He was sitting comfortably in the lobby of the colonial era Nassau Inn in Princeton, New Jersey when the statuesque blonde passed in front of him. His eyes scanned her like a barcode reader as she walked away. He collected and stored all of the data – real, imagined and suspected – that male DNA had programmed him to collect for purposes of survival of the species. Hotel lobbies, he thought, are great.
Ten minutes later his friend arrived, striding briskly past the wood-paneled front desk area into the brightly lit lobby with its warm yellow walls. They greeted each other briefly and, with the familiarity of old pals, his friend gave him some clothing on hangars to hold onto while he checked with the front desk clerk. There are some relationships where you can assume assistance without asking and this was their relationship. And yet, they had seen each other only a few times in the nearly 30 years since high school graduation. The last time had been at least ten years ago. Yet, the years had been bridged in that short moment of comfortable recognition and it was as if they had never been apart.
While his friend went to his room to freshen up and hang up the change of clothing, he reminisced about their boyhood and teen years.
He had first met Bill when they were both in seventh grade, except that at the time Bill was using his first name, Irving. They had lived four small one-story brick houses away from each other in a typical 1950s subdivision teeming with kids, dogs, and bicycles – and without fences. Their parents were the young men and women who, after World War Two, had turned their attentions to starting families and turning farmland into vast tracks of virgin suburbia.
He and Irv, who was quickly labeled “Oyving” as a term of dubious affection by his new pals, almost always walked to the schoolbus stop together. Irv would patiently wait on the couch by the door and talk with his parents until he was ready. After school they played outside, no matter how hot or how cold. Once, while wrestling in Irv’s back yard, Irv’s kneecap had popped out and he had called Irv’s parents for instructions on how to pop it back in place. Irv remained cool, as he always did, except for an expression on his face that betrayed his pain.
When they became teenagers, they both took up smoking. (They also both quit later in life.) Exhibiting the style that was completely natural for him, one night Irv leaned nonchalantly against the fireplace mantle in his parents finished basement and proceeded to stoke up a pipe. Pipes were for cool people back then. Irv’s father was hidden behind the newspaper he was reading and his mother was sewing when she noticed the downy-faced pipesmoker in their midst. Very calmly, his mother said, “Harvey… Look. Irving is smoking.” His father, peering slowly over his newspaper, drawled, “Yes. He is.” Then he went back to reading. There was no doubt after that where Irv, his dog and his sister got their laid-back qualities of innate unflappable coolness.
Irv grew into a tall lanky young man, always soft-spoken, with blonde hair and that plague of teenagers, an imperfect complexion. He was a good student, always did his homework and managed to excel at all of his courses. He tried out for and made the varsity football team through sheer determination. As a forerunner of today’s geeks, he was not a born athlete. And because of his geek qualities, his friends often played jokes on him. But he had been the best of good sports and never, ever responded in an unfriendly way.
Sitting in the comfortable red leather chair at the Nassau Inn decades later, our time traveler laughed out loud. He and Irv had once gone on a winter camping trip in the mountains. Irv drove his parents car. They had taken only the essentials for teenaged boys: hotdogs, beans, marshmallows – and cans of beer. Some beer was left over so they had stowed it under the front passenger seat of the car on the way home. Unfortunately, the beer had frozen overnight and when it began to unfreeze in the heat of the car it was forced through the seams of the cans. After they noticed, they decided to drive the rest of the way home in freezing temperatures with the windows rolled down to get rid of the smell. Irv’s parents, they hoped, would never know they had been drinking alcohol.
On the night of their high school graduation they had gone to a German restaurant and, being 18 now, legally drank beer. That night Irv wrote a touching coming-of-age poem on a beer-drenched napkin. His friend reminiscing in the lobby had kept it, but eventually it was lost. For years he tried unsuccessfully to remember its words.
Irv went on to a top-ranked university and got an engineering degree. Afterwards, he got a job with a company that was on the leading edge with computers. As always, he was rock solid, the salt of the earth. He was smart and reliable. He dressed and behaved conservatively. He bought sensible cars. He saved and invested his money. He succeeded.
After high school, they had seen each other a few times, then there were many years when they had no contact at all. On one occasion during these years when they did see each other, he was amazed at what Irv had become. His complexion had cleared up, he had grown a mustache and he looked like the actor Robert Redford. And he was no longer Irv. He was Bill now. The “Oyving” business was left behind as a not too pleasant boyhood memory.
He had married, become a father, continued to succeed at his career and then divorced. And now, Bill had remarried and the reception was being held at the Nassau Inn in Princeton, New Jersey.
Reminiscing ended when the elevator doors opened and Bill stepped out into the lobby once again. They walked a short distance to the wedding reception, where family and friends awaited Bill’s arrival.
They drank and talked and there were speeches in honor of Bill and his new bride. Our time traveler finally came clean, confessing that which, previously, he had steadfastly denied. He had, indeed, goosed Bill’s younger sister as they were going up the stairs in his house when they were teenagers. They all laughed, except for Bill’s brother-in-law, who remained politely neutral.
Bill and his bride danced the traditional first dance. Then something happened. A tall statuesque blonde, whose data Bill’s old friend had stored permanently in his male mind for survival of the species purposes, walked onto the dance floor and began dancing with Bill.
And then he knew. She was Bill’s daughter from his first marriage, now a young woman. He had met her once as a child. OMG!