A surprising incredible day (My highschool reunion)
I went to my high school reunion because I did not want to regret missing it
That sounds simple enough but it hardly felt that way. I had not seen most of these people in around eight years. Back then I drifted between two overlapping groups. One was nerdier and more straight-laced and the other was more alternative. I always looked up to the alternative group. They seemed closer and more sure of themselves than I ever was. They felt like people who had a real social life which I envied
In high school I felt awkward and forgettable. I wanted friends badly but I never felt like I fully belonged anywhere
That is part of why the reunion mattered so much, I was going back to a familiar world as an unfamiliar person
Getting ready
I spent weeks thinking about what to wear.
I had not seen any of these people since long before I came out so deciding whether to dress femme felt like an important decision. It felt like the entire point that night. I could go as myself or I could make the evening easier by retreating into something more familiar
In the end I did it
There was one other thing I had done in the days before the reunion, I cleaned my apartment in the hope there might be an afterparty at mine afterward. Looking back I think that says a lot about how much hope I had pinned to the night even before it started
Arriving
There were maybe a dozen people there all standing around a booked-off area of the brewery
The problem was that when I got there there was no one I knew, I kept scanning the room wondering whether there is someone there I should recognise but don't after all these years. Occasionally making eye contact with someone as both our brains try to figure out who the other person is
I got a drink, checked my phone, made awkward small talk with a couple of people I had not known at school and felt very aware of myself in that horrible ordinary way where every gesture feels too deliberate and every pause feels visible
The first people I knew
Things got much better when two friends from the nerdier group arrived.
They were warm straight away, they told me I looked nice which was a huge relief to hear. Once they were there I had people to talk to and the night stopped feeling like something I had to survive
We talked about work, life, and who we thought might show up. I relaxed a lot after that even if I was still a little self-conscious
The trans friend
Back in school they were one of the people I looked up to most. They still felt cooler than me and like they had their life more sorted out than I did even after all these years. For a long time I had worried I had strained that relationship somehow and that they maybe did not like me anymore
In the end, they were happy talking to me. They asked how long I had been on hormones which stood out because almost everyone else just brushed over my transition in a general way. They told me that they and a mutual friend had joked before about when my egg would crack (turns out dabbling in DIY-HRT is not a very cis thing to do) and when I told my partner that later they joked that “the closet was made of glass” which honestly felt correct
More than anything it mattered that they seemed genuinely and not just politely interested
Seeing them there with their trans partner also did something to my brain. It made me feel like I really did belong there and I didn't need to justify existing as a trans person in that space
The girl, the bathroom and the mirror photo
Another big part of the night was a girl I ended up talking to a lot
I honestly do not really remember who she was in high school. She said she had been a floater too but that night she was warm, easy to talk to, and a huge part of why the reunion became so special
We did three rounds of shots together over the course of the night and at one point she asked if I wanted to go to the bathroom with her. She explained the whole girls-going-to-the-bathroom-together thing then after we washed our hands she took me to the mirror so we could take a photo together
That moment gave me a ridiculous amount of gender euphoria as it was the first time I'd ever been invited to one of those "girl" rituals
A lot of the time even when people accept me there is still a fear that they really see me as a guy. Someone they are being nice to but not someone they naturally include in those little rituals. So being invited along in that easy, casual, unthinking way meant a lot more than it probably sounds like it should
Later we got onto the topic of sex and things she likes. She talked about having sex on LSD and how intense it was, the conversation was funny, loose, and chaotic in a perfect blend
The last hour
By the end, there was a smaller group of about six to eight of us left around one table for another hour
It was quiet, intimate and much more relaxed as I was mostly talking to her by then
At one point a supportive friend from my current life called and invited me on a bar crawl. He was drunk and I said I might go but that I was dressed femme and he basically said that if anyone had a problem with it he'd "kick their teeth in"
What I liked about that was that he was not pretending nothing could ever go wrong. He was acknowledging that there could be an issue and making it clear that it still would not be a problem. Sometimes you need that kind of chaotic support
I did not end up going to the bar crawl
Instead, I went back to mine with her
Back at mine
The idea came up after we had been talking about sex and LSD, The reunion was basically over by then so I suggest to everyone we had back to mine and she could take some shrooms then. Everyone else decided to leave
I got the shrooms ready and we sat on opposite couches watching some random show while we waited for them to kick in
Once they did I had a great body high and could not stop grinning
She stayed for about 2-3 hours, we talked more about sex, joked about a guy at the reunion who had completely missed that she was flirting with him, she showed me one of her sex tapes and she also shared a rough experience she had at school with someone I thought was a friend
The morning after
The next morning was rough but what stayed with me was not just that the night had been fun, It was that being brave had paid off
I went because I did not want to regret missing it and instead I got one of the best nights of the year
I want more nights like this