5:58 PM, Friday, July 3rd, 1998
My longtime pal and partner-in-crime, Elaine Hardy Vickers, has agreed to go to our big "all school" high school reunion with me. She and I arrive at The Patio, a banquet facility where the reunions being held are for classes of 1976 through 1981. We are two minutes early, so we tell each other how nervous we are and stand in the parking lot, eyeing the other early birds and having a cigarette. Clothing, shoes, and lipstick adjusted, we then enter The Patio at the stroke of 6:00.

6:02 PM
We register ourselves with Tim Fenimore and Hannah Isaly, two of our classmates, both of whom look amazingly great. In fact, Tim Fenimore looks darned cute. I should pause here to say that Tim Fenimore was my first boyfriend, back in fifth grade, after he'd responded to my note of "Do you like me? Check yes or no [complete with yes and no boxes]." He checked yes, and subsequently gave me my first-ever gift from a beau: a tiny Avon lemon perfume in stick form, sort of like a cross between a room freshener and deoderant. It shriveled up and dehydrated after a few months because I lost the cap.

6:03 PM
We scan the list to see which of our classmates will be there. No Don Rudy (cute guy with male version of Farrah Fawcett-Majors hair). No Harry McCullough, my favorite buddy, partner-in-crime, and secret crush from seventh-grade homeroom who could always make me laugh no matter what. No Lillie Farmer (gorgeous red-haired girl, smart, gorgeous, smart, gorgeous, too difficult to hate because also nice). No Michael and Michaela Black, twin classmates who were always hysterically funny. No Jim Ensell, a short, good-looking boy with elaborate braces, and the first boy with whom I ever seriously necked -- accompanied by "Frampton Comes Alive" blaring in Elaine Hardy Vickers' parents' basement. Ah, memories.

Some people we want to see, some we don't. We make a beeline for the bar.

6:10 PM
We're at the bar, sipping Heinekens. Hey, this isn't too bad! It's not real crowded, the beers are icy cold, and we're having a couple of cigarettes, scoping the room. We discuss our outfits. Elaine was afraid she'd be overdressed, I was afraid I might be underdressed. It turned out we are probably about in the middle of the underdressed/ overdressed range. Elaine's wearing a beautiful black wedding/tea party/cocktail party-type dress with vivid crimson and orangey-pink blossoms all over, nail polish, sexy black heels. I'm wearing a plain ivory silk sleeveless top, black pants, and "not dressy enough for the outfit but comfortable sandals." We both have loaded on the jewelry, one of the points of a class reunion being to wow your classmates with your successfulness via the amount of jewelry you own.

As for the dress of the other attendees, well, as they say in the Bible, it takes all kinds. For the men, there is everything from cut-off jean shorts topped with oily-looking Harley-Davidson T-shirts to polo shirts and Dockers to blazers, ties, and tropical wool pants. For the women, the gamut runs from sundresses in gauzy African prints to "I'm in better shape than my classmates who've had children and find my fulfillment at the gym instead" tight, tight, tight (I cannot stress the "tight" part enough) microscopic black skirts or shorts with midriff-baring tops, sometimes avec sequins, sometimes sans sequins. There are also a number of ladies in smart-looking work-type suits in pastel shades. Major jewelry on most of the women, major balding on most of the men.

6:25 PM
First snub of the evening. Lureen Hurd, looking fiercely thin and attractive in a sort of scary way, is standing just feet away from us pretending not to notice us. She's (sort of) clad in a black shorts outfit that looks like it was designed by Salvador Dali: teeny-weeny shorts with a slanting, sort-of-midriff-bearing, weirdly-shaped sleeveless top through which you can occasionally glimpse her belly- button. Her hair is screaming "Bottle blonde! Bottle blonde!" and her skin is screaming, "Future melanoma victim! Future melanoma victim!" Too much make-up, too much everything.

When Elaine and I finally bring ourselves to her attention, Lureen's eyes dart this way and that as she looks for classmates more previously popular than ourselves to whom she can flaunt her belly-button. We find out, in a brief exchange of vital info, that she is living in southern California and works as a personal trainer as she awaits imminent film stardom. We tell her about ourselves and she can barely contain her boredom. Lots of eye-darting as we finally pull ourselves away and go elsewhere.

6:40 PM
The place is really filling up now. For $10 per head, we get our choice of rigatoni, some sort of meatball thing, cold cuts, rolls, and hunks of honeydew and watermelon. The drinks are extra, of course. We look at the line, which extends literally halfway around the room, and decide to have another beer and wait til the line gets shorter.

6:50 PM
We're on our second beers, and we're having a blast. Our pal Suzy Webster Botelli comes in and her husband, Rick, shortly buys us each another beer. We now each have two beers in front of us, so we drink a little faster.

7:00 PM
First trip to the ladies room. Chat with women from my sister's class (1977) and am told how much I look like my sister. One helpfully points out, "You were always so tall!" in case I had never happened to notice this.

7:15 PM
We are spotting folks from our class left and right, not to mention folks we knew from other classes. In walks Caroline Anthony, a couple of classes younger than us, with what Elaine and I agree is the scariest hair we've ever seen. Caroline has a gorgeous, petite figure and a beautiful face, but the overly enthusiastic make-up and too-black Mafia princess hair kill the effect. "I thought they stopped selling teasing combs in the '70s," Elaine hisses at me.

I agree. I don't know how to describe this hair other than to say it looks as though you could remove it from Caroline's head and enter it in a 4-H livestock competition. Think Priscilla Presley on her wedding day: major helmet action, looking sprayed all to hell, weird winglike hanks of hair swooping down on her cheeks. Not a single actress in a single 1950s bad Hollywood film sported hair this unnatural-looking. I have a flash of wondering if maybe Caroline is actually a serenely-recovering cancer patient who lost all her hair due to chemo and is now making do with a bad wig. But we are close enough to see that, no, that truly is her own hair and that truly is the style she's chosen, presumably of her own free will.

7:35 PM
Elaine decides not to have any dinner, but I am starving. I get in line and Joe Penn, probably the handsomest, bedroomiest-eyes guy from our class, is in line directly behind me. He says to me cheerfully, "Hey, Catherine, wanna do my homework?" He used to tease me in junior high about being smart (that not being in as high demand as a cute butt, perfectly feathered hair, and major cheerleader aspirations, none of which I happened to have).

I smirk at Joe and ask him if his pal Rick Thompson has shown up. He points to Rick right behind him. Rick jerks his chin at me and I jerk my chin back. Rick and I had grown up just two houses away from each other. He used to tease me unmercifully when we were kids, to the point that I finally silenced him one day by whacking him upside the head with a white patent leather purse filled with rocks. I am pleased to note that neither Joe nor Rick are anywhere as cute as they used to be. I then suffer a minor panic attack, realizing that neither am I. I comfort myself with the thought that I have not yet started to go bald.

7:45 PM
Now there's a line at the ladies room. I go into the men's room instead. Of course there's no mirror and no door on one stall.

7:55 PM
I try to subtly direct Elaine's attention to a classmate of ours who is nattily attired in a blue-sprigged sundress, out of which her boobs are bursting gaily forth to greet the world. Her hair is unnaturally curly, unnaturally blonde, and she's sporting more make-up than could strictly be considered necessary. I ask Elaine who it is. Elaine looks at her, thinks for a moment, and then guesses: "Dolly Parton?"

8:00 PM
Elaine and I are seated at a table with Antoinette Tobla, a teeny-weeny but very tough chick from our class. Antoinette has black spiky hair, black spiky eyelashes, and a severe-looking mouth. I start pontificating about the number of our classmates who have kids in their mid- to late-teens. "It's really scary!" I blather. "I mean, can you imagine being our age and having kids that old?" Antoinette offers me a tight smile and whips out photographs of her 16-year old daughter, Sierra. I ooh and aah over Sierra, who in the photos looks as though she is wearing a prom dress constructed of purple Saran Wrap. I shut my mouth.

8:05 PM
The DJ is in full-swing. We are getting the full-blown 1970s bad-music immersion treatment: the Commodores, Free, Kiss, Queen, Donna Summer, Journey, and so on. Despite the badness of most of the music, I am thrilled to hear it. I am amazed at how many of the songs remind me of Rex Morton, who used to live on my street, and who was this completely unattainable boy I had a major teenage crush on. In junior high, he (and ten zillion other American boys) had a poster of Farrah Fawcett-Majors on his bedroom wall. If memory serves, I think there was a spotlight trained on it. Very intimidating at the time to dark-haired, flat-chested, regular-sized-teeth me.

8:15 PM
I spot Rex Morton across the room with his wife, Teresa James Morton. They were both in our class and have been married thirteen years. Rex is still yumilicious, and Teresa is still rail-thin, with bounteous hair and perfectly applied make-up. Rex still has the sort of independently-operating eyebrows than can, in turn, make him look devilish, choir-boyish, sexy, angry, and so on. I catch his eye and go over to talk to him. Elaine and I have a nice chat with Rex and Teresa, nicer than I would have thought. Scary to think of getting married so young, but Elaine and I are both admiring of the fact that they have managed to stay together, and even seem happy together.

8:40 PM
Simultaneously, Corinne Charles and I spot each other. I don't think we've seen each other since high school. Shrieks and hugs, hellos, and catching up. I tell her that my first memory of her is from a junior high assembly, in which she sat behind me surreptitiously discussing the details of her recent break-up with boyfriend Mick Sparks. I didn't know Corinne well then, but I was so impressed with the fact that she told the girl sitting next to her that she'd "cried all the tears I have for that boy." I had never had a boyfriend at that point in time -- and had certainly never had the wonderfully mature opportunity to cry over a boy -- and was amazed at this Joan Crawford melodrama unfolding in the seat behind me. She howls at this and says he was a dirtball and she couldn't believe she'd ever dated him.

8:52 PM
I see Patty Miller, one of my all-time favorite people in the world. We hug and shriek, hug and shriek. She looks fabulous and maybe twenty-five, tops. We reminisce. I tell her that one of my favorite memories of her was when I won the seventh-grade spelling bee. I went back to her house to spend the night. Her mom made us both chocolate milkshakes, and we sat there drinking them while watching "The Six-Million Dollar Man." I remember sitting there with Patty, sipping my shake and watching Lee Majors jump in around in slow-motion, thinking blissfully, "Does it get any better than this?!??"

9:00 PM
Hey! Howsabout another beer!

9:20 PM
We spot Lucy Dorrance, an old classmate of ours. We'd heard rumors that she'd married well, but didn't know much about her husband. We are about to find out, as we begin chatting with Lucy.

Lucy, it turns out, married Manny Kellogg, one of the first people in America to get his law degree specializing in entertainment law. He wastes no time in telling us this about himself. He now works for -- get this -- the law firm founded by Paul McCartney's father-in-law. This is the very law firm over which the Beatles supposedly broke up, as they couldn't agree on how to split royalties from certain songs. Meanwhile, we find out that Lucy and Manny have lived in London for years, and that they have two sons named Rhys and Edwin. Veddy English.

They say there's someone famous at every class reunion, and I guess Manny is our guy. We certainly get the impression that he feels this way. Manny is nice enough to chat with, but after about ten minutes, you begin to realize the level of his shallowness. Or something like that.

Manny starts telling us about Linda's funeral back in April. In case we are too dumb to figure it out, he is at pains to tell us that by Linda, he means Linda Eastman McCartney. This is, of course, the daughter of the guy who founded his firm; her brother is still an attorney there. Manny went to the funeral in London, of course, and has sarcastic things to say about the choice of flowers on the pews ("Lilies are so typically, I don't know, funereal, don't you think? Not at all her style."). Then, in a pathetic attempt to make himself look down-to-earth, Manny tells us that even though he's an important attorney and apparently indispensable to all manner of aging rock stars, "Among our friends, I'm known just as Lucy's husband."

"Is that true?" Elaine asks Lucy, but before Lucy can say a word, Manny puffs up and says, "Except in the newspapers and on television, of course." No lie! He actually says this! He has no shame! He's in the press a lot because in addition to doing work for Paul McCartney ("Linda's estate is going to be a monumental piece of work," he says, trying unsuccessfully to look mournful), he has provided legal counsel to David Bowie, Mick Jagger, Robert Plant, and Rupert Murdoch. Or so he says.

9:45 PM
Elaine and Manny are still gabbing (that is, Manny is still yapping egotistically in Elaine's face). Elaine says something about the difficulties of having earned her teaching certification -- the financial and time constraints and so on. Manny later casually mentions that he's earned his teaching certification, too. Elaine is astonished. "When did you do this? After law school?" Manny says yes, he did it "in my spare time, down at Cambridge. It was nothing; a piece of cake, really." I can tell Elaine is itching to smack him.

10:00 PM
Elaine and I have been exchanging deep, dark secrets, mostly about old crushes. We're having a grand time. We decide to stroll over and tell Tim Fenimore that he has gotten really cute and that we would happily have jumped his bones in high school had we but known. I think we said it more diplomatically than that. I hope we did, as his wife was standing nearby when we said it.

10:15 PM
We decide to first go to Dan's Bar, where our former pal and mess-of-his-life-maker Jerry Baldwin works. It turns out he's not there that night. It looks like the Star Wars bar in there -- most of the patrons have that "I've done hard time" look. We hustle out and head into the heart of town just a block or so away. We get beers at the Dan-Dee-Bar (not to be confused with Dan's Bar) and bump into Lureen Hurd again, still sporting her Salvador Dali Halloween get-up. We also bump into Yuko Ijiri, a former exchange student of my family's from Japan, and her pal Katie Fergus, who used to babysit my brother and sister and me. I tell Katie that I can still remember hot summer afternoons thirty years ago where we'd all lie on the living room floor (the coolest place in the house) and listen to . . . and before I can finish, she laughs and says, " 'Abbey Road' and 'Sgt. Pepper' !" Exactly right.

10:35 PM
Elaine and I both have to go. Women are in line for both the men's room and the women's room in the Dan-Dee-Bar, and some guy is giving a woman at the head of the line grief about it. She sticks her hip out to one side, puts her head down like a charging bull, and says aggressively, "Listen, honey, you can go take a leak outside if you don't like it."

"So can you," he counters, to much laughter from the other men and stony silence from the other women.

"I don't think so," Head-like-Charging-Bull tells him. "I'm going in the first bathroom available and I! Don't! Care! If! It's! The! Men's!" The women cheer and the men roll their eyes.

11:30 PM
We bump into Jim and DeeDee Crocker. Jim is a surgeon and DeeDee is a stay-at-home mom. We visit for a long time. We've all known each other since we were kids; it's a real Old Home Week experience.

12:12 AM
Manny and Lucy are getting ready to leave, but Manny can't resist leaving us with another bit of homespun folk wisdom. He begins his homily as though we've spent the entire evening telling him he's the most wonderful, successful man we know, because he points over at our classmate Alan Riker and says, "You know who is a real success? Al. You know why? Because from what Lucy tells me, here's a guy who's not all that smart [yes! Manny says this!] and doesn't earn much -- he's a maintenance guy, after all, never went to college -- but he's got a good marriage, a bright kid, and a nice house. And people like him. Now in MY book, that's a real success." We listen in silence, waiting for the corn syrup to stop dripping off Manny's proclamation. Elaine and I later agree that we've never met anyone with such a colossal ego.

12:30 AM
DeeDee and Jim leave. Elaine and I agree that we're having a wonderful time, that we love gabbing with each other, and that we should hug. We do, thus spilling beer all over ourselves. Eau de Reunion.

1:00 AM
Time to go. We make our way through the crowd, which seems only to have gotten bigger, and head home. Reunion over.

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