Last night I went to an NYC regional “reunion” of my high school down in Tampa. I put reunion in quotes not to be cynical, but because meeting up with gents from the class of 1968 (the year I was born) is not a forum conducive to rehashing memories and talking about the olden days. In its way these gatherings (I went to another one about 8 years ago) defy the precision of those eras in which any of us attended the school and with which we associate ourselves. It creates a sort of continuum of association, albeit one in which I doubt any lasting connections outside the room would be established.
The meeting was, to be blunt, a fund raiser.
I have no animosity toward my high school but I do not see those 4 years through rose-tinted glasses. I was a rail-thin artsy kid who played piano and won literary awards in a culture that loudly favored athleticism and sports. I don’t think too many people cared about the literary stuff I did but for the piano pursuits a lot of the other kids just called me a “fagot”, to use the parlance of the day. They probably still call me that, in one form or another, if they even remember who I am.
But it’s not some kind of grudge I carry. It is a real memory, unlike the sanitized version of reality that nostalgia filters up the streams of time. The school and its teachers gave me a fine education, as well they should have for the thousands upon thousands of dollars it cost to attend. I do not feel that the school formed me into who I am today or that it has any level of exclusivity in taking claim for my character (or lack thereof). I have what I feel are multiple alumni associations in my life. They revolve around people I knew from schools and workplaces and bars and Internet message boards, among other points of focus. In each of these and other scenarios I was among a special and unique confluence of people among whom memories were made in ways unlike any other places I’ve been.
My attitude toward school was simple. I wanted to get it out of the way so I could get on with life. I never intended to do just one thing, or stick to a singular livelihood or focus, and on that account whatever I majored in in college or focused on in high school could have been anything. After college I played piano recitals and did other type of concerts for about as much as I intended before fully embracing a corporate lifestyle and, frankly, getting damn lucky in being able to do so. I got in on the Internet thing when typing “ls -l” at a command prompt and getting a list of filenames was enough to raise oohs and aahs from suits who could barely even spell “WWW”. Today I would be happy as hell to get out of this business but I’ve drawn myself into something of a trap out of which I cannot seem to find a way. I still play piano, of course, and remain open to performing again in some form or other. But it’s not all that I am, or all that I want to be. I would prefer to be a creator and not a re-creator.
So after this little “reunion” I naturally enough was reminded of a variety of teachers and situations from the old high school. Two influential-to-me teachers, one of Latin and the other English, retired within the last couple of years. The English teacher was moderator of the school newspaper, of which I was editor-in-chief my senior year. I was not the best editor ever but I was not bad, and the paper won what was at the time a prestigious state-level award, the name of which I have no memory.
I recounted to a couple of younger alumni last night something I’ve only ever told here, on this web site, which has remained invisible to the search engines and to most people who might happen upon it by searching for terms related to certain things. I recounted the anecdote involving the last editorial I wrote for the school paper. I think it was titled “On Driving Through Queens, New York” and it was meant to be a high-minded farewell from myself to the class and, on behalf of my fellow students, the school itself. I cannot remember much of its substance but it was written in the form of a poem. I worked it so that if you read vertically the first letters of several of the lines the words spelled out something like “FUCK YOU ALL TO HELL”. Childish, no doubt, but thinking of it today I think I should get keys to the city not so much for doing it but for getting away with it. That English teacher who moderated the newspaper was no dumbass, and I strongly suspect he at least looked out for something like this from me. But I did it in a way that made it just “unobvious” enough that it got through.
I hid that message in the last issue of the school paper because I was mad at not being voted “Most Talented”, losing out to the guitar-playing rock and roll star who was and still is a good friend of mine. Him winning that award never frayed our friendship but it confirmed my standing as an outsider among my peers, many of whom probably never even knew I existed or, if they did, regarded my piano and literary awards as stupid or unworthy.
A copy of that school paper should be among the boxloads of stuff I got out of storage back in December but it has not yet surfaced. I want to see it for myself, just once more, to prove I really did that. Evidence! I need evidence that I have existed and that my memories are not too embellished or exaggerated.
The gathering last night ranged from recent graduates to dudes in their 70s. One of the younger kids said he was there to network, and find a job, something which it sounded like he was having trouble with. I think he said he was still attending Fordham but expected, based on job prospects, that he’d be heading back to Tampa sooner rather than later. A lot of the younger guys talked like that, as if they’d only be in New York for a little while. Most anyone I talked to seemed impressed I’d been here 28 years, though I don’t see why. It’s just a place.
There was actually one dude from my class. I never knew him but I remembered him and how I thought back then that he seemed like a nice guy. Our conversation confirmed that memory. He lives in Summit, not New York, but he is the only person I’ve ever heard of from my graduating class who landed in the greater New York City area. I knew of just a handful of others from other classes, including one who worked at MTV and another who had gone to Harvard and became a lawyer in Manhattan.
The MTV person and I have a strange connection. We slept in the same bed together. It was a field trip of some sort that involved an overnight stay at a hotel, and the woman who organized the trip didn’t think it would be strange for teenage boys to share beds. I’m sorry but it was strange. That’s something girls do, I think, but not guys, or at least that’s been my interpretation of such things. After 9/11 I and some others went downtown to help CNN cover the re-opening of the New York Stock Exchange. One of the women reporters asked me if I’d mind sharing a bed with the lead photographer, who was a man. I laughed and said no way, and the photographer concurred with my sentiment when I later described this proposal to him. He said, in effect, that women do that but men do not. I took his word for it.
The reporter’s intentions were noble enough. She just wanted to save money for the famously tightwad company that owned CNN. I assume the same pecuniary thrift informed the bed-sharing arrangements made by the woman who organized the overnight field trip for us in high school. I felt a little awkward but I got over it. But the other kid seemed extremely uneasy about it, from what I sensed. Years later I learned he was gay. In those days high school kids rarely if ever came out, so if his unease was as palpable as I thought that might explain it.
I talked to someone from the class of 1990 who said he was a patent attorney. I asked him what the most interesting patents he worked on included. He said he was doing a surprising amount of work involving fusion. He said he would have thought that was the stuff of science fiction but big companies are investing mightily into it with the belief it will lead to some sort of infinite source of energy. I don’t know or intend to learn more about this but a quick search turns up evidence of what this patent attorney was talking about.
But what I intended to write about when starting this surprisingly lengthy ramble was a priest I knew. I did not know until now that he died earlier this year, in January. He was the priest I talked to the most at school. As his obituary states, and as I can confirm, he was a bit of a rebel in priestly garb. He was the reason I can never think see or hear the term “Jesuit priest” without automatically prepending it with the words “foul mouthed”. He cursed like an entire fucking schoolyard and I, unlike those quoted in the obit, did not appreciate it. I don’t care if a priest or if anyone curses but he let vulgarity spew like he couldn’t get enough of its taste in his mouth.
The ultimate example of this, which for me was the last straw in my assumption that I should have respect for this priest or even the priesthood in general, came on January 28, 1986, after the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded. This priest was the school’s designated Chaplain, meaning he conducted most of the church services and led the congregations in morning prayer. After the Challenger blew up the school’s principal asked this priest to end one of his classes a little early so he could get on the public address system and lead the student body in a moment of prayer for the victims of the explosion, the smoke and stain of which were clearly visible in the eastern sky.
I happened to be in the class which the principal had requested this priest end early. He informed of us he had to leave because “the fucking principal wants me to say a fucking prayer for the motherfucking Space Shuttle, fucking bullshit.” He sounded like a petulant child. It was something that never left me, not to this very moment as I recount the anecdote for the umpteenth time.
Against his will he reported to the public address terminal and, through the campus-wide speakers, led the student body in what I heard as a cynical, biting, profoundly insincere recitation of a prayer I do not remember, followed by a gratuitous reference to whatever Saints Day it was. I interpreted his reference to the Saints Day as his faux-scholarly way of asserting himself into a moment with a coincidental bit of information that had no possible positive connection to the Space Shuttle exploding.
I told my mother about this. She tried to insist that I should not connect this incident with all priests. I don’t feel like I did but I came to regard her insistence as something like a defensive maneuver in that she did not want to feel like she spent all that tuition money on a school that produced in me trashy associations with the church and priests in particular. I have never had illusions of priests or nuns being angelic creatures. They are just like anybody else, minus the sex. But in those moments following the Challenger exploding this particular priest’s sewermouth was too much for me, and it still is.
Another issue with this p[riest involved… what’s the word… intimacy? Nothing between us ever approached the ghastly stories that emerged years later about priest sex abuse scandals, but he would wrap his arms around me giving a lot of inappropriately lengthy bearhugs. I only weighed about 100 pounds and he was a pretty big guy. He would hold me like this for several minutes, saying that I felt like a son to him. I knew this was weird as it happened but there did not seem to be anything I could do about it without offending him. I don’t mean to make more of it than there is but I’d be interested to know if he did this sort of thing with any other kids. But I did not ask anyone about that or anything like it at the gathering last night, nor would I have even considered doing so.
I never told my mother about this but one time I was back in Tampa and were out and about, just driving around with no particular place to go. We ended up at the school, inevitably referencing the priest sex scandals that were in the news. In light of that we joked about how the school’s motto suddenly sounded different: “MEN FOR OTHERS.”
Cornell Club
