July 09, 2009

What I’m Reading Now: The History of the World in Six Glasses, by Tom Standage

I could have easily said no.

Wait, actually: I could have even more easily said nothing. Dan, the head of ImprovBoston, sent out a mass email asking for volunteers to help move old seats out of the theater and new seats in. Very simply, I could have deleted the email, or ignored it, or even responded with a, “Sorry I can’t help! Good luck!”

See, there was no real reason to help, is the thing: (1) I’m on a sabbatical from working at the theater this July, (2) the whole thing was supposed to start at 7:30 AM on Thursday, the morning after karaoke, and (3) well, here’s the thing. ImprovBoston is like a generally nurturing and loving parent who is very occasionally verbally and emotionally abusive. I love the theater very, very much … but I don’t feel as if I owe them, if that makes sense. So I could have said no. But I didn’t.

When I returned from karaoke, slightly earlier than usual, I checked my email from Dan and saw the follow-up: the “new” chairs for the theater were actually coming from Braintree High School, and being repurposed in the IB space. I had to read that twice, and then twice again: Braintree High School. Braintree High School.

I hadn’t been back in sixteen years. The last time I stepped foot on BHS ground was two weeks after graduation in 1993, when I came by to pick up my term paper from Ms. Kreinsen … which wasn’t really a term paper so much as a collection of short stories I’d compiled during my last semester. Sixteen years ago I had picked that collection up, and since had only looked back in my memory. Some might say I’ve looked back a lot.

Serpico picked me up at 7:00 and we made our way down to Braintree. I’m clearer about my mixed feelings for Quincy, one town over. Quincy is where I moved to when I first lived alone, and when I had my first apartment. Quincy is where I lived when I met Tracey and Dave and George and Shawn. Quincy was my stepping-stone into my adulthood. Braintree – damn, Braintree was where I was a kid for the last time.

We pulled up in front of my school and stood under the flagpole out front. There’s a cement courtyard there, and when school’s in session, the buses pull up out in front of it. The countless buses I waited for there. There’s a sad patch of grass in the middle of this elevated enclosure, and I remember sitting on the ledge and reading by myself when Mike B. came by and pushed me over on a dare. It was the first time I’d ever seen him and I fell in love at once. That courtyard was where I was a bully for the first and only time, writing the words I’M A FAG in Wite-Out on John B.’s backpack without him knowing it. A year later, we became friends, although I’m damned if I know how he ever forgave me. I talked with John L. about doing the whole Flatliners thing for real, I made up with Keith, I … I carried a hammer around in my backpack in case anyone threatened me. Jesus Christ, all that, just waiting for my bus ride home. Serpico and I leaned up against that ledge this morning and the memories were almost palpable.

Soon, other people arrived and we made our way to the loading dock, where piles of auditorium chairs waited to be packed and delivered to their new homes. “I know these chairs,” I told Theresa. “Holy crap, I’ve sat in these chairs.” During a break in the hoisting, I took a quick jaunt down the hall, to the auditorium from which these seats came.

Seeing it hit me with a wallop so hard I almost fell over.

I saw Pirates of Penzance in that theater when I was a junior. I sat alone and watched the talent show in senior year, and one of my friends sang, “Summer, Highland Falls” on stage. Even more, so much more, I sat in those seats with my mother, waiting to be called up on stage myself to accept the Creative Writing Award for 1993.

I had to take a further look. Into the lobby, where The Pit we all used to sit in had been filled in. Quickly up those front stairs, stairs I used to climb every single day, now feeling like an imposter, like a letch, like a … like a goddamned grownup.

Then that first hall and there was the Media Lab, a fancy name for the School Library. The doors were closed and might have been locked. I didn’t want to test them for fear that they wouldn’t be. Mike and Keith and I used to hang out in there all the time. It’s where I wrote my story “Captain Solar Saves the Universe” on math paper. Where Keith tore a page out of my copy of The Dark Half just to be mean. Where I spent hours reading the Man, Myth, and Magic books. Where Mike showed me his journal entry that talked about me. Where I discovered what Jack London looked like for the first time.

God, too much. Way too much.

Down the hall: none of the names on the doors were familiar to me. My homeroom was upstairs, one flight up, but I didn’t dare go up. Up there was the science lab, where me and my friends would hang out and electrocute each other for fun and repeat jokes from Saturday Night Live and talk about Star Trek. Upstairs was the writing lab, to which I escaped every day to sit at the computers there and get lost in my own made-up worlds.

I stopped short. No, not all of the names were alien. Right here was where Mrs. Kreinsen taught. Her name was there, above the door. I took one step inside the classroom where I first learned about haiku and read William Carlos Williams. Where I wrote most of my best short stories. Where I first figured out how to describe a scene without dialogue, and attempt to make it interesting. Every English class I’d ever had led me to that one, and here I stood looking at the place I used to sit with my hand raised and a smile upon my face. The lights were off and the desks – too small, far too small – were in disarray. This wasn’t my classroom anymore. You can’t hold on forever, Kev. Sometime you have to figure out how to let go.

I made my way back downstairs to the loading dock where Theresa was talking with a fellow whose face I remembered, just barely. He smiled when he saw me and I recognized him as the maintenance man, Mr. Maher. And holy hell if he didn’t recognize me: “Kevin Quigley!” he shouted, and reached out to grab my hand. “Class of ’93, isn’t it?”

I shook with him. “That’s exactly right,” I told him, amazed. “You’ve got a great memory.”

“I’ll do you one better,” he said with a smile. “Eleven. Seventeen. Twenty-three.”

I gaped at him. “That was my locker combination.”

“Darn right,” he said. “How about that?”

He caught me up on everyone who’d taught me who has since retired or died. It’s a funny old world, what happens when you keep moving and the places you leave behind stay still. Funny old world.

“Hey,” Mr. Maher said, grinning, “You think you left anything in that old locker of yours?”

I laughed with him and turned back to the seats we were loading into the truck. The seats I’d sat in so long ago, making their way up the road apiece to the theater I love. Life is like a circle, stapling the past to the present. It goes round and round, and it never ends. It just never ends.

“No,” I said to him. “I think I got all I needed.”