reunited (high school edition)
16 November 2007
Last month, I went home to Philly for the weekend for my ten year high school reunion. On Friday night, there was a school-sponsored happy hour at a bar in Center City. On Saturday night, there was an event at the school itself.
It got a little messy.
************
I went to a high school in Philly called St. Joe’s Prep. It’s an all boys, Jesuit-run prep school in the middle of the ghetto of North Philly. Despite the complete lack of sexual contact with any sort of female mammal, high school was a pretty f’ing awesome time in my life.
So I was very much looking forward to the reunion. I still keep in touch with a lot of guys from high school - some of them remain my closest friends – but there were a number of guys I lost touch with over the years, because of moving away or getting hitched early or turning into a gay. Alternatively, there were some guys I wished were seriously injured either during or after high school. The reunion was a perfect opportunity to bring us all back together; for the former group, it’s a chance to share stories and memories; for the latter, a chance to point out how much better I am then they are now.
(My disdain for some guys wasn’t because I was picked on in high school. I was actually both fairly large – I was maybe an inch shorter and thirty pounds heavier as a high school junior than I am now – and considered "cool." But some guys were simply unconscionable dickheads. I’ll spoil the surprise and tell you that it was too bad that most of these dickheads weren’t at the reunion, so I’ll just have to continue wishing them ill will from afar.)
On Friday night I was late getting to the happy hour, which was winding down just as I arrived, fresh off the train from NYC with my buddies Joe and Pat. However, just because the school-sponsored happy hour was over (at 8pm) didn’t mean the bar was closing. So me and thirty guys stayed at the bar until closing.
I won’t even attempt to get into all the private jokes that were being resurrected and bandied about between my friends and I ("me and my friends"?). You’re just gonna have to trust me that I can’t recall a time when I laughed so hard and so frequently, unless you want a 2000 word dissection on why Mr. Nilewski’s revelation that he once had shigelosis was one of the formative moments in my life and in the development of my sense of humor (short explanation: shigelosis is transferred through the fecaloral route – draw your own conclusions). All I’ll say is that very little has changed maturity-wise since our high school days. I haven’t seen more scrotums since, well, probably my birthday. But before that, it had been awhile. Like, months.
What has changed is our drinking ability, or at least my drinking ability. Little known fact about me: I didn’t start drinking until I was 19. Seriously. I’ll get into the reasons for this another time, but though I went to the standard high school parties, I never drank. Also, as mentioned, I never sexually touched a female at these high school parties. I have no doubt that the two are related. My clear braces, weight problem, round John Lennon glasses, and long hair that naturally curled up just above my shoulders probably also contributed, but I’m certain if I drank a little bit I would have been able to make out at least with a chubby girl here and there.
(By the way, if you were to put $1 on the odds of the high school me one day becoming one of People’s "50 Hottest Bachelors", well, you’d have to buy me a beer or a boat, because you’d be a trillionaire right now.)
While catching up, I got drunk, stone stinking drunk, at this Friday night happy "hour." We all did. My buddy Kyle was so drunk after all the shots and beers and mixed drinks that he actually took himself home just after midnight, walking two miles through downtown Philly (which, as you may have heard, is not the safest place these days) at 1am. After leaving the bar, my friend Pat was detained by the Philadelphia Police for four hours after a brush-up with a cabbie. My buddy PJ, having missed the 1:15am train back to his home in suburban Ardmore and too drunk/cheap to take a cab, slept in an unlocked Hertz rental car at 30th Street Station. These men are each 28 years old, and successful psychologists, traders, and salesmen, respectively. I told you, very little has changed.
I had my own moment as well, after my buddy Joe, who was staying with me at my mom’s house for the weekend, and I got home after a drunken meal at the 24 hour Oregon Diner. I passed out in bed, but not before sending a record 34 (!) text messages to a girl I recently made out with (I actually filled her mailbox, so she had to erase messages the next day to get them all) (and no, unfortunately, "filled her mailbox" is not a sexual euphemism). Though I passed out in bed, I woke up the next morning on floor with the light on. I was confused. And hungover. Very, very hungover.
One thing I often do when drunk and in a strange place is sleepwalk. Usually when I’m in Philly, I stay at my dad’s place. However, since Joe was crashing with me for the weekend and my mom’s house has two spare bedrooms to my dad’s one, I slept at my mom’s for the first time in years (my mom and dad live around the corner from each other, so this isn’t as big a deal).
At some point during the night, I allegedly got up and sleptwalked into my mom’s bedroom, the front room (fully clothed, thankfully). When she asked me what I was doing, I chided her, saying, "I know what I’m doing! I know what I’m doing!" She then watched me walk down the hall and try to get into the back room where Joe was sleeping. But his door was locked. So I went back into my room (the middle room) and laid down to sleep on the floor – with no pillow or blanket, two feet away from an empty and perfectly comfortable bed. This is how I woke up.
So there’s that.
************
On Saturday night, a more formal event (read: jacket and tie, buffet dinner, and open bar) was held at the school itself. Spouses were invited to come, but many, wisely, stayed away. The event was for all reunion classes ending in 2 or 7, so there were five- and ten-year guys drinking and eating along with 35- and 50-year guys. Strange.
But it was a nice night and opportunity to (try to) appear classy, have some fancier drinks and talk to old teachers and classmates. Many more of my former classmates were at this function as opposed to the previous’ nights happy hour, but that didn’t stop those who were at the happy hour from dominating the conversations about how drunk we got and what sort of trouble we got in the night before. Again, not much has changed.
At one point during the night, my friend G (initial-only for reasons to become apparent) asked me if I wanted to step outside to smoke a joint with our buddy P. I don’t think I’ve ever turned down such an invitation before and wasn’t about to then. So G, P and I started walking out, toward a side entrance/exit of the school, for a nice evening doobie.
Our buddy T joined us and when we got outside, we realized that between the four of us…no one had a lighter (did I mention that our alma mater is one of the most academically rigorous high schools in the nation?). Worst stoners ever. T ran back inside to get a lighter while P kept on rolling the joint; I was the lookout, keeping an eye on the window in the door into the school, to make sure no one was going to walk out.
While I watched T jog back into the school, I also watched him get intercepted by Mr. Z. Mr. Z is (or was when I was there) the head of admissions at the high school and he also plays an important role in alumni relations, going to all the events and such. In many ways, he’s the face of the school; an affable, good-natured guy, perpetually smiling but not a pushover, who looks younger than he is. Everybody likes Mr. Z and he likes everyone.
But boy, could Mr. Z walk fast. He said something briefly to T and then continued at cheetah-like pace toward our exit. I felt like I was 14 again and telling P to quickly finish up the circle jerk because his mom had just pulled into the driveway when I stammered, "Dude, stop - he’s coming. Z’s coming!" P was putting the unfinished joint into his pocket when Mr. Z stuck his head out the door.
"Guys…you gotta know there are security cameras everywhere. [motions to cameras above us] You can’t be rolling the, uh, rolling the J’s [mimes puff-puff motion of smoking a joint] out here. Just finish it up and come back inside. Cool?"
Surprised and embarrassed, not only because Mr. Z had just caught us, at 28, trying to smoke a joint outside our old high school, but also flabbergasted by his puff-puff motion and belabored/awkward use of the phrase "rolling the J’s", we did not protest and walked back into the school with Mr. Z. P broke any tension there might have been by saying as we walked inside, "Man, it’s a good thing I don’t go here anymore." We all laughed. But I couldn’t help thinking it would have been funnier if we were high.
************
These are good snapshots of the reunion weekend. Again, I dare not get into the private jokes, but I think you get the idea. If you don’t, I’ll tell you that the function at the school ended with about thirty guys in my class sitting around a table stacked with bottles of beer that we hoarded before the bar closed, long after everyone else had left, betting on who could throw my buddy Pat’s jacket, which had been stolen during the night by our friend PJ and taped into a ball, into a trash can. We left only when the valets came in tell us they were going home and were going to leave our car keys outside in the North Philly neighborhood.
The thirty of us then went to a bar and drank and smoked some more. When the bar closed, fifteen of us got carry-out beers and sat in the middle of a courtyard in front of an office building on the Parkway, drinking until the beer ran out (shortly after 5am). When that ended, we were planning on going to our friend J’s apartment, which he shares with his fiancée. At the last minute this idea was abandoned; J had gotten so drunk the night before at the happy hour that his fiancée said to our buddy Ryan that if he were that drunk again, he shouldn’t come home. Thus ended the night.
The next day, I had another belly full of booze and diner food and a massive hangover. But the runs and a monster headache were a small price to pay for the ultimate boys’ weekend. I can deal with those consequences once every five or ten years.
It got a little messy.
************
I went to a high school in Philly called St. Joe’s Prep. It’s an all boys, Jesuit-run prep school in the middle of the ghetto of North Philly. Despite the complete lack of sexual contact with any sort of female mammal, high school was a pretty f’ing awesome time in my life.
So I was very much looking forward to the reunion. I still keep in touch with a lot of guys from high school - some of them remain my closest friends – but there were a number of guys I lost touch with over the years, because of moving away or getting hitched early or turning into a gay. Alternatively, there were some guys I wished were seriously injured either during or after high school. The reunion was a perfect opportunity to bring us all back together; for the former group, it’s a chance to share stories and memories; for the latter, a chance to point out how much better I am then they are now.
(My disdain for some guys wasn’t because I was picked on in high school. I was actually both fairly large – I was maybe an inch shorter and thirty pounds heavier as a high school junior than I am now – and considered "cool." But some guys were simply unconscionable dickheads. I’ll spoil the surprise and tell you that it was too bad that most of these dickheads weren’t at the reunion, so I’ll just have to continue wishing them ill will from afar.)
On Friday night I was late getting to the happy hour, which was winding down just as I arrived, fresh off the train from NYC with my buddies Joe and Pat. However, just because the school-sponsored happy hour was over (at 8pm) didn’t mean the bar was closing. So me and thirty guys stayed at the bar until closing.
I won’t even attempt to get into all the private jokes that were being resurrected and bandied about between my friends and I ("me and my friends"?). You’re just gonna have to trust me that I can’t recall a time when I laughed so hard and so frequently, unless you want a 2000 word dissection on why Mr. Nilewski’s revelation that he once had shigelosis was one of the formative moments in my life and in the development of my sense of humor (short explanation: shigelosis is transferred through the fecaloral route – draw your own conclusions). All I’ll say is that very little has changed maturity-wise since our high school days. I haven’t seen more scrotums since, well, probably my birthday. But before that, it had been awhile. Like, months.
What has changed is our drinking ability, or at least my drinking ability. Little known fact about me: I didn’t start drinking until I was 19. Seriously. I’ll get into the reasons for this another time, but though I went to the standard high school parties, I never drank. Also, as mentioned, I never sexually touched a female at these high school parties. I have no doubt that the two are related. My clear braces, weight problem, round John Lennon glasses, and long hair that naturally curled up just above my shoulders probably also contributed, but I’m certain if I drank a little bit I would have been able to make out at least with a chubby girl here and there.
(By the way, if you were to put $1 on the odds of the high school me one day becoming one of People’s "50 Hottest Bachelors", well, you’d have to buy me a beer or a boat, because you’d be a trillionaire right now.)
While catching up, I got drunk, stone stinking drunk, at this Friday night happy "hour." We all did. My buddy Kyle was so drunk after all the shots and beers and mixed drinks that he actually took himself home just after midnight, walking two miles through downtown Philly (which, as you may have heard, is not the safest place these days) at 1am. After leaving the bar, my friend Pat was detained by the Philadelphia Police for four hours after a brush-up with a cabbie. My buddy PJ, having missed the 1:15am train back to his home in suburban Ardmore and too drunk/cheap to take a cab, slept in an unlocked Hertz rental car at 30th Street Station. These men are each 28 years old, and successful psychologists, traders, and salesmen, respectively. I told you, very little has changed.
I had my own moment as well, after my buddy Joe, who was staying with me at my mom’s house for the weekend, and I got home after a drunken meal at the 24 hour Oregon Diner. I passed out in bed, but not before sending a record 34 (!) text messages to a girl I recently made out with (I actually filled her mailbox, so she had to erase messages the next day to get them all) (and no, unfortunately, "filled her mailbox" is not a sexual euphemism). Though I passed out in bed, I woke up the next morning on floor with the light on. I was confused. And hungover. Very, very hungover.
One thing I often do when drunk and in a strange place is sleepwalk. Usually when I’m in Philly, I stay at my dad’s place. However, since Joe was crashing with me for the weekend and my mom’s house has two spare bedrooms to my dad’s one, I slept at my mom’s for the first time in years (my mom and dad live around the corner from each other, so this isn’t as big a deal).
At some point during the night, I allegedly got up and sleptwalked into my mom’s bedroom, the front room (fully clothed, thankfully). When she asked me what I was doing, I chided her, saying, "I know what I’m doing! I know what I’m doing!" She then watched me walk down the hall and try to get into the back room where Joe was sleeping. But his door was locked. So I went back into my room (the middle room) and laid down to sleep on the floor – with no pillow or blanket, two feet away from an empty and perfectly comfortable bed. This is how I woke up.
So there’s that.
************
On Saturday night, a more formal event (read: jacket and tie, buffet dinner, and open bar) was held at the school itself. Spouses were invited to come, but many, wisely, stayed away. The event was for all reunion classes ending in 2 or 7, so there were five- and ten-year guys drinking and eating along with 35- and 50-year guys. Strange.
But it was a nice night and opportunity to (try to) appear classy, have some fancier drinks and talk to old teachers and classmates. Many more of my former classmates were at this function as opposed to the previous’ nights happy hour, but that didn’t stop those who were at the happy hour from dominating the conversations about how drunk we got and what sort of trouble we got in the night before. Again, not much has changed.
At one point during the night, my friend G (initial-only for reasons to become apparent) asked me if I wanted to step outside to smoke a joint with our buddy P. I don’t think I’ve ever turned down such an invitation before and wasn’t about to then. So G, P and I started walking out, toward a side entrance/exit of the school, for a nice evening doobie.
Our buddy T joined us and when we got outside, we realized that between the four of us…no one had a lighter (did I mention that our alma mater is one of the most academically rigorous high schools in the nation?). Worst stoners ever. T ran back inside to get a lighter while P kept on rolling the joint; I was the lookout, keeping an eye on the window in the door into the school, to make sure no one was going to walk out.
While I watched T jog back into the school, I also watched him get intercepted by Mr. Z. Mr. Z is (or was when I was there) the head of admissions at the high school and he also plays an important role in alumni relations, going to all the events and such. In many ways, he’s the face of the school; an affable, good-natured guy, perpetually smiling but not a pushover, who looks younger than he is. Everybody likes Mr. Z and he likes everyone.
But boy, could Mr. Z walk fast. He said something briefly to T and then continued at cheetah-like pace toward our exit. I felt like I was 14 again and telling P to quickly finish up the circle jerk because his mom had just pulled into the driveway when I stammered, "Dude, stop - he’s coming. Z’s coming!" P was putting the unfinished joint into his pocket when Mr. Z stuck his head out the door.
"Guys…you gotta know there are security cameras everywhere. [motions to cameras above us] You can’t be rolling the, uh, rolling the J’s [mimes puff-puff motion of smoking a joint] out here. Just finish it up and come back inside. Cool?"
Surprised and embarrassed, not only because Mr. Z had just caught us, at 28, trying to smoke a joint outside our old high school, but also flabbergasted by his puff-puff motion and belabored/awkward use of the phrase "rolling the J’s", we did not protest and walked back into the school with Mr. Z. P broke any tension there might have been by saying as we walked inside, "Man, it’s a good thing I don’t go here anymore." We all laughed. But I couldn’t help thinking it would have been funnier if we were high.
************
These are good snapshots of the reunion weekend. Again, I dare not get into the private jokes, but I think you get the idea. If you don’t, I’ll tell you that the function at the school ended with about thirty guys in my class sitting around a table stacked with bottles of beer that we hoarded before the bar closed, long after everyone else had left, betting on who could throw my buddy Pat’s jacket, which had been stolen during the night by our friend PJ and taped into a ball, into a trash can. We left only when the valets came in tell us they were going home and were going to leave our car keys outside in the North Philly neighborhood.
The thirty of us then went to a bar and drank and smoked some more. When the bar closed, fifteen of us got carry-out beers and sat in the middle of a courtyard in front of an office building on the Parkway, drinking until the beer ran out (shortly after 5am). When that ended, we were planning on going to our friend J’s apartment, which he shares with his fiancée. At the last minute this idea was abandoned; J had gotten so drunk the night before at the happy hour that his fiancée said to our buddy Ryan that if he were that drunk again, he shouldn’t come home. Thus ended the night.
The next day, I had another belly full of booze and diner food and a massive hangover. But the runs and a monster headache were a small price to pay for the ultimate boys’ weekend. I can deal with those consequences once every five or ten years.
