This has been one hell of an eye
opening class reunion. I still straddle the fence with what I should do with
the dirt I’ve uncovered and the challenges I face. I had not seen my group of
high school buddies in twenty years, last attending the five year get together.
I had no earthly idea that their Entrepreneurship had flourished so. Hell, I
didn’t even know they were all in business together. I suppose I can be
thankful that I moved out of town after graduating or I too could have been
part of this hometown enterprise. As it turned out, luck smiled down on me and
I wasn’t privy to their mad house or at least not until the last few days, but
knowing their dirty little secrets has placed me in a most uncomfortable
predicament.
We
have our bags packed and ready to check out and I still haven’t shared my
discovery with my beloved little trophy wife, their name for her, not mine. That
would just make her an accessory too, so I need to think my next move oh so
carefully as not to endanger either one of us.
Given the
circumstances I could possibly work this to my advantage, even though I
question whether I should have joined them for that first boy’s night out.
Adult beverages have a tendency to loosen ones’ tongues. Friends say a lot of
things to friends that they wouldn’t share with anyone else, especially when ripped.
I suppose I’m still a valued member of the clique after all. Frankly I should
count myself lucky to be here to tell about it.
I guess I’m getting ahead of myself. I should start at the beginning and not so
close to the end, since I’m as much a part of it as them now.
1
The latest chapter in my life
actually started two months ago when I received the invitation for my 25th
Class reunion, the class of 1971. I had skipped the ten year reunion, for good
reason. My second wife and I were honey mooning in Bermuda .
Not even she would have granted me a kitchen pass for such a lame excuse as
partying with my old school pals. A honey moon divorce wasn’t on the agenda. Two
wives in less than five years, I wasn’t quite ready for a third. History has a
tendency of writing its own pages unfortunately.
My buddies and I
were inseparable while in high school and we vowed we would never lose scope of
that fact. They didn’t. I’m the one who drifted away long before that fifth
year out of school. Love had tugged at my loins and influenced the purple
headed warrior to take charge of those brain cells that had not been rendered
useless from toking on all those left handed cigarettes. We didn’t consider
burning a joint doing real drugs back in the day. It was more of a rite of
passage in a small town with nothing better to do. Hell, we had nothing better
to do...really.
Anyway, directly
after our senior year I relocated one state over in Georgia, The Peach State,
living on the outskirts of Atlanta , if living
that close to Atlanta Stone
Mountain from my deck. Thinking back now, I should have renamed it
Stoned Mountain Stone Mountain
is a quartz monadnock, a large granite rock in the middle of nowhere. It has these
gigantic carvings on one side of civil war heroes, Stonewall Jackson, Robert E.
Lee and Jefferson Davis all riding horses. The south may never rise again but
we still have our rock with a confederate portrait chiseled on the side that
the Yankees can’t take away from us.
Let’s fast forward
twenty years to 1996. I opened the 25th year invitation and asked my third wife,
Ginger, if she would care if we attended. She had never met any of my high
school buddies and being newly weds of less than a year, she humored me with my
request, saying it sounded like such a quaint little town. I’m not sure about
that quaint part but little certainly fist the build.
Wifey number three,
Ginger and I reside in close proximity to Charlotte ,
North Carolina
In two short
months I would be joining up with the old crowd. I could hardly wait. I
returned my RSVP promptly and called to make reservations at the only hotel in
town, a locally owned mom and pop three story restored behemoth anchoring the south
end of the town. The John C. Calhoun Inn, Bar and Grill had become quite the
tourist stop. This would be my first time staying there. It had been condemned
during my youth but still laid claims to being haunted by a whore or should I
say a Madam of the night, which had been allegedly murdered by a drunken mayor
back in the late 1800’s. Playing the ghost card now drew tourists like flies to
cow manure. I of course asked for the whore’s room to partake of the ambiance. It
only cost twenty eight dollars more than a regular room so I thought why not splurge.
Ginger could
hardly contain her excitement. She often pretended to be a medium while
performing at Twin Peaks , painting her size
38’s to resemble dual crystal balls for her gypsy routine. An apparent
clairvoyant, she had seen me in her future. I do recall gazing into them and being
head slapped a time or two between those mountains of delight during a friend’s
bachelor party. Those wonderful assets lead to my many returns to Twin Peaks and to me eventually proposing matrimony to
her so I’ve been told. I’m a sucker for all natural tits and there was nothing
artificial about either one of hers, so bouncy and fleshy, not like those rigid
basketball sized ones most strippers sport. I think they call them boob jobs
because boobs are a sucker for them.
So the table had
been set. We would arrive on a Thursday. A Scotch Foursome golf tournament was
scheduled for Friday for those men and woman who did play golf. A concert was
planned Friday night with performances by three local bands, all made up of a
splattering of our fellow graduates. The main gala would be Saturday night, a
reenactment of prom night 1971. While all events would have an open bar, we
were encouraged to BYOB and I opted to bring ours. In two months I would be
united with the brew crew as we called ourselves back then. Ginger would
require a new wardrobe for the occasion and I saw a case of Jack Daniels in my
future. Neither of us would be disappointed.
