SRPL Reflections: Other Clubhouses

In many of these posts I’ve referred to SRPL as a clubhouse and that it certainly was. I’ve been lucky enough to have several clubhouses in my life, and I think it’s about time I gave them their fair shake as I lament the loss of the one which was most primary.

I’d define a clubhouse as any meeting space where friends gather. In my life, I scrupulously avoided bars since I didn’t drink and didn’t like being around people who were drunk if I was never going to be.

One would think that would seriously limit my options, but I was lucky enough to have an active social life through the years. 99% of my friends hung out in bars at least some of the time, but I had enough people in my life that when one group was out pounding I could do something with those that weren’t. Also, a lot of my time in those years was spent with a girlfriend, and if they were dating me they weren’t going to those places.

It’s a complete fallacy to imply I never hung out in bars. I just never did when the order of the day was getting totally bombed. So I almost never went on weekends. For several years I did hang out in one bar in particular with my library friends (best Buffalo wings ever), but the rule was “booths only!”

Friends basements always made for good clubhouses (some better than others). In the real early days I spent the majority of my time hanging out in my friend Ed’s basement. Hundreds of movies were watched there and it was the site of my one foray into the world of drinking.

When he moved to Florida and I began spending more time with my other friends and my basement became the primary clubhouse. It was semi-finished, totally private and my parents were more than happy for me to have friends over. I’m sure they felt more comfortable knowing where I was so they put up with some occasional cackling pouring through the vents.

It was around this time I began chronicling our exploits on my state of the art (for 1985) video camera and if I were a mean guy I would post our adolescent musings on You Tube (actually theirs, not mine). I recently transferred about five years worth of the stuff to DVD and I cringe almost every time I hear myself speak, or I want to punch myself in the face…hard. Still, it’s great to have those time capsules.

Anyway, my basement lasted as a clubhouse until the late 90s when the “marriage boom” hit my group, and obviously ended officially when I got married in 1998.

The other big clubhouse for me was the Television Center at St. John’s University, and it’s one that sadly, always lost out to the library. I say sadly because I really loved the people there, and as I wax nostalgic about how wonderful and fabulous the library was, I don’t want these folks to get short shrift. That place and those people meant a great deal to me (and still do) but I was always ducking out to go to…the library.

I should back peddle a bit. When I started college all I did was go to class and go home. That was my m.o for two years until Girlfriend #1 lowered the boom on me. That event was a serious wake up call for me. Here I was, nearly a junior in college, and I had not joined any clubs or participated in any activities (except for a movie review gig at the student newspaper). I had not seriously considered my future and it was rapidly approaching.

I was a communications major and had chosen St. John’s partially for its state of the art television center. However, when I was a freshman (and I don’t think I ever told my TV Club friends this) I went up there to join the club and met a guy from high school who was also there to join. I really didn’t like him and wasn’t enamored of the idea of spending yet another four years with him, so I ditched it.

Two years later, I returned to take a summer class. I befriended two of the student workers there and found out there were part-time jobs available at the TV Center. Sounded perfect to me – hang out with nice people, learn a bit and get paid (slave wages). I applied and got the job and off I went. And my high school “frenemy” was nowhere to be found.

However, the siren call of the library (and a new girlfriend there) proved irresistible. I also had an expensive laser disc habit that I needed to support, so I worked as often as possible there. I was never at the TV Center later than early afternoon on any given day. My involvement compared to those of my friends was limited.

Sometimes I feel as though I missed out on a lot and I did, but I made my decision. My limited involvement certainly didn’t influence my career path. As soon as I got involved I realized the TV industry was not for me, and it cemented my desire to find a career in writing.

It became a running gag to hear me say that I needed to leave for the library, and I hope people never felt like they were “second class citizens” in terms of what they meant to me. When I graduated I realized how much I missed out on and for at least a year I would visit during their nightly editing sessions, something I never did as a student.

Over the years, I’ve tried to keep the clubhouse concept going through “movie nights” and “Geek Fests” with various constituencies so that sense of (mostly) male camaraderie could be preserved in some form or fashion, and I do have to give props to my wife for never impeding it and always being a gracious hostess.

Getting married and starting families does tend to take its toll on the clubhouse concept. The library has endured since it’s a job whose productive value equals its social value. God knows I’d never be able to see my friends with such frequency otherwise.

It can be argued that I spent too much time there, and it was somewhat detrimental to my growth (especially in those early post-college years), but there’s no point in analyzing that now. Today I just wanted to make it clear I am grateful for all the clubhouses, not just SRPL.