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Computer science professor gossip... Matrimonial bondage... What the cool people talked about...
We changed at the Rancho. I got into my usual wedding outfit, then took off the jacket. It was already getting hot outside. It occurred to me that if I'd only thought ahead a bit, I would have known it would be too hot for a jacket. And I needn't have packed it. And then I would have had room for other kinds of snacks. I shook my head to clear it. This was no time to think on what might have been. I had a couple of Jolly Ranchers to focus my thoughts.
Brendan was looking like some kind of crazy-ass fezless shriner, wearing a necktie with shorts. I told him it was a good look for him. Dave was dressed in a nice short-sleeved shirt, no tie. He explained: Rob (the groom) wasn't going to wear a tie, so it was okay if Dave didn't either. Bryan was wearing one of those no-collar shirts, so he wasn't wearing a tie, either. My, but we were a scruffy lot.
We soon made our way to the Bishop's Lodge and spotted the wedding party by means of some brightly colored saris. We signed in. Brendan snagged Rob and the two of them went off in search of pants. I found myself in conversation with various young folks I didn't really know. One of them, I think one of Rob's Madison friends, works for Be. He revealed this when I talked about Geoworks' problems selling operating systems. He said, "Selling operating systems isn't easy," and his voice sounded pretty damned weary. He talked a bit about Professor Knuth (yes, that one), who was acting something like a recluse--he had no email account, didn't give out his phone number, and his office could only be reached by going through another office full of grad students (including the fellow I was talking to). I was irrationally surprised to hear that Knuth was still alive. For some reason, I picture him as a contemporary of Plato and Socrates, working out the pseudocode of fundamental algorithms by drawing in a sandbox while sitting on some stoa, surrounded by toga-wearing followers.
Sandia, who is gradding in some bio thing while working at LBL, was easy to talk to, grinning and bearing it when people asked her about her connection with Sandia Labs (none). Steve didn't talk much, but then, he'd been one of the people trapped in Denver the night before, so people were inclined to cut him some slack. We looked around for James Landay--oops, now Professor James Landay, and didn't see him. He'd been invited, perhaps he was too busy. I said maybe Landay just didn't want to show up. I admitted that I'd had limited association with him. Actually, I'd only met him once; he and I were both seniors; Bryan and I were setting up our electronics digital design project to demo out in the hall of Cory Hall. Landay was friends with Jimmy, who was working on the next project over, with his partner Chung Liu. After playing with Jimmy's project, James came over to try out ours, which worked with sound, a kind of digital answering machine. After recording and playing a message, Landay asked, "Why does it sound so shitty?" Like, thanks a lot. Sandia giggled and said Yeah, it had seemed kind of surprising that out of everyone, Landay had gone on to become a professor considering his... considering his... "Attitude?" I suggested. Yeah, that was it. Hell, I don't know. Landay's got lots of friends. He's probably one of those people who's kind of obnoxious, but interesting enough to be worth it. I just ran in to the obnoxious part first, is all.
Rob's friend Rob was zipping around. I said hi. He wasn't sure where he remembered me from. I mentioned that we'd gone to a show, he'd been wearing Birkenstocks with white socks, the hall had been done up with black lights, his feet had glowed. He smiled uncertainly and kept going. But it's all true, I swear it.
Mason and his wife and child had shown up, though I didn't know this, not having spotted Mason, and not ever having met his wife. Hans, who I once shared a house with, showed up, along with Noriko, who he'd married a couple of months before. All of the sudden, people were taking pictures, and I realized that here was the Edwards Street household, reunited again after all these years; here was MegaBrooce together again, as well. Thank goodness the only musical instruments in evidence were some flutes, and professional flautists kept these firmly in hand lest some errant soloist try to grab one for an impromptu rendition of "Back in Black".
We sat down for the ceremony. I should probably say something about the bridal party's outfits. I mean, Suruchi (the bride) was wearing what looked like a magenta sari, and there were flower girls wearing these olive-colored silk outfits with these gold sashes... it looked pretty cool. I'm not saying that everyone should start using traditional Indian costumes when getting married. I know where that leads. I've seen those lime green tuxedos that crop up around prom time. I'm not sure I trust most Americans with the color choices that other cultures make available. But in the bright sunlight, these costumes stood out well. Rob was wearing one of those collar-less shirts; in spite of this, he didn't look like a dork. His beard was neatly trimmed; that might have lended him the necessary dignity in the chin-neck vicinity; I dunno.
The ceremony was a delight.
A reception line was formed, and Dave and I were the first to walk it. The last person in the receiving line was Rob's mom. She accepted my kind words and then asked me, "Are you next?" I considered asking her if she was nuts--was she going to try and strike up a conversation with everyone she was going to receive? Sure, right now she was thinking it was too bad that she didn't know who this young friend of her son's was. But she had dozens of bozos to get through. Any effort to get to know them all now was doomed. I decided against giving her any advice at this point. She'd figure out the deal soon enough. "I doubt it," I replied, grinned, and walked off to the drink table.
I managed to talk with Hans, finding out that he had recently started working at a patent law office, and was still waiting to find out if he'd passed the bar. Others gathered around. He talked about the behavior of one of the flower girls, who'd discovered, as she approached the end of her walk, that she still had a lot of flowers left over--and started tossing large clumps, finally dumping the remaining contents of her basket at the end of the aisle. "She was dropping bombs," Dave said; we were inclined to agree, glad to bring this street-smart talk to the outskirts of Santa Fe.
All of the sudden, Rob loomed. He asked Dave if he could come over to help witness the license. Dave was amenable. "Gotta make sure all this is on the up and up," I said, a bit in awe of Dave's authority. Dave made a cryptic hand gesture and walked off with Rob.
Soon it was time to head in to the Lodge for lunch. We checked our nametags to find out which tables we were destined for. Dave, Bryan, and I were headed to Table 9. Brendan was destined for Table 10. Our little foursome was to be broken up for a while. Brendan was crestfallen. Why hadn't he been judged cool enough to sit at the cool people's table? I didn't know what to tell him, I was so relieved to have made it.
At the cool people's table was myself, Dave, Bryan, John from Madison, Steve, Sandia, Mason, Mason's wife, Mason's baby (in a stroller), and some guy who might have been named Steven who was a friend of Suruchi's from way back, in town from where he lived now (Manhattan). Damn. A Manhattanite. So much for my chance to impress these rubes with what a sophisticated city dweller I was.
Sandia found out that I worked for Geoworks; she asked me if I knew someone named Chung. Yes, I did. It turned out that she and Chung were friends. She asked me about how Chung was doing, how his daughter, Juliana, was doing. I talked about what I'd seen of Juliana's experiences with solid food while at the Geoworks company picnic.
Bryan, noting my food choices said, "But you're not really a vegetarian, are you? You'll still eat potstickers, right?" I guess he and I hadn't had this conversation in a few years. Nope, no more potstickers for this boy. Bryan seemed stricken. I didn't know what to say. I didn't want to say anything snotty involving my opinions of animal lovers, seeing as how there was a vegan at the table and a large contingent of probable non-beef-eaters just one table away. I was getting pretty tired; they probably could have taken me in a fight.
Bryan was going to graduate soon, and was applying to the NSF for a grant. He was hoping to get a teaching position somewhere, but had slim hopes in this regard. He was trying to figure out if he'd rather end up teaching at some podunk burg or selling out and doing 3-D computer graphics. It occurred to me that if he ended up in some podunk burg, he'd have an easier time finding meat-eaters to hang out with, but I again held my tongue. I don't know if old age is making me more tactful; it's certainly making me more reticent.
The Manhattanite started talking to me, probably feeling a bit left out of the conversation of all these Bay Area friends of Rob's. We talked for a bit. He said he worked for British Airlines, as a programmer. I asked him if he was working on airplane controls, or a ticketing database, or what. He said he was working on the UI for the ticketing system. I said that I bet he ran into lots of interesting synchronization problems; I've often wondered how one administers one of these national databases. Well, the Manhattanite didn't know, he'd only just started. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed lots of computer geeks at the table had been observing this conversation out of the corner of their eye, checking this guy for hidden depths... now they lost interest. Still, he turned out to be pretty interesting, and soon was regaling the table with New York housing tales which I, alas, can no longer remember.
Bryan seemed to be stuck on the topic of social clubs. He talked a bit about the time he went to visit someone at their club. He was stopped at the door because he wasn't wearing a tie. He was at the time wearing one of those collarless shirts (as he was at the time of the telling, too). At first, the doorkeeper had loaned him a tie, but putting it on over the collarless shirt revealed why one doesn't wear ties with those shirts--it looked pretty silly. There was a worried muttering. Finally, Bryan's host came out and said something, and eventually someone came along who actually knew about these shirts and was able to confirm that it was okay to wear them without a tie. Someone asked--and I had been curious--if this was such an old club, surely they could have loaned Bryan a collar? Perhaps they'd tossed them all out a few years ago.
Rob and Suruchi came around to make sure that our table was doing okay. Rob thanked us for coming out, saying that Suruchi's family had been pleasantly surprised to see how many friends he had. "They thought you were some kind of loser," someone said. "Something like that," Rob laughed. I looked around, puzzled. If those people had thought that Rob was a loser, I wasn't exactly sure how this ragtag bunch was going to convince them otherwise. I chose not to bring this up at the time.
Soon it was time to move on. We'd started to set up some phone calls to arrange for a seven o'clock dinner. Hans and Noriko had an eight o'clock flight, so they were going to come with us back to the Rancho to talk until they had to go, since they wouldn't make the dinner. Alex would come, too, because what else was there to do? Alex was a man after my own heart. I said various pleasant things to various relatives. I was pretty tired. I was so tired that when I was saying nice things to Rob's father, I went and said, "Congratulations." Goddamn it. I felt like an idiot. He saved me: "I think it's them you should be congratulating, not me," he said, and smiled. I agreed wholeheartedly and got the hell out of there before I spouted any more nonsense. I rode back to the Rancho in Hans and Noriko's car, now that I was a big expert on how to navigate the twisted streets of Tesuque. Soon Dave, I, Hans, Noriko, and Alex were ensconced in the suite, talking quietly through the rest of the afternoon.