Grad Night

June 23, 2004

Drunken high school grads arrive in rented limos at the lakeshore for their party on the rented ship. Limo drivers lean against pearl white, slightly worn stretch limos. They look mint from twenty metres but dents and scratches reveal themselves on closer inspection. Duty calls and the drivers answer with shifting feet and stifled yawns. It will be a few hours and the teens will return with a few shoes missing, or puke spackled rented patent leather loafers. Weeping falling, fighting, yelling. In celebration of something they can’t quite fathom just yet they work their way toward the hangover that signals something is really starting. Really…they are just on the “on ramp” of responsibility. This should be thought of more as a wake but foreboding should not be on the menu at this point. Society refrains from framing graduation in this manner. The limo drivers smile politely and maintain their steady and positive demeanor. Today they are stewards of hope, tolerance and patience. Bound by their own hippocratic oath they mention nothing to the parents. Parents are losing their charges to the effects of learning “the hard way”. It would make little difference. This bar mitzvah of barf is a ritual scarification of the memory. This Frankenstein day of posturing and release will become a cornerstone of one’s image life. It may be different for the new breed. Vomiting, staggering and mumbling, “I love you man” will never be held against you today.
It is more often the case that one can feel more embarrassment for others than they feel for themselves. There is probably a German word for this feeling. They have all the cool words applying to complex emotional distress. There are new ideas about what can be exposed without taking on psychological baggage. It may now be wrong to be the one person feeling waves of gut churning shame for modern humanity. Has Jerry Springer taught us nothing? The grads have long ago established their independence on web cams and “Girls Gone Wild” videos. Parents have long ago hung their heads, waited at some wee hour for the tumbler of the front lock to quietly turn, had the “heart to heart” conversation and resigned to repeatedly reading the same page of their book back in the bedroom. Huge tracts of time are spent on the Internet and all roads eventually lead to hardcore porn. With Photoshop it is possible that sexual athletes can now demonstrate feats that may not be possible in nature. There is a lot to live up to. A disproportionate amount of degrading and unpleasant behaviour may, one-day turn people off sex altogether. Expectations will range into painful territory. This is not a moral issue. It is an issue of sullying the sensual and pleasurable with an “X games” attitude.
There are new definitions of what is private. To the modern teen blowjobs are less intimate than a passionate kiss. Public cell phone conversations on a bus are considered private. “Chelsea is a fuckin bitch and Kyle and me are gonna be getting’ into some serious shit tonight”. Reality television reveals private moments and redefines them as some sort of public/private hybrid. Where are the words for the new sense of over exposure and needless disclosure?
How many times today have the limo drivers followed the code and politely referred to their booze addled charges as “sir” or “miss”? How long before the nouveau riche teen renters, at $30 a head, grow comfortable and begin to treat the driver as their servant? So begins the new Lord of the Flies. This is perhaps the most important of grad night role-play games. The valedictorian arrives in a taxi.