1999-11-12

Gotta get off this high school jag...

Opening Night for S.F. Sorrow last night. A good time had by all.

After the show, Linda Bean, Ethan and I headed over to the Squealing Pig for a post-performance beer. The 'Pig has become very popular, despite the crummy guitarist they had in the corner playing Waterboys covers.

Ethan is one of the few pals from high school whom I've managed to stay in touch with. Linda, fresh from a lovely performance as the show's doomed heroine, immediately wanted dirt: "Tell me something embarrassing about Lisa in high school!"

Ethan: "You know, I can't think of anything right now, but after this beer I may remember something."

Did Ethan have something on me? I panicked. Really, though, the truly horrible stuff happened after high school, after undergrad, too, frankly. Grad. school was when I outdid myself in terms of drunken spectacles, bad vanilla sex, subway histrionics and patchouli-dipped boyfriends. Ethan could not have known this. The best Ethan had on me was my terrible wardrobe and the fact that I used to drink wine coolers.

The summer after we graduated high school was pretty much what you'd expect. A core group of us spent nearly every night together, sitting on beach walls and in basement rec. rooms, weepily swearing that we'd be friends 4-eva and that we'd see each other at Christmas and we were soooo glad we got to be friends and blah blah blah. I knew this was a load of crap, even as I threw my arms around kids and pledged undying solidarity. Big a cynic as I was, I wanted the memory of that summer. I wanted that summer in pastels and velvets. I wanted to do the requisite teen soul-searching and I wanted to spew trite little catch-phrases and I wanted to head off to Florida awash in sentimentalism. And for the most part, I got that. The first semester, we all wrote to each other, then a few of us wrote to each other, and then I just wrote to Ethan.

Enough. Now I'm sitting at my desk with a huge pile of paper in front of me and I'm wondering how much of this I can reasonably fob off on my intern when she gets in. Delegation. Responsibility. Spreadsheets. Accounting. I want that summer back.

lisamcc at 10:50:18

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