Expensive Evil - Princeton Reunions, Or Negastalgia

Looking back at looking back.

Welcome back to Expensive Evil, a nonfiction series about my monthly trip outside. This long-promised, galaxy-sized update covers Princeton Reunions, the party where Freemasons reminisce about pranking Majestic 12. The first two sections are open to the public. The the other four are for the people keeping me alive. Either way, thanks for reading.

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PART 0 - The Conversation(s)

“I’m not fucking going.”

“We only get one tenth reunion.”

“I’m not fucking going.”

“Our friends will be there.”

“I’m not fucking going.”

“You can write about it.”

PART 1 - The N-Word

Not much. Just a little reflection. You into history?

Yeah, they were fine. “ASS” remains the five-borough Galaga champion. But let’s talk about another reign of terror.

After winning Rome’s annual power struggle, Sulla’s team subsidized victory orgies by rounding up unlucky nobles. Traitors don’t need savings or heads. Rough for the people losing weight, but a predictable outcome of betting at the imperial track. As Sgt. McGruff once said, “If you gamble with life, you can lose it.”

It happened in China too, and every other empire I can think of or spell. But the American ego loves citing Rome, and I’m not immune. Nero’s the biggest poster on our dorm room wall. Next year’s Fashion Week is all togas and knives. We’ve absorbed their full timeline, and none of its lessons.

Not quite. But that fourth idea’s money. Here’s another.

Tip for whoever wins our lazy civil war: pillage Princeton. You can spin their CNN neutrality into tacit support for the enemy, and improvise from there. Your worst vizier will complain, but the windfall’s worth it. There’s gold hiding behind Princeton’s walls, and diamonds hiding behind the gold. Half the campus looks like Vatican City, and that’s the fixer-upper. It’s a living monument to education as enterprise, and you’d be mad to ignore the opportunity.

Another time. That game’s a known quantity. You can always beat 40,000 if you’re awake and unimpaired. I sleepwalk through the day, and ASS still reigns through muscle memory.

My point: I can’t tell you where all of Princeton’s gold comes from. That’s a web of dark money and 18th-century oaths Neal Stephenson would spin. But I know multiple nations’ worth comes from nostalgia. Alumni grasping at the ghost of a feeling. Tired adults that wish they weren’t.

Consider descriptions of Disney World. Not Disney Adults recapping last week. Dead-Eyed Adults (I enjoy Disney Adults’ enthusiasm) describing their distant childhood. Plenty, maybe even all, of their story happened. But it’s merged with the brand over time. The further back the vacation, the closer it is to the Disney monomyth. Barring a distinguishing tragedy, nostalgia’s stronger than memory. Much stronger. In comparison, memory’s CM Punk in a UFC ring.

Making Princeton’s reunion big business.

The same. It’s the best place to see a lobbyist crash a golf cart into a hedge fund pirate. Or a Rumsfeld crash a golf cart into a Bezos. People really like stealing golf carts, and hate braking. They call it Reunions, with a capital R.

Pardon?

Have you seen my credit?

Interesting rumor. It would explain riding peak NJ Transit again, uncoerced. My old Rutherford commute put me in Poseidon’s hands every morning. Whatever destination I wanted, NJ Transit had fresh ideas. It’s almost half as broken as the MTA.

Orange beer jackets dotted Penn Station. A bit like SantaCon, with the flow of traffic reversed. The dots drifted together, drawn by camaraderie, day-drinking, and the n-word. Some kept confused families in tow.

I didn’t have a beer jacket. Mine lived with my sister, so she could skim drinks off of alumni events. But my scent marked me as a vampire: an orange scarf sniffed me out.

“What’s your year?”

“2013,” I answered, straight. You might expect more wit, but I’d cut back on harassing strangers. I still drank, so this was my main self-improvement project.

“Your tenth! That’s the best one, until your twentieth.”

I nodded–she could be right. But my freshman year cameo was a blur, save geriatrics swerving carts through human traffic. I doubted the compromise years between brownouts and joyrides could compete.

My guide described her tenth reunion in the same high, hazy terms as the promo email. Had she written it? Absorbed it? Did all Ivy memory pull from one hivemind? I chewed a protein carcinogen and listened, wondering if traffic cone-colored shoes sold well anywhere else.

Part 2: The Orange Planet

I had my notes this time. The schedule promised three events just for reactionaries, and I wouldn’t miss that for a solid gold motorcycle. Even if a Bezos offered one. I was on duty, “in service of humanity.”

Slogans channel an organization’s sins. WWE has “Then. Now. Forever. Together.” Reflecting a century of poisoned labor, unconsenting referees, and glittering Saudi propaganda. Princeton University has “In service of humanity,” which has nice world-domination flavor. But that one’s new and informal. The old Latin line is “Dei sub numine viget,” which Wikipedia translates as “Under God’s power she flourishes.” If that doesn’t terrify you, it was fun seeing you at Reunions. Did you like my coat? I think white works on me.

I’d packed the pad for quick notes. But this section wrote itself, and refused to let go as people I definitely knew stopped, waited, and moved on. The best lesson of my education was “never walk away from a hot pad.” I got it from a Luke Sullivan book, three years after Princeton. At Princeton, I learned less. Mostly ire.

That major includes Michelle Obama, Bruce Wright, and everyone glaring in the corner of admissions photos. Some observers might notice a link. That’s culture war brainwashing. Princeton punishes square pegs of every shade. Ask Fitzgerald. 

Mostly Gondor.

At least the southwest corner. Avalon, if you’re more old-fashioned. Hogwarts, if you’re only literate in the dictionary sense. There’s plenty of newer buildings and heavy construction to the south, but none of that occupies mental space. When you enter, imagine, or type about the campus, it’s Aragorn’s hometown.

As for the people, orange.

I mentioned beer jackets, but everything was glowstick orange. Jackets, shirts, signs, tarps, face paint, tattoos, umbrellas, action figures, condoms, dental dams, pacemakers, kidneys, whatever you call those hats that look like deflated fedoras, and golf carts. There’s some black accessories to go with it, but they’re all swallowed in a hurricane of Cheeto dust. From above, the campus looks like it’s been shelled with Tang.

And then the reunion arrives.

I finally shut the notepad, and searched for a line.

A queue.

Standard EDM festival rules applied: you needed the right wristband to stand anywhere. Without one, you met a polite student. If you ignored them, you met Blackwater alumni. I hadn’t won a fight since 2002, so I’d need a few wristbands.

I got the idea, but they had trouble. The hockey rink sent me to the gym, who sent me back to the hockey rink, who sent me back to the gym. The last loop made the supervisor nervous–one angry Cruz or four angry normals, and she’d be sent to the pits. She called for a golf cart, making my afternoon.

Theme parks have wonderful transitions. Disney rides and shows are alright, but the monorail ride between them sticks. I think. Again, nostalgia. In any case, a cart ride without an injury,  hijacking, or osteoporosis was a treat. It outshone my expectations for the event itself. I watched orange Nikes, dress shoes, and flip-flops walk, like savages. Half of them were faster than the cart.

My driver, a nervous cloud of strong cologne, kept apologizing. I’d just rewatched Death Race 2000, so we’ll call him Frankenstein. I liked Frankenstein: he took alcoholic hospitality seriously, lending him instant Don Quixote charm. All student workers are expected to do is avoid puking on anyone important.

“Sorry about all this,” he repeated.

“What? Did you hit someone?” Death Race 2000 had a scoring system for that.

“For the delay.”

“The cart ride’s more important.”

“Oh. I get it.”

He didn’t get it. But Frankenstein took my obvious insanity as amicability. I scribbled notes, as normal people do in normal conversations.

“The first Reunion without lockdown craziness. It’ll be legendary.” 

“Yeah?” The plague had eaten his peak tank top years, so saltiness was fair. I wasn’t over losing my late twenties, and those years don’t make it into well-edited memoirs.

“Legendary,” he repeated, letting each syllable shine. We snaked another cart.

A junior engineering student, Frankenstein already looked backwards. Figuratively, or we’d have died. He critiqued every building we  passed younger than the president, preferring Dorian columns to Sulla’s Ionic nonsense.

“I hate the construction,” he noted. “You don’t have to change just to change.” We sped through the Gondor quarter.

“Mrmph,” I agreed, struggling to chase human speech by hand. I needed to start wiring myself like a police plant.

“Ye college doesn’t feel like Princeton,” he lamented, sinking with disappointment. He’d be a donor.

“Why not?” I asked, imitating Michael. The practical side of being a little nicer: more material. My hand cramped up.

“Princeton’s classic. You can’t just…add stuff.”

For once, no. I underlined that sentence. It could still be comedy overwriting the rest of my brain, but I’m the only narrator we have.

We parted after some pandemic talk. You know the conversation. Frankenstein made a vague promise to meet in the tents, and I promised to follow up. A traditional tandem lie.

After the wristband line, I stood in line for a tent, then in line for a drink. I stared into a reusable “Eco-Cup”—a thousand others coated the grass. It held Milwaukee’s Best, which was almost beer. I almost enjoyed the first sip.

This was taking too long. Wasn’t this what I did? Arrive first, drink first, pass out last? D-Day sometimes meant Dennard, often meant Doomsday, but mostly meant getting bombed.

I dumped Milwaukee’s pride into a bush. Maybe it was a wine night.