Friday, November 10, 2017

Of All The Gin Joints...


In 1967, a psychologist named Stanley Milgram designed and executed an experiment to test the degree of connectivity between Americans across a wide geographic and socioeconomic spectrum. Long before social networking was even a thought in any of our heads, Milgram was investigating human networks via the permutations of association and happenstance, with surprising results.

He mailed packets of materials to people he’d randomly selected in Wichita, KS and Omaha, NE. He asked the participants to send the contents on to one randomly selected individual in Boston, Mass, but only if they knew that person on a first-name basis. If not, they were asked to send it to someone that they were on a first-name basis with—any friend, relative, coworker or associate—that they guessed might have a chance of knowing the stranger in Boston. Each person in the chain signed their name on an included roster so that when the parcel got to its intended recipient in Boston, Milgram could track how many people it took to complete the connection. On average, it took six. On a couple of occasions, it was as few as two, but never once did it take more than nine individuals. He dubbed it Small World Theory, although it’s more popularly known today as Six Degrees of Separation. Or Six Steps to Kevin Bacon, if you prefer.

L-R: Me and Charles 
I’m pretty sure my cousin Charles wasn’t thinking about any of that when he invited me to come hang out with some of his friends up at McCredie Hot Springs in Oakridge, OR during the Fall of 1996. Oakridge is a little town nestled in the Cascade Mountains—population 2,200—straight out of Twin Peaks, and not any place you go expecting to find the Nexus of the Universe. It’s where you stop for gas on the way to the ski slope, or where you go to find a natural hot spring where you can toss the Frisbee, drink some beer, and soak your bones. Which sounded like just what the doctor ordered, since my long-time girlfriend and I were on the outs for the millionth time.

Charles and I had always been close as kids, born just five days apart, and had grown up to be quite similar in many respects—easy going, philosophical, kind of given to hippie pursuits— although we had different upbringings. I’d been raised a Military Brat and had lived in six states and one foreign country by then, while he was the son of a blue collar working family, born and raised his whole life in the same house. But he had actually finished his master’s degree, while I was still a semester shy of a never-to-be-completed AA in Underwater Basket Weaving. He’d been wandering a while, traveling and finishing graduate school in Iowa, but had recently come back to Eugene to settle down in the place he’d been raised. I, on the other hand, had been wandering my whole life, and had decided to make Eugene my home and finally put down some roots. 

Charles returned from Iowa with a friend in tow, David, who was looking for new adventures in life. He decided to accompany Charles back to Eugene in search of a world more tolerant to his identity as a gay man, which apparently the Midwest wasn't know for in the 90s. David and I had hit it off immediately and, along with Charles, we spent endless hours drinking coffee and beer together and hashing out the world’s problems. So, you know... you’re welcome. It turned out that David was going to be in attendance as well—along with a couple of new friends from the apartment building he’d recently moved into—which kind of sealed the deal for me, since David had somehow become the go-to guy whenever I was having girl troubles. Go figure.

The gorgeous Fall day was crisp enough to make lounging in the natural cauldrons of hot water a perfect counterpoint, and just what the doctor ordered. Everyone in attendance was a nice mix of laid-back but engaging, and it was an easy day of amusing diversions and effortless conversation. One person in particular stood out as being really bright and friendly, one of David's new neighbors, Leta.

McCredie Hot Springs, Oakridge, OR
As we lounged in the spring, it came up in conversation that Leta and I shared the same birthday, which got us going on a train of conversation that lead to a surprising revelation. I wish I could remember our exact path to this rather ridiculous sentence, but we both said it aloud together in stereo: “Keoki is Hawaiian for George.” We shared a sitcom moment of comic surprise, and then began tumbling over each other to figure out how two strangers meeting at a hot spring in Oakridge, OR—who shared the same birthday no less—could possibly both know a guy with the unlikely name of Keoki. The only thing more unlikely was the idea that there could be two guys in the world with that name. OK, probably there are, but we’ll never know, because it turned out we were both talking about the same guy: Keoki Wells.

Keoki played Right Forward on my soccer team in Jr. High, while I played Left Halfback. He scored way more than me, though often on one of my crossing passes. Leta knew him because he was her sister’s first serious boyfriend, back in the day. But the key element to this curious coincidence is that we both met Keoki in... Naples, Italy. We two—strangers at a hot spring in a town that’s just a wide spot in the road on the way to somewhere else, where neither of us lived—shared a decade-old connection from 5,997 miles, and nine time zones away. When you’re faced with the staggering unlikelihood of something like that, it’s pretty hard to maintain a disbelief in… some kind of intelligent design. 

I mean, we were only there together because my cousin from Oregon met a guy from Michigan, at college in Iowa, who somehow made friends with a Military Brat who’d been stationed to the same overseas posting as me, but on the far side of the world. And if she and I hadn’t shared the same birthday, it still might never have come to light. The more links in the chain, the more ludicrous it becomes. But this wasn’t the first time something this preposterous had happened to me. Years previous in California, I met a girl on vacation from Wisconsin, who had grown up in Massachusetts going to school with a girl that I also knew from Italy, Betsy Bina, who had been my first real crush in life. For the sake of brevity, I’ve glossed over the intricacies of that unlikely discovery, but it was a doozy, and really hard to accept as mere coincidence.  


So to have a second equally ridiculous event occur just a few years later (in a totally different state, mind you) was compelling, if a bit... disquieting somehow. Because it makes you feel like the Nexus of the Universe, or at least a spoke in some great, cosmic machine. Ultimately, it reveals nothing of whatever Grand Design there might be. I mean, for a brief moment, life seems crazy beautiful and intricately meaningful in ways you can’t find the edges of, but then you still have to go back to your workaday life and run your errands. 

The following day, I was invited over to David’s place for his apartment-warming party, where I unloaded my Ficus plant on him as a "gift." While I was there I got to meet Leta’s sister, Lori, who just so happened to be visiting from Seattle. Leta had already informed Lori of our interesting connection, and we immediately began to share memories of Naples. Their family had moved to there the summer of 1985, which was when mine was was moving back to California. We were the same year in school, and the time overlap was close enough that Lori and I knew a lot of the same people. We discussed Keoki for a bit, but while my eighth grade memories of him were pretty plain-Jane, he was her first serious boyfriend, so things were considerably less, shall we say, PG-13?

The talk of first loves/crushes brought up Betsy, but Lori’s memories of Betsy were sour, which bummed me out. Apparently, things changed quite a bit in my absence, like I should have expected, but somehow still didn't. People who I thought would be friends forever began hanging out in different crowds, circles drifted apart. I shouldn’t have been shocked to discover this—the center never seems to hold—but I still found it oddly unnerving to hear of people falling out, couples breaking up, and unapproved new players interjecting themselves into my narrative. The nerve of some people.

Cristy, Heather, Betsy and Ethan at Castel Nuovo, Naples
It was naïve to think that a bunch of adolescent tumbleweed Military Brats who moved every thousand days would remain steadfastly in the arrangements I remembered so fondly. I guess we all want our childhood world to stand inviolate as a museum of our lives and a monument to our existence. Instead, the diorama had advanced in my absence into something I couldn’t have predicted, and had no ownership of. Which left me with an incongruous sense of jealousy at having been left out of these changes. Like maybe I could have amounted to something if only I’d stayed in Naples instead of returning to the States.

Lisa & Ethan, 8th Grade Prom
I didn’t have the heart to hear any more, so I inquired about another soul uniquely dear to me from those long-ago days, Lisa Rizzo. Lisa was the first girl to say “yes” to me, kindly granting me my very first dance at the tender age of thirteen. It was platonic by necessity, because she was soon to be my buddy Ethan’s girl. But that didn’t stop me from transferring that fervent original crush from Betsy—briefly, but with dizzying intensity—to Lisa for a several endless-seeming weeks. They say you never forget your first, and while Lisa wasn’t my first love, she was the first girl to endorse me as being an OK guy. At least no worse than the next guy, which is almost as good when you’re thirteen. 

After I related the story of Lisa and my first dance to Lori—my eyes glazing over in rapt nostalgia, as they do to this day anytime I can corner some poor soul long enough to tell the story—Lori had the best response of all time: she instantly produced a picture of Lisa with her husband and baby daughter. There are few feelings in the world as gratifying as knowing that the people you’ve cherished in life are alive and prospering. Seeing Lisa as a grownup, still wearing that easy Italian smile, was immensely rewarding. And considering the preposterous lengths the Almighty had gone to get this information to me, it was all the more so. Although I was a little disappointed that she and Ethan hadn’t gone the distance from 8th grade, Lori assured me that Lisa’s husband Ray was good people, so I let it go. I can be very magnanimous that way.

Center: Lisa and Ray. Right End: Lori and Ethan
One might think that two such experiences in a lifetime is at least one more than anyone could expect. I mean, how many times can the lines of coincidence converge in one person’s life, especially when you consider the huge geographic areas that we’re talking about here? From Italy to Massachusetts to Wisconsin to Michigan to Iowa to California to Oregon. Could even Milgram have conceived of such a thing? 

But wait, there’s more. 

Over fifteen years after this experience with Lori and Leta, having never seen either of them ever again, I sat down to write these stories, wanting to reconnect with old friends. I reached out to Lisa on Facebook, to share the tale of our first dance, “Last Dance in the City of Ruins.” It was well-received, to say the least, and virtually overnight renewed a friendship that means the world to me today. In exploring these memories with Lisa, several unexpected things came to light. 

L-R: Ethan, Lisa, Me, Lori
First, her old beau from back in Naples—my long lost buddy Ethan—now lives in Washington State, not five minutes from where my parents retired. Ethan moved back to Kitsap County, WA after Naples, because that’s where he was originally from. Our family retired from the Navy in Long Beach, CA, having returned there after Italy. We only moved to Washington for work after the California aerospace industry went into the crapper following the end of the Cold War. Consequently, I spent a thousand days in the 90’s living, loving, and working minutes from one of my oldest buddies from a world away, and never knew it. I could have walked to his house. Hell, we probably went to the same crappy little video store at Kountry Korners, and I never ran into him once. 

Luke and Lori at the Halloween party where we met,
our Naples connection unknown to us.
Second, in the intervening decade, Lisa's friend, Naples Lori, whom I'd only met the night of David's housewarming party, had moved from Seattle to my little town of Springfield, and married the brother of my wife’s best friend’s husband’s best friend. If that sounds convoluted, that's only because it is. Allow me to belabor. My wife’s best friend, Kristi, is married to Tony. Tony’s best friend, Jessie, has a brother named Luke. Luke is now married to Naples Lori. As I was perusing Lisa’s pictures on Facebook, I recognized Luke from several parties we’d attended together at Kristi and Tony's over the years. Considering that none of my Oregon connections to Lori even knew each other, that’s a bit much. What a surreal feeling, sitting in my little Oregon town, scrolling through pics of a long-lost friend in Jersey, and seeing someone I knew from across town because of my wife. And by the way, just to keep it interesting, my wife is originally from Alaska.  

But wait, there’s more.

Since I published “Last Dance,” I’ve reconnected with numerous Neapolitan expats, and even made a handful that I’ve never even met in real life into friends. One of the latter kind, Jen, represents yet another thread that converges on my life with an uncanny degree of specificity. 

Jen was three years behind me in school, and was stationed in Naples after I’d left. So although we'd never met, Jen and I became friends on Facebook because of “Last Dance." Over time, I noticed some familiar names and places in her FB pictures and posts, including the Kitsap Regional Library in Poulsbo, WA, where my Mom worked for twenty years. It turns out that Jen had been shadowing me for years. She went to NAHS right after me, then to a rival high school of mine in Long Beach, CA, and finally to the same Community College as me. And we never once met. She then moved to England, returning to the US years later with a husband and family, only to settle in Poulsbo, just 10 minutes from my parent’s house. Upon further investigation, it turns out that our Moms have been friends for years, long before Jen and I even met. 

It’s hard to consider all of this and not feel the invisible turning of the clockworks, the cycles in an incredibly vast and intricate machine. One whose overall workings may be unknowable to us, but whose exquisite synchronicity is beautiful to behold, even for its own sake. Italy, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Michigan, Iowa, Washington, Oregon, California, and Alaska. My, what a tangled web we weave, Mr. Milgram. Or perhaps not so tangled after all. Because there have never been more than five people separating all of us from across six thousand miles and thirty years of silent distance. Milgrim had his six degrees, I have my stories. Either way, it’s a very small world, indeed. 

Charles once gave me a book purporting to explain the augury of the specific day you were born. Instead of a general calendar month Zodiac sign, it was like three-hundred-sixty-five individual horoscopes for each day of the year. I don’t put much stock in the metaphysical. Still, the one for the day of my birth has stayed with me all of these years: “You are the place where the lines converge.”





Okay, maybe I’m not the Nexus of the Universe, but seriously? Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world…





2 comments:

  1. Man...more familiar names. "Keoki" had to younger brothers named James--a year ahead of me--and David--two years behind me, same grade as my brother. They were all athletically gifted, that's for sure. I remember James playing after-school basketball (rec league) and David being on one of my buddies baseball team.

    And the young lady you named as "Jen" sounds a lot like my old NAHS classmate and fellow Varcaturo bus rider Jennifer Cleverdon (she was Jennifer Supancheck back then). I can easily see running into NAHS/Naples people in California and even Washington State, but Oregon and Wisconsin strike me as a bit odd. It IS a small world, though. Here in the Baltimore-Washington area, there's LOTS of people with NAHS/Naples connections.

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    1. Hey there! Yeah, the Jen I'm referring to is Cleverdon/Supancheck. It was weird when I first got to know her because of one of the other Naples blog stories (Last Dance), because I started seeing familiar landmarks in her pictures. When we finally figured out how the extent of our parallels and overlaps it was pretty fun. Of course, Fb makes all of these discoveries thousands of times easier and more likely, but except for Jen all the others were discovered organically over the course of many strange coincidences. No doubt we live and work around people we have connections to all the time, but we just don't know it. Half of the amazement comes from the way it all comes to light. Thanks so much for taking the time to read and comment. Love my Wildcat brethren!

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