Reunions and Reminders: To Become What We Must, We Shall Acknowledge Who We Are.

An Odyssey Through Muskegon's Bar Scene

On Wednesday night an old friend of mine came in to town. He was more like an old acquaintance, because I knew this fellow from college, but I do not recall much hanging out with him back then. We were both on the universities prestigious and hard-drinking debate team, but I did not hit my social prime until after he left.

Given this I wasn't quite sure why he wanted to hang out. I was up for it if for no other reason that a mild-mannered substitute teacher should have a certain antithetical mystique (quasi-hypocritical debauchery), and I had not had a whole lot of either recently.

He had been away for a few years; he is earning his Ph.D in Kansas, a place where in many parts of the state you are regarded as being in the ivory tower for having a G.E.D. I picked him up at his grandparents’ house which was in a familiar neighborhood, since I went to elementary school there and earlier in the year I had made visits to that street during my campaign for the State Legislature.

We chatted for a bit, and then we went to one of the red-neckenist bars that I know on Henry Street. It's highest redeeming value is that it is next door to the best greasy fries & chili dog joint in town. Also, pool was only 50 ¢ents.

Before we went into the bar, we slammed two cans of LaBatt that I had in my car. He was especially appreciative of this since he cannot get LaBatt in Kansas. We slammed beers and tossed the hand crushed cans into the woods like true locals. Upon out arrival we shot 50 cent pool next to a chubby nerd making moves on a past-her-prime single mother with unfortunate tattoos. . .but these blemishes clearly didn't translate into attainability for this fellow. . .the woman was still out of his league.*

*I wasn't sure I should call her a woman, because she might have been younger than me
We picked up a six-pack at a RITE-AID, and we each slammed a beer before every bar. We played pool. I lost and was reunited with my RAZR™ cell phone. We smoked cigars, and cackled like vulgar old men. I almost hooked up with an attractive female who had a really unbecoming reputation. (She could possibly have been the woman on whom the song "Crazy Bitch" might have been based.) It was one of those micro-adventures that make life's odyssey worth talking about.

I soon realized that the best part about wooting it up with this fellow is that he is a lot more similar to me than my hometown friends. He is a booze-swilling, self-perceived intellectual, just like me. I admire men like Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain because they loved wit, wisdom and getting totally fucked up and hitting on some white bitches. Word.

I remember commenting that I had to break the rules of 8-Ball because in order to become the Ubermensch, I had to reject cultural norms and socially constructed fallacies, and that is what Nietzsche told me to do. It is not as though it was particularly witty, but it was the best feeling that he understood the allusion because he was college educated. I know that if I had the temerity to say such in front of the fellows I grew up with that they would look at me like my dog looks at me when I sound a high pitched whistle. . . an unnervingly familiar countenance: confused and contemptuous turn of the head and twitch of the ears.

I can't help but feel as though I am incredibly snotty and elitist for having these feelings. It's not that I look down on the guys who have been with me since elementary school, and who were willing to drive 2 hours to my college to beat the shit out of some 20 frat-bastards whose fury inspired them to search me out for violent ends. It had been clear to me for some time that I have outgrown a lot of my old social niches. With most of my friends from this time, it is clear that we had taken totally different directions in life. I wanted to go to college, and then I worked on a presidential campaign, a U.S. House race, and then I worked at the state capitol and then ran and lost my own campaign for the state legislature, all before I was 25. My friends got jobs, got girlfriends who became their baby-mommas, who became wives. I have heard that for my generation that friends are the new family. My family went off and made families of their own while I was embracing new cultural norms that say it is okay to wait until your into your 30s to settle down.

Even the family I had in college, the debate team and other friends are making families of their own in places like Chicago, D.C. and Seattle. It appears that I lose brothers and sisters to proximity more often than mother-circumstance can make them for me. There is a certain sense of isolation many of us report as we move toward being closer to 30 than to 20. Reevaluating interpersonal relationships and developing ones identity is one of the "symptoms" of the so-called Quarter-Life crisis. It is a pervasive phenomenon.

Can we overcome the brutal indifference of change by anticipating it and accepting its inevitability? Does this prepare us to have more satisfying lives in the future? Is it so pathetic to want to savor that which by its very nature is not in our lives long enough to appreciate appropriately? I don't know. As George Harrison once said “With every mistake we must surely be learning, Still my guitar gently weeps.”