rafters thrummed with their vibrations.

I glanced away praying they wouldn’t look at me. “They are exactly the thing that turned me off most in school,” I thought. Then I sipped my orange juice and waited.

Slowly, the bar began to fill: pretty girls, guys with virgin guts, people who looked better, people who looked worse, some I recognized, some I couldn’t have guessed in a billion years. Yet, I remained unidentified, and stayed glued to my stool, observing, wondering if Ramon would be the next to enter.

Within thirty minutes, the bar was packed. My class graduated 357. I figured half had shown up.

Cindy Burks arrived. She was Miss Organizer in high school—pep rallies, dances, drama club, food drives, you name it—and began scribbling out nametags at the door, pasting them so we could be sighted and be one big happy family, which was bullshit because Grant was an upper class, backstabbing, clique menagerie. You’ve heard about ‘in crowds’ and ‘outsiders,’ well, people like Cindy, and her cronies, such as, Debbi O’Riley, Kim Finch, Susan Bellmont, and the boys they rifled through in their desperate dry humps and clumsy blowjobs, ran our school and deemed who was hip.

“I was never in that group for a day,” I thought, finishing my OJ. “Not even the moment I hit the grand slam to defeat our arch rivals, East Coolidge, in extra innings.” Yeah, the guys slapped me on the back, but it didn’t earn me one invite to the ‘popular’ party that Friday night. “Didn’t matter,” I sighed, my eyes darting across the bar where the old crowd postured and bragged. “I had evolved way past these creatures by then. I wouldn’t have gone if the invitation was gilded: Taj Mahal.”

A few moments later, a couple of guys from the baseball team, Ted Lymon and Gary Gordon, walked toward me. I took a deep breath and swung profile on the chair.

“Two Heinekens.” Ted told the bartender.

The barkeep notched his head upward, acknowledging the order.

Ted and Gary stood five feet from me. They played the left side of the infield but neither one could hit a lick. As people they ignored me like the rest of my teammates, all except Ramon.

I looked up and smiled at them, but they looked past me as if I was a ghost, doing peacocks back at Debbi’s crowd.

“Two Heinies,” spat the helium-voiced barkeep.

Ted grabbed the bottles and they walked off sharing some cruel joke about the bartender and Peewee Herman.

Overhearing the reference, the bartender glowered at me, intimating, are you gonna friggin’ feed the meter or what? Cause I had only managed one drink.

“Another orange juice,” I said.

With his lazy eye anchoring me, he fetched.

As I began my second drink, I dug deep into my subconscious wondering why I had come. And that’s when my world stopped, things getting hazy and warm.

“RAMON!” SCREAMED THE ROOM IN UNISON.

Before the door could close, every man and woman in the place had swallowed him.

He was always handsome, I’ll give you that, but he was an absolute Hollywood stud now. Ramon was quarterback, ace pitcher, and Grant’s leading scorer in hoops. Not only that, but he sang in a band--to me he sounded a lot like Ritchie Valens. He also was a solid student and nice guy to all. In his senior year he became a big brother to a foster kid whose parents had both OD’d on heroin. This made Ramon beloved by everyone in the school, students and faculty. The Tribune ran an article on him and the community named him Racine’s Student of the Year.

I was recalling all this when somehow Ramon broke free of the back pounding and female cheek kissers and headed toward the bar opposite me.

“May I have a orange juice?” he said.

I could read his lips, just like when I caught him all those years. We still thought as one, and for some reason I got the chills.

The bartender brought Ramon his drink and shook his hand, asking for an autograph. I could tell Ramon was embarrassed by it as he opened his wallet to pay.

“Nah,” bellowed the bartender, tossing his hands over his head, “are you crazy! The drink’s on the house for whiz kid Ramon Rodriguez.”

Ramon shared a smile that would’ve melted the polar caps. Nodding, he began away. Then, licked by some vague peripheral spark, he turned to me and stared.

Gulping, I smiled back.

Every eye in the place held him as he paused to consider me. A moment later he was gliding over.

“Who’s that?” I heard Cindy ask to no one in particular.

Ramon kept coming, his dazzling teeth a lighthouse on a darkened shore.

My legs weakened unlike anything else I had ever experienced.

“Hi,” said Ramon, stopping two feet away. “How are you?”

“Fine. Fine.” I was floating in ether.

“Don’t I know you?” he asked.

My ethics had never been more sorely tested. I rarely lied as a man, but as a woman I don’t think I had even considered it. My mouth dry as sand, my loins jumping, I licked my lips and answered. “No, we’ve never met.”

For a woman, I was pretty damn hot--so I’d been told by everyone in Manhattan. Hardly a day passed I wasn’t hit on, but in my mind there was only one man, one person I had loved my whole life since first seeing him in junior high home room. After that, I focused every ounce of stamina and athletic talents, which were marginal, into learning how to catch so I could someday be his battery mate. It worked. We never became friends, but he came to respect me--something I never felt from my parents, teachers, friends, or anyone else in my entire life.

Ramon was a good man, a kind teenager, and tender in boyhood. He had always been good and I had always been in love with him.

That’s why I knew I had to do what most people could never comprehend. Changing over, becoming something I always knew I was but couldn’t bloom into.

I visited all night with Ramon. We laughed, discussed favorite movies and books, complained about Iraq—he despised Bush as much as I did, and explored what was important in life: pursuing worthwhile goals and helping others whenever possible. We just clicked like we did when I’d call a curve on a full count with the bases loaded and he’d trust me and we’d catch the batter looking, knees frozen, a victim of our cunning and Ramon’s spectacular skill.

The reunion girls of Grant were furious, and came over a dozen times to pry Ramon away to dance. He’d go, but only one dance, and then he’d return to keep our conversation going.

At the end of the night, I just knew he would invite me to his hotel; he was staying at the Sheraton.

I was breathless as the bar cleared, his eyes scooping into mine like shovels.

“I bet you are wondering why I came over in the first place tonight,” began Ramon. “Well, I recognized you right away, Michael.”

My heart dropped like an egg from a carton. “Michelle,” I whispered.

Ramon smiled, caring like only he could. “Michelle,” he repeated with respect. Then he paused, reaching for the right words. “I was hoping you would be here. I knew back in junior high homeroom who you really were: a sweet kid, someone trapped in a world that would never understand.”

“Did you know I loved you even then?” I couldn’t believe I blurted this, but I needed to know.

Ramon nodded, his angelic face glorious in the shimmering light. “You were my favorite teammate I ever had. I just wish I would’ve told you that back then. You deserved that. But we aren’t all so wise in high school. We think we are, but we’re not.”

“I guess that’s why they have reunions every ten years to make amends after studying Solomon.”

Ramon laughed.

Then more startling words escaped. “I don’t suppose we could—”

Ramon held up his finger. I couldn’t believe I’d missed it. “I’m married to the greatest woman on earth.”

Now it was my turn to laugh. “No, I wanted to ask if I might have one friend from high school to stay in touch with?”

Ramon leaned over and gave me a hug. It was warm and perfect. And as I hugged him back I wished on every star in the universe that someday I could find such a man for myself. But fortune isn’t easy to locate, not in love. And I fear I will march through many valleys and find just as many peaks before I’ve traveled far enough to recognize it when it comes my way again.

Those feelings are elusive. But no matter who we are we yearn for that connection, for a mate that fits our jagged edges and makes us smooth and whole.

THE END