They say you can never return home, but sometimes you try
In the year of our lord 2023, Ryan attends his 20-year high school reunion
I’ve long held the belief that if you’ve lived anywhere, you reserve the lifelong privilege of returning at any time. Everyone should be able to go back to any house, apartment, dwelling in which they’ve lived and have a look around. It could be therapeutic. In fact, the majority of my favorite dreams involve going back to houses I grew up in, even if I always feel nostalgic and sad when I wake up.
There’s an inherent sadness in yearning for something long-gone. It’s like there are broken feedback loops in our heads, and nostalgia is the brain is reaching out to close them.
But I know if I were ever to return to one of my childhood homes, it wouldn’t be anything like my memories. No way could they be the gargantuan mansions from my 6-year-old perspective. I wouldn’t be able to fit in all my hide-and-seek spots. What seemed strange or frightening or magical would just be ordinary now.
Back in January, I got an email from the president of my high school class reminding us that it had been 20 years since we graduated. Reunion time.
Our class didn’t have a 10-year because social media was still usable a decade ago. What was the point? Everyone knew what everyone else was doing. But 20 years down the line, I hardly know anyone in my Facebook feed.
The email went on to say that he was too busy to organize it, and wanted to know if anyone else wanted to take the reins?
A high school reunion isn’t the same as returning to an old house, but it’s close. So many aspects of our lives sprout during those formative years: the music we listen to, the movies we like, the type of people that attract us, how we behave around others. I know there are many reasons why people would rather forget those days, but for me, it felt like a rare opportunity to revisit the past.
I volunteered.
Or more accurately, I volunteered my friend Anna to organize it. We’ve remained close over the years, and I know she has a knack for leadership and motivating people. A few emails later, she had wrangled together a solid team of classmates who also wanted to see a reunion happen.
We made a plan, set a date, got a venue. It was on.
In the year of our lord 2023, Ryan Bradford attends his 20-year high school reunion in Park City, Utah.
I haven’t been back to Park City in years, but I’ve heard that the place has changed dramatically since I left, thanks to Covid. Apparently, PCHS never really enforced a mask mandate for students, causing teachers to leave in droves. Just like the wealthy communities in Southern California, the hubris and entitlement of the wealthy unearthed a lot of nastiness, and the fundamental makeup of the town has changed.
And this makes me a little nervous. How many uncomfortable interactions will this reunion entail? How many of my former classmates will turn out to be anti-vaxxers? How many have dabbled in QAnon? Will I get stuck in conversation with someone shitting on the Black Lives Matter movement, or unhoused people, or climate change?
Ryen—my best friend, then and now—has absolutely zero interest in attending the reunion, not even out of morbid curiosity. I have to invent a responsibility for him—in this case, co-DJing the evening event with me. But Ryen’s persistent aversion to this whole ordeal makes me second-guess myself. Am I the weird one?
(Ryen and I spent all high school making short films. Here’s one of them. He’s the guy in the red shirt.)
On the day of, my wife Jessica and I drive through my hometown. We pass landmarks of my youth and I act as the worst tour guide. That used to be a Blockbuster. I once got drunk in that cemetery. Oh, I don’t remember a road being here. The Albertsons changed to a Fresh Market? Wild.
There are two events scheduled for the day: a family-friendly get-together at Park City’s city park (heh), and an adults-only night at a small bar on Main Street.
We park at Park City city park (do not take this away from me), and find a large group gathered beneath a pavilion. I begin to feel anxious. Everyone looks so... adult. Functioning in society? Strange. Shouldn’t everyone be holding a cold Natty Ice to their chest? Shouldn’t there be a beer pong table? Shouldn’t there be a bunch of us just sitting around, bored, wallowing in big emotions?.
The first person I recognize is Robbie, a tall athletic cyclist who now runs a craft chocolate empire. “Hey! Robbie!” I say, and then immediately start talking about the time I saw one of his chocolate bars at a small coffee shop right off the highway. “I can’t remember the name of the place,” I keep saying, and out of nervous panic, take out my phone to google “coffee shops”.
First interaction of the day. Doing great.
I find Anna and she quietly says something to the effect of “I don’t fucking know what to talk about.” Oh, I see. Everyone here is nervous, uncomfortable, awkward. This revelation washes over me like a warm bath. In the land of discomfort, the most awkward man is king.
Conversations are mostly superficial, but that’s okay. How do you sum up 20 years in a brief chat? And of course some things haven’t. It’s easy to spot the people that haven’t evolved much from their high school days, who still care about status.
I tell a popular person that I live in San Diego and they say there’s too many homeless people here, and that Ocean Beach is gross.
It’s not a long conversation.
But for the most part, people have changed, grown up, or embraced a self that they tried hard to cover up in high school. I talk to a guy who had infamously bad behavioral problems all throughout school. He’s doing great. He introduces me to his wife, and their new child, and all I can think is “I remember when you threw a hammer at our teacher in third grade.”
An acquaintance tells me how he’s embraced the life of dance, and in fact, had met his wife on the middle of a salsa dance floor.
I catch up with Stacy, a girl (woman, I should say—yet again, it’s strange to think of anyone here as an adult) who I was friends with during senior year. Stacy now breeds reptiles. She shows me pictures of a wall stacked with terrariums, and I just keep saying, “holy shit.”
Ryen texts me and tells me that he’s not going to make it to the park, and I do a mental over/under whether he’s going to come at all. The odds seem bad. Sam, a guy who’s casually kept in touch via Facebook, tells me that he re-read the novel I published nearly 10 years ago just because he knew he’d see me at the reunion, and welp, sorry Ryen, looks like Sam is now my new best friend.
After the park, Jessica and I go to our hotel and try to nap, but my mind is reeling. It’s basically the feeling of mainlining my past. I’m not sure if seeing so many faces that have been stored somewhere in my mind has closed any of the nostalgia loops, or just made them bigger.
A text from Ryen pulls me from my mental spiral. He and Steph are in Park City.
Jessica and I walk from our hotel to theirs, a 15-minute stroll up a Main Street I no longer recognize. Everything about this town is different. We pass a Banksy, which he tagged onto the side of a building during the Sundance Film Festival many years ago. The tag has since been covered up with glass. Totally Park City’s style to only preserve street art if it’s valuable. A woman walking by says there are more Banskys on Main Street, one in an alley down a few blocks. “But it’s a totally safe alley,” she clarifies, which is like someone telling you an alley in Downtown Disney is safe.
We make it to Ryen and Steph’s hotel room. He’s not mad about me forcing him to come to the reunion, per se, but he’s not happy. In all my yearning to revisit some past, I forget that many people have no desire to.
“It’s going to be fun!” I say, immediately hating myself. Nothing is ever fun when you have to plead it. Ryen pours a big glass of tequila for each of us.
We head over to the bar and begin to set up Ryen’s DJ equipment. People begin to arrive shortly after. A posse of popular kids arrives in their finest Margaritaville-approved party attire. One of them—a guy I’ll call Movie Guy who had a brief film career after high school—walks directly up to Ryen and asks what kind of music he’s going to be playing.
“Wow man, you really went gray,” Ryen says, rubbing his own beard, implying just like all of us but Movie Guy doesn’t get the implication.
“You should let my friend DJ,” Movie Guy says sternly. “He has some sick beats.”
“Okay,” Ryen says. “Anyone can DJ if they want.”
“Because I feel like dancing tonight,” Movie Guy says, stomping away.
“What is that guy’s name again?” Ryen asks.
The bar fills up. After 20 years, at least no one has forgotten how to party. I lose count of how much I drink (Jessica, however, likes to remind me that our bill at the end of the night was $160). The booze washes away the discomfort, and soon I’m talking to a woman who now lives in a yurt, and another who’s a star anchor for the local Fox affiliate. I meet someone’s husband who lived in San Diego for a long time, and we bro-down about my favorite San Diego bar, The Whistle Stop.
I reconnect with friends that I haven’t spoken with in years. We try to reenact pictures that were burned into our memories.
After my third Old Fashioned (probably equivalent to two Old Fashioneds by non-Utah standards), I feel a sudden hankering to get this party started, which is a thought I actually think. Not proud. I put on a carefully cultivated playlist of songs that were big from the era: “The Middle” by Jimmy Eat World, Brittany Spears’ “Toxic”, even “Hands Down” by Dashboard Confessional. Nobody gives a shit. One song ends and before I can queue up the next song, the algorithm plays “Dragula” by Rob Zombie and everyone gives me a “what the fuck” look (except my friend Lindsey’s husband, Jalal, who’s super into it).
My new San Diego/Whistle Stop friend approaches the DJ booth and asks if I can turn down the music. No longer my bro. I whisper “cAn YoU tUrN dOwN tHe MuSiC?” when he leaves.
I find Ryen. “Are you going to help with DJing?”
“But I’m mingling,” he says.
I can’t be angry. Ryen, who had zero interest in coming, is having a good time. Plus, his partner Steph has taken over the music, playing early-’90s R&B, and a dance party instantly materializes. I take note. R&B, yes; Rob Zombie, no. I join the dance party and a woman next to me says “This is so strange”—probably the 50th iteration of that sentiment I’ve heard all day. “All the girls look the same,” she says. “But all the guys have grown up.”
I look down at the Bud Light held against my chest. Sort of, I think.
As the bar begins to shut down, there’s a woman throwing up in the bathroom. A few others are getting touchy with each other. I make a note to tell Anna, who was taking bets on who was going to hook up.
“We’re going to The Spur!” someone says, and a large group of us follow. I’ve never been to The Spur, but I knew its reputation as a townie bar before I was even allowed to drink. It turns out to be a mix of honkey-tonk and craft brewery. A place where rich people pretend to be cowboys. Weird vibes abound. We only have time for one or two or three more drinks before The Spur turns its lights on, too.
“When was the last time you closed down the bar?” someone asks, and no one can remember.
Outside, we wait around, swaying, eyes crossed. There’s a lot of drunken hugging. I see a kiss between a divorcee and someone who’d been talking about his partner the whole night. There’s also a butt-grab.
“When are we doing this again?” someone slurs. “Let’s not wait so long.”
Jessica and I walk back to the hotel. We pass clusters of people hanging around on the sidewalk, recently swept out from other bars. Everyone looks so young. I always thought Park City’s bar scene was for old people, but maybe I’m just remembering it wrong.
Got a tip or wanna say hi? Email me at ryancraigbradford@gmail.com, or follow me on Twitter @theryanbradford. And if you like what you’ve just read, please hit that little heart icon at the end of the post.
Park City city park is excellent