Attending your girlfriend or spouse’s ten-year reunion is an eerie and frightening proposition laced with all sorts of latent moral ambiguities and the fear of unexpected surprise. But primarily it is awkward on every level you can possibly think of. With that in mind, I recently attended my wife’s ten-year reunion and decided to keep a running tally in my mind of the evening.

6:52 Realize that the only button-down shirt I have is too tight to be worn without looking a bit ridiculous. Wife confirms opinion. Mother-in-law says it looks fine.

I looked like this guy…except without pectoral muscles.

6:54 Shoot down suggestion that we travel to Old Navy to buy me a new shirt.

6:56 Admire self in mirror with offending shirt covered by jacket. Wonder if this is the female equivalent of wrapping a sweatshirt around your waist to cover a fat ass.

6:58 Shamefully submit to tweezing of errant hairs surrounding my beard. Stare at ceiling in remorseful contemplation for the direction my life has taken.

7:01 Step father-in-law makes fun of me for not looking like I am excited about the reunion. Respond with weak half-laugh.

7:04 Climb in car for trip to pre-party at some guy’s house.

7:06 Inquire for the fifth time as to how many ex-boyfriends I will have to meet. “Probably only two,” says wife. Worry the entire football team counts as one.

7:11 Arrive at house/mansion in expensive part of town. Surmise that this house costs approximately 750k more than any other house of someone else my own age.

Like this except with snow.

7:12 Complain about the cold and falling snow as we walk toward the front door. A part of me doesn’t feel like I should be allowed to enter through the front door.

7:13 Am told to stop complaining about the cold and falling snow.

7:14 Enter mansion. Everyone squeals and greets my wife. She hands me her coat. I feel like a man servant. (Incidentally my wife claims she never handed me her coat…either I am completely making this up or someone who was not my wife handed me their coat. I’m convinced it was the latter.)

7:16 Consume first beer in rapid time while attempting to keep a silly grin on my face. Silly grin causes first spillage and leads me to wonder how the Joker ever drank anything.

Notice the absence of beer.

7:19 Duke-Memphis is playing on the flat screen in the kitchen. This flat screen should not be confused with the flat screen ten feet away beside the twenty foot Christmas tree.

7:22 I have never been more falsely interested in a sporting event.

7:25 Finish second beer. Find a girl who is a huge Laguna Beach fan and begin discussing whether she is going to watch LC’s new show. Just as I’m about to make the segue to Real World, she finds someone else she would prefer to be talking with. I’m not sure what it says about me that if you are unfamiliar with either the Real World, Laguna Beach or sports I have nothing to say to you in a social setting. But I suspect it says something bad.

        
My own modified Pythagorean theorem:
No LC² + No Real World² + No Sports²= (Chew peanuts and drink beer while standing silent and awkward)²

7:32-7:39 God, I am so interested in this game. Wow, what a game.

7:40 The old high school yearbook is passed around. Just a tip for future reunion guests, your wife or girlfriend will probably not favorably respond when you are asked to give your opinion of her senior year picture and you say, “You look like an immigrant.” (My wife says she didn’t even ask for my opinion and I said this. Ok, that’s even worse).

7:45 I meet another non-graduate of the high school. She is very entertaining. Especially when she says her mother told her to “watch out for the black people” at the reunion. So far the only minorities at the pre-party are two asian kids. And I think they were adopted.

Two different Asians…parentage uncertain. Danger:minimal.

7:48 Third beer finished. Man, I’m telling you this Memphis-Duke game may be the best game in the history of the universe.

7:50 Find a peanut tray and begin ravenously eating peanuts even though I’m not hungry because it makes me look busy. Tell any guy who walks by, “Man, this is some game.”

7:52 One of my wife’s female friends who I know takes me by the arm, “You are just so much better than any of your wife’s old boyfriends. She was such a smart girl but all of her boyfriends were such…” We are interrupted by loud shouting. Someone is being told not to flush the toilet.

7:54 I tell three people about my friend from college named Shaw who once got locked in a bathroom at a college party for a half-hour and emerged all sweaty and with the vein in the center of his head pounding. In response, someone says, “Did he go to Andover?” Someone else says, “I hate Andover.” I have no idea what Andover is.

But I do know Shaw.

8:03 I begin my fourth beer. All of a sudden the Christmas tree lights are almost as interesting as the basketball game.

8:06 Christ, we’re at half-time. Tell some guy who I am talking to, “Man that was a great first half.”

“What’s the score?” he asks.

I realize I have idea. “Close,” I say and reach for more peanuts.

8:11 I’ve emptied the peanut tray.

8:13 My wife returns from somewhere far away and I consider making an immigration joke. Instead the cheese I am eating doesn’t fit between the two wedges of cracker and crumbs go everywhere. My wife rolls her eyes.

8:15 I finish the fourth beer and everyone is leaving for the actual reunion.

8:18 My wife’s friend tells me that I should keep my jacket on and no one will notice how tight my shirt is.

8:22-8:31 We sit down in the car and some guy is peeing directly in front of us into a tree. “He was always peeing into trees,” my wife says. She puts her headlights on bright and the guy almost falls. We spend the rest of the time driving to the bar. It passes very quickly and for a time I convince myself that the advancing snowflakes are a warp speed tunnel and that when we get there the night will already be over.

8:32 The night is not already over.

8:33 The reunion location is actually the upstairs of a bar. I have some trouble with the stairs and the fact that we have to pay an entrance “donation.” “I don’t want to donate,” I say.

8:34 We donate. For the donation I get a red nametag and Lara writes my name for me and presses it onto my shirt. “It’s on pretty tight,” she says of both the sticker and my shirt.

8:35 I buy a Miller Lite for $4.50 and walk back to the rail above the actual bar. It occurs to me that the location of this reunion is like one of those catwalks above the stage.  For a time I turn and watch the bar below and wonder how many beer bottles I would have to throw down to clear the entire place.

    
The reunion was here.

8:45 While leaning against the back rail, I meet some guy who looks like Silent Bob except he is not Silent. We talk about all sorts of interesting things. Like:

Surprisingly, this argument is very similar to what practicing law is actually like.

8:53 I buy beer for two guys, one nice guy and the guy who always pees into trees. The guy who always pees into trees says, “Cool man, you rock, I’ll get you next time.” I never see him again.

8:55 The nice guy and I discuss whether an attractive girl went to his high school. Ultimately we determine there is no way she did because her breasts are too big for him to forget.

8:57-10:03 I lean against the railing and discuss with no less than nine people the legal dynamics of what would happen if the railing broke and we all plummeted below.

10:04 The reunion is beginning to die down. I know this because there are less squeals. No one is remotely near me except for the only six asian people at the reunion. I consider tapping them to see whether they know Jamie from Real World San Diego. My wife arrives and says, “Oh Christy Oh.” For a time I deconstruct the likelihood of someone actually being named Oh Oh.

    
Odds of knowing Jamie? 3.2 billion to 1.

10:06 My wife pulls me through the crowd to meet people who I have somehow not met before. Everyone is very interested to meet me for exactly thirty-three seconds and then there are more important people to speak with.

10:11 The nice guy returns and says, “Big boobs went to Andover and they’re fake.” Suddenly, I realize that Andover is the big rival high school.

10:14 I meet a girl who lived in Pakistan for six months. We discuss Pakistan. 

This is what Pakistan is like.

10:44 I tell a new girl that if we fall off the balcony we will all be very rich. Then somehow I say, “I’m addicted to the internet.” She leaves. I knew I should have gone with, “I’m addicted to porn on the internet.”

11:01 One of my wife’s friends from grade school is now a lingerie designer. I inform her that I do not wear lingerie.

11:04 We discuss whether I look particularly awkward when I enter a lingerie store.

Pictured: Lingerie store Not pictured: me looking particularly awkward entering said store.

11:10 The guy who likes to pee into trees is downstairs making some kind of whooping sound at the bar.

11:11 I eliminate whooping cough as the cause.

11:12 Trip to the bathroom. On the way back my wife’s friend who thinks I am the best boyfriend/husband my wife has ever had asks whether I want to accompany her to the ATM. I say yes. She says, “I was just joking.” I trudge back upstairs.

11:14-11:30 Place cell phone calls and push buttons on my phone feverishly in a failed effort to change the background photo on my cell phone from me reading the paper.

11:31 Manage to change the cell phone image to a picture of a whirring landscape that vaguely resembles the catwalk reunion.

11:38 Someone screeches, “Where’s your nametag?” without stopping to speak. My nametag has vanished. Unfortunately my “donation” has not returned.

What my nametag looked like before I gave a donation.

11:46 My wife takes my arm, “People like you here,” she says, “They really do. They’re calling you the trophy husband.”

11:55 If I am a trophy husband, scratch that, I am not a trophy husband. No standards can be this low.

I should be pictured on this cover.

12:01 The witching hour has come and passed. Once again I lean against the flimsy railing while I consider the implications of being labeled a trophy husband.

12:03 I contemplate buying lots of things and bitching frequently about my as yet unhired personal trainer and as yet unhired maid.

This is what my maid would look like for the two hours she was employed before my wife fired her.

12:05 The last hour passes with grandiose visions of all the things I will buy and all the places I will visit until I realize I barely have enough money to cover the bar tab replete with four dollar beers and nine dollar mixed drinks.

1:04 We leave and it occurs to me that I have met no ex-boyfriends. I bid adieu to the catwalk and the flimsy railing I called home. Once more we walk into the snow. The crystalline air is freezing. In two years I will have been out of high school for ten years. What does it mean when the older you get the more you wish you were still in school?

1:05 My wife gives me a hug. “You were very good,” she says, “what did you talk about with all those people.”

“Pakistan,” I say to my immigrant wife.