 |
Calef Brown
|
the approach of
my first class reunion is bearing down on my psyche
with ever-increasing intensity. It’s slow,
steady, unstoppable—not unlike my mother on her riding
lawnmower as she makes laps around the aboveground
pool in our backyard. I can run, but I can’t hide.
If
it were just another wedding I had to skip or another
grad school graduation I wouldn’t attend, I could
ignore it and ride out the remaining months at a pace that
might indicate I’m cruising through life on a John
Deere tractor all my own. But like shoulder pads
in a Dynasty rerun,
signs of the reunion are everywhere I turn. Almost
weekly, reminders find their way to my mailbox. Every
conversation with friends includes some question about
who’ll be
there and whose hair loss is worse than mine at this
point. To add to the pressure, I have roughly two weeks
left to
put together a page for my class book.
It’s the page
that’s driving me crazy—the
very idea that my last five years can be distilled
into a 5-by-8-inch box under the simple heading “Life
Since Stanford.” My problem is not that I refuse to
be put in a box; my problem is that my recent past
fits all too
easily in that little space with room to spare. The
real challenge is deciding whether to follow the classic “here’s
my résumé” format or the slightly less
popular but equally respectable “no, seriously, this
isn’t a personal ad” layout.
Either way, this process has forced me to recognize
that I’m simply not good on paper. There’s been
no great job, no graduate degree, no time spent selflessly
slaving away at a nonprofit in some interesting part
of the world. There’s no child on the way, no pending
nuptials and, to be honest, no one I’d even pend nuptials
with. What, then, should I put in my box?
I’ve done
exactly two significant things since I left Stanford.
The first was telling my Southern Baptist parents
that I’m
gay. (My mother still occasionally pretends that conversation
never happened.) The second was losing weight roughly
equivalent to the body mass of your average Warner
Bros. starlet. Obviously,
neither of these things would make me the alumnus of
the month, and neither fits very well in that little
box; but
in my world, they’re both on a par with getting an
MBA.
So I’ll be showing up on the Stanford campus a
little behind in the game of life. It won’t be the
first time. Almost nine years ago, I made my first
appearance there with
possessions that included 22 Streisand CDs, one Brian
Boitano poster and a pair of black jeans. For that
and much more,
I owe an enormous apology to my freshman roommates.
(Sorry, Joe, Raj and Gene.)
Thankfully, I’m not the
same guy I used to be. Through some miracle of transformation
and overexposure to Neiman
Marcus, I’ve become an odd blend of personal shopper,
lifestyle consultant and walking Zagat guide, though
currently these services are available only to my friends.
It’s
nice. But what’s nicer is that as I threw out the pastel
plaid flannels, shed the weight and pawned the complete
Michael Bolton, I found out I actually sort of like
myself. Which
means that, at my reunion, lots of people who knew
me before will be meeting me for the very first time.
All
right, I tell myself—I’ll fill out my page.
I’ll probably even include a picture proving I’ve
recently upgraded from being a single man to being
a single man with dogs. And I’ll show up at the reunion
fully prepared to encounter happy couples and business
cards littered
with titles like vice president. And I’ll have a great
time. It might take me five more years to reach the
point where I’m good on paper, but it’s taken
the last five for me to reach the point where I’m great
in person. And that’s just not something you can easily
put in a box. |
