The self-pleasure of reunion

School reunions can have a variety of effects.  In the early years after leaving school they can be an occasion for comparing your achievements with those of former chums.  There will be some just getting by whom you can lord it over.  Others you discover are skiing at Aspen or flying somewhere in their private jets.  You try to steer the conversation away from them.

I went to a reunion of my old, all-boys school in a distant metropolis perhaps 20 years ago.  It took place in the dining hall and we were arranged at tables, according to the year we had left, along that very long room.  There was an after-dinner speaker, a well-respected teacher, who related a long series of jokes.  Some jokes produced laughter from only the end of the room where decrepit old boys in their 80s were ensconced.  Others brought laughter from those who had just left the school.  It seemed that those of us in between had lost our sense of humour for there was little laughter at our tables.

About half an hour into the dinner, one of my contemporaries, who had become a politician, arrived.  As he sat down he said to our table: "I've just jetted in from the House of Reps.  We had a long session."  This was said in the 'born to rule' accent which a few years spent at the school sometimes engendered.  Naturally the latecomer was treated like a total outcast for the remainder of the dinner since he was obviously full of himself, or of something similar.  It was okay to be full of yourself so long as you didn't show it.  I was pleased to hear he lost his seat some months later.

Dinner talk got around to a former headmaster who by then had retired, to most people’s relief.  He was viewed with little respect and several recalled odd experiences they had had with him.  I recounted my own experience of 10 years before.  The headmaster had called me to his study one afternoon.  I entered the room with great trepidation.  I had no idea why he would want to see me. 

It turned out he wanted to dissuade me from leaving home.  To that moment I had never considered the idea since I was on a pretty good wicket there.   Overwhelmed by being in the headmaster’s study and having this remarkable being focused on me, I listened for a full ten minutes before it dawned upon me he had the wrong boy.  I assured him, because of his words, I would certainly never leave home (I was a bit of a crawler).  For an awestruck, downtrodden 14 year old the head remained a major authority figure despite that encounter and I assumed everyone else felt the same about him.  I sometimes wonder, though, what happened to the boy he was supposed to be giving advice to. 

About four years into his term of office, he had alienated quite a few of us by banning nude bathing in the school pool, a practice which had been de rigueur for a hundred years.  Although the pool had no filter, and grew algae with near-tropical luxuriance, diving in and swimming around au naturel had a rather elemental, primaeval feeling about it, and was rightly regarded as quite the most pleasurable activity at the school; well, for most.

In placing the ban he obliquely indicated that his wife, who always accompanied him to the school swimming sports, had been affronted over the years by the sight of such large quantities of unclad, adolescent, male flesh.  Strangely enough, despite her reported sense of affront, she had been an absolute stalwart at those swimming carnivals and had managed, with presumably superhuman effort, to cover her unease with a facial expression we naïve and unclad chaps had taken as signifying interest and delight - in our swimming prowess naturally.

The head spoke to the assembled school several times about what I might term a ‘sexual health’ topic; the Americans would now call it ‘self-pleasuring’ which is one of their more revolting euphemisms, but it conveys the concept.   I think he might have had some developmental problem in this area.  His approach to the subject was so idiosyncratic and obscure that perhaps one boy in fifty knew vaguely what he was talking about and one boy in a hundred was able to carry out his advice, perhaps to their subsequent regret.  For the rest of us he might as well have been reading an ATO guidance note on tax legislation; for some reason, the Alienation of Personal Services Act comes to mind.  I think he was too frightened and repressed to come out and clearly state what the hell he was talking about, but he still managed to convey a strong sense of warning and doom. 

These days we would say the head had the communication skills of a rock, an anxiety-provoking rock.  Nowadays he would have the opportunity to go to courses in interpersonal communication which would elevate his skills to those of a brick.  At that time we didn't know about communication skills; most eventually concluded he was an absolute drongo.

I went to another school reunion some months ago; this time in Sydney.  There were enough old boys from the interstate school, and one of its major rivals, to make a sizable party.  Everyone looked old, except for a handful of recent school-leavers who merely looked prematurely dissipated.  The occasion resembled a Grey Power gathering and I was well qualified for that.  I checked the mirror in the men’s a couple of times to see whether I really looked like these fellows.  Sad to say, I did.  A longer mirror would have shown I matched them in gut profile as well. 

The oldest person at the reunion turned out to be a master, not a pupil.  He was at the school during my time although he had never taught me.  A very kindly man, I had assumed he would stay teaching until he turned to chalk but, five years after I left, he chucked it in, moved here, and became a farmer.  He could not forsake his old teaching habits though; his cattle were the most literate in the country and his swine won several scholarships. 

I realised that he would be an ideal person to ask about the fate of my favourite teacher, known affectionately as WMR; nobody else at the reunion could remember him.  The old bloke dimly recalled him but had no idea where he had gone.  I was suddenly clutched with the black, abysmal thought that WMR, from whom I gained so much at school, might be dead.

I left the reunion feeling older, greyer, gut-heavier, and with a strong sense of loss.  Aren’t reunions supposed to be joyful affairs?

But this one had a happier outcome.  I contacted several at the school in that far-flung capital but they knew nothing of him.  Then I heard from their archivist who thought WMR had gone on to teach at a prominent Melbourne school but had just retired.  From there it was easy to track him down, write to him, and tell him, before it was too late, how much I appreciated him. 

When I had a chance to talk to him in person, I found him as fit, good-humoured and eloquent as ever; in him, the burden of teaching and years was very lightly borne.  I told him exactly that and he replied he had been “permanently happy” at the school.  To my surprise, he went on to say “we staff had such a ball at the expense of that drongo of a headmaster”.  He added that the head’s sex talk would always be followed by a spirited discussion in the staff room, lubricated with lots of Teacher’s Scotch Whisky, about what the duffer could possibly mean. 

I don’t think I shall attend any more school reunions.  Instead, I’ll sit at home, a glass of Teacher’s by my side.  One day I hope to work out what the old headmaster was warning us about, though I fear, for me, it’s too late.