Alumni Reunion

As usual, this year’s Pitzer College alumni reunion was a fun mess.

I was hesitant to come this year after making an ass of myself at the reunion the previous year. Full disclosure (something I probably do too often here): I blacked out for only the second time in my life (the first being this infamous trip to Vegas) and ended up becoming a public spectacle while throwing up in the bushes by the dorms. With an endless open bar, I had been pretty steadily drinking since 4 pm, and it showed when I approached some “grey foxes” (women who graduated from college in the 60s) on the dance floor and they cleared out in fear that I would knock them over. The ladies weren’t that far off considering I then proceeded to accidentally bump my friend Phoebe onto the ground. The next morning, I woke up next to Kat who had also gotten ill the previous night. On the sheets between us was an earring, a nicotine patch, and some vomit. The first two belonged to Kat, but we never determined who was responsible for the puke on the bed. In a sense, it didn’t really matter.

So yeah, considering I never really had a night that bad when I actually was in college and could chalk it up to youthful indiscretion, I really didn’t want to become “that guy” at the reunions. It helped that I had other plans and didn’t show up until about 11 pm this time, sparing me an additional seven hours of obliteration. So while I maintained reasonable behavior, I can’t say the same of many other people in attendance, which was certainly fun to watch.

It seems that when people return to their alma mater, they feel compelled to live up to their glory days. So even if they’re well into their thirties and forties, they get drunk and stoned like they were half their age. On multiple occasions, I was invited to go back to someone’s temporary dorm room to do some drugs, including one guy who had a bag with some sort of gas to inhale that he couldn’t even identify, so I was just like, “Ummm…” I hope I’m not anywhere close to being that guy at my 15-year reunion.

One of the funnier aspects of the evening was that my friend Devin brought two coworkers along to the party to for the free booze. They were friendly and pretended to have graduated from the school. The thing is, at a school of less than 1,000 students, you do tend to remember most people, at least by sight, from your graduating class, so they had to invent stories as to why they weren’t memorable. One of Devin’s friends told people he had gone to Wisconsin then transferred to Pitzer for his last semester of school, so he didn’t really meet many people. It was a laughable story, because I don’t think it’s even possible to transfer for just your last semester of college, plus you probably wouldn’t bother coming to the reunion if you didn’t actually know anyone, but people apparently bought it. Blame it on the alcohol. The story wasn’t as successful later when the second non-alum coworker, now thoroughly inebriated, had forgotten what his fabricated history was and proceeded to say “Uh, same as him,” after the first guy told his story. “So wait, you both transferred from Wisconsin in your last semester?” “Uh… yeah…” Their cover was blown, but by that point in the night, it didn’t really matter.

I was excited when someone I had a crush on my freshman year recognized me and struck up a conversation. Everything about our dialogue made me realize how I would never have a crush on her now, but it did feel like I fulfilled a six-year-old goal when she brought me back to her after-party with her “cool” friends.

Meanwhile, I ran into Christine. Though the bar had closed at this point, Christine had received a bottle of beer, but was struggling to remove the cap. She tried to flip it off between two boards of wood, yet only managed to break the bottle and leave a jagged neck, from which she tried to drink. Recognizing the danger, I found her a used red cup to pour the beer into; though the cup was dirty, it seemed better than drinking straight from the broken bottle. As she poured the beer, I watched pieces of glasses flow into the cup, so, out of concern, I insisted that she slurp slowly from the top so she wouldn’t ingest the glass. Then, demonstrating my commitment to safety, I walked away, leaving her unsupervised.

An hour later, a bunch of us walked home. While crossing the street at 2 am, a car pulled up to the stoplight, from which someone shouted something that I couldn’t understand. Drunk, Angel flipped him off, which prompted the car passenger to get out of the car with a bat that he swung in our general direction. Christine shouted something insulting, which I personally wouldn’t have directed toward someone with a weapon. The car then started speeding by us. After participating in the aggression, Angel and Christine ran and hid while the rest of kind of watched in fear. Apparently, the two were afraid there would be a drive-by, but I kind of figured if you had a gun, you’d pull that out of your car to intimidate people before a baseball bat.

Alcohol, deception, flirtation, and danger – it was quite a reunion. Anecdotally, I heard of even more scandalous actions that went on after I went to bed, but alas, those aren’t my stories to share.