Low Visibility by Matt Harrison

My wife was born invisible, but she told me that it’s only at my high school reunion that she feels invisible.

A small percentage of Americans are born invisible each year. Naturally, this number is very hard to track.

I went to an all-boys private school outside a city that you probably know the name of but have no plans to visit.

Every five years, the reunions take place beneath a tent on the open commons green. Yes, we had a “central green” in high school and when everyone went off to their colleges and universities, we would make thin smiles when we heard freshmen our own age getting excited to say, “quad.”

I get myself a bourbon and soda and a glass of Sauvignon Blanc for my wife. There are servers with trays of canapés but I pass these by in favor of the serve-yourself snack table. There’s the mandatory charcuterie of sweaty-looking cubes of cheese and crackers. Next to that are two bowls of salsa, one red, and one green. Someone has dropped the ladle for the red salsa entirely into the bowl, where it lies half-submerged like a shipwreck circled by the shark fins of broken Tostito fragments. People had been using the ladle for the chile verde to spoon red salsa, leaving unpleasant-looking green pools in the bowl. I notice that the chile verde is incorrectly labeled as chimichurri but I decide not to make a whole thing about it.

My wife accepts her wine and I take several long sips of my drink, knowing that if I can fight through the soda I will be rewarded by the warm brown center of this stupid cocktail I can’t stop ordering. I look around at my old classmates, making mental tallies for the Hairline Report. The hairline report is a running game I play in the Instagram group chat with the four friends from this school that I still keep in touch with. The Hairline Report is exactly what it sounds like: a diagnostic study of the WWI inch-by-inch trench warfare between the male forehead and hairline among our former classmates. In that Instagram group chat, among my actual friends, none of us is losing our hair. We have just developed mature hairlines like Bruce Willis or Dracula. Including one of our own in the Hairline Report would be something akin to friendly fire. None of those guys could be here tonight.

My wife and I met in college. Choosing what I thought was an empty chair in my senior poetry seminar, I accidentally sat in her lap. We were both equally embarrassed and she agreed to let me take her out for a cheeseburger. She chose a dive bar near campus where she worked as a waitress. Her manager came by and told me she was the best server he’d ever had. She told me she was rarely thanked.

As I count bald and balder heads, I notice there are significantly fewer wives than last year. I wonder if this is from a rash of divorces or patent female refusals to attend an all-boys school reunion. I start to tell this to my wife when Cameron Lansky pulls me into one of those hand-pump side-hugs it feels like we’re getting too old for.

Cameron Lansky is now a consultant. Cameron Lansky and I played JV hockey together. He remembers this fondly with a one-sided esprit de corps. All I can remember is that he used to give himself papercuts between his toes and stick pouches of wintergreen tobacco in there. He said the pressure on his skates made it feel like a thousand angels were sucking him off through his feet. He inspired Dwight Hennison, our goalie, to remove the bandages from a long-boarding accident and sprinkle long-cut tobacco over his road rash like top sod. Dwight’s wound became hideously infected and he almost lost the arm.

Cameron finishes telling us about his company’s massive acquisition, something he thinks I have read about in the news. I introduce my wife. I watch as several thoughts flit across Cameron’s eyeballs before he extends his arm two feet to the left of where she is standing.

In the next conversational circle, I begin to cheat my hip out, subtly pushing my wife toward the center. I steer the talk into topics where I know she’s an expert. I like to think that everyone is taking note of this behavior, ascertaining that we are a functional couple or at least can be called upon to portray one for an evening. Maybe they think we learned this in therapy.

At one point, Gregory Pruitt, who was really meek in high school but has spent the last five years in the Costa del Sol doing what sounds like white collar crime, loudly points out that the chile verde is mislabeled. This elicits a humiliating non-reaction and I experience the incredible feeling of watching someone fail at something I considered doing. There should be a German word for it.

As the evening goes on and the attendees drink more, the men regress back into the boys that they were in high school. They don’t have to go back far.

I am different from these men. I am a champion of women. Of undocumented workers. I support children both disabled and fast. But when people ask me if I know any jokes I can only remember one that isn’t racist. Where does satisfaction come from? A satisfactory.

It’s late. We need to get back soon and relieve the sitter. Our kids are mostly translucent, I know you were wondering. It will be good content for their college essays but in the right light you can see them perfectly fine.

I go to tell my wife that I am ready to go but of course she has been ready to go for hours. I apologize and she gives me a comforting look that nobody sees.

Matt Harrison

Image by delo from Pixabay – Cheese cubes and olives on plastic cocktail swords.