conventional avoidance

over the years i've remained in contact with a very few high school friends. i attended our 5-year reunion, to discover most of the guys, but none of the women, were still living at home. in those scant years, none of us had done much growing up (although some had had kids--not counting the smatter of white trash girls who'd popped out a few before graduating), so it just felt like our old keggers at the gorge, except with dresses and ties. and no mud.

i skipped the 10th, there was no 15th and no 20th. apparently the woman who seems to steward these things was too high or something.

collective itchy feet wanted to stroll down memory lane, so a date was selected, then the venue. i lobbied selfishly and briefly for nyc. they picked a crap hotel right near our home town. in the damn boonies. the e-mail loops began, then widened and folks started chiming in from all over. well, not so many from so far. plenty stayed close to home, and it seemed that a good number moved to similar boonies, just in other states. the constant theme in the e-mails: how to entertain their hapless husbands while the biddies all caught up and clucked about their kids. links to soporific blogs featuring pix of progeny and cruise vacations. the mens' notes, of course didn't mention spouses, lol.

every single woman in this electronic circle is married and has kids. except for me. in theory, i'm accustomed to my statistically curious singleness, but realized instantly that being besieged by its opposite, trapped in some badly lit banquet room, force-fed rubber chicken, and held hostage to whomever carpooled with me would be a nightmare of epic proportions. add the horror of my current emotional state, unwavering devotion to a man whom i have no business loving, as well as my uncertain future, and i felt too freakish by ten. in my mind i saw the only thing i'd likely manage would be to fuck somebody's husband, and then fuck somebody else's the next night, to prove the first one didn't mean anything. a tacky hotel full of suburban moms and me: koo-koo the bird girl.. so despite being pleaded with and implored by many, i wisely opted for my usual weekend routine.

now the visual circle begins. pix are trickling on-line, the first round of which were untitled. i was shocked at how few women i recognized. four. i recognized only four out of about thirty. i wanted to start a botox pool, but nobody took me up on it. two of them i predicted, one, i didn't know was going, and another, i'd forgotten about entirely. other than looking unecessarily startled, these women looked great. the rest? i had no clue who they were, till a later link came with names. even then, i couldn't believe how terribly most of them had aged. fifty- or 100-plus pounds, terrible strip-mall haircuts and all those glamour-don'ts were just sad. french women are notorious for dying their hair ash blond as the gray gains majority, so i can only presume well-intentioned hayseed hairdressers are accountable for all those brackish dye jobs. as for the guys? i recognized two. some guy now has a goddamn comb-over!! how could that be? (i still haven't found out who he is...)

so yup, cocktails mixed with my not-so-inner snob would have been a very bad mix, lol. for once, i made a prudent decision.

if i'd been in the room, felt their presence, heard their voice while our high school soundtrack of squeeze's "tempted" and meatloaf's opus "paradise by the dashboard light" blared, would i have *known* them more? would i still want to know them? i still have very good and vivid memories of those years. i'm not one of those pantsed and whirlied saps for whom high school was a trauma anxiously left behind. the girls and guys in my circle were popular, smart, funny and we were the nexus in our relatively small community of upper-middle-class privilege.

we were touted as movers and shakers; g.p.a's were stratospheric, academic honor societies' certificates piled up, "who's who" tracked us down, and universities clamored for us. the girls with whom i remained friends are still some of the smartest people i know. so although it shouldn't, it always surprises me how many opted for lives just like the ones they had growing up. the safety of the known.

i'll never know their truth, and i wonder how many of them actually do--did they choose this life of mini-vans and mommy-n-me, or just let it happen because it was *expected*? the logical adult next step. i have a friend who once said, " i like my kids, i just don't like being their mom." um, ok...

does the fence around their yard keep them safely within, or keep the big world out and at bay? which do they fear more? do they daydream a life with no fence, no limits? do they still dream for themselves, or only their children?