The Reunion Show – part 2
If you’re not 18 or older, blah,
blah, blah; you shouldn’t be here.
If you don’t like these types of
stories, blah, blah, blah; you shouldn’t be here.
Constructive criticisms are
welcome also at: mlogan6969@hotmail.com. If you would like
to join my Yahoo! group we'd love to have ya! You'll find it
at: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/logans_lit/
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The day before I was supposed to go
over to the apartment one of the show’s producers and a camerman came
out to my place to interview me. I assumed that it was to find
out some background information, which it was. She wanted to know
whether or not I had enjoyed high school and in general whether or not
my experience was positive or negative, etc. There were a few
bumps in the road but hell, everyone had experienced them – mine were
nothing special or unique. I had 10 years of post graduation to
mature and get over them.
“Are there any people that you’re
hoping to avoid at the reunion?” she asked.
“Yeah, the seven people I’m about to
room with” I said, laughing.
“Oh really. Why?”
“Actualy I’m just kidding. I
don’t really know, and I never really did know, any of the other people
that I’ll be living with for 5 weeks. So personally I don’t
really have any problems or issues. I haven’t kept in contact
with a whole lot of people from school so I’m really looking forward to
seeing people again. I know I’ve changed a lot so I know that
some of the assholes could be really cool now, and some of the people I
had good times with could be assholes. In general I’m looking
forward to this whole experience because I haven’t done anything like
it before.”
“But you like having an audience,
don’t you” she stated, smiling, more than asked.
I let out one of my belly
laughs. “Now who told you that?”
“Oh, a little birdie. No,
seriously, I read that you were in a couple of musicals and from what I
heard from your fellow castmates you had a great time.”
“Oh, to say the least.”
“Do you still participate in anything
musical or dramatic?”
“Yeah, my life!” laughing.
“Baby, I haven’t done anything like that since school. Once I
went to college I was pretty serious about my studies and never took
the time to do any plays or musicals. Maybe someday I will
again,” I said smiling.
By the way, I call everyone “baby.”
“What about karoke?”
“What about it?”
“Have you ever sang karoke?”
“Honey, who hasn’t? Ok, I
wasn’t that serious in
school. Sometimes my friends and I’d get tanked at a bar that had
karoke and I’ve been known to break out into song. Just to be
goofy, whatever.”
“So you still like to entertain.”
“Oh hell yeah.”
“Will you be doing much entertaining
in the studio?”
“Studio?”
“Apartment.”
“Well, I guess it depends on how much
liquor y’all have supplied us with” I said laughing.
She laughed a bit. “I guess
we’ll supply as much as we need to make things interesting.”
“Oh, I’m interesting enough.”
Mike the Ham to the rescue.
“Ok, now more high school questions….”
“Don’t you think most of them will be
answered during the show?” I asked.
“Well we need to have some material
for little spots here and there that we’ll edit into the show.”
“Aiiight! Shoot.”
“Did you date a lot in high school?”
“Please. Have you ever seen
pictures of me at that time?”
“Actually I have; you weren’t that
bad looking.”
“Yeah, for a corpse. Honey, I
had a mirror – I know what I looked like. And no, I didn’t do a
lot of dating. I went to dances with girl friends, but that’s
about it. I mean who was going to date me – let’s not try and
fool anyone here.” Plus I’m gay…..
“So you had girlfriends.”
“Um….no. I had friends who were
girls.”
“Got it. Who were some of the
people that you really hated in school?”
“Geeze, you’re scraping for dirt
aren’t ya” I said, half-joking. “What does that matter now?
I mean you’re not the same person you were in high school, and neither
are the people that I didn’t like. Like I said before ten years
is a lot of time for people to do a lot of changing. I’m not
going to rehash a lot of bad memories or hurtful times for the sake of
ratings. Sorry!” I said, smiling at the camera.
“So you have a lot of bad memories.”
“Well, not a lot. But
hello! I’m human so yeah I have some bad ones. Mostly good
ones though.”
“If you could go back and change
anything about school what would it be?”
I had to sit and think about that
one. “There are times in everyone’s life when some people aren’t
so nice to other people, and I’d change the strength that I had,
physically and mentally, to stand up to bullies, assholes, etc.
But then again, didn’t going through some rough times have an impact on
and influence my life? I’m sure that it did, somehow. I
don’t know” I continued, looking down, “maybe I wouldn’t change
anything. I just look at all of the great times that I had and
hope that somewhere in time there were people that I was involved
with who took something positive from their experiences with me.”
“Sounds pretty mature.”
“Well, I’m not 15 anymore.”
The producer had some more questions
and then they finally wrapped things up. Thank God! I was
getting sick of her questions. Why couldn’t people figure out the
answers when they watched the show.
“Oh by the way,” she said, “we’ve
decided to extend the show by three weeks.”
“Do what?” (That's Southern for
"what?")
“Yeah, we thought it might be
interesting to see how things went after the actual reunion party.”
“Well, goody gumdrops! Eight
weeks in an apartment with seven other people. What if they
smell?”
She just laughed.
“And how about their work. I’m
a teacher so I have the whole summer off but most people don’t have
that schedule.”
“Well, that’s where the twist comes
in.”
“What twist?”
“If I told you then there wouldn’t be
a twist, now would there” she said with a smirk on her face.
“Welp. I guess not.”
So that was finally over. Thank
God! It’s not like it went bad or anything, I just wanted to get
back to packing up the last few things before I left in the
morning. I had really psyched myself up for this adventure.
Yes, I was sure that it was going to be an adventure.
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“Awwww shit!” I hollered as I looked
at the blinking “12:00” on my alarm clock. I knew I should have
put a backup battery in the damn thing. Dumb ass. It
started raining the night before, right after the folks from the
reunion show had left and I guess the power went out sometime during
the night. It was still raining outside so there was no real
sunlight to try and figure out exactly how late in the morning it
was. I grabbed my watch: 9:45. Oh hey-ell naww. I
really wanted to get my homely ass there early so I could meet people
as they came into the “studio.” I hurried into the kitchen and
grabbed a quick bite to eat before I started my shower. It felt
great and I wanted to stay a while but figured I better get
going. It was still going to take 45 minutes or so to get down to
midtown. In Atlanta, it takes 40-50 minutes to get everywhere,
even to the nearest Kroger. I was in too big of a hurry to shave
so I got dressed – jean shorts and a polo shirt. Leather
sandals. Probably not smart for rainy weather – oh well! I
did a quick run through the apartment and made sure what needed to be
off was off, and what needed to be on was on. I had a couple of
lamps set on timers; never been gone anywhere for 8 weeks before.
After making sure I had my bags fully loaded (bathroom crap, lube; you
know – I’m a guy) I opened the door, stepped out onto the porch and
stopped.
Standing out in the rain in a poncho
or slicker or whatever you call them was a camerman. “What in the
hell,” I said.
“The only thing that I can tell you
is that I’m to film you on the way down to the studio.”
“Why? You gonna get lost or
something?”
He just stood there with his camera
aimed at me. I made a face at the camera and said “Shit-ass; you
could have at least gotten me up this morning” laughing a bit. I
usually laugh whenever I say something, especially when I’m talking to
people that I don’t know, ‘cause I never know when they’ll get my sense
of humor. My friends know that I’m a real sarcastic bastard, but
they say it’s a part of my charm. Lick me.
I didn’t think I’d ever get to I-75,
and heading downtown was easy – for about a minute or two. It
seems that whenever people drive in the rain they have a bizarre
tendency to remove their own heads before going out on the road.
There were like three wrecks between Smyrna and Atlanta, which when
added with rain added about twenty more minutes to my drive.
Finally, I hit the connector (that’s where I-85 and I-75 come together
in the city) and exited at North Aveune, near Georgia Tech. I
crossed over the connector, zigged and zagged to Ponce De Leon and
headed east toward the factory/apartment. By the way, nobody in
Atlanta pronounces that name correctly, which is “Pon-say day lee-own;”
we pronounce it “Ponce de Lee-on.” Most of us just call it
“Ponce”. There’s your useless trivia for the day.
Back to the story. Wait.
Should I describe myself here? Oh, alright, you’ve convinced
me. I’m 5’11”, weigh about 180 and have hazel eyes, brown hair
and I sport a goatee. I keep in shape by not eating a lot of shit
and jogging. I have ten-pack abs and a ten inch cock. Now,
take 8 away from the first number and 3 away from the second and you’ll
have my actual belly and ….. well, you know. (That's my attempt
at being coy).
Ok, now
back to the story. I know exactly where the factory apartments
are where we’ll be living for 5 – make that 8 – weeks, and head over
there. I spot the old Sears building and know that I’m almost
there. Parking for the factory is in the rear, or south side of
the building. Dude, there’s nothing like an Atlanta summer
rain. Your car fogs up quite nicely when it’s really muggy
outside, which it was. The rain had started to pick up and now it
was also thundering and lightning. Lovely.
“Grab a bag?” I ask the camera
man. The camera stays on me. “Great.” I take a deep
breath, blow it out and head out into the malestrom known as an Atlanta
storm. I ran around to the back of the Jimmy, opened the back and
grabbed my bags. At this point I’m completely soaked and cussing
up a storm, out loud but to myself. I close the back and almost
trip running into the camera man. I really had to start
remembering that he was there wherever I went. As I headed toward
the building I remembered to set the alarm on the Jimmy and turned
around to aim my remote at it. I ended up backing into a
cameraman, but not mine.
“Dammit y’all!” I said. I
started looking around to find my camerman, spotted him a few feet away
and then walked right into a wall. Or at least I thought it was a
wall. Quickly I saw that it was a person and for a second I
thought it was the second cameraman and was saying “What in the
Goddamned hell….” when I noticed that it wasn’t him at all. It
was the person he was following.
It was Scott Dell.
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Ok y’all. What do you think so
far? I’ll be frank, if you want to just read about ass-grinding
sex, well then you’ll have to wait…..a little while.
Let me know your thoughts, if you
don’t mind. mlogan6969@hotmail.com
Mark