the holy invasion

I figured out how to get onto the roof at work and went up there one morning witih a coworker to look at the skyline. We noticed a strange airplane flying low over the city. It seemed to have only one wing. Then we realized it was carrying a large payload that looked like a missile but turned out to be a large cargo helicopter, strapped to its underbelly. When the plane released the helicopter, it hovered over the building next to ours and landed. Dozens of people streamed out of it and spread out over the other building's roof. They figured out how to get over to our roof and started crowding around us, too. They appeared to be college fraternity brothers, all wearing matching tie-dye shirts with Christian slogans. My coworker was worried they were aliens and ran for the door to the stairs. I got the nerve to ask one of them who they were. They claimed to be a service club airlifted in from the east side to protest rising heating bills for all the poor residents of the West Village. There were hundreds of them---I could see helicopters landing on other roofs nearby and letting off even more of these boys. Before I could ask them another question, the helicopter morphed into an all-terrain land vehicle and kind of climbed over onto our roof. The group leader driving the land-helicopter turned on a megaphone and instructed everyone to head inside for a pizza party. I took a different stairwell and ended up at a study party where my friends from high school had apparently been waiting over ten years for me to show up.

idyllic whatever

I found a neighborhood I'd never heard of before, east of the East Village. Its main feature was a large castle-like structure blocking the entire length of Houston right at the entrance, beyond Avenue D and the FDR overpass. People came from all over the city to look at it. Apparently it was built by a bored and very rich fourteen year old whose parents never let her leave the house. She built the entire castle inside the main room of her parents' mansion. Her parents were so proud of her work that they had it transferred to Houston as a permanent installation. I guess they were rich enough to pay off all the fines for blocking traffic in perpetuity.

The castle itself wasn't that remarkable, aside from the fact that it was in the middle of the street. I was able to walk right up to it and peer through the narrow windows built into the sides. It was hollow inside and full of trash and blankets.

Beyond the castle, the neighborhood felt like a mix of Franklin, Michigan and the Cotswolds. Lots of sloping green fields and adorable houses and a little main street full of antique shops and art galleries. I decided it was my new favorite part of the city. I went there one day with a friend of mine for a summer picnic. Hundreds of people were gathered in one of the big clearings, sitting on the grass and laughing their heads off.

Then my friend started kissing all the girls around us. We got up and walked down the main street holding hands, and at each house a girl came down to the front gate for a kiss while I stood awkwardly to the side. I realized all these women were people I went to high school with who had since married, some of them with kids of their own. I also realized that somehow, probably in a way Freud could explain quite nicely, all of the above means I am totally psyched out by the prospect of my impending high school reunion.

this has all happened before

It was high school and college graduation all over again at the same time. The night before I dropped my parents and my brother off at their hotel and took the car (magically transformed into the old Dodge Caravan) around the old neighborhood. As I drove by the house on Witherbee, I got a call from a friend who wanted a recommendation of where to take his boyfriend on a date in Birmingham. I told him I'd have to think about that, and in the meantime decided to head over to Birmingham myself and take in a movie. It was almost 2 am when I remembered to call that guy, and by then he and his boyfriend had broken up and he was a big slobbery sobbing mess, so I took him along to the next movie with me to cheer him up.

Luckily, the first event the next day was the band and orchestra awards ceremony, part 2, which I was already planning to use as nap time. (They gave out so many awards to the band and orch kids that they had to break it up into an evening gala, which I'd skipped, and a standard ceremony in an auditorium.) I was super bored and didn't see anyone I knew. I took out a twenty dollar bill and was going to ask the middle-aged man next to me to do something with it. Maybe it was going to be a bet or something, to make me less bored. But at that moment the marching band started a number and I was transfixed by the chubby flag girls. When I looked over, the man was pocketing my twenty!

"Hey, is that your twenty?" I asked him.

He said, "Oh, I thought you wanted me to have it." He gave it back, but then he thought we were flirting, which was awkward. Joe started calling my name from the other side of the auditorium, and I slid over to talk to him over everyone's head. I'm not sure why he was there. He was in band, but at a different high school. Still, it was good to see a friendly face.

Before I could figure it out, we all filed out to head over to the actual graduation ceremony, which was taking place at a highway toll booth in the Appalachian mountains. The teachers lined us up in rows like cars waiting to pay the toll, then we marched through to the other side to listen to the speakers. The first speaker was this guy who lived down the street and was really into biking. He may also have been a priest, judging by his collar. But he didn't bother to prepare a speech, so after a minute he started going, "umm, ummm," and got really mad at us when we stopped paying attention. The next speaker was supposed to talk inside the highway patrolman's office as we chowed down on refreshments. No one listened to her, either, and I felt bad because she was actually very good, and she had made grilled corn and chocolate truffles for us.

Then my cousin Tricia showed up, and told me I was about to lose my job at The Globe and Mail if I didn't organize a techno dance party immediately. I didn't realize I had a job there, but I also didn't want to lose it, so I rounded up six of my graduating friends and told them the rules. We had to stay within a 6'x6' dancing box, and no one could stop dancing, not even for a second. Someone cued up an Erasure remix and we were on our way.