RISD Reunion

Biltmore Hotel, Providence, Rhode Island

Oct 20, 2011

"Are you going to the reunion?" I asked Mark, a co-worker who was in my graduating class at RISD. We didn't know each other in school, but we've gotten to know each other over the years while freelancing for a few of the same companies.

"Mmmnah," he said, shaking his head.

"Yeah, I figured. Me neither. I stay in touch with the people I want to stay in touch with, and of course, none of them are going, so why bother?"

"Same here," said Mark. "Honestly, I don't feel like RISD was that big a part of my life."

Whether that was true or not, neither of us felt motivated to go. But then I got an email from my friend Robert, a "failed artist" (his words, not mine) who went on to get a law degree and is now an immigration lawyer in South Carolina, specializing in deportation defense.

"I know you said you're not planning to go," he wrote, "but I was thinking of going and had the thought that if you had any interest, I could fly to LaGuardia and we could drive up to Providence in a big rental car together. Get a room in a nice downtown hotel. Happy to cover the costs. No pressure. Just thought it would allow us to spend some quality time together, which is hard to do with family and work obligations these days/weeks/years. Let me know asap, as I need to book a flight."

Happy to cover the costs? His time in the courtroom has made him quite skilled at the art of persuasion. What the hell, it would be good to get out of town.

Robert, RISD Library, Providence, Rhode Island

Robert arrived in New York early Friday morning and took a power nap on my couch while I finished work. We couldn't have left at a worse time. Rush hour traffic combined with a light but steady rain meant a long trudge up Route 95.

Robert's driving made me tense. He's not a bad driver at all, but I found myself saying "Watch it. careful," quite a bit. I apologized. "I don't know why I'm so stressed out."

"No problem, I'm used to it. My wife is the worst backseat driver ever."

I suspect my anxiety had less to do with his driving and more to do with my general apprehension over returning to Providence -- the scene of the crime, so to speak. It's where I met my infamous ex-girlfriend and I met. I hadn't been back in about 20 years, and even though I knew she wouldn't be there, a stroll through all those gooey memories was likely to stir up a lot of garbled emotions. I don't think I was ready to admit it, though, so I blamed my nervousness on my two recent motorcycle accidents instead.

"The congestion on these wet roads has me wound up," I said. "I keep picturing a trash-compactor-style pile up. I learned the hard way how even a minor bump can disrupt a routine. My accidents weren't that bad, really, but my body is still screwed up."

Passing a couple of fender benders along the way didn't help anything, nor did Robert's graphic tale of a high school car accident that left him with his pants around his knees and his car around a tree. "Funny story, Robert, but let's change the subject..."

After handing the car over to the valet and checking into the room, we dropped off our luggage and walked across town to see if any of our geriatric school chums were up past their bedtimes.

The rain had stopped, but the streets were still wet. Street-lamps and headlights reflected in the glossy cobblestones. It was ten o'clock, but it felt much later. We stood on a corner, waiting for a green light, when a pair of cars came whooshing down the road, one after the other. The first one nicked the corner of a puddle like a warning shot, and it gave me just enough time to step back from the curb before the second car b-lined for the puddle's sweet spot. "Aw shit," said Robert, looking at his splattered pants, which had instantly turned from tan khakis into Desert Storm camouflage.

We walked into the bar where our class had arranged to meet. The sound system was pumping long-forgotten songs from the 80s, and some people were dancing — or moving almost to the beat. I may have known some of them, but it was too dark to tell. A pretty, young cocktail waitress directed us to the back room where the "RISD get together" was taking place. Curious glances followed us through the bar."Do I know that guy?"

A handful of people we knew were sitting at a table in the far back corner. We joined them and started a tab. After a few minutes of lip-reading, someone in our group asked the hostesses to turn the music down, but from the sound of it, she turned it up. A big guy with a black beard lumbered toward our table, his gaze fixed on Sylvie, who traveled from Paris for the event. Sylvie was in the middle of telling me a story about how she met the woman she's been living with for the past 20 years. The big man got to within three feet of Sylvie's face and stopped.

"Do we know each other?" said Sylvie.

It was a reasonable question. As it was, everyone had been it over and over to everyone else: "You haven't changed a bit, you look exactly the same," Though it often wasn't true.

"Yes," he said, "we do." Then he turned on his heel and walked away, apparently insulted.

"Did I say something wrong?" said Sylvie. "I wasn't trying to be rude, I just wanted to know who he was. I've been asking people that same question all day long."

"He's probably been thinking about you for the past 25 years," I said. "He was hoping you'd been doing the same for him. Way to crush a guy's dream, Sylvie."

Sylvie shrugged. "What were we talking about?"

"Your girlfriend."

"Right,"

Before she got started, we were interrupted again.

"Whay-ahs my cawdroy jacket?" a former classmate squawked in a well-lubricated Rhode Island accent. I forget her name, so I'll call her Theresa. "Whose got my cawdroy jacket?"

"What's it look like?"

"It's a small wale cawdroy, off-white, three-qwatah length with a matching belt."

She was a former apparel major who, from the sound of it, did some time in merchandising. Robert said she sounded like she was writing for a J. Peterman catalog. "It goes effortlessly from day to evening..."

As she dug through piles of jackets, someone whispered to me that Theresa came with a blind date.

"What a strange place to bring a blind date."

The date may have thought so, too, as he was long gone and Theresa was about to leave with someone else entirely.

Around midnight, we called it quits and walked back to the hotel.

Other than the melancholy of slogging through the memory marsh, another reason I was leery of going to the reunion was having the "So, what have you been up to," conversation over and over. I didn't feel like I had much to say and, although it wasn't a conscious effort, I found myself becoming more and more opaque as the weekend progressed.

"What have you been up to?"

"Not much."

"Working?"

"A little?"

"What do you do?"

"I'm a professional dilettante. I work freelance and do whatever comes down the pike."

If someone knew me, they might ask if I've been writing. More people than I realized read my blog. (Or used to, anyway.)

"No, haven't been writing much."

"Taking photos?"

"Not really, no."

"Well, what have you been doing?"

"Sleeping."

It was a smartass answer, but that doesn't make it a lie.

As for everyone else, a few were quite successful, and some were even happy.

The following evening, at a cash bar pizza party, one of the organizers stood up, got everyone's attention, and read a list of deceased classmates. I suppose it was appropriate, but a surefire way to bring the party down..

I saw the guy with the beard, the one who Sylvie insulted the previous night, and overheard him say that he hoped he wouldn't be on the list at the next reunion. "I had my first heart attack when I was thirty-six," he said. "How the hell did that happen?"

I had a few ideas.

There was an after-party at the Providence Art Club, a hoity-toity club founded in 1880 to "stimulate the appreciation of art in the community." Though inarguably stuffy, it's a cool old building filled with cool old things, and it was fun to wander around inside of it, cocktail in hand.

As I sat in a chair I wasn't 100 percent sure I was supposed to sit in, a tipsy woman with a wild mess of blond hair stumbled over to me. "Do we know each uthuh?" she said, in an accent rivaling Theresa's. "You look fuh-mil-yuh."

RISD is a small school, and everyone looks at least vaguely familiar. I recognized her, mainly because she was wearing the same clothes she wore in college. Same style, anyway. It was all back in fashion now, though, so there was nothing unusual about it.

"Way-yuh you livin' now?"

"New York," I said. "Brooklyn."

"Awyeah, New Yawk. I'm a paint-uh now, I show in Chelsea."

I was either stunned or not surprised at all. I couldn't tell.

"You goin' to the aft-uh pah-ty?"

"Maybe."

"Okay, cool, we can catch up then."

Robert and a few other friends tried to convince me to go to the after-party, but I decided not to.

"I've had enough," I said.

“Okay, well, come with us and we can drop you off at the hotel.”

“No, I’m going to walk,” I said. “Wander around, maybe take some pictures. Thanks, though.”

And that’s what I did, deciding about halfway through the walk that, like so many other things I've done, I was glad I came, but probably wouldn't come again.

Vintage Nationals

Weekday Vaycay, As They Say