The people who were supposed to plan our high school reunion dropped the ball, so I figured it wouldn’t happen. But then this other dude from our high school stepped up to plan it. He was in a graduate program and also working part-time at a banquet hall, and he said that his boss would give us the banquet hall space for free. It was a really nice gesture, and he seemed really into it. He had been miserable in high school. Grumpy, sullen, unpleasant, mean to other people. He came out in college, so maybe the weight of having to keep it a secret was part of why he was so unpleasant. Maybe he’d be more fun now.

I was working a s@#t job and had no savings at the time, so I was neither interested in having my former classmates pity me nor was I gunning to shell out a lot of money to attend. Plus my s@#tty ex might be there and that didn’t feel worth it.