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| Proud to be a Reunion Man | |||||||
| Kuntzman gets a bunch of ex-girlfriends together to relive the past | |||||||
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| May 28 — I think the last straw for me was the game show reunion special. I was willing to accept the “M*A*S*H Reunion” and the “Mary Tyler Moore Reunion” because both shows were, on some level, cultural watersheds (although I could’ve lived without both reunions’ reverential tone, an inherent hazard when you gather Hollywood celebrities in one room and ask them to talk in excruciating detail about the great job they did on a sit-com 30 years ago). |
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| BUT THEN THE
REUNION special craze got out of hand: A “Laverne & Shirley” reunion?
A “Cosby Show” reunion? An “LA Law” reunion? An NBC “Must-See TV” reunion?
A “That’s Incredible!” reunion? Think about it: A “That’s Incredible!”
reunion! That really is incredible! So by the time my TV was showing old clips of Charles Nelson Reilly and Orson Bean from “Match Game,” I’d decided that Reunion Specials had gone too far. Or had they? After all, I watched every single one of them —except, unincredibly, the “That’s Incredible!” reunion. I knew then that there must be something to these reunion shows. This is the part of the story when I would call up some psychologist who would tell me that the rash of reunion shows is really just a manifestation of our collective yearning for simpler times, a completely understandable reaction to the harsh reality of post-9/11 America. |
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As I said, I
would’ve quoted a psychologist, but I couldn’t find one anywhere in
New York when I started making calls on Friday afternoon before the
Memorial Day weekend. Maybe I couldn’t get my readers that perfect
psychological analysis of reunion specials, but I learned something even
more valuable: If you’re an anxiety-ridden urbanite, the afternoon before
a holiday weekend in summer is not a good time to be needing emotional
guidance. Shrink or no shrink, I knew I had to host my very own reunion special. And I had the perfect sweeps-week concept: A reunion of all the women who dumped me in college. Unfortunately, despite the enormity of my Newsweek.com expense account, fiscal restrictions made it impossible for me to fly these dozens of ex-girlfriends to a soundstage in New York City, outfit them in stylish clothing, seat them in expensive directors chairs and then lodge them at the Essex House for two days. Instead, this reunion special would have to take place via long-distance telephone service (which ended up being quite expensive, considering how much time we all spent catching up on our professional dissatisfactions, discussing the joys and strains of raising our children and musing about the aches, pains and sudden aversion to the cold that come with middle-age). So for the purposes of this first-ever American Beat Reunion Special, imagine that the participants are sitting on directors chairs in front of this blow-up photo (http://gershkuntzman.homestead.com/college.html), which must be seen if you are going to have any understanding of why most of my collegiate relationships failed. The participants are: Lindsay Sommers (not her real name, my first college girlfriend. We dated for two months during that hormonal land-rush known as freshman year. I fell madly in love with Lindsay the minute she confided in me that she was madly in love with my best friend, a weakness I strove to exploit. Sure, I got her in the sack, but I never won her heart (not that that particular organ was my target); Gyneth Sick (her real name), my second college girlfriend. Athletic, buxom, direct, she overpowered the boyish Gersh Kuntzman. I didn’t merely worship her, I created an entire religion around her, putting myself in the role of high priest, choir, usher and receptionist…though not, unfortunately, lay cleric; Kate Miller, with whom I had one of the most promising dates of my life—a 24-hour extravaganza that included dinner, a movie and then a spur-of-the-moment, three-hour drive to Cape Cod—only to be dumped in the car ride back; Alexandra Lester (not her real name), who dated me chastely for two months before we finally had sex. Despite that—or, more likely, because of it—she dumped me the very next day. I tracked down Alexandra at a college where she’s now a literature professor. Her home page featured this quote: “The development of new aesthetic criteria demonstrates that canons do not form by adding a new set of ‘good,’ ‘timeless’ works to a previously existing list. Not only are there no timeless works or master lists, but also new additions to a canon can alter accepted notions of what is canonical.” I swear to God that she didn’t say stuff like that when we were dating. GERSH: This first-ever American Beat Reunion Special promises to be a special night for me, as it will give me yet another chance to relive the abject humiliation of my college years. I’d like to start off by asking you all to explain why it didn’t work out between us. MILLER: What ‘it’? We didn’t have an ‘it.’ We had one date. GERSH: You had a good time, I recall. You even suggested that we drive to Cape Cod! And then, in the car ride back, you told me not to call you. MILLER: Listen, it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. It was just for fun. And it was fun. Until you tried to kiss me. GERSH: What? Tried to kiss you?! Are you nuts? I was the perfect gentleman. MILLER: We were sitting on the beach real close and I knew that if I turned my head one micron to the left, you were going to plant one on me. GERSH: Did you turn your head? MILLER: No. GERSH: Did I plant one on you? MILLER: No. GERSH: Can you repeat that? MILLER: Yes. “No.” GERSH: So why didn’t it work out? MILLER: I think it was your hair. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t get past it. SICK: Oh, my God! That hair! That killed it for me, too. SOMMERS: That hair was the worst! GERSH: Wait, you all knew this and you’re only telling me now? SICK: I was 17. I guess I just had a different image of what Mr. Right was. It was someone more physically attractive. Someone more suave. I had an image of myself with a dashing figure. And dashing is not what you’d call Gersh Kuntzman with that hair and those glasses. GERSH: This is such a shock. It seemed like you were totally into me. SICK: I loved being with you because you were so funny, but in the end, you were too desperate and insecure. You weren’t confident enough to let me come to you. GERSH: But would you have? SICK: No, probably not. GERSH: See? SOMMERS: I think she’s over-intellectualizing. The reason it didn’t work between us was because you were fundamentally my best friend. The only reason we fooled around at all is because it was freshman year and everyone was hooking up. It was in the air. |
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GERSH: So
if we had only met at another time, at another place…? SOMMERS: No, it still wouldn’t have worked out. But I’m really glad we remained friends because you fixed me up with my husband. MILLER: Hey, you did that for me, too! GERSH: See, what a great guy I was! You guys both dumped my ass, yet I still fixed you up with people. MILLER: I know. Sometimes I feel that you were too good a guy and I needed to be with the “bad” boy. You needed women to mature to your level. SICK: But he was totally immature! What are you saying? MILLER: That he was the kind of guy who you could see yourself marrying, but you didn’t want to date. SICK: You can say that again. GERSH: How about you don’t say that again? SOMMERS: I agree that you were the kind of guy you could see yourself settling down with. GERSH: So that means you have some regrets? SOMMERS: No, not at all. But I do regret that I tried about a zillion times to break up with you, but never went through with it. GERSH: That’s what you regret? Not smashing my heart to pieces sooner?! At least you’re apologizing, I guess. SOMMERS: Yeah. I’m sorry about that. There. There’s your small victory. GERSH: Victory at last. Who said these reunion specials were useless? Gersh Kuntzman is also a columnist for The New York Post. His Web site is at http://www.gersh.tv/ © 2002 Newsweek, Inc. |
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Perspectives
