Early & Alone #94: Rewriting the Narrative

On reunions, Brats, and the stories we tell ourselves

I actively dreaded attending my 20-year college reunion, despite the fact that I’ve attended every reunion prior to this one—the 5-year, the 10-year, the 15-year. The dynamic shifts at each iteration as my class ages—the numbers dwindle a little more each year, the number of kids attending the family-friendly picnic surges. The 15-year was pretty sparsely attended but the numbers seemed to be on the upswing for the 20-year, perhaps because children are getting a little older, allowing parents to take the weekend away to party like it’s the year 2000 again.

The dread is something I can’t quite pinpoint. Every time I mention that I’m attending my college reunion, people gush “Oh how fun!” Why couldn’t I see the fun? Two of my best friends and former roommates were going with me—they were the only reasons I was going, in fact. When I was in college, I loved college. I loved the campus with its classic brick buildings and meticulous landscaping. I even loved the hills and stairs, the terrifying statue of the hand of Christ at the top of the library steps, a nail piercing the palm, and the tiny cemetery at the center of campus where a bunch of Jesuits were buried.

But I never quite felt I belonged there, a feeling that has grown over the years as I’ve grown and changed. Given the chance to do it all over again, I don’t think I would have chosen Holy Cross, despite the fact that it was an excellent education and I forged some of my best friendships there. But then I think, well, didn’t I become the person I am today as a result of Holy Cross, at least in some ways, instead of despite it?

The day before reunion started, I had a kind of epiphany, which seems a little silly in retrospect, but it was truly eye-opening. I’d been thinking about attending the reunion all wrong. In my mind, going back to campus, seeing all of the people I’d known all those years ago, I was picturing the me of 20 years ago. In fact, I think I was really picturing the me of 24 years ago, a terrified and grossly immature and unsure 18-year-old who’d never really been anywhere or done anything outside of her tiny comfort zone. I hated who I was then, and though I have more grace for her now, I still don’t like to think about all of the opportunities I missed because I was so scared and awkward and self-loathing.

My epiphany was that (duh) I wasn’t attending the reunion as that scared 18-year-old or even the slightly more worldly 21-year-old I was when I graduated. I wasn’t even attending as the me who’d attended the 15-year back in 2019. We are all constantly growing and changing. I am a person who has vastly grown and changed since college, and every day since then. And so are the other people who would be at the reunion.

Suddenly, I was able to see the event for what it really was—an incredibly rare chance to revisit the past with a new perspective. It was one night on campus, one night with people I’d spent some time with many years ago.

A few days after reunion weekend, I watched Brats, Andrew McCarthy’s documentary about the Brat Pack. Perhaps because I grew up with an older sister who is six years older than I am, I have always felt a little bit more of an affinity for the Brat Pack movies than most of my friends. I even had a Breakfast Club poster hanging in my dorm room.

In the documentary, McCarthy investigates what the Brat Pack label meant to him and his contemporaries. He seeks out his old co-stars, most of whom he hasn’t seen in decades, and films their conversations about the past. He interviews Ally Sheedy, Emilio Estevez, Timothy Hutton, Jon Cryer, Rob Lowe, and Demi Moore, amongst other cultural critics and Hollywood casting agents and producers. Molly Ringwald and Judd Nelson declined to participate, and there is absolutely no mention of Anthony Michael Hall, which I found incredibly strange.

McCarthy and his interviewees go back and forth about who even was in the Brat Pack (canonically, I would argue it was McCarthy, Nelson, Ringwald, Sheedy, Estevez, and Hall, but there’s been a lot of debate about this over the years), as well as how strange it is to see one another after so much time. One of my favorite parts of the movie was getting to see the various houses of the people he interviews—unsurprisingly, Demi Moore’s is stunning.

But the center of the movie is McCarthy’s obsession with the 1985 New York Magazine article that originally coined the phrase. It was written by David Blum, a young staff writer who spent an evening with Estevez, Lowe, and Nelson and came away with…a not so great impression of the young celebrities. The phrase Brat Pack was a clever play on the Rat Pack of the 1960s, a reference that was totally lost on me as a kid and that I still don’t fully get outside of knowing Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. were involved. McCarthy seems to pin all of his angst and the ultimate failure of his Hollywood career on this article and its admittedly wild afterlife. Every critic, journalist, and media personality took the words “brat pack” and ran with them. But while McCarthy always felt that the moniker was damaging, bitter, and mean-spirited, most others, myself included, never really took it that way. It was just a fun shorthand for the cluster of 80s movies and stars that defined an era.

What is perhaps most fascinating about McCarthy’s obsession with Blum and his article is that McCarthy is only mentioned once, in passing. To Blum, he wasn’t even part of this pack, an omission that is barely mentioned in the entire documentary. McCarthy even confronts Blum at the end of the movie, the two sitting in Blum’s New York apartment a little awkwardly. Blum is matter-of-fact about the article, saying he was proud of the clever phrase and expected it to launch his career more than it did, and that he hoped it isn’t ultimately what his career would be known for. The two men were more alike than they knew at the time—both ambitious, literary dudes in their 20s who were just trying to get ahead in their respective rat-race industries. By the end of the conversation, McCarthy seems to accept this, but he still can’t help but say, after the men have hugged and ended the official interview, but while the cameras are still rolling, “But couldn’t you have been just a little nicer?”

Many of the reviews of the movie I’ve seen have noted that McCarthy comes across as whiny and annoying. Unfortunately, I have to agree. I always had a crush on McCarthy, even going so far as to rent Mannequin on a weekly basis as a kid. It’s true that McCarthy’s post-Brat Pack career never quite reached Oscar-worthy heights (see Mannequin), but what McCarthy also doesn’t mention too much during the movie is that he’s gone on to have a successful career in other fields—he’s directed and become a travel writer, even editing the National Geographic Traveler magazine. He’s written several books. He’s no slouch.

But somewhere over the years, McCarthy allowed that Brat Pack label to become a narrative he told himself about who he was, or who other people thought he was. It’s interesting because his former co-stars all seem to have reached more of a peace with it than he has, each of them being very gracious to speak to him but also seeming a little bewildered about his need for some kind of resolution. Notably, Lowe and Moore seem the most zen about it, but that could also be because they’ve arguably found the most success in Hollywood post-Brat Pack (I don’t even think of them as really being part of the Brat Pack even though I’m mostly alone in that).

So in that way, I feel a kinship with Andrew McCarthy. I’ve let myself believe the narrative I wrote for myself somewhere way back that I’m a loser, that no one likes me, that I’m not good at anything, that I’m awkward and scared and ugly. All of this despite the evidence to the contrary. I’m getting better at rewriting it but it’s still an ongoing struggle, one that events like reunion bring into sharp focus, just how much of a struggle it continues to be and probably always will be, to some degree. McCarthy is a writer and so am I—maybe it’s just the way our brains work, trying to fit everything into a cohesive narrative, something that makes some kind of sense. Trying to find closure or resolution.

It seems like maybe McCarthy is closer to that place at the end of the documentary. And I think I am, too. I had several really good conversations during reunion and was able to see and catch up with some people I genuinely respect and enjoy. It wasn’t life-altering, as any experience taking place in a college dorm where 42-year-olds are playing Beirut (beer pong?) and blasting Nelly in the hallway until 3:30 in the morning wouldn’t be, but it was at least somewhat revelatory, for me. And that seems like enough right now.

I miss writing here! Maybe I’ll keep doing it, but maybe I won’t. I’m trying to give myself permission to just…be, sometimes. But thanks for reading, even after all this time.