It’s Preppy’s ten year high school reunion, and we’re in Vicksburg, Mississippi. Preppy was class president his senior year, so he was responsible for planning the festivities. That was a little learning moment for me, by the way: I had no idea the responsibilities of class officers continued after graduation. Now he’s a dignified former president making an official visit, like when Jimmy Carter moderates peace talks. And that makes me, in a way, the former first lady of Porter’s Chapel Academy. I should totally be wearing a sensible suit and heels. Maybe a scarf.At dinner, we’re seated between Jen, Preppy’s best friend from high school, and a girl named Betty, who was expelled her senior year. Betty was the wild child- she could always get liquor or cigarettes, and ditched her prom date to take the limo driver instead. It seems everyone at the table has a Betty story.
“Betty,” says Preppy. “What was the name of that guy you ran off and moved in with junior year? He had a trailer with a big screen TV?”
“Oh, shit, what was his name?” says Betty, sipping her White Russian and peering into the haze of her memory. “My mama wanted to have him arrested. Jim? Tim? Somethin’.”
“I remember that!” shouts Jen. “We went to visit you and you just threw a porn tape on while we were sitting there talking. I’d never seen some of those acts before. Scared the hell outta me!”
“I just wanted y’all to see the big TV,” says Betty. “Everybody knows the only reason you get a big TV is to watch porn life-sized.”
“I didn’t know that,” I say. “Preppy, did you know that?”
The conversation continues in this vein for a while: the teenage adventures of Preppy, Betty, and Jen, most of which involve small crimes or choices that would have shamed their families. So they sound a lot like my high school stories. Good times. Eventually, I start looking around for the cocktail waitress, and I notice Jen’s husband. He was amiable and animated earlier in the evening, but for at least the last half hour, he’s been sitting two chairs down, observing the conversation silently. There’s an expression on his face I recognize, and it does not bode well for Jen when they leave.
Several months ago I met a few friends of Preppy’s from his life in another city. As the alcohol flowed, so did the stories. And there were quite a few that somehow had never come up in our conversations. I tried to maintain a placid expression as my stomach tightened. My laugh became more forced and my glances at my fiancée grew increasingly severe. We did not have a pleasant drive home.
So when Jen’s husband stands and makes it very clear it’s time to leave, I know exactly what’s going on in his head: “Why haven’t I heard any of this before?”
The next day, Jen reports to Preppy that she did have a rather strenuous drive back to the hotel, which left her confused even after they’d patched things up. These events were a decade ago, when they were babies. What’s the big deal?
Maybe it’s just me, but I think there’s a protective instinct which kicks in when we hear tales of wild nights and bad choices from our significant other’s history. We wish we’d been there, to steer them away from a guy who treated them like shit or something they drank, smoked, or snorted. And there’s a small part of us that wishes they’d been there to do the same for us. It’s the part of you that really means it when you say “Where have you been all my life?”, and knowing you can’t change that can be frustrating.
You probably have to be a total control freak to really appreciate this.
Preppy advised Jen to tell her hubby the same thing he told me: Every choice they made before led them to become the people we now love. Not all of them were good, but they were all necessary. And the past we had apart pales in comparison to the future we have together.
