I didn’t even notice them at first.

After 14 hours working between two bars, I was ready to forget about graduation weekend in downtown Bloomington altogether.

But then on my nightly, ever-therapeutic 3-block walk to my truck, in which I prepare to drive home — literally putting it all behind me — I saw a mass of humanity that was not ready to go so easy into that fair night.

It’s Kilroy’s Sports. 3:30 a.m., Sunday morning, after two days of commencement ceremonies in Bloomington.

Nana’s gone to bed. Bubbe’s back at the hotel. What had been a sun-kissed, family-photo weekend for thousands in town had turned into a final night of catharsis for Hoosiers about to leave Hoosierland.

And they were drunk. Very drunk, at the Gates of Valhalla. Standing on every table, every chair, every service area, screaming along to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” — specifically, the MAMAAAAAAAA part as I was walking by — well past the usual hour mere mortals call it a night. The bar’s double-doors were wide open, a cute-in-retrospect attempt to clue the hundreds of guests it was time to leave. Walking by, I was able to peer well-inside despite being near the sidewalk’s distant curb.

And then I took a picture.

An everyday, whip-out-the-phone, take a quick shot, maybe this is interesting thought after a long day. Something to look at on the toilet in a few weeks. I mean hell, people are standing on tables. I figured my housemates (relative homebodies) would get a kick out of some rowdy boozers getting their feet up on the furniture like a bunch of heathens.

So I got home and put it in the group chat for the housies. Fired up the Nintendo Switch, drank some beers of my own, and crawled onto my mattress after a milestone work weekend put to bed itself.

The next afternoon, after a long night of sleep, I took a second look at the picture.

I didn’t notice the two guys hugging in the middle of all the chaos.

But it stood out to me as something poignant, something raw and vulnerable.

Everyone in Kilroy’s Sports was putting on a brave face, staring at the explicit end of their college experiences. When they went home that night, it meant college — nay, Indiana University — was finally over. It meant the genesis of job-hunting or office gigs or scrambling for something from the parents’ new “guest room.”

So rage, rage against the dying of the light, they did.

And yet, with all of the singing and shouting and chugging and shooting and bumping and grinding and sweating and vibing going on in the room, these two anonymous figures were, in my eyes, finally acknowledging it all, and what it meant for their friendship.

And celebrating the moment before The Great Unknown with one final hug.

These guys, it seems, are really going to miss each other.

Let me be clear: I do not know these guys. I don’t know anyone in this photo (well, there’s one familiar face way in back, but that’s not important). These two friends might not be students. They might not even be close friends! But their body language evoked something that represents the metaphor of turning a page and acknowledging the rest of the book up to that point was now history. Over. Done. Goodbye. Toast. Never coming back.

But nights like these are forever.

Something about this image evoked something in me of my own college experience. Fittingly enough, the day had marked the 10-year anniversary of my own IU graduation — a day I will describe to God Himself as a horrible affair.

Dad had been gone for 4 years. Mom’s health was ailing. Brother and sister had to work. I was a poor student hopping between jobs myself. That Saturday in 2013, I woke up terribly hungover and wearily marched into Assembly Hall with my hot, humid fart-gown. Mom was somewhere in the alcoves, as the steep stairs of the building where Dad used to play were too much for her feeble legs to navigate. My flip phone (yes, a flip phone) was too weak to take a good picture, and Mom couldn’t figure out how to work the camera on her phone.

So there’s not really any pictures of my IU graduation. There wasn’t a party either — I finally found Mom outside IU’s cathedral of basketball after the whole shebang and we went back to my dingy, 1970’s apartment (“A Distinct Management Property”) and ate what I had in the fridge, which was cold chicken sandwiches made from Kroger deli meat and shredded cheddar cheese.

We didn’t get our picture taken together because there was nobody else to take the picture. She needed to drive home before it got too dark, and that was that. I went to bed after a few drinks on the couch. Nothing special.

So, suffice to say, I didn’t get a real elegant finish to my college career. There was no pageantry. No reserved-months-in-advance table at Uptown or Farm.

No pomp, either. Just circumstance.

This memory is kind of traumatic in retrospect. And I say it all as a juxtaposition to this candid photograph, which seemingly illustrates the graduation experience I never got.

Here I am, 10 years later. Same town. Making drinks for the new graduates and their proud families. Those who had been my equal peers are now those I serve with a sense of duty.

Honestly, there’s no resentment. I’m happy for them. I’ve learned to look past the wealth and status that comes with an all-smiles college experience and remember these are real people with real families. And real emotions.

And hugs that seemingly last forever.

I tweeted this same picture, more or less, as what we called a “gee-whizzer” in the newspaper industry. Nothing of particular value, but something that makes you think or feel. Something uncommon that stays with you.

There’s something about this embrace that I’m sure we’ve all been lucky to experience at one point in our lives. The hug that comes at a time of closure and farewell. The Hug Goodbye. I described it on the bird site as the “I don’t want to cry so I’m going to press my eyes into your shoulder and hope I don’t start bawling” hug. But whatever you may call it, pretty much everyone has had a hug this meaningful before.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who felt this way. The original picture (where I used Twitter stickers to cover up a few faces, for privacy’s sake) made the rounds across IU’s wide online alumni network and got people in their feels again.

In the quote tweets, one alumnus said “grad night at Sports was probably the most wholesome night I’ve ever had at a bar in my entire life.” Another said that “places in Bloomington still make me emotional, how you change and they change, but part of the places and a part of you stay forever the same, frozen in time.” Another remembered giving his late brother this same sort of hug.

A few recent graduates (of 2020 and 2021) saw in this photo a lamentation what they never got, a final send-off cancelled by Covid.

As for the picture composition itself, a friend of mine described it as like a Renaissance painting. It made an acquaintance state he was glad to be Straight Edge. A random person remarked “I know it smell like earring backs in there,” which, truthfully speaking, yeah.

However it made people feel, it certainly did just that.

I’m really loath these days to share pictures of strangers on the internet. I took more efforts with this post to blur out any faces that might be easy to recognize. But it was the seeming anonymity, the symmetrical head-in-shoulder hug that covers crying eyes, and the plain-colored clothes that anyone can wear, that I think made this so relatable.

We don’t know these guys — we are these guys. Anyone you love, have loved, will ever love, is these guys.

There’s part of me that’s curious to know who they are, but ultimately? I think I’m better off not learning. After 24 hours and thousands of likes on Instagram (you’re welcome, Barstool IU), the subjects in this picture haven’t spoken up. No retweets or replies with a “hey, it’s so-and-so!” either. I haven’t heard anything yet, at least.

And I’m fine with that. It has the same mystique, in a sense, of iconic photographs like the “high-rise lunch” or “the V-J Day kiss” or “raising the flag at Iwo Jima.” We don’t have to know who the subject is to appreciate the evident human emotion on display, even if it was just two bros hugging it out after a long night (and day) of drinking.

This photograph was a mere passing glimpse into a bar’s pulsing maw, and it got people talking about friends and family they miss. These hugging strangers, in the middle of the chaos, holding each other for dear life, represent a friendship realized and finalized. A hug we’ve all regrettably, lovingly, weepingly had. A goodbye we’ve all had to speak.

And to think, I didn’t even notice them at first.

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-moose