Mr. Bresson’s Latest Date in Bakersfield

Perhaps it would be wise to avoid this subject altogether, but I have always written about my traumatic experiences, from my heart attack to the death of my dog, so I ought to be man enough for this.

Over the weekend of June 11-12, I drove up to Bakersfield with my wife to attend the 50th anniversary reunion of her 1938 Kern County Union High School graduating class.

Among other things, I found out what it is like to be a spouse. Although I was given a name card that said Jack Smith, I found that no one knew me until I said that I was Mr. Denise Bresson.

Bakersfield is often used by Los Angeles as a symbol of cultural dearth, just as Los Angeles is used by New York. Every city needs another city to look down on. That is why, ironically, a mayor of Fresno said, “Fresno is the gateway to Bakersfield.”

My wife was a senior at Kern County Union High School when I met her. I was a sports reporter for the Bakersfield Californian and a rather dashing figure. We met on a blind date arranged by a mutual friend, who had, I realize now, a genius for matchmaking.

Fifty years ago Kern County Union High School had the best football teams in the state, and the prettiest girls. Many were the daughters of immigrants--French, Italian, Armenian, Greek--and they were spectacular lookers. Many of them never went on to college because they were picked off for marriage by the local bucks.

I must admit that I persuaded my wife, after her graduation, not to go on to Berkeley, although she was an excellent student and had the grades for it. I thought she would be happier as the wife of a newspaper reporter. If the women’s movement had started 15 years earlier, she might have been chairman of IBM.

The reunion began with a reception in the Presidential Suite at the Red Lion Inn. We got our name tags and began to circulate. To my surprise, the man who had arranged our blind date walked in. He was not in my wife’s class. He was one year earlier. We shook hands and I asked him what he was doing there.

He said he had come to see a couple of his old girlfriends. Just wondered how they had turned out. I happened to know that he had been married four times, and that he was still living with his fourth wife. I wondered why she wasn’t with him.

“She decided not to come,” he said.

I wondered whether she hadn’t made a better decision than I had.

While we were talking, a very handsome woman walked in. She certainly didn’t look her age; she must have been a great beauty as a girl, and she was still no eyesore. Slender, poised, chic.

My friend said, “Oh, oh, there she is.” He said she was one of the two girls he had originally considered marrying, although he chose the other.

He walked up to her, took her hand and went into his charming routine. He always had a way with the ladies. Her response seemed polite but remote.

After a minute or two he bowed to her and came back to me, crestfallen. “She didn’t remember me,” he said.

That, of course, is the price one may pay for going to a 50th reunion.

I had my own comeuppance only a few minutes later when a woman came in alone and immediately drew a crowd of admirers. She was gorgeous, with a beautifully coiffed pile of reddish hair, a magnificent Roman face and an elegance of posture and movement. I realized that she had been my girlfriend before I met my wife.

I pushed through the crowd and introduced myself. She said, “Oh, and what do you do?”

“I’m Mr. Denise Bresson,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” she said. I asked her if she was married. She said she had been married three times. “I found out it doesn’t work for me,” she said. I realized that I might have been her first discard.

At the dinner that night I danced with my wife. It was the first time I had danced with her in 10 years. I thought I ought to make some kind of a statement.