I Love MikeLavoieDotCom.com

I don’t know why I went to my college reunion. I was never really a rah-rah college guy. I only went to one basketball game, I didn’t add pep to rallies, I wore a Hoya Pride shirt because it was free and had a pretty rainbow triangle on it. Mostly, I drank and wrote and made silly faces on stage and silently judged people. These things I still do in New York. Plus, returning to DC was sure to bring up bittersweet memories of good times with my ex and bitter memories of getting sued by my college next door neighbor, both of which fill me with different brands of helpless rage that I wish I could bottle and sell to some small, rich middle-eastern principality. I dunno. I guess the lure of hanging out with my old roomies in a dorm room again filled me with some silly longing. Plus, maybe someone will make out with me. So I went.

Georgetown was beautiful five years ago but even my fuzzy, glorified remembrances do not do it justice. The ancient, iconic Healy building that looms beyond the front gates exudes this aura of religious serenity, even for a lapsed Catholic like me. As I approached, my heart began to ache. For the rest of the day, it felt like I was walking in slow motion through memory soup.

Since 2003, Georgetown built a huge dorm, my old writing haunt, Leavy, has comfy new furniture, previously craptastic dorm Darnell now has a slick restaurant with Sapporo on tap, and the coup de grace, there is a new state of the art performing arts center, in its fourth season. When I visited as a high school senior, I was told that they would be breaking ground my sophomore year. I got a tour and it was like getting kicked in the balls every fifteen seconds. It felt like my ex-girlfriend started dating George Clooney or any other more-successful-than-me actor (read: any other actor). That night, I had this dream:

EXT. GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY. DUSK.
Mike stands in front of Georgetown. He is old. He has forgotten to wear pants. His underwear has sheep on them. Georgetown has lost weight, has a tan.

Georgetown pats Mike’s arm, turns on a dime and skips off, her smile, freckles, fade in the distance.

(Or something like that.)

Besides crippling relationship issues, I have the worst memory of any non-vegetative person on earth. The next day I have lunch with my old roomies. They say hi to someone who I have long since forgotten. I hold out my hand and say, “Hi, I’m Mike.” She squeezes it and says, “Yeah, I know. I’m Steph. I sat next to you for three semesters of Professor Sabat’s psych classes. How’s your grandma? Still scared of cats?”

This woman knows intimate details of my life and I’m so mortified about forgetting her name from five years ago that I’ve already forgotten her name from two seconds ago… Becca? I remember her face; all of their faces, I like these people, I just don’t know why. I’m like the guy from Memento, just with less tattoos and zero excuse for having amnesia.

We all chat. Becca hates me. I massage my squozen hand.

Later that night there is a “tent party” in the parking lot by the new dorm. Tent party = alumni + tent + cover band (loud, bad) + fruit (on a stick) + other hors d’oeuvres (semi-edible) x open bar.

I enter the tent with my friend Beth. She remembers everything about everyone, which makes me wonder how she can still be friends with me. “Just so you know, Lavoie, I’m not going to hang out with you all night just so I can save your ass.” I try to stay close to her but she is small and fits through gaps in the mob that I do not. Sure enough, she loses me. Now I am fucked.

I order a Maker’s Mark and soda. Time to make questionable decisions. I search for all the girls who were hot and unavailable in college, whose names I do remember. They are still hot and unavailable and in fact do not remember my name. One, Michalene, says, “Matt?” which is close enough, by god, so we chat. I do my best impression of a confident and interesting person who has a lot of things going for him. Later she tells people I am a stalker. I pay attention to Facebook notifications and suddenly I’m a stalker. If she didn’t want me knowing she canceled “yumyum at Burger Bistro” with Kaydee because of “this retarded thing with my dad” on May 26th at 6:04 PM then she shouldn’t’ve posted it on Kaydee’s wall. Lord. Doesn’t anyone TEXT anymore?

A familiar voice says, “LAY-VOIE!” and we high five and hug. I should totally know this guy. I ask him where he is and what he is doing. Chicago. Law school. “Dope.” His name is not coming. Beth’s tiny face appears, praise God. “Hey, do you know Beth?” I say, but instead of completing the introduction, I feign catching someone’s eye off in the distance and wave. Beth knows what I want: “Hey, Chris, how are ya?” “Oh hey, Beth, good.” I finish waving to no one and return reinvigorated with this intel. “So, Chris. How about them Cubbies??”

People like Chris and Becca are like Algebra 2. I aced Algebra 2. And a few months later, I would have gotten a B. But five years later, when a polynomial walks up and says, “LAY-VOIE! REMEMBER ME?” That’s a big F. My brain has jettisoned this information. I apologize every time, and every time I mean it.

Facebook should sell flash cards.

Sometimes I feel like I’m F’ing up in life in every sense of the term. I don’t need a life coach, I need a life professor. How can I possibly be an alumnus? I don’t know anything about anything. I make things up on paper and on stage and in bars and hope someone will make out with me and make me feel like I’m young again.

I look around. Michalene is gone. They refuse to pour me more Maker’s Mark. Just because I’m lying on the ground. I find home and sleep alone in a twin bed, a few feet away from my old GU roommate. The sheets are too short for the mattresses. Lie down forever lie down!

The next day, my ex-roomie introduces me to his new girlfriend, who just graduated from George Washington. I tell her I’m an actor and she says, “Aw, how cute.” Later she asks me how it feels to be so close to thirty and suggests I put on twenty pounds of muscle if I expect to get anywhere in “the industry.” Somehow, the wood-chipper scene in Fargo pops up in my throbbing brain.

I excuse myself. I have made lunch dates with all the girls who I was in love with in college but never dated. Maybe they will make out with me. Sadly, they are all in “stable” and “happy” relationships. Two have rings. One has a baby. I just sit across from her, pounding an iced mocha in my shades, regretting not marrying and impregnating her myself. It’s strange; she seems completely immune to my several charms. I mean, she’s not hitting on me at all. All she wants to do is feed that baby. What’s a guy gotta do to get some attention around here? I’m even wearing boxers with sheep on them.

We reminisce, but it feels like fact-checking.

We are bored by the details of each other’s life. I hate babies. She hates that I have not grown into an adult. We do not embrace goodbye because she is holding a baby.

• Lesson for the Day #1: Hangovers are considerably worse when your old loves independently reach the consensus that you are an immature disaster and they don’t know even know why they are surprised.

This is a good time for a nap.

I wake up refreshed for the final night’s tent party. It was supposed to be on the roof of Leavy, which has islands of undulating lawns and provides a nice panorama of the lower campus. The bad news: It has been moved due to “flooding” to a hotel conference room. The good news: the room has 50-foot ceilings. Hoya, Hoya Saxa!

An hour later, fueled by spring rolls, riding an ocean of whiskey and surrounded by a maelstrom of faces that actually become more recognizable the more I drink, the world is a glorious, hilarious mess. When I remember someone’s name from relearning it yesterday, I am ecstatic. I scream it out like I have Tourette’s. “BOB! I LOVE YOU BOB! KISS ME BOB!”

Soon though, my old classmates catch up and surpass me in revelry. People are becoming loud and sloppy. Honestly begins to leak out. Did I hear so-and-so’s marriage is falling apart? He is unfaithful, she is an alcoholic, it’s hard to tell which came first. In a corner, someone confides that she is scared to death of her own child. Another hates his job but can’t afford to leave; another is getting married because her boyfriend is the “best of what’s left.” I need to sit down. This is heavy, the seedy underbelly or normalcy. Whatever absurdities and failures abound in my life, I guess I have to be thankful it’s only myself I’m bringing to ruination.

Looking up, there is a slideshow in the distance. It’s been on loop all night. Faces. Faces, faces. And then, out of the masses: me. Grinning like a fool, arms around an old chum. No smugness. No trace of irony. Just happiness. Interesting. I loved it here. I think I forgot that at some point. The proof crossfades into another picture. I look around. The room has thinned.

Someone finds me and we go to the roof for a cigarette. There are four puddles. Nice flood. The smoke swirls around us as his ladyfriend puddle hops. Feels nice not to be in a bar in New York. Feels nice to be back.

Some late night wanderings, random run-ins, jokes and embraces later, it’s 4 AM. Time to go. Damn, that was fast. And fun. Like a reunion should be. Like college was.

Reuniting is strange, but makes me feel lucky I united with all these people in the first place. It is somehow good to know there are people as scared and lost and insane feeling as I am. So I’m not George Clooney and my roomie isn’t Warren Buffett, but we’re trying. And I guess giving yourself and A for effort is as good as it gets these days.

On my hazy way through campus to my luggage, the ghosts of scenes from the past emerge from the shadows. Sleepovers on the Leavy rooftop, making out by the David Schick memorial pond, peeing on the dumpsters in Village B and countless other moments replay in my head as I drift between asleep and awake on the ride to the airport.

And suddenly I’m home, back to “real life,” whatever the hell that is. But it feels good to be back. Can’t live in the past or for the past. You just have to remember what you can, with who you can remember and keep moving forward, together or apart.

So, thanks, old friends, whatever your names are. I really am sorry I can’t remember anything. I hope to see you all in another five years, or less even. Good luck, Chris and Becca. Gain ground and go straight for the touchdown! And in the mean time, try your best to get divorced so we can make out next time.

Or at least separated. That’ll work too.

Love,

Mike

This entry was posted on Monday, June 9th, 2008 at 1:02 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.