Thang Nguyen 555

Of late, we’ve been pre-friending online. Then came our face to face get-together: dress and cross-dress to impress. Pressing the flesh. Pushing the schedule, re-arranging the furniture, setting up the sound system and of course, bringing in the food. Voila!

We’ve got a venue, a mini-event. A party.

Every fifteen minutes or so, as if seeing a ghost, we heard a loud scream: someone arrived unannounced and unexpectedly.

A three-dimensional friend joins in. As if jumping out of the screen. Still with roaming personality (hovering), same winding speech ( village people during oral tradition) and of course, our action-oriented MC who just wanted everybody to dive in to eat (different time zone in his stomach).

Either from Sarasota if not Saratoga, Saigon or Little Saigon. We got lost. Or we showed up. Voluntarily. Decades ago, the opposite way (ditching classes for a matinee at Vinh Loi – French last bastion for cultural propaganda: Alain Delon…”Je t’aime”, Je t’aime toujours. )

We came. On foot or on wheel chair. Drying or dyeing our hair. with cholesterol pills and glucosamine pills.

Still recognisable? That’s good.

Still alive? Cool.

Still with hair or no hair, no problem. You’re in.

OK, this is for you, for you, for you. Who is this in the zip lock bag? Co “Tea”..”Cu onion”, “number 2”, “Principle Cinnamon” and of course, last but not least, “stinky socks”……hahaha ( I lost a fortune on prizes, underestimating my classmates’ IQ).

My body is aching (came home really late last night). Had seen my daughter (undergoing chemo therapy) before the get-together. I had to drag myself there. Sensitive friends saw through my facade, “somebody got to get this guy out of stress mode…give him a drink”.

We made concious choices: eating or greeting, dancing or dressing up like a drag queen (at least, in my case).

“We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the Sun..” Wine and cigars, upgrading to first-class…why not. It’s the package (severance or retirement).

Partying at any age. Lucky nobody rented a Party Jumper out front. Or else, some of us might have tried. (Sorry, got interrupted by a text, my oldest sister finally moved in to Assisted Living. She used to go to the all-girls Trung Vuong, CVA’s counterparts,( Rain in Saigon Rain in Hanoi).

Time flows one way.

Upper classmen often quoted ” one cannot swim in the same river twice”… Class 71 are harbingers of what we someday find ourselves.

Down that road, by any measure , we will be cut short by attrition. Decent interval. Just like the winding down of the Vietnam War that plagued our school years.

The remnant will continue just as we did last Sunday, and many Sundays after that.

But per “Song with no Name, # 8” “Ve sau va nhieu nam sau nua, co Buon nhung van khong bao gio bang hom nay:”. (melancholy might resurface now and then at unguarded moments, but it wouldn’t be as heart-wrenching as today). Class 71 lost another one right after their 50th Re-Union in San Jose. Yet they managed to leave behind a publication…whose conceptual founder tried to “bond” with me in between customers (he operates a one-stop business mailing center in his retirement).

I’d rather us meet up than never. It’s been worth it . I failed – 67- and tried again for the 68 entrance exam, only to change horse mid-stream 72. Van, my new friend, recounted a bus trip he was on…looking out the window, seeing young Malaysian riding bikes, male and female (not main dans la main) but girls sitting cross-legged in back; so care-free and blissful. He, at the time, was “housed” on that island under duress and anxiety, ill at ease given local hostile reception. The grass always seem greener…

On the plus side, we’ve got Thoa – our writer/designer who felt the warmth of a thousand fires.

Perhaps in a few years, Thoa and Truong Nong (B3 and B1, respectively) can collaborate on OUR 50th issue.

It would be our last great gathering, on canes and on wheel chairs, grey hair and glucosamine.

Who can go backward? Time waits for no one.

So long my old/young friends. who “skinned our heads and skinned our knees.” ——–

penned by Chau (lop dem) – AKA Chau 10 checks, who alone, escapes the curse of time.

Please friending me (if you can even recognise me). Virtually only. No more incident at the Beach.