Stories For Boys Tripp Millican -------------------------------------------------------------------------- This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA. ISBN 978-1-4357-4555-1 Quote from "Process; a Tomato Project" by Tomato, copyright 1996, used with permission. Quote from "Raiding the 20th Century -- Words & Music Expansion" audio mix by DJ Food / Paul Morley, appears in an altered version in the book "Words and Music," copyright 2003, published by Bloomsbury. Book design by Kelley Semanka. http://storiesforboys.madeofglass.com Copyright (c) Tripp Millican, 2008 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- it's about moving, seeking out, involving, becoming. not a journey along a line to a fixed point when it will all happen, when it will all be clear, but a journey within a circle that explores and maps the possibilities that arise along the way. we are here. we are not yet there, or there: this is what it is. where are we going? from this moment to the next: from the centre to the perimeter and around, and back to where we came from, and then out again -- finding, bringing back, showing, finding . . . from 'process; a tomato project' Much of what I say is true. Here I am, trying to sum up a period of my life where I understood very little, where I'd like to believe I grew up, where I'd like to believe I learned a lot. All within the structure of a week-long vacation, recalled years after the fact. So much of what I will say is true. More of it is remembered. For those involved, it would make me sad, make me shake my head, if this past, my dreamlike memories, became the accepted version. But I can no longer separate the truth from the fiction. So why does it matter? This story is better than the truth anyway. I was going to go. That was it. I told Amy this, months before anything had been decided. "I'm going." "What makes you think I am?" she retorted. Oh, she was so clever. And yet, I didn't get her joke. "You're going to beach week. Fool." "What makes you think that I'm going with you?" "It won't be just the two of us." "I'm just fucking with you, Zach." It came up a few other times in the fall. I had begun my campaign to be included well early. I didn't want to be left out. These were my closest friends in high school -- people I had classes with every day. They were not my favorite people. They were not even people I saw too much of outside of class. But they were my friends; I didn't socialize much outside of school. And I didn't want to be left behind. I didn't want to miss the trip. I didn't want to miss anything -- the trip would be the last time we were together as a group. The last time I had a group to be together with before college. And then I found out she was going. And that changed everything. It was no longer about being included. It was no longer about being with a group of people that I liked in small doses, that I enjoyed sitting in the classroom laughing with behind teachers' backs. Suddenly, the entire trip, the entire week at the beach became about avoiding her. Kate. It had been a messy breakup; I was stupid and in love. And even though it had been a while, just over a year, I wasn't ready to be social with her. Around her. Even with that much time gone, I wasn't over her. Not like this. I wasn't going to go. That was it. I told Amy this, weeks before we were to leave. "I'm not going." "You've already paid." "So?" "Fine by me. Don't go. Your money." But, honestly, it wasn't my money. It was my parents'. I wasn't going to explain it all to them. And, I didn't want to miss out on anything. Even though that meant I had to maneuver around her. I was going to go. Like Caulfield and his magic violin. There was a prearranged meeting time. That is, I was to come to the party at the end of the night, 30 minutes before Amy's curfew. This was a favor to her, as it always was. I played her designated driver because she would drive drunk otherwise. I had heard enough of these stories over time to work this system out with her. This is how I was a friend to her. This, during senior year, is how friendship manifested itself with me. It was not about confiding talks nor social inclusion. It amounted to baby-sitting because she needed it. It amounted to baby-sitting because I let it. It had taken someone in our class going through a windshield for her to acquiesce. For her to let me pick her up from parties. Her curfew was 2 A.M. I didn't have one. To be honest, my parents didn't even know I was leaving the house. They were asleep. I watched Saturday Night Live and then left. I had parked the car a few houses away that afternoon on purpose and my parents said nothing. I was sneaking out on a Friday night to give my drunk friend a ride home. Even now, even knowing I was doing something noble and nice, I still can't believe this is how I spent my senior year. I still, even now, find it pathetic. Knowing I was doing it then for her attention is only salt in the wound. Amy was how I rebounded that year. She was not my only friend, not the only person I associated with. She was my only friend who gave me a real window, a real opening, into this scene. The rest of my friends hung out quietly, calmly and only rarely, socially. Amy provided a gateway into the popular clique -- something I found fascinating. Something that made me want it, want to be a part of it. Popularity is the drug of high school. I snuck out. Exactly 14 minutes later, I was rolling to a stop at the party. The house was quiet from the street. There were some lights on but things seemed to be dying down. I walked to the door and tried the handle. Unlocked. I let myself in. Some couples were rolling around in the room immediately to my left. I averted my eyes, trying to avoid the absurd dry humping. I didn't want to be here; I didn't want to be recognized. I walked towards the back of the house, staring at the floor as I went, dodging cups, people and furniture. Had to find Amy. My best guess was the back yard. She tended to migrate there, unless she had made it upstairs with a boy. I blinked, sending out a quick prayer that this wasn't the case this time. Upstairs was the scenario where most bets were off. She and I had never worked out a good system regarding her and boys and bedrooms. I didn't want to try and sort it out that night. Ever, for that matter. Who was I kidding? I would walk upstairs and get her. I would drag her out of wherever she was. And this was the issue. I knew what I would do. I knew what my job was and I knew I wouldn't deviate from completing the mission. But the issue was her. The issue was her yelling, screaming, slapping me as I tried to drag her out of the bed. As I tried to do her a favor, tried to save her ass, she would fight me every step of the way. This was my idea of a nightmare. This was why I hated this job. This role. And yet, I put myself up for it at every chance. This is what I did. And I am why she got to have fun. I was her safety net. Some part of me got a thrill from that. I felt proud for doing it. Noble. I pushed through the kitchen and outside, onto the back porch. A pool, a deck, a hot tub, all the lights on. And the Smashing Pumpkins playing. "Disarm." Amy was sitting on the deck, talking to a couple of people, watching others in the hot tub. No one was in the pool, though there seemed to be some clothes floating in it. As I walked up to her, a boy leaned out of the hot tub and threw up. He wiped liquid off his mouth with the back of his left hand. His right hand was still holding a cup and he took a drink as he settled back into the hot tub. Out with the old, in with the new. I refrained from sarcastically cheering for him. "Amy." She turned her head and noticed me. "Oh, hey." "You ready?" "To go?" "Uh, yeah. It's about 1:20." "We can stay for a few more then. We have another 20 or so." I rolled my eyes. She didn't notice. I didn't want to be here. I didn't want to debate with her over the time. I wanted to be in control of the situation. I was doing her the favor; why did I allow this nonsense? I had no idea why I allowed it. I allowed it because I didn't know what else to do. I didn't know how else to behave, how to control the situation. I stood, awkwardly, for a few moments by Amy and the couple of people she was talking to. I recognized them but didn't actually know either of them. Amy made no introduction -- a girl and a boy that might have been a couple. I couldn't tell. I didn't care. I stepped backwards slowly, moving away from the three of them. My steps were slow and shuffling. When they turned to look at the hot tub, as the puking guy began raising his voice, I turned and took several steps. By the time I returned to facing Amy and company, I was a good twenty feet away. They didn't even pretend to notice. I wandered around the pool, still dodging cups. Fucking red Dixie cups. Fucking drunk people. I sat down at the far end of the pool on a deck chair. On the end of it, hands clasped between my knees. I wanted no part of being here. Everyone else was indulging my presence -- no one, other than Amy, had made eye contact with me. There was a girl in the hot tub I liked. I didn't know her personally, but I had a tiny crush on her. I hated her now, seeing her there like that. Crush dead. I tapped my feet. Water in the hot tub splashed. Sounds rustled. I stood up and walked back to where Amy was sitting. I stood there, just outside of the conversation, shifting my weight back and forth from foot to foot. Right then, at that moment, I was hanging out with the cool kids. I was hanging out with people who did not know my name, who did not think I was cool. I stood still, waiting. I held my breath, just wanting something to do. I counted to 47 before I let the air out. The next time I made it to 63. I thought I counted faster the second time. Amy's group was still ignoring me. I was bored. I was attention-starved. I moved; I walked over to one of the chairs surrounding the pool. I climbed up onto the chair, standing in the seat, towering over everyone. I cleared my throat. Amy looked up and rolled her eyes. She started to say something to me. I tried not to make eye contact with her. "Everyone, thank you for coming. I just want to say how great it is to see you all here. I look forward to being ignored by all of you on Monday . . . " I threw my hands up. Amy walked over as people stared blankly at me. They stared through me, blinked and returned to their drunken conversations. For a brief second, I debated leaping into the pool from right there, leaping into the deep end. But I had no change of clothes, the air was freezing, I had to drive home. Amy made it over to me. "Zach, what are you doing?" I bent over a bit, still standing on the chair. I bent over and put my hands on my knees, pulling my face close to even with her face. I spoke slowly. Condescendingly. "I'm trying to have fun." "You're being an ass." "You want to see that?" "Look, we can go if you are going to be like this." Drunk, this was the first thing Amy had said that made sense to me. Never-mind that it was the only substantial thing she had said to me. I stood up and hopped off the chair, putting my hands on her shoulders for support as I leapt. She flinched. I pretended not to notice, pretended not to be hurt. I put my hands up against my head, over my ears. "What are you doing?" she asked. Her tone was exasperated. "I'm not listening to you, for starters." I didn't know why I said this; this was the opposite of what I wanted to say. The opposite of what I wanted. But my priorities had shifted. I had committed to a new course. "Look at me! I'm Nixon!" I threw up peace signs. "I'm Nixon in China! Look at me! I'll teach you motherfuckers to dance!" She shook her head. "Look at me! Who, who are our enemies? Who are our friends?" "What are you doing?" she asked again. Realizing I was working my crowd at too high a level, at an intellectual level for which they were not ready, I threw myself onto all fours. "Arf! Arf! Look at me, I'm a dog! Look at me!" I started galloping on all fours. "Arf!" Amy sat down in the chair where I was standing previous. Her head sank into her hands. People noticed me, but perhaps not in the way I intended. I thought, I seriously believed, this would be funny to a group of drunkards. Halfway around the pool, I realized this was not going to be the case. Halfway around the pool, I realized the ass I had truly made of myself. I was about fifteen feet from the hot tub now. I considered stopping, stopping to roll over on my back. Rolling over, throwing my arms and legs up and seeing if I could get the girl I liked to come rub my stomach. I seriously considered this. In my head, this was a viable way to hit on a girl. To be endearing. This is what I believed it took to get attention. To get noticed. To get loved. I went with it. I actually rolled over on my back and barked. But it was half-hearted, something I could play off later without feeling like a total idiot. Amy was ignoring me. I didn't blame her. In a way, I was ignoring myself. Especially as my girl in the hot tub still didn't acknowledge I was at this party, that I was right here in front of her. That I was on my back, trying to get her to rub my stomach. I was on my back, staring at the hot tub upside down. I was ready to go home. I lifted my head and looked over at Amy. "Time?" I asked. Even I was no longer amused by my actions. She didn't turn my direction. I sighed. I had to get up. I had to get up and I hadn't figured out a graceful way to recover from the whole dog debacle. I rolled over, stood up and shuffled over to Amy, my head down, the only sound came from my shoes as they scraped against the concrete. I was not lifting my feet as I walked. "Ready?" I was embarrassed to be speaking now. She turned to me, slowly. "Yes. And don't ever do that again. I can't believe I'm walking out of here with you. Actually -- you go and I'll be out in few minutes." Well done, Zach. Well done. I let myself back out, said not a single word to anyone. I sat in the car, the radio on, watching the minutes count. If Amy got home late, it wouldn't be my fault. I wouldn't speed for her. It was eleven minutes before Amy emerged, carrying her blonde, stumbling self out. I shook my head a little and watched her try to open the door. I finally leaned over and opened it for her; she had too much of her weight against the car and almost fell as I pushed the door open. I drove. Amy put the window down and cold air rushed in. We stopped at a red light about a mile, about 3 minutes, from Amy's house. At this stop, here, the alcohol in Amy's system had been inside her long enough. I heard it; I heard it coming up and out of her. I won't admit to shrieking, but I kept saying, "Head out! Head out the window!" She got her head out of the window. She did not, however, clear the car. I had alcohol-based vomit all down the passenger-side door. Of my parents car. At 1:45 in the morning. She pulled her head back inside the car, more coherent now. Still drunk. She tried to apologize. I brushed it off, unsure how I was going to fix the mess she just made. Wondering how I was going to not be angry at her later, later when she would be sober and wouldn't recall puking. I dropped her off, refusing to get out of the car when we pulled up to her house. I wanted her gone. I wanted the night to be over. No carwash place would be open at 1:45. I drove around for 30 minutes, trying to find one that was 24 hours. I finally found one and drove the car through. Problem solved. But I didn't get to fall into bed until a few minutes past 2:30 A.M., tired, lonely and frustrated. And I knew she wouldn't thank me. She wouldn't even mention it again. And I'd just end up doing it again for her. That was a lie. It wasn't for her. It wasn't for me, it was for attention. It was for adoration I knew I would never get, from her or anyone else. It was pure need, pure greed. Typical. ---*--- "He came in my mouth." Oh, Amy. ---*--- Looking back now, looking back years after the fact, is tough. I'm trying my best to gather my thoughts, to organize everything I want to tell you, everything you need to know, everything you need to understand how I grew up. How I became a real person. But there is then -- all the stuff that happened before the trip. And there is the trip. And there is now, years after all the thens. And like a dream, one thing leads to another. That might be the name of a song. Regardless, I'm trying to organize, trying to help you understand it all. But, like so many things, it isn't a linear story. Not really. So you and I are going to take a trip. Together. Dream with me. Float away as if you never knew where the ground was to begin with; open yourself up as if it will help. Maybe it will. The taste burns my mouth -- the memory of you. You, then, it would seem, burn my mouth. The roof, my roof, where the skin is hard and tough and bony, my tongue, my teeth, my gums -- my mouth. Is that right? I don't even know anymore. You are gone, so they tell me -- they have to tell me something, I suppose, and now my fingers fall in rhythm of the music. "Stop calling me." "Ah -- that old trick." I simply hadn't learned -- I'm sorry. I really am. Apologies don't mean much, do they? "Not coming from you," you would say. You never believed I felt sorrow. As strange and unreal as that sounds to me now. The sky rumbles -- thunder from miles away, coming to us at the speed of sound. "Looks like rain," she said. I nodded, half numb. The cold had already set into me even before the rain had started. It really hadn't been what she said, but the way she said it. When someone admits to you they have nothing to talk to you about, bored and indifferent: "Hi. Is Kate there?" "Speaking." "Oh. It's me." "Who?" "Me." ". . . " "Zach." "Oh . . . " ". . . " "I didn't recognize your voice." "I could tell." "So what's up?" "Nothing, just wanted to talk really." ". . . " ". . . " "Ok . . . " "Well, good classes today?" "I guess." "What did you do?" "Nothing, really." "I see. Well, what are you doing tonight? Homework?" "I have to help my parents with some stuff. Listen, I'll see you around, okay?" "Um . . . well, okay." "All right, I'll talk to you later then. Bye." "By-" Click. That happened more times than you might think over the years; the only change was the voice on the other end. You might realize it happened a lot. Perhaps. Maybe you don't care at all, already. Is it obvious how sad I was? Needy? Desiring? Can you at least notice things about me I couldn't see then? I wasn't very bright and needed a lot of things to keep me going -- which, I like to believe, is different from now. Attention. Girls. Now it seems I watch my needs bearing down on me, I just can't change them. One step at a time, I suppose. All these songs suck. My fingers slow down, stop tapping. My thoughts disintegrate. The radio keeps going. Let's start over. Try again. Another perspective. It was over. The wind, the trees told him so. It felt good somehow. To know he was only lying to himself; it had all just begun. It seemed the world was rushing at him. This was an emotion, a raw anticipation, which he felt often now. Imagination. He felt the speed race across his face. The open window. He wanted to be able to rush like that. Like the car he was riding in. Feel the wind whip his face. To know he was moving of his own volition and power faster than anyone had ever thought possible. It was the desire to do something, to create, that drove these feelings: he knew that. It depressed him -- he wanted to be someone -- to make something of himself, fully knowing that more likely than not, he would fade into routine, obscurity and habit before he even began to rise into something beautiful and complete. The odds were simply against him. This realization didn't change anything. If it had, he would have been over before he had even begun. He couldn't consider not trying. He wanted to reach potential, whatever it was. They were flat out and flying. Right now, at least. Down the road, away from home. He had crossed the last bridge. In his mind. One more chapter to scratch through in his table of contents. It gave him a good feeling. He didn't want to grow up, but high school was not somewhere he could have remained. He was too angry. Too lost. The wind whipped at him. A day ago, he had graduated from high school. The end. And then today, he had left for the beach -- to celebrate the occasion in a drunken stupor with friends for a week. His last chance to be with his friends. To overcome his heartbreak. His last opportunity to be a true, irresponsible child. I don't think I'll write any more of this in the third person. It's too detached, too impersonal. This story isn't about some fictional character. It's about me. I don't like pretending it isn't. It's unfair to the both of us. You and I. I had my first girlfriend in kindergarten. It was a cute, innocent relationship -- things like visiting each other's houses for birthdays and holidays. Our parents arranged the entire episode. Every trip. As if we were in a foreign culture. At age five. This went on for the next six years. We never kissed, never played doctor, never did any of those games you are supposed to play with your grade-school sweetheart. My parents encouraged us to hang out. Speaking only from my vantage point, it probably had something to do with me not having any friends, a fact I think has affected my personality since. I was skinny, with glasses the size of my head. Huge tortoise shell frames with thick lenses. A beautiful, uneven bowl cut, gently covering my ears. I had no grasp of style or manners. I (as most children of that age) only understood the world in relation to myself. And the world I had surrounded myself with was one of books. Not people. The books I read didn't tell me how to match clothes or what other people want. Or find rude. The books didn't teach me social etiquette. They taught me about death and fantasy worlds, imaginary plots and unreal science. I read mysteries, science fiction, horror. Escapist fiction. I had my second girlfriend the summer after sixth grade. I had my first kiss with my third girlfriend in eighth grade. I had my first love in ninth grade. After that, firsts aren't as black and white to me. Plus, I'm not sure I feel comfortable enough with you to reveal when I lost my virginity or gave someone oral sex, when I had anal sex or a threesome for the first time. I would like to save some part of myself for me. Ninth grade changed my life. I don't mean to sound so cheesy and dramatic. It's when I met my first love. It would end three years later, at the end of my junior year of high school. It would take me years to recover. Kate. That was her name. Now it seems like an invocation. ---*--- You came down here, as if you would follow me for the rest of my life like a ghost, a banshee. Wailing, like a lost child, waiting for me to hear you. You know what happens when a banshee's scream is heard, don't you? Someone dies. That's right. Someone dies. And I would be willing to bet you want it to be me. Is that why, when I saw you at the party after graduation, you seemed to go into a trance? Why everyone seemed to slow down except you and me? Have you been practicing magic again? Or is it majik this time? I ran. And I kept running until I could get on the road and the cars around me were moving again. Was it my imagination? Were the cars simply going the limit and I slowed down in relation to them or was it something more? I didn't manage to hear you that time, but I'm sure you have more where that came from -- I will be looking over my shoulder all week here at the beach as you dart in and out of shadows, trying to doom me in some form or another. And yet, yet, I still feel empty. From you. From the piece you took when you left. That sounds stupid. Generic. Stereotypical. It is. But that pain has not left me since you did. I feel like an alcoholic. And the drink burns my mouth. Is this what you have driven me to? Sitting around drinking tinted vodka on a Wednesday night? (Someone else's idea, I am sure -- I wouldn't think to color vodka. It is for the black light I am told -- a couple of drops of food color. It didn't turn out right though -- further discussion reveals you are supposed to use water and highlighter ink once the bottle is empty; no one here has the patience for something like that. At least they didn't put the highlighter ink in the bottle before the vodka was gone.) No talking -- all action. I wish that was me. I want to mean more than this. I want my life to mean more. These people I am with now, here, they talk too much. Simply put. But that seems to be normal when I go out -- people talk. And talk. And talk. They talk too much for me. I get tired, anxious. Lonely. Because they talk and talk and nothing ever seems to come out of their mouths. (Isn't that a line from a Minor Threat song? Is that what I have reduced myself to? Unintentionally quoting lyrics from a punk rock band? You reduce me to sitting around with cards and colored vodka. I reduce that by quoting punk bands to sound above it.) I am sitting in a room. Another song. I am sitting here in this room, watching people do shots of colored vodka. Maybe I am doing some too -- I can't tell, can't remember, can't care -- although there is a glass in front of me, I don't remember taking anything to drink and the glass looks empty, unused. But one can never tell. I pick up the glass and sniff at it. I don't think anyone notices. No smell. I put the glass to my lips and tilt it back. A single drop slowly makes its way towards me. I unfurl my tongue into the glass, trying to meet the drop halfway. It hits my tongue. Water. Amy looks at me and says: "You know, there is a sink. You can just get more water if you want." The sweat of your mouth runs sweet in the memory of my mind. I don't mind. Is it odd I can remember how you taste? Or why you smell? Does this make it easier for me? I don't mind, but I wonder. When did I start asking so many questions? The blood rushes to me, out of me. Don't fight; the blows come easier now if you don't -- as opposed to then as we barreled down that road as if it was empty. As if we owned it. Or each other. But then, that which is, never is. Or at least, never is true. Wishing you all the best for you and your loved ones as well as the ones you wished you loved. Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. Fuck. Everything seems so small without you. I want to puke. So I am sitting here and thinking of you. Do you realize that? I am thinking of you and you don't even know. You will never know. Would you care if you did? If I could let you know each time my mind wanders to you? Your spider-sense might never stop going off. Would you like that? My fingers clench. Frustrated. These people continue to laugh and talk. There are nine people in this circle -- most of whom I don't know. In fact, Stephanie and Amy are the only two here I even recognize. The girl almost straight across from me is hot. Hot as shit. Totally and completely fuckable. I'm sorry. That seems crude, doesn't it? But it's true. She's one of those girls that seem flawless when you look at her. Except she is talking. I don't listen. She moves with grace. I think that is the biggest draw for me. She seems to have perfect skin, white teeth. A revealing outfit and a body that wants to be revealed underneath. I'm a boy. It would be boring imagining her naked if I didn't want to fuck her so badly. Someone I stare at until caught. If I realized she had caught me staring. Her mouth continues to move. Stephanie nudges me, saying that this girl is asking me a question and repeating the girl's initial inquiry. I look at Stephanie, then the girl and tell her my name. She tells me to drink. I try to decline politely, explaining my fear of drinking artificially colored alcohol. She doesn't listen and has gone to fill my glass. Knowing I will not drink what has been placed before me, Stephanie takes it and drinks. I have no idea what game is being played. The music is uncomfortable to me. There isn't anyone to tell. I look at my watch. I wish this world existed on simpler terms. Simpler sexual terms. There have been too many times in my short life I just want to fuck. Just simple, animalistic sex. Like right now. Especially right now. With this girl sitting across from me. I don't want to talk to her. Actually, I don't want to hear her voice. I don't care at all what she has to say. I want to have sex with her. Not even sex. I want to fuck her. A hate-fuck. It isn't that I hate her -- I simply don't care. I want to fuck her without consideration for her being. A totally selfish act. Afterwards, I want her to ask me pointed, intelligent questions she can interpret. From these questions she can tell what kind of a person I am and she will take a genuine interest in me and ask more intimate questions like: "Do you put on your shirt or pants first?" "My underwear," I answer. "I knew that. I mean after that." "I think . . . I think my shirt. I've never really thought about it." "Why?" "Why have I never thought about it?" "No. Why the shirt?" "I don't know . . . " "Are you self-conscious about your chest? I bet that's it." "No. Well . . . maybe a little." "That's what I thought." And the conversation would continue. Notice two important pieces of information in the above transaction: 1. She knows me better than myself. She wants to know me better than I know myself. But more importantly: 2. She never volunteers the information about herself. This second fact seems insignificant perhaps, but it isn't. I don't want to know her answer. And she knows that I don't want to know. So she doesn't bother telling me; instead she concentrates on me. Total servitude. Total selflessness. Is this desire wrong? For someone to know me, to know things about me I don't even know? And to not want to reciprocate? It seems wrong not wanting to reciprocate. Here: "You put your pants on first don't you?" "Yes. Yes, I do. How did you know?" "You put on your underwear, your bra, covering your breasts. The next logical step would be your pants. I know you aren't ashamed of your breasts or your stomach." "Huh." There. Are you happy? I did it. So things would seem more fair. I would admit the truth, repent, and tell you I didn't really ask her, but then she didn't ask me either. Nor did I get to hate-fuck her. So it really doesn't matter. It's all a fucking fantasy. She looks at me; the disdainful expression is clear on her face. She knows what I am thinking. No, maybe she doesn't. She knows enough. This is what she does know: I want to fuck her. And this is what I know: She won't let me. Never. I am sad, pathetic to her. Not a mate. Not worth spreading her legs for. We continue to play. When the bottle finally makes its way back to me, I hope she will try again to make me drink. This time I will. It will show her she is right -- that I am miserable, impressionable -- I am willing to drink to impress others, especially her. Which will only serve to drive her farther from my bed. That's okay though. I want to drive her away now. If I'm not good enough, I'm going to do everything I can to drive her as far away as possible. But she doesn't; she skips right over me. I let her. I didn't want to drink anyway. Not really. And not because of her. I really do want to be able to stand up for myself. I'm ashamed for having thought about her like that. As an object. Or considering drinking for her. I want to be better, stronger, more enduring than that. I feel like a sad, pathetic excuse for a male. I can't really do anything right, the "male" way. Wait. That's not to say the male way equals the right way. I meant the right way for a male to act. According to (and this is the important part): girls. They give themselves to those boys who do know how to act. And do act correctly. If nothing else, I don't weigh enough to be a true boy. I'm not a sex god. Or even a sex object. I'm a skinny, nerdy, non-drinking kid who needs a haircut. I look like I'm still in fifth grade. Like I want to go play in the backyard, imagining myself as Tarzan. I'm not a man; I'm not even on my way. But enough about my theories and the absurdities of my sex drive. Lets do something more constructive with our time, shall we? Here is the situation in a little more detail than I afforded it before: We are in a hotel room. It is about 4 in the afternoon. The TV is on. A soccer game is being broadcast on some channel. There doesn't seem to be a logo on the screen, which keeps me from knowing what channel we are watching. I do know it is the World Cup. The TV is to my right, lodged in a large wooden cabinet, in the periphery of my vision, both making it difficult to watch and annoying to keep catching glimpses of the game at the same time. As I have said before, there are nine of us in the circle. I am not playing. (I think I'm not playing, at least that's what I have finally concluded or convinced myself. Anti-social, yes. But not as bad as simply sitting in one of the corners, on the floor, watching the game and scribbling in my journal. In my mind, the only other option.) The nine people are (going to my left): Stephanie, Amy, a boy (a David maybe), another boy named Travis, another girl (who is not as hot and whose name I think is Vanessa and who seems to be dating Travis), the really hot girl, another boy (whose name I have never known), a boy with a girl's name I can't recall and finally me. The shades are closed. ---*--- Answer me this: my spell check (Microsoft Word, Office 95. I'm writing on a laptop that is woefully outdated -- a 486 machine with no CD-ROM) tells me TV is spelled capitalized, but with no periods. How did that happen? How did it turn from an abbreviation into an acronym? The invention, TV itself, really has changed the world; I suppose that is reason enough. Of course, this is the same spell-checker that doesn't recognize Excalibur or asshole as words, so I'm not sure it is to be trusted anyway. I know asshole is a word. I also know how to spell it. ---*--- "On a plane . . . on a plain . . . " Light drifts, filtered through the window, it's early evening and the sun is setting on the other side of the building. Soon, someone will turn on an interior light so they can continue to see the cards. For now, the room, the lighting, is how I like it -- dusky. You can't quite make out details. We are sitting on a motley combination of things -- three of us are on one of the two double beds in the room, four on the other bed, and two of us are in the cheap hotel desk chairs. I am one of the two beds; both have generic, geometric, white and red and yellow bedspreads. They are crowded. There isn't anywhere I could escape if I wanted. Perhaps on the floor, up against a dresser, wedged into a corner. Not worth the effort. Next to me sits a boy. With a girl's name. Kelly? He has long, reddish hair, cut into a half-assed mullet and is wearing a Nirvana tee shirt. It's stained and faded. Black, with bleach spots. An iconic, drugged-out smiley face sits in yellow print on the front. He has a screeching voice. I don't really want to be sitting next to him. He too is staring at the flawless girl. She seems to be ignoring him as well. The boy next to him is boring. Visually. His face looks like everyone I went to high school with. His name is probably David and he probably drives a blue car. A shitty 1980's sedan, with the fabric ceiling falling to form a canopy within the car, Coke stains all over the upholstery. Sometimes you can just tell. He sees me looking at him and raises an eyebrow in an attempt at an inquisitive glance. I half-smile, wondering if he will then take it as a signal of me coming on to him. He doesn't look like the type to care (at least he would confess to not caring, even if under all of it, he really does get uncomfortable). But I'm not hitting on him and if he did think that, it is over as quickly as it began. Which, I am quite confident, is for the best. These people are a rather boring lot. This includes David -- who I later find out, is actually called Paul, and, the other guy in this circle is called David. So I was partially right. And, of course, that's just me refusing to be wrong. I nudge Stephanie and then ask in a muttered voice if I can change the music. It is Dave Matthews, I think. Stephanie shrugs and says I need to ask Adria. It's her room. Among others, but it's her CD. Already more attention has been drawn to this than I want. Now embarrassed and feeling like a controlling asshole, I ask the hot girl if we could change the music. She smiles. "You not a Blues Traveler fan?" "Not really." "Sure. What do you want to listen to? I've got . . . " She pauses for a moment, sorting the list in her head. "How about some Soundgarden?" "Um . . . " "The Black Crowes?" ". . . " "Live? Smashing Pumpkins? Jewel?" "Not so much." "Pixies?" "Please." "I haven't listened to that in ages . . . " Figures. She probably bought it when she was in love with a boy who told her how good they were. When she realized she and this boy had nothing in common and her infatuation was based in nothing but fantasy (something I am quite accomplished at), she stopped bothering to pretend they interested her, but has yet to get to the point where she can sell it off. And then the music starts. ---*--- There is so much I want to show you. Not tell. Show. That's what they teach you about writing, right? Show, don't tell. But I'm the narrator. I'm telling you about a time in my past. All I can do is tell you. The catch here is how well I illustrate the entire time. I can tell you who was wearing what, where they were, who they were fucking. I can go into great detail about the whole week. Does that mean I'm showing you? Does that make me a good writer? Isn't it all fake? I mean, fuck, I could have brought a video camera down to the beach and filmed the entire fucking thing, but then when I edit it, I'm still telling you. I'm still assembling pieces and order for how I want you to view it. It's all fucking subjective. It's all telling. No matter how I write it, it is still just telling you what happened. Does dialogue mean I am showing you? Does asking questions like this mean that I am telling? Or does it simply mean I am as confused as you might be? I don't think so. I just want you to understand me. To love me. There is more than one way to tell a story. I suppose you simply have to believe in my point of view. Or learn where I am biased and make your own assumptions, just as I have done. There is no such thing as objectivity. Especially in the arts. In life even. But this isn't about what happened that week. About who was wearing what or who fucked whom from behind while drunkards watched. It's about me. It's about how I remember that week years later. How I remember becoming a person. How I tried to figure out the fairer sex. I was searching. I wanted to believe -- my romantic ideals wanted to believe -- there was someone who could offer me the security and understanding I longed for. It was tough. It was tough to look, it was tough to realize, tough to accept that if it ever was going to happen, it wasn't going to be during beach week straight out of high school. Curiously, that didn't stop me. In fact, it might have made me look even harder. Just to prove them wrong. Them? What an absurd concept. As if the Fates honestly gave one damn about me and my quest for the perfect girl. As if there was a perfect girl. As if I was going to find her. There and then. The romantic in me though felt differently. He wanted her, like nothing he had ever tasted before. It wouldn't happen. I knew before we even left my parents' house on Sunday morning. And getting to the beach only reaffirmed it for me. This was to be a bridge for me, yes. But nothing all that life-changing. Nothing that profound. At least in the extreme I was searching for it. I was an idiot. ---*--- It is later in the evening. That sentence seems redundant but I will leave it there anyway. And that one. And . . . well, anyway. We had vacated our room for theirs, then theirs in the hope of something more. Saved by the Bell reruns, local news (a station that has recipes as part of their daily news? Are recipes news? Or is it simply that there isn't enough violence in this area?) can only sustain for so long. One question: Are my attempts to get over her made more pathetic by the fact I am desperately trying to get with anyone? Answer: Yes. Question: Does this stop me? Answer: No. ---*--- Here is another example of my life (rather this isn't an example, it is a story; I want to say a parable, but I know that too is wrong): ninth grade. The first time I got drunk purposefully. (Once, in fifth grade, I had without trying.) I had gone over to a neighbor's house because his parents were out of town. There was no one watching Bobby. He was a year younger than me. Bobby was nowhere as cool as his name implies. He was pissy, immature and annoying. He was also one of the few people I had to hang out with in my neighborhood. There simply weren't many kids. And to drink and watch porn -- how could I say no, regardless of how much I despised him? His house had a satellite and we would watch the Playboy channel and drink when his parents were gone. This was over a summer break -- after ninth grade. It had to be. (Although the summer had just started and it is so difficult to remember what happened what summer. Does that happen to you? Did I learn to drive stick this summer or that? Did I meet that girl at camp between these school years or those? And usually you just have to make it up because you have no one to consult with. Although there are those rare times where you can sit down with someone and say, "Do you remember the time we went swimming with the bike in the pool?" And they will say, "Yes." And you say, "When was that -- between eighth and ninth or between ninth and tenth?" "It was between ninth and tenth because I was going out with Anna. I remember because I called her to get her to come over and she couldn't. So I called you. Once we got the bike in the pool, I called her again to make sure she wasn't coming because we had driven the bike off the diving board and we were riding it on the bottom of the pool. Do you remember the bucket?" "The one we would wedge under the ladder in the pool and swim down and breathe the pocket of air? Yeah." And it goes on for a while. And then the commercials go off the TV and the two of you are back ignoring each other. That's what friendships are for.) I had been going out with Kate for barely 6 months. I was drunk; I needed to call her -- as a child that age, dating another child, you cannot go a day without calling each other. Not really any different than now, although then you are in class all day together, making the phone call more redundant and dependent. So I dial. Drunk. At about 1:30 in the morning. While Skin-a-Max porn blares in the background. I don't know if you ever have gotten the delight of watching the Playboy channel. As a child, Playboy was a synonym for porn. A brand. Porn implies you get to see nudity. People fucking. See it more than have it implied. In that regard, the Playboy channel was a huge disappointment. It didn't show anything but tits. Sex might have been on-screen, but genitals weren't. Sex occurred from the waist up. People screwing at impossible angles, where you just know the actor's dick is slapping the outside of the woman's thigh. The fact that the sounds have been overdubbed. This all was a huge letdown for me. I called her house, at 1:30, from the kitchen. The kitchen opened directly into the den; the TV was fairly audible from where I was standing. Leaning. Into the den, as far as the cord would let me. I hadn't even had that much to drink. The two of us hadn't had more than two or three shots total -- Bobby was afraid his parents might notice if we took more. So, to be fair and honest, I wasn't drunk. I was buzzing. (What a stupid, stupid word -- I am not a bee when inebriated.) Everything was funny to me -- I was young and over-reacting on my first drinking experience. People do this all the time. They fake being drunk. Or high. The story where you tell the person you are smoking with (who has never smoked before) it's some really good pot and they agree and start acting stoned. Then you tell them it is really just tobacco. It really is. I called. On the third ring, Kate answered. We spoke; she pointed out the time to me; she told me she would speak to me tomorrow. Thinking I had fucked up a good and thoughtful deed, I got upset. She consoled me until she started to fall back asleep and I hung up, depressed. In the morning, she told me that her mother asked if Kate heard the phone ring in the night. Kate said no. Which was assuredly for the best because her mother hated me dating her daughter. She shook her head and grumbled and let it go, knowing I had called Kate. I loved her. I was only trying to do right. Doing right isn't always what you need to do. Somehow the innocent part of my mind doesn't want to accept this, even now. Or maybe it is my problems with artificial-seeming rules, the black and white ones. Sometimes logic does not work. I'm sitting here now, typing, in a small room. Years have passed since the previous paragraph; the keyboard feels strange under my fingers. Between the time I wrote the previous sentence and the time I'm sitting here editing it. Time moves. I can't stop it. Years pass and I'm older and people expect me to be an adult. To have a career. I'm not sure if time and I get along well or not. I don't have the luxury of choice. The interesting part of the story we are in the midst of is that I know now how a lot of it turns out. Like knowing what you get for Christmas beforehand. Although not quite the same. I know where these people have ended up, what has become of them, years later. None of it is really surprising in the slightest. The story is completed, in some form or another, as I sit and write these words. And I wonder why I am surprised. Why I thought the story could have a different ending. When I first began this tale, it was years previous. I didn't know how this story would complete itself, much less where I would be. And yet here I am, typing on this keyboard and seeing my words become more concrete on a screen that doesn't know what it holds or what the pattern is for the bits it has been receiving through the wire in my keyboard. This may sound strange to you, but listen: 2, 4, 6, 8 -- what comes next in the pattern? You know it's 10. I know it's 10. It is 10. But the computer doesn't know it's 10. It isn't able to know it is 10. Here is the thought spun from this tangent: How does the spell check know what words to suggest? It can't be programmed so every variation of everything is in there with solutions of some sort or another. Which suggests to me it picks, somehow, what to suggest based on the evidence you have given it in the form of your mangled word. Some sort of algorithmic logic. Well, then -- it decides, see? It decides. Therefore, the computer should be able to pick out 10. Think about it: 2, 4, 6, 8 is a word. The correct spelling is 2, 4, 6, 8, 10. A little rudimentary, I admit, but nonetheless it could be applied in this manner. Perhaps it is too convenient a solution -- to suggest the same algorithm that suggests 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 as the correct word, on an even larger scale, would also suggest this tale and it's outcome as the correct spelling of the first section of my life. It's a pattern. Pre-defined. Fate. Pre-ordained. Life. I had no idea of this when I began writing this series of thoughts and now I have convinced myself of something I had never considered before. No matter how many times you press a button on a calculator, it will never remember. Or pick up on the pattern. I used to sit in class and test the calculator's memory (from the time I noticed it in seventh grade -- maybe eighth -- until after I graduated from college). I wanted to see if the calculator would speak to me. Or at least work a magic for me that its transistor circuits had never worked for anyone else. I wanted that magic. The calculator never remembered. My favorite test was to press "2." Then "+." Over and over. And over and over. Wanting the calculator to pick up on the pattern. To talk back to me. Another game I used to play was to press "2." Then the square function. Over and over, finally learning by trial and error where the calculator memory overflowed and stopping right before that instance. Then I would press the square root button over and over all the way down until it got to the smallest number the calculator could compute (passing right through my original starting point). I would press the square function over and over to see if I could build it back to "2" exactly. That never worked either -- rounding problems. Although I am sure they have calculators out now that will do it. The last calculator I used on a regular basis had a horse racing and blackjack game programmed into it. This calculator was for Calculus. Those two games were why I almost failed. Every Tuesday and Thursday, I would sit in the back of the classroom and try to win as much money possible before the end of the period. I bet the bank every time. I would start out with 2,000; the best I ever did was 24,000. Then I lost. And I would start over. I'm sure if they have calculators out that can be made to horse race, play blackjack and Space Invaders (a favorite I somehow missed getting my hands on -- probably too much time absorbed in blackjack), they can write programs for them that have limited AI (enough so the calculator can pick up on a pattern). How this would be done, I really have no clue. Not that it matters at all. Why would anyone develop a program that once you pressed a button 100 times, it would assume you wanted it pressed 101? What if you didn't? Or what if you wanted it pressed 102? Would it assume that too? Would it ever stop once it started then? This train of thought is doing nothing favorable to my mental state. Let's get back to the real story, rather than theories about calculators and magic and predestination. And being special. ---*--- In the parking lot of the hotel, I see a girl try to unlock her door. She seems angry; she looks hot in that horrendously slutty way. She has cut the top of her jeans off, causing them to ride dangerously low on her hips. (Dangerously? I love it; it isn't dangerous. Slutty, but not dangerous. Unless you truly are worried they will slide right off. For me though, I think it's fucking fantastic.) Her artificially lightened and streaked hair rolls down her artificially darkened back, over the tube top barely holding her breasts in. Bass pounds from somewhere near me. Behind and down, I think, in another room. She slides her key in the door-lock and turns. Her left hand tugs on the handle, her right removes the key. One very fluid movement between her two hands. Still locked. She repeats the process, no less fluid, no more slowly. Still locked. The third time she gets it. She can't get in her car and drive off fast enough. I wonder for a moment if she is drunk or simply mad at her own ineptness. I go back inside. The second period of the soccer game is about to begin. So. Of boys trying to unravel the intrigue of the opposite sex. Of why I find females attractive. And what makes them attractive. And more importantly, what makes them people. It is fascinating how so many famous people live much like I do. We do. They use Cool-Whip, watch Tom Brokaw and shop at Tower Records. And their lives probably aren't too different from ours. How can they be? High school, sex, alcohol, friends and family. They are as tall as we are. Famous people worry about getting into Heaven just like the rest of us. They have friends like you and I -- college buddies and best friends. They are myths and makeup and special effects. It is so easy to forget that we are all human. That we are all the same. Underneath, all we want is to be accepted and loved. How many deodorants are on the market? 30? At best? Most everyone in the U.S. then has selected one of those for themselves. How many other people in your life will you meet that smell like me? The odds say there will be many. Here I am, 18 years old. So many things continue to amaze me. I'm 18 and I still find the time in my life to be surprised by the actions of others. People amaze me; their actions astound me. Does this happen to everyone? Does everyone have this happen to them? ---*--- One can hear a song dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of times and never realize it was not written specifically for oneself. I recently heard a song on the radio. This song I have heard over and over for years on an irregular basis. In all the times I heard the song, I never thought it could be written for anyone other than me. I never thought anyone else could relate to the song as I have done. When I speak of relating, I mean this: Having the song as a part of me, rather than connecting the song to a particular point or space or place in my life. Not conjuring a memory of a place or time, but as a part of me. Now, writing this, my thoughts sound rather elementary and silly. And let's not forget egotistical. And pretentious. You are right. No, that is not exactly true. A song written years ago that everyone likes because it makes them feel miserable is not what it is about to be human. That sounded strong to my brain until I typed it out. Now it sounds more real. It sounds more truthful. This song is what it is about to be human. This is what I mean to say: I want to find out if everyone experiences the same thoughts, emotions, or moods. Why is this important? Let us take the song. Am I truly the subject this song was written for? I think not. So therefore, there is someone else out there that expresses the same thing I feel. They had to write this song, because I certainly did not. Now why did it become a hit? Why did it go into heavy rotation at MTV? Why did I hear it on the radio, years after it was released? Because people relate to it. Many people must relate to the message of this song. (The song's lyrics express the sentiment "I am worthless and you are perfect." The song relays the message more poetically.) This logic, in turn, leads me to believe many people feel as I do. But where are they? I feel as if I am alone, as if idiots surround me. Yet the numbers do not lie. MTV would not play a video of this band if there weren't support for it. But where are these people? Why do my peers seem to be the fools? I heard the song in Jason's car that week. It pained me immensely to see him singing along to the song in time with both the radio and me. It was not fair. Am I wrong to be frustrated? I did not see him as passionate or emotionally charged. I cannot grasp how this song would have appealed to him. How he related; how the lyrics meant anything to him. ---*--- I'm sitting here, stuck in a hotel room, looking for anything to cling to, to escape any of the traps that have been built around my four walls. These are the people with whom I have spent my formative years. I thought I knew these people at one time. But it is at times like this that I feel most alone. I realize these people don't even come close to me. Some things never change. My nose tingles and as I sneeze, bile surfaces into my throat. This place is dead; I can feel it. ---*--- Another theory about calculators. Or rather, I didn't finish my thought on the matter the last time -- I got lost in a sea of theory. I just wanted the calculator to know intrinsically what I wanted it to do. By, say, pressing two plus two plus . . . I always was hoping it would pick up on it and when I pressed "+" once, it would go on and enter the two again (which a lot of calculators, especially the older, more secretarial ones do anyway, without the calculator being magic). I guess that's it really. I just didn't feel as if that was explained clearly enough before. The importance of magic. Of understanding, intrinsically, what I want and need. Did you ever have magic as a child? It has taken me years to admit how taken in I was by the lure of magic as a child. I cried when I found out Santa didn't exist. It took weeks for me to accept it was true. I was in sixth grade when the news was broken to me. Broken to me by another child, who was spiteful and hateful to me. He said it solely to crush me. That at least once, in a fit of loneliness, I wrote a note to the Leprechauns, the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny begging them to be my friends because I didn't have any. This comes to me as sad news from a distant land. I found the note several years ago when cleaning up my room. Can you imagine what kind of desperation a child would be in to need that kind of hope? That kind of fierce devotion? Everyone grows up. Remember the Monty Python phase? The phase where you think you're old enough to be called an adult? Or even a young adult? Where you believe you have finally reached your pinnacle of maturity? Even though you'll continue maturing for another fifteen years. I'm pretty sure it occurred for me sometime during my freshman year of high school. I distinctly remember having parties (both birthday and slumber [which were never called slumber parties, being boys and all -- overnighters then]) where the plans depended on which Monty Python movies were in stock at the video store. Over and over again until you had the film memorized. Maybe it wasn't Monty Python for you. But I'll bet it was something. Is it odd to be dry? To not drink? Maybe. It didn't seem that way. Not at the time. "Fuck drinking." To me, it was an "us against them" mentality. As a child, growing up, developing a sense of self, an awareness of being, I wanted to be someone. No, that's not it at all. I wanted to belong. I wanted something to believe in. A bus to be on. That was an easy one for me to jump on. The popular kids drank. They were the ones who had parties I never got invited to -- the ones who either ignored me or mocked me, the ones who wouldn't date me. Usually I was simply playing Dungeons & Dragons with someone. I only ever wandered into these parties at the end. Picking someone up because they needed a sober ride home and didn't want to call their parents at 2 A.M. drunk. How many stories did I hear in high school about people getting drunk, high, passing out, almost dying, almost drowning in swimming pools? In the fucking swimming pool? Just because they were wasted. But this is nothing new to you. I know all of these stories were a contributing factor to me not drinking. Those people were a mess. I would hear about it from them at school the next day. About passing out and falling into the pool. About being chased by the cops. About people throwing up in vans. My friends who didn't drink were supportive -- more than that really. They made it a family. Us. It's really impressive to look back on it now. But that's the story, isn't it? Can you remember when you became a real person? When you developed into that which is you? Not so much a soul, more of a distinct personality. I don't mean traits (to belabor the point). I've known the things I do for years (picking my nose, tearing at my fingernails, et cetera). But my beliefs, my morals, my conceptions, my tastes, while ever-evolving surfaced sometime during high school. I think this is true for most people. Can you remember all the facets of what made you into what you are today? Do you have any idea how many factors make your moral system up? Me neither. But they are important. Defining, of course. Now where was I? Drinking. And not. I had an equal number of friends who did drink in high school. They were annoying as fuck. And I went to the beach with them all. I wanted to stay close to these people. My other friends were not celebrating. I thought going would keep me close to the friends who were. I wanted something. A release. An escape. A moment in time we could all relate to. It's all I have ever wanted from life. Guns n' Roses. Appetite for Destruction. It was amazing. The album was like Excalibur for me. I remember wanting it. I remember going to the store and buying it with my cousin and his friend. I remember his friend buying a Judas Priest album. Maybe a live one, I'm not sure. That part doesn't matter -- although the cover was a matte brown I think, with the Judas Priest logo on it. But it really doesn't matter. I bought Guns n' Roses -- Appetite for Destruction. I still consider it one of the greatest albums ever recorded, one of the top five of my youth. But that's not the point. It was my first serious musical purchase. It was on tape and it came from a low-rent department/discount store -- one of those chains that seem to hang out in malls for about seven years and then dry up and the chain exists only in one town in northwestern Nebraska. And then one day, you're driving through the most remote corner of your state and see it -- sometimes from the interstate, sometimes at a stoplight, but the road offers no way for you to reach it from where you are -- no left turn, no right turn, obviously no U-turn. And yet you can see the entrance. It's right there. And cars seem to be entering it and leaving -- but how? You can't seem to figure out where they are coming from. And so it turns out there are two of these stores left -- one in Nebraska and one in your state. You return home and approach the subject with your best friend: "Remember the old A---- stores?" "Like the one in the old mall?" "Yeah." "I thought they were all gone?" "No -- there was that one in Nebraska maybe . . . something like that." "Oh." "There's one in R----. I saw it as I was driving down the interstate the other day." "Wasn't that the store that carried those weird magazines -- the ones imported from . . . where was it?" "No. That was at the other end of the mall." "Japan. Maybe . . . no, it was China. I think . . . So there's one out there?" "Yeah." "We need to go sometime." "Yeah -- I wanted to stop, but I couldn't figure out how to get there from the interstate." "We'll go." So you eventually go. You load up the wagon and drive off to make an afternoon of it. And when you finally get there, it's gone. Not just gone -- it's as if it has never been there. Oh, the building is there, but there aren't any signs on the building. There are newspapers from three years ago blowing across the parking lot, stained and lonely. Maybe you know what kind of store this was then. I bought the tape one afternoon. And I got home and listened to it once or twice. And then it broke. And this store, well, this store was so shitty (and it was still there -- thankfully, because about three weeks later, it was gone -- like a band of gypsies -- that's what those stores are like -- a caravan of gypsies. I wish I had thought of that several paragraphs ago), they don't even try and give me shit for returning the damn thing. Even though I had no receipt, no proof I had purchased it from them. The workers hated their jobs -- probably because they knew they weren't there but for a couple of weeks, tops. Unless of course they joined this circus and traveled with this company. But even that would be a terrible existence. One I certainly wouldn't want. They traded me for a new tape, not even wanting to hear my explanation: "Um. Hi." This after many minutes of stalling and shifting my weight, expecting to be waited on, while the girl finished her phone conversation with what appeared to be the clerk in the girls' clothes section. I could see the other girl, across an aisle and behind several clothing racks. I was still intimidated with salespeople then and didn't want to even approach her. But I had to -- this tape -- this was too important to ignore. So I got a new one. I immediately dubbed it. The store wouldn't be there next week for me to exchange the tape should it break again. And I listened, from then out, to the dubbed copy. This was an ordeal -- in seventh grade, I didn't have a double cassette player. Those were still rare items. Your popularity increased if you had a dual cassette player. And why not? I mean, they were unnecessary at that age. As a small child (how old are you when you are in seventh grade? 12-ish?), you were just beginning to develop musical tastes. At least I was. Up until that point I had only listened to the radio. And if a music video ever came on TV I didn't care for, I would change the channel. While there weren't as many choices then as there are today for stations, you could hook up with several that would satisfy you for the three minutes it took for the video to air on the other station. So I dubbed the tape. And listened to it religiously. I still remember the day. It was in Miss Class' class. (That was really her name -- I can't bring myself to change it. It's so absurd.) I was sitting next to Patrick. He and Chris. "My favorite song is 'Paradise City.'" "'Welcome to the Jungle.'" I interjected. "'Mr. Brownstone.' But the whole thing is awesome." "How would you know?" "I own the album." "You liar. You aren't cool enough to own that album." "I do too." "Prove it." "How?" "List all the songs on the album. In order." "Um . . . ok. 'Welcome to the Jungle.' 'It's So Easy.' 'Nighttrain.' 'Out ta Get Me.' 'Mr. Brownstone.' 'Paradise City.' 'My Michelle.' "Think About You.' 'Sweet Child O' Mine.' 'You're Crazy.' 'Anything Goes.' 'Rocket Queen'." "Wrong. 'Out ta Get Me' is before 'Nighttrain.'" "It isn't. I've got the album. I'll bring it in tomorrow and show you." Patrick stepped in, "Naw, Zach's right. I had no idea you listened to that music." And with that, I was in. An elite society. I was no longer totally uncool. Of course that didn't make me cool, nor was it the final nail in the coffin. But the fact that I loved G n' R over another band was a start. I had drawn the sword out of the stone. I moved up a rank, from mocked to ignored. It gave me hope. Thank you, Axl Rose. In some odd way, you might have saved my life. ---*--- We went to a party at a club. It turned out Jason knew someone who had a friend who was the general manager. So we all loaded up and went. Amy, Stephanie, Polly, Jason and I. It was an 18-years and up club, meaning we avoided the issue of fake IDs. Meaning we had our wrists bundled with a colored stripe. Meaning we were not served. I was thankful, though I know I was the only one. We got there too early. Before the club had truly opened. That's why we got food. The kitchen was open; they were still serving food. We hung out for a while, eating fries and talking. After being there for about an hour and a half, after using all the quarters we had on an old videogame cabinet of Galactica, people have began arriving. Slowly at first. There's no one here. I said that already. There isn't even anything here that makes me want to write. "Holy shit." A girl just put a match out on our ashtray. Well, the ashtray on the table the group of us has claimed. Using as a base of sorts. Even if it's just Jason and I right now, ignoring each other. I can't decide if I find her move rude or interesting. The girl I noticed before with the thong underwear (one of many, I'm sure) has moved. Instead of her back, I now see her face. Which is better? The smoke has made me lightheaded, the music nauseated. Generic house music. My ears strain, looking for something to pull out of conversations. Girls (or boys. How about people?) with the same haircut. Girls whispering secrets to each other while blocking the doorway. Fifth grade secrets like: "Look at him. No, not now! He's looking! Ohmygod! He's so cute!" Boys chewing on toothpicks. A couple walking by on the street, not understanding the appeal, the atmosphere. I almost envy them. The smoke continues to hug, no, suck at my face. I try to entertain myself by picking out elements of other people's conversations. "You're a fool then." Smoking as an event, as an occurrence, has always eluded me. Maybe that makes me the fool. A girl four tables in front of me bangs on her table. Once again I am reminded how easy it is to become old. And stale. Let's not forget stale. And the people I am now associating with want to be old and stale. They want to forget their youth. This is a fact that saddens me. They are ready to move away, away from their childhood, from their innocence. They want sex, drugs and rock and roll. They want to be adults, to accept a routine that includes promotions, insurance and imitations of emotions. Routine. Is that what we are all looking for? I have a bump right at the bottom of my eyelid. I have been scratching this bump for about a week now. Nothing interesting. Except when I scratch it, my nose tingles as if to sneeze. Like when you smell too much dust or mildew or an elderly person's attic. So smoking is synonymous with hanging out. At least it is to me, especially this week. Maybe because the only time I see people they are smoking. But nonetheless, there doesn't seem to be any practical purpose to it. People could argue drinking makes you drunk. Smoking . . . kills you. I don't know anyone who could honestly say there was a real reason why they smoked. "Uh . . . I like it." "Something to do." "I don't know." See what I mean? No real reasons. I'll admit I've smoked before. It became increasingly pointless to me as time wore on. Like skating rinks or NASCAR. What's the point in going around in circles on a set of wheels? This is the same logic that leads me not to care for many sports (except for World Cup soccer, which as of this week, I am officially crazy about). Back and forth. Back and forth. One team carries it up the field, the other takes it back down. Is this where we have progressed to as a civilization? There's a girl at the bar. Either she was looking at me or at the fan next to me. What are the odds really? Especially when I saw her come in with another boy? But why would a girl stare at a fan? Short skirts, almost obscenely so. Done to catch my eye; I want to avert mine simply for that reason. But I can't. I hate myself for it. So fucking predictable. Such a fucking boy. Only a fucking boy. ---*--- Isn't it amazing how people fall? How easy it is to become bogged down by monotony and life? Beepers, sitcoms, cigarettes and frozen food. I feel like, sound like, an Oasis song. I don't think this truly happens until one lives on one's own, but I saw a lot of it that week. It seemed to creep out. Like genetics. You can't change habit. ---*--- Smoke. Drinks. It's always the same ingredients, isn't it? I wonder if the table is two and a half or three feet square. I wonder how it is that I can't figure it out as I notice the DJ's reflection in a mirror, the rose tablecloth and the need for words. My hand can't keep up. Four butts in the ashtray in front of me. No pretzels in a little wooden bowl, unlike the other tables. I should know the difference between two and a half and three feet. I'm embarrassed at myself. A siren beats into my brain triggering some sort of biological impulse. She wasn't mine. She wasn't mine to take. The chimes ring. The door slams. I remember sitting in the house for hours, doing nothing, waiting for the phone to ring. Waiting to hear her voice again. It never came. I woke up the following morning confused and unhappy. I was scared to get up. Even more scared to check the answering machine. I knew she hadn't called -- I would have woken up, my parents would have woken me up. But I still thought there had to be a message. Magically placed there by her will and my desire. I wasn't sure if I wanted one or not. I crossed the house, almost limping, in my boxers, without my contacts in, eyes unable to focus. If she had called, I would have woken up. Surely. I hoped. No message. Better? Worse? I didn't care. I went back to bed. I didn't eat for a week. Funny, hey? No, not really. I wonder if I could starve myself to death. I don't think I could. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm too tired to say anything intelligent. Do you think genetics are really the reason for homosexuality? Couldn't (or shouldn't) environment have something to do with it? I have a difficult time believing environment has nothing to do with it. A girl walks by the table, her chest at my eye level. Her breasts smiled at me. (See? That was intelligent.) I swear they did. Like a dog. I see you in the mirror reflecting your stance. Arms outstretched like you love me. Which isn't true -- why should we even pretend? It won't hurt my feelings. Much. You turn your head, not even realizing I am after you. On the way back though you make eye contact with me. The mirror plays you out in duplicate. The infinite you uncrosses and re-crosses her legs. A sign perhaps? An omen? An invitation? Everyone is watching now. I hate crowds. In the dream, I'm famous. I'm the one eating Cool-Whip. The one who pretends to be normal and can't even go to a mall. Not from fear, but from recognition. It's my favorite dream and a horrible nightmare. Why would I even want to go to the mall? The buildings surround the beach. I swear if they could build hotels in the water, they would. It makes me nauseous. People everywhere. Cars everywhere. Shit everywhere. For the first time in my life, I feel claustrophobic. High rises. People cramming into rooms with the express purpose of getting drunk and then getting laid. What the fuck am I doing here? The wind from the ocean blows the dirt on the street. I think it's trying to tell me something. But I'm not sure. I'm so melodramatic that even the fucking wind can't blow without me trying to contextualize it not only within my life, but as a direct metaphor for something in my life. That's pathetic. Maybe. Or maybe it's the only way I know how to attach significance to things. How I understand them. It seems to me the only way I can understand something is relating it to what I know. I'm here to be with people I thought meant something to me. I'm not such a bastard that I'm going to leave, now that I'm three states away from home with no car. I'm a big boy, I can deal with it. I'll just whine the entire time. Later, Amy wanders into the bedroom, in that house, where I am still sitting, staring at the couple of books on the nightstand. "Whose room is this? Do you know?" She stares at me. Blink. "Do you know whose books these are?" "Matt's," she says, while trying to glance around the room, absorb it, perhaps him, before she wanders back out into the party. The drink warms in my mouth. The liquid comes off my lips in a strangely fluid motion I think. I expected it to cling to me more. To want to remain a part of me. It saddens me. I can't even hold on to a drink. And, sentence, by sentence, she comes crawling out of me. I am in love with a ghost. Once the music starts in earnest, the place fills up fairly quickly. It is surprising to me. This is pretty pure dance music -- not Top 40. Instead, it's four on the floor house. Repetitive and boring perhaps. But more than I'd expected. Almost a shame this only happens once a week instead of every night. A haughty look on her face, her hand on her waist waiting for the beat to return. She's the only one on the dance floor. She seems to be challenging the DJ. Trying to wish away the breakdown -- she has more important things to do. Wave it away with some sort of incantation with her hands, some voodoo spell. The strobing is starting to bug me. Where did all these lame people come from? And who is the record singing to? Am I the only one wondering what the vocal is saying? Or means? Is it a man or a woman singing? Girls complaining about their clothes, their sororities; their asses are everywhere. Ugly people can hide so easily in the dim lights of a club. I want a drink. I shake my head. Do I look as silly as everyone else here? Am I as selfish, as greedy, as stupid? It doesn't matter. I can't change. The time for debating semantics is hardly now anyway. The ashes drift, the drinks bubble. And here I am wasting even more time watching kids fuck each other on a dance floor. So why am I here, watching this with fear in my eyes? I think the answer is that I am scared. Scared of growing old, of dying. I'm hiding from the entire human race. If you have questions, ask me later. I'm escaping. I'm in hiding. From myself mainly. The pen is slippery in my hands tonight. It feels like the pen has burst and my hand is covered in ink. The snare cracks. She glances across the room at me, without meaning to. Instinctively. Crack. She turns her head the other way this time. What I had taken for a sign was wrong. Or was it? A breeze shuffles my papers. Could she have turned her head as a subconscious sign? I am bored with this game already. Jason lights another cigarette and tries to talk to me about baseball. The girl gets up and walks to the bar. I can't see her from here. A huge bowl of stir-fry is left sitting next to me. Who would leave that? And how long has it been there? Another couple walks by outside. She makes him stop to kiss her. She: a short blonde in a black shirt stained with bleach. He: auburn colored short hair, in a blue golf shirt. The thought flows (no pun intended) through my mind how when women live closely for a period of time, their periods regulate to the same time. I feel strangely perverse for remembering this fact. Jason blinks and the DJ throws the mixer to the other channel. Tonight has been a pleasant evening, I decide. She watches me watch her adjust her bra strap underneath her Strawberry Shortcake tee shirt. I feel dirty again. An empty bottle of Rolling Rock bounces back and forth on the speaker. There really is that much bass. I can feel the air from the speaker sweeping my leg. People continue to use our ashtray. The look on a girl's face as she sample spots. But it's a sound, not a vocal and not one I can recall ever hearing. There is this one guy dancing, wearing a wife beater and a crooked visor. His teeth are even more crooked. He is holding his left hand on his stomach, his right outstretched. He is counting over and over, "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8." He makes me nervous. I think he might have mental problems. The blue shirted guy from outside is still standing there. His girlfriend isn't. He doesn't look upset. The crazy boy has shifted now -- from counting to clapping and chanting. Now he is back to counting. And back. And the smoke it burns my eyes. We made out. Jessica and I. The first girlfriend I made out with. We made out like champs. One might have considered this was for some sort of a prize. That our lives were at stake. Neither of these explanations would have been correct. (And you sit there saying "No shit.") I didn't even like her that much. I know that's bad to admit, but it's better to say it now, up front, than later. Had I realized it then, I would have admitted it. Maybe. It was my first instance of flirting and someone flirting back. I wasn't used to attention. It was something I had been sorely lacking. My self-esteem needed it. We were in some after-school extracurricular activity like good, well-rounded eighth graders should be; we started talking. I put my arm around her for some reason and she put hers around me for some reason and suddenly we weren't joking anymore. And that's how it started. Simple enough. Too simple to last. Would I have told her then it didn't matter? No. Because I didn't know at the time. It's the same feeling you have about most things in your life (like high school, virginity, smoking) -- it seems important until you grow up a bit, get some distance. And suddenly it doesn't mean shit anymore. We were kids and we had experimenting we wanted to do. Needed to do. It all rolled downhill, of course. From my first kiss (which I suppose I should be giving more of a build-up than this, but it seems much easier to approach it casually than building it up), which occurred during our first date. It seems, at this point in my life, it would be ridiculous and perhaps even inappropriate to even consider that a kiss could occur before the end of a true first date. But there we were, 14 years old, kissing like the world was going to end in the middle of the movie theater. It was awkward. ("No shit," you think again). And yet, we didn't care. It started . . . I don't even know how. I probably put my arm around her and slowly pulled her closer and closer to me. After the first kiss, which was a simple peck, the flame was lit. I remember, turning to watch the movie (The Little Mermaid -- thanks Walt) again after that first kiss, wondering why I hadn't kissed her with my tongue -- which was, after all, what you were supposed to do. I remember, very clearly, thinking, "You idiot. You're supposed to kiss her with your tongue." At which point I turned back to her, and she to me, and we began making out furiously. Jessica had a trampoline. In her backyard. Her parents were the parents who did everything to please their only daughter. So in those days when you were young and had nothing to do and nowhere to go as a young eighth grader, you did what every other kid did -- you went to someone else's house. Her parents ate that up. I guess they just wanted to see her happy. So there was a group of about 10 or 12 of us that would head over to her house on Saturdays to hang out -- play Nintendo, jump on the trampoline, watch Monty Python movies. All the things you lose flavor for, as you grow older and are not so easily impressed. One evening, after everyone else had gone home, we found ourselves sitting out on the trampoline, talking. Her parents were inside, probably cleaning up. And suddenly we were all over each other. Pawing like mad. It is the K-Mart story that takes the prize though. The K-Mart/car story, I guess if I am really to be fair about it. It started in K-Mart and ended in the car. This is so absurd you are likely to think I made this story up. This is true. The God's honest truth. I think I might be making up the trampoline story, but this story is as genuine as anything in my life. Her parents took me out to eat. She and I had been going out a month. I think it was our month anniversary. And a stop at K-Mart before we returned home. Or rather, before I returned home. Or really, before they returned me home. When we got there, there was only 10 minutes before closing. Feeling adventurous, Jessica and I headed to the darkest corner of the building -- the outside garden/plant section. They were preparing to close and had turned off most of the lights. She and I snuck to the dark corner that was a narrow employee access hallway, off the regular customer path. It was there we began to attack one another. I said, "How kinky do you want to get?" Jessica's answer: "Shut up." I don't believe I said that, still to this day. It embarrasses me. Someday someone will throw that back in my face and I'll turn red and hide. Years later, I still don't have a good excuse for such a stupid statement. I reached my hands up her shirt, groping frantically, while she rubbed my crotch. After no more than two or three minutes of this clumsy and unrewarding adolescent behavior, a loud metal clatter reverberated through the outside area. Imagining the lock being thrown on the gate and not wanting to explain our sudden fascination with houseplants, we took off towards the entrance. We hurried through the store to find her parents. One might think the story would end right there. We should have taken that noise as an omen and ceased our scandalous ways. That the story of two 14-year-olds groping each other in the dark would be enough. No. We loaded up into the car, Jessica's dad not finding exactly what he needed (or maybe he did -- I don't even know what he was looking for -- I was more interested in his daughter). We loaded up the car. And drove off. Her parents had an interesting car. It was a station wagon. (I have been told car manufacturers don't even make them anymore. Why not? SUVs are the trend of today. Like the mini-van before them, station wagons before that. The family utility vehicle. What a strange, commercial world we live in. Automotive Darwinism.) It was a station wagon with a third seat. That is, the storage area in the back of the car actually held a seat that folded up out of the floor to create an extra seat that faced away from the other two. We had one in my family many years later and it always excited me to ride in that back seat. I liked to watch the world race away from me as if it was frightened. We ended up somehow convincing her parents to let us ride in the very back. How exactly remains a mystery that is lost forever. It had something to do with the fact her parents let Jessica do almost anything she wanted because she was their only child. They needed to spoil her. It was a long drive back to my house from the K-Mart. No matter. This is embarrassing. Jessica and I are in the back seat, enjoying each other. Do I really need to say more? It's gross and degrading to say much more. It's not like we were having sex. But we were . . . exploring each other. It was wrong. Not morally. I mean, I don't regret it like that. But . . . it does tug at something in me. So our hands were all down each other's pants. Groping and rubbing. I remember Jessica whispering to me in a husky, quiet tone, "Not so hard." There. You happy? ---*--- Clubs are weird places. Another place I've never felt truly comfortable. I think again it's a feeling of thinly masked excuses and reasons in an attempt to throw away one's morals. Perhaps that's a bit harsh. To forget them. That's better perhaps. The sound is loud. The lights act in inverse. That is, I feel as if it could be a sunny day somewhere if the light and dark patches that swirl around the room were switched. The light acts like shadows. The darkness acts like a sun. I can imagine I am more alone than I am. Maybe everyone feels uncomfortable in clubs. Loud noises, no light and you're isolated from everyone else by every sense. I am the only one of us who wants to dance. The others want to simply lean against a rail and watch the girls dance. Tease the boys. Ogling from afar. I'm not going to waste my time like that. I dive for the floor, wanting to be moved, teleported away from the place, the week, the past year, my life, myself. Almost enough to make me wish I do drugs. Almost enough to make me want to drop something. When I dance, I close my eyes. I drop my head. I don't want the acknowledgment that I am dancing. I don't want to look at other people and I don't want them to look at me. I don't even want to know there are other people here. It is personal. Mine. The sound, the lights behind my eyelids, the space I occupy. People at clubs are weird. People check you out. But it isn't simply checking you out. It isn't simply the boys staring at girls, wishing they would dance a little closer to each other, that they would grind on each other, feel each other. Girls do it to boys as well. And at a club it's even worse than usual. It isn't simply checking people out. It isn't simply that people are usually somehow fucked off their gourd when they go dancing. It isn't just that. It's also that people watch you dance. Critique your dancing. Because if you can't dance, you can't fuck. And if you can't fuck, why should someone at the club pay attention to you? I know I'm oversimplifying it; I know I am. But I need to make that point. You have to be on your best behavior at a club. You are selling yourself as a sexual object. I don't like buying into that theme. Not that I don't believe it, I just don't like playing along. I do to a larger part than I would like to admit. I know that. It doesn't make me happy. But it should let you know that I don't think I'm above all of this. Just because I notice it (as I am sure you have), call it out and speak about my annoyance of it doesn't mean I don't end up going along with it. I want to get fucked just like everyone else. But I'll be much happier when it occurs on my own terms. And the way I want it. Rather than going along with the bullshit rules and games I see around me, later regretting my choices and wondering what my life has come to. The club has two floors, which surprises me. The first has speakers all around the outside of the dance floor, with a bar next to the door. Beer and power drinks. The upstairs is nothing more than a balcony, so you can stare down at all the girls dancing on the blocks and speakers that litter the outside of the dance floor. A dance floor filled with girls. Filled with girls I will never fuck. Turning my head in any direction I am met with females that I will never see naked. I think the place is called something like "The Fort." Something stupid. Or perhaps I mean insipid. For all of my unhappiness about the game I am living while at beach week, I am having fun tonight. I dance. I get my mind off myself and I have fun. I see a girl there in black pants, a white tee shirt and a black cardigan, buttoned in the middle. Hot for sure. She has cute pigtails, with bleached and colored hair sticking off her head. What makes her stand out? She has headphones on. Standard Walkman headphones, with the black foam discs. They are for show. There is no way she can hear her music over this sound system. Lame. What is the point? I want her to be listening to her own shit. Coming in to dance on her own terms. Antisocial and brilliant. This is before I see a couple doing coke on the back of their hands in the middle of the dance floor. It is crowded and dark, no one notices. Or if they do, they let it go. They are almost right next to me. That kills whatever I have left in me. My little happy time has been shattered and it is time for me to get out. I'm not having fun anymore. Stephanie and Amy decide they can catch rides back with other people -- they are banking on meeting new boys, but there are people from high school here. If worse comes to worst they will call the room for Polly or myself to come get them. Jason and Polly are ready -- he has simply been watching the sluts dance; she has stood around patiently. It makes me sad for her. For their relationship. I am nervous to go back to the room with just them. More than likely I will get kicked out so they can have sex. Or else they will wake me up having sex. There isn't a good solution. I leave the club anyway. I feel gross. Being here any longer. They don't do either. They wait until I am asleep. Either they are quiet or go out to the beach. It really doesn't mean much anymore. After you talk about a thing for so long it ceases to have the inherent manner and meaning invested in it from the time it was a child as you ran along the beach, with your swimsuit falling off because you were so skinny and never let me tie the drawstring correctly because you didn't like it tight around your body like she would be years later in the motel where you originally stayed except now they had redone it so that it was like a completely new place but you still could see the stain on the wall that you had left there years ago with your dirty hands in a fit of anger not unlike the one you are experiencing right now which is funny because that is the second time you have used the word experience in the same sentence implying to me that is a word you enjoy incorporating into your vocabulary like that time in sixth grade Miss Bergman (are you listening Miss Bergman? You never did like me very much I recall -- you gave me my first "C" and I cried) insulted your vocabulary because for the week preceding you had refused to speak a sentence that did not include the word "incessantly" in it. ---*--- The ridiculousness of the situation, I think, is what bothers me so. We were in the back seat of her parent's car, their white station wagon, driving me home, having a conversation that occasionally needed a grunted response from Jessica or me. How strained did we sound, trying to make ourselves sound like we were simply cuddling in the back? Fairly. Jessica told me on the phone later that night she was no longer allowed to ride in the back back seat. Which leads me to my next question -- how much did her parents really think was going on back there? Really. If they really thought something wrong was occurring, shouldn't they have taken some sort of steps to prevent it? And if they didn't, why was the back seat now off-limits? These questions will go forever unanswered, I'm afraid. I'm not that sad -- I'm not sure I would want to know. And besides, I got what I wanted. I wish Jessica and I had done something more back there. I wish I had gotten away with something I could be proud of now. At an older age, with more experience to remove the awkwardness, I would hope for a blow job. (The spell-checker recognizes blow job. What kind of a world do we live in?) That would have been impressive and funny. This? This was simply awkward. And embarrassing. It was only then that I realized what she was speaking about. About what she was speaking. The year in government class had been spent passing notes and whispering over shoulders while Coach MacArthur lectured about presidential hearings and distribution of power. He was a moron. The coach. Not a branch of the government. He said inane, idiotic things. Which is precisely why we ignored most of what came out of his mouth. The only times we were unoccupied with entertaining one another was when he put on debates and other "learning materials" on the television. But then it was only because it was easier to sit and read another textbook or Stephen King than to watch two grown men discuss nothing but vague taunting terms meant to incriminate rather than enlighten. This was the same teacher (if he could really be called that) who would make the class write response papers on certain subjects throughout the semester. He never told the class up front what he expected out of these papers and would then proceed to grade them as if he had. He sucked. I'm sure you had a teacher like him at some point in your life; you know exactly what I am talking about. They don't really want to be teaching. They are there by mistake. Their passion lies elsewhere and you, as the student, are the one who gets left behind. They are looking for a few key phrases in your work that somehow prove you grasp the material. MacArthur would have rather been on the football field. He was only teaching because it was required so he could coach. So we were in class one day, waiting for Polly to get yelled at because she didn't know how to whisper. It didn't help she would laugh in the middle of Coach MacArthur's speech on the importance of the majority whip. She laughed like a horse. He didn't like girls and he especially didn't like girls who acted like girls in the middle of his government class. I hated him. So there we were. We had been passing notes all morning long. And Stephanie, who sat in the seat next to me, threw a stub of paper on my desk. "I'm getting a beeper," it said. I rolled my eyes, not believing of the depths of absurdity she would sink. Beepers were still not terribly common; cell phones even less so. (Gasp. Can that be true?) "You can beep me now," said the next note. I nodded, half aware, but still not fully comprehending the path she was attempting to lead me down. "Whenever you want." Again I nodded. "Whenever" was underlined. I nodded again and went back to reading The Stand, determined that what Coach MacArthur had to say about the importance of the two party system that has evolved in the U.S. would reveal itself to me at a later date should I ever need to know. It couldn't be as important as reading this 700 page marvel of a book about Earth's last survivors facing off against a demonic adversary with supernatural powers (which, I guess if he was really a demonic power, the supernatural part went without saying). The novel came from the trunk of Bucky's car. Bucky was a boy named Paul who sat in front of me. Bucky, for his large front teeth. He had read it, left it in his car and oil spilt on it. The back cover and the last five or 10 pages had fallen off as a result. He was going to throw it away. Instead, I took it and began reading it. A month later, once I had gotten to the end of this book, I had to go into Walden's (maybe Barnes and Noble) and read the last several pages while standing in the middle of the bookstore. (I guess it had to be Walden's -- I would have sat down in Barnes and Noble and not felt as uncomfortable as I remember feeling.) It was awkward to stand in an aisle of this little mall bookstore and read several pages, buy nothing after returning the book to the shelf and leaving. I guess it's because I was too lazy to go to the library, although, on reflection, that would have made more sense. Of course, if they had the book. It has never occurred to me I could have gone to the library. Isn't that odd? I used to love the library. Or libraries in general. I no longer care about them as much because I find I prefer to buy my books. I like having shelves -- it makes me feel intellectual, I think. I also like it because I can reference anything I need to whenever I want. It never occurred to me why Stephanie might have wanted me to call her whenever I needed her until I began writing this book. I'm not overly religious. I've never spoken to God. I have always secretly hoped God would call on the phone one day. I would answer and the voice on the other end would announce Himself as the Lord of all Heaven and Earth. And that would be enough to change my life forever for the better. It hasn't happened so far. It's another example of me wanting more magic in my life. More marvels. Miracles. Once, I thought I saw Him. The Creator of all there ever was and had been. Would be. I was walking the mall, bored, waiting for a friend to buy a CD. A Bad Brains album. I saw Him. It was only for a second, I caught a glimpse as He passed me. She looked a bit like Uma Thurman from Pulp Fiction. Larger. More full, more luscious. A big, beautiful whore. Dark hair, dyed hideously fake black, cut to her chin, in that trendy, slanted cut. Lips a bright whore red. Huge dark eyes. Modeled after Bambi. (Thanks again, Walt.) She didn't notice me. I didn't care. I masturbated over the thought of Her for years. It was all I needed. All I wanted. I wanted Her to be my Mrs. Robinson. Except I never fucked Her. Or saw Her again. Was it sad I wandered the mall many a time trying to find Her again? That I wanted that seduction, by someone much older and more knowing than myself? Freeing myself from any guilt? I don't think so. And if I could have had Her daughter, I would have. But only if I could have the Mother as well. What was I really talking about? People, oh yes. People. And how silly they are. I just read, in the last day or two, about how people want their lives documented. This doesn't really strike me as surprising -- it's a fairly obvious and true statement. But the starkness of it -- without the proclamations, without the justifications, without the bullshit -- that's what struck me. Because, let's face it, no one wants to admit such narcissism in such an outright fashion. Maybe you do. I don't know you. You could be that kind of an asshole. Or egoist. Myself, I like to believe I'm not. But realizing this, accepting this as truth and moving through life with this knowledge is a surprising thing. I don't know many people who do this. And, of course, this is only half the equation. The other half is that people want their lives documented by others. That's key. Here I am sitting at my keyboard tap-tap-tapping away on my own life, sculpting it and remaking it to the vision of the past as I see it (as it perhaps would have been had it been a novel, structured in some definable way). It gives me a great sense of release to do this. But I'm doing it for me. About me. I am not doing this for you. Which might be rude. Isn't that one of the rules? Make the main character likable? Interesting? I'm sure I'm not enough of either for you; though if you have made it this far, perhaps I am. Maybe you can relate to the emotions I am trying to convey, even if the actual subject matter doesn't tug at you in any way. Well, before we go any further, I'll toss you this bone: Obviously, I am narcissistic by virtue of writing this. I ask too many questions, I whine a lot. I am only trying to find my place in the world. I'm trying to understand how the world works and where I fit. I'm trying to understand the opposite sex. I'm trying to fucking grow up. I have something to tell you. Another bone. Lean in closer -- it is, after all, a secret. I pick my nose. I pick it fairly frequently. Maybe a couple of times a day. Why? You might be asking in a tone of voice that suggests you would never think of committing such an atrocity. Let's drop that pretense right now, alright? It's not an atrocity and you aren't really that shocked. I'm betting. I have to, to make myself feel better. I mean, after all, nose picking isn't a public conversation piece usually. I guess you could really mean that tone of voice. But I am gambling I am not alone. That's my bluff -- right there. I showed my cards. I could be the freak. But I bet I am not. Either way, I feel I should admit it. I like it. I like picking my nose. I loved dating Kate. To say otherwise would be a lie. It taught me a lot. She dumped me. Plain and simple. It ripped my heart out. To be frank. It crushed me. All that self-esteem I had spent years building up? Gone. That hurt. I'll admit it took me far too long to let go of her. (Some of you might even say this novel is my way of finally trying to put my relationship with her away. Perhaps. That's all the confession you'll get out of me regarding it.) I have no excuse for this. Other than the fact she was my first love. There seem to be certain things in the world that are universal. This is a fact I am gambling on (much like the nose picking). Everyone that grew up during my generation (Gen X or post-Gen X - Gen-Y?) knows each other, if for nothing else than Kurt Cobain was some kind of facet in our lives. Lame, I know, but true nonetheless. So far, he is our Kennedy. I suspect that is how it will go down -- most people I know remember where they were when they heard the news of his death. I remember the 14- (or 16-? Whatever.) year-old girls on MTV, wearing black holding vigil in Seattle, crying, saying how he understood them, how life would never be the same again. While I didn't think this then, I certainly do now -- what the fuck? I mean, let's take this one step at a time: 1. Where the fuck are these people now? Hopefully moved on with their lives and made something of themselves. Hopefully at least slightly embarrassed they put so much faith in someone who didn't even know they existed. 2. MTV. Yes, it was a big story. Yes, these kids were only making it bigger by holding vigils and the like. But do we really need to see that? Of course, that's the story of MTV. No matter how good a video is (with very few exceptions) couldn't you be doing something more productive (while still listening to a song) than sitting on a sofa, watching a band lip-sync to it? The answer is yes. That was such a disappointing thing for me to learn -- bands lip-synced. As a child, I never stopped to think how videos were filmed -- or what it took to sync a song to a video. It's such a bizarre concept. 3. Did he really impact their lives? Sure, the man could write some mean guitar hooks. Sure, he was the front-man for a rock-tastic band. But his lyrics? How did they speak to you? For the most part, they didn't mean shit. I believe Nirvana was a band you felt. It either hit you in your gut and you could relate or it didn't. English classes are never going to study his lyrics as poetry, at least outside the context of late 20th century life. If anything, you envied him and his success. Nothing more. I had come back from a camping trip when I heard. My friend's little sister ran out to tell us. I was sitting in the car, passenger side seat. I had seen him perform in person less than six months previous. Right there in front of me. I didn't expect it to cause the blitz it did. I didn't realize he spoke so personally to so many people. I underestimated people's need to relate to him. To be comforted and feel less alone through him. Jessica and I lasted maybe three months. I think. I can't remember anymore. Jessica -- are you out there? How long did we last? I think it was three months because at the time, we had a date every two weeks. A date that each time, led us further down the path of sexual experience. That first date: our first kiss. Two weeks later: the first breast contact. And then, two weeks after that: the infamous car incident. Of course that only takes up through the first month and a half of our relationship. So it was only two months. Of course in a world of eighth grade infancy, two months (or even three) is equivalent to eternity. Now? Now I can't even fucking remember how long it was. At any rate, Jessica and I broke up, not long after I realized she had shown me I wasn't as pathetic as I had spent years making myself out to be. And that I didn't really like her. So I dumped her. She cried, I felt shitty and her friends hated me. I thought when she and I broke up I could date one of her friends. Evette held the grudge from me hurting her best friend until college. Evette had a shirt that said "Do the Wild Thang" with a set of footprints inside and facing another set. I ran into Evette in an airport about six or seven years after this whole Jessica escapade. She was perfectly nice and we traded email addresses. We emailed back and forth two or three times and that was the end of that. But seeing her in the airport was the first time she had ever been nice to me. She and I would have never worked. The reason I wanted to date her in eighth grade was because she had big breasts. I sit here years later, listening to Fatboy Slim, mouth full of Maker's Mark. The sun has set and the whiskey is making my mouth numb. I'd be embarrassed if I didn't feel so happy. It has all worked out. The sun sets in front of me, behind a steeple. Ninth grade changed my life. That's when I met my first love. You know this by now. But allow me to recap for a moment. She was the first person I really felt a connection with. A connection that seemed to go deeper than making out in the dark corners behind parents' backs. Kate. That is her name. It almost seems like an incantation to mention it in such a stark manner. Somber presence. She was quiet. Intriguing. Dark. Black hair, with highlights of brown and red. Big eyes. Wore a lot of black. Dressed like she was a 24 year-old secretarial assistant. Not in the horrible, cliched images that description may conjure, but the positive ones. (Then, at least. Now, I'm less sure.) In ninth grade, I thought it was good. No one else seemed to. She transferred in from a private school in the city. She immediately made friends with Evette. Figures. Evette wouldn't give me her phone number -- the first step in asking a girl out. I couldn't ask her out if I couldn't call her. The number was unlisted. I never considered asking her out casually during class. I had been mocked enough over the phone; I wasn't pushing my luck, thank you very much -- my self-esteem? It only went but so far. I attributed it mostly to luck, not to being an attractive boy. Two weeks before Christmas break, I finally made up an excuse to get it from her and we ended up talking for the next week every night on the phone until some extreme hour. She came to the school marching band Christmas party. I can see you now -- chuckling, laughing at the absurdity of a band Christmas party. It was. I asked her to slow dance. I am sure (now that I am older and more well-versed in life) that she could feel my ninth grade erection poking her as we danced. It sounds filthy. It wasn't. Well, it wasn't meant to be. I had been in love with this girl for months before I even knew what her voice sounded like. And finally after worrying for months, she was slow dancing with me. I was excited. That's all. Nothing more. I couldn't comprehend kissing her. The erection was an unfortunate side effect of being male. That's all. Maybe she didn't mind, maybe she didn't see it as embarrassing as I did. Girls seem to like causing erections. Another date was set and we went out. That was the same night we kissed for the first time, it was also the same night I asked her to be my girlfriend. December 28. From there on out -- we were an item. For more than two and a half years. She ate up my high school career. Until the end of my junior year. I didn't want to go out with anyone else. When there's nothing left to say, what do you say? That's the part I didn't know. She wanted a response. She wanted me to tell her she was right and she wasn't crazy. I couldn't do it. I made her feel safe; I made her feel comfortable. I didn't know what to say. She simply stood there, waiting for me to speak, growing unsure with every passing second. Anything I said would flash out like a lie. It would be. So I simply stood there, looking expectantly at her. People moved by in all directions like some opening to an urban dramedy on television. Crowds, moving down a sidewalk, motion-blurred and distracted. I smiled, unwilling to make any move that could be considered physical. "It's like bubblegum," she said. I looked at her quizzically, before realizing it was the woman standing behind her who had spoken. The trampoline incident. It didn't happen with Jessica. I lied to you. Does that make you distrust me as a narrator? Here I am trying to tell you what happened and it looks as if I am making it up as I go along. This, I assure you, is not the case. However, having stepped away from the alleged trampoline case and re-approached it several weeks later, this is what I have come to realize: It happened with Kate, not Jessica. The rest of the story is about right. Although it happened at Evette's house (who also had a trampoline). Now you're going to hate me. I seem to remember coming out of Evette's house on New Year's Eve, junior year. It was Evette's party; hence it was at her house. We walked out to the trampoline, only to get within 15 paces or so and discover several couples had already beat us there. So I haven't even ever made out on a trampoline at all. I hate the unreliability of memories. This was the same party, the same night where I tried to have sex with her. The situation: party, New Year's Eve. Lots of people. All staying the night. We all sleep in the same room. Twenty or thirty of us. In sleeping bags -- all splayed across the floor in some kind of Mondrian grid. Kate and I, of course, either stayed up after everyone else went to sleep or woke up after everyone else had gone to sleep. We start making out. One thing led to another until I found myself above her urging (again, this makes me sound like an idiot. Maybe I am. Or perhaps I am when all the blood has been trapped in my penis), "Let me put it in. Just once . . . " "No." "Just once. Then I promise to take it out." "No." It ended up being me just rubbing my penis on her a bit. After 10 seconds, I came. On her. That was the end of that. She ran upstairs to the bathroom, paranoia in full effect. I lay down feeling like a huge turd (what a perfect word for the emotions I felt). Her period was late, worrying both of us enough that we never tried that trick again. We? I. I'm the moron. Girls laugh at boys. Boys think with their penises. It pains me. I fight with my penis. To give in to its urge, it makes me weak. But I fall for it. Every time. In some way I let it win. I can't do anything about it. It's not that I'm surprised I came. I'm surprised at my lack of willpower. I knew an orgasm was approaching; I could have pulled away. But no. I shot it all over her leg. And the waistband of her pajamas, which had been pulled down mid-thigh, stretching the elastic and putting her in a less than comfortable position. It did prevent her from really opening her legs, which helped the entire episode. Upper thigh and front of hip was better than between the legs. When you are talking about awkward, unprotected teenage fumbling. Pretend sex. I still feel like such an asshole for that episode. Church camp. Every summer from seventh grade until the end of high school, I would pack up for a week for camp. I'd be shipped off with a bunch of my peers, out in the woods, into a small town for this retreat. I don't carry many memories away from my time there. Is it sad? I don't think so. I remember the place extremely fondly, with no ill will or even mediocrity. I would return there without pause given an opportunity. But having been there so many times, the people I met there all seem to run together. I'm sorry if you were one of the ones I did meet there and you are now hurt because I don't remember you specifically. You should have kissed me. I would remember you then. What I do carry away from there: A girl named Regan Mercy. She was an amazing creature. The most perfect being I can remember seeing. Ever. The fact that she was 15 when I met her means nothing -- I was only 14. It didn't seem dirty because we were the same age. She was thin, with blonde hair, green eyes and a perfect body. Really. It really was. Pert tits, gorgeous legs. Big emerald eyes. Her hair shoulder length, wavy and highlighted, always in a headband. Usually I can find something to pick at on someone. Even if it's something like a stray hair or thick ankles or a zit on the back. She had none of this. Every single thing was perfect. It breaks my heart to sit here and admit this in retrospect but it was true. Now? Now I don't even know where she is. She knew she had it made. And she did. She made no pretenses about her looks -- she ate men. And I was one that got swallowed whole. Jonah. I was smitten with her from the first time I met her. I can't remember when that was exactly -- I think it was right after I broke up with Jessica. She knew she had me. We traded addresses. And the letters started coming. I still have them. Her letters eventually confessed love for me. Her last letter expressed regret for not being a virgin. She envied what I still had. At 15. Needless to say, she broke my heart. When I saw her next: I thought that was going to be it -- my time. I would have her heart. I would capture her as she had me, I would get to hold her hand, maybe kiss her. Right. She didn't notice me and immediately took to other boys, making out with them in her traditional hiding spots. It crushed me. I ran into someone who knew her several years later. According to them, she had gotten pregnant and dropped out of high school. And so now I wonder, where are you Regan? Are you alive? Dead? Married? Happy? Do you remember me? Were we just too different? If I called you by your real name, would someone call you up one day after reading this and explain how you were mentioned? And I could find out everything that had gone wrong with your life since you turned me down? How would our lives have changed if you had given me the time of day like you once thought you would? Would I have been able to help you at least long enough so you wouldn't end up as you have? Probably not. She didn't want anything from life. I wouldn't be surprised to find out she was dead now. That makes me incredibly sad to say, but it is the truth. She was a trooper. But bottom line -- she was a slut. Sorry Regan. I really am. But a rose by any other name . . . And you really were a beautiful girl. Even when you were telling me how long your boyfriend's cock was. She was a sweetheart -- no, she wasn't -- she was a beautiful girl. And she went horribly, horribly wrong last I heard. But I still remember her. Even if no one else does. But that would surprise me. You don't meet too many beautiful people in life. Even if the beauty is only skin deep. ---*--- It's rare to find myself in such a passive circumstance. It's an interesting experiment. No, not experiment. Situation. I suppose. Circumstance might have been right after all. And passive? I like to believe I am more dominant. More aggressive. But I'm not. I'm here at a party wondering, "Is this fun?" To be playing the politics of hanging out -- the smiles, nods, eye contact, body language. Being sober, it's easy to see it, see the games and puzzles. And avoid them. I think this pen is impeding my will to write. Damn 25-cent Bic pens. These clear plastic ballpoint pens have to be the shittiest pens ever created. Give me a quill and inkwell over these motherfuckers. Give me something to do with my life. ---*--- The Bomb. I remember in elementary school everyone was scared of the Bomb. Everyone lived in perpetual fear of nuclear war. (Thank you, President Reagan. Thank you, Cold War politics.) I remember my art teacher, Mrs. Jones, telling me one day she had a dream of nuclear holocaust. The art room, which had been the older cafeteria years before, was the setting. She had locked herself in the old walk-in freezer that, when it was the art room was used as the supply closet. And she had survived the explosion, in the freezer with many of her students. I don't remember if she told me what happened next or not. If she did, I have forgotten. If she didn't, well, that was the story. It did nothing to comfort me when I was already scared to death of a nuclear war wiping out everything I knew in a painfully bright bolt of white light, spreading out in a circle from the point of origin. I'm not even sure she would remember the dream, but it has remained with me. That fear of unavoidable, uncontrollable death. No, not even death. Fear of rash, idiotic decisions made by others could destroy me. Things that affect me though I have no say or control over them. Of nightmares. Of echoes of memories we cannot suppress. You are a ghost to me. ---*--- The party. Tuesday night. We end up in someone else's hotel room. The Smiths playing, as if that is entertainment. I am surprised. Most of my peers don't know quality when it hits them, they only know how to go to the mall and buy things that are popular. Sheep. It's sad I put most of my peers in this category, even at this age. It discounts them to a large extent, makes them less human. But it doesn't make it any less true. "Girlfriend in a Coma" is playing. I don't care if she pulls through at all, frankly, Mr. Shankly. I hate Britpop. I hate The Smiths. But even the Smiths top what other garbage we could be listening to -- En Vogue, Jewel, Stone Temple Pilots. I know when to cut my losses and be thankful for what I do have, not what I am lacking. The party is about as depressing as the music. Everyone is just standing around. No one knowing what to do except get drunk. So they keep drinking. Big red Dixie cups -- the cup of choice. Thirty minutes later, Amy approaches me: "Listen, I think were going to go. There's a party up the road. Polly hasn't been drinking -- she's gonna drive. Wanna go?" "Do you really think I would want to stand around here?" "You never know," she answers. She's right. ---*--- I went to a lot of punk rock shows senior year of high school. Never with Kate. With other people. Usually Amy. I had a lot of anger in me at the time after Kate and I broke up. I would leap into the pit, dive off the stage, wear steel-toed boots so I could throw people around without recrimination to my toes. After several months of this, I began to realize this wasn't what I needed. Shows started to bore me. I began to write during them, sitting in the back of the bar/hall/apartment and reflect that I was growing old. Eventually my anger went away. I outgrew it. I am a romantic. All I want is to meet my other half. I don't want to feel like I have to prove myself to someone else; I don't want to have to answer for my actions. Because she understands them. Like nose-picking, I think most people relate to this desire. I think most people want this. This is how most people define happiness. Contentment. I think it's a fairly universal theme -- wanting to be understood. This could explain why I'm using it as a theme for my first book. Or why you could expand on that and explain how my first book is simply about me. But it makes me frustrated. Angry. I would like very much to believe I'm more complex, too deep to simply be summed up like this -- a few hundred pages. It seems to strip a lot of my individuality away. I'm more of a person than that. This. Or I want to believe that I am. The song was "Creep," by Radiohead. ---*--- I'm standing on the balcony of our room, watching a group of kids approach a mini-van. Seven of them. They all get into this maroon vehicle. Engine rolls, catches, dies. Catches. Dies. Turns the key too long and the car scrapes. Catches. They pull out. Almost all the way out of the space before the van dies again. Turns over. Turns over again. Catches. I'm laughing now. Reverse. Cuts off. Rolls. Catches. Driver floors it to keep it running. Floods and cuts off. Catches. Squeals. The driver stomps the brakes to keep from rear-ending the car in front of them. Dies. Catches. They pull out finally. Total time trying to leave the parking space? Four minutes. So we leave that hotel, armed with nothing but vague ideas as to where the other party should be located and three drunks. And Polly and myself. The front seat is a contested item -- I don't want to ride in the back with all the drunks, Jason wants to be able to sit next to Polly. The bastard wins. It is his car. Still. I end up in the back, not even with a window seat. (Stephanie and Amy get these honors, so if they have to puke, they can lean outside. How anyone can get so smashed at a party [especially one as lame as the one we just left] in under 30 minutes is beyond me.) I am sandwiched between them. Jason rolls down his window, sticks his head out and begins howling at the moon and passing cars. Nerve wracking and annoying. Polly tells him to get back in the car unless he wants a ticket. This only adds fuel to his already raging fire. "If I want a ticket, I'll get a goddamn ticket. This is my car and I'll be the one to decide who gets a ticket and who doesn't." "Jason . . . " "Tiiiiicket!" It is pointless. You can't argue with him when he is drunk. You shouldn't even try. I'm not sure how many years it will take Polly to learn this, but one day, she will. She has to. I don't think it can be long before she realizes he is an abusive alcoholic and she leaves him. That's my hope. We get there, with no one getting sick and no police encountered. ---*--- Suddenly this girl who had plagued my every thought for months and had become my reason for living was now my girlfriend. It was a big deal. To me. She was my first love. (Is it more correct to say she is my first love? She is still alive, you see. But the love is over. Is the tense for the love or for the person?) Things were never peachy for us. I liked to fight. I got great enjoyment out of testing both my patience and mental capacity with verbal arguments. It turned out Kate didn't. That was perhaps our greatest flaw. Certainly not our only one, but perhaps our greatest. This is our story: Weekends in high school, at least for me, before we (we being my peers and, more importantly, Kate and myself) could drive, were spent almost identically to weekends in middle school. Go over to someone's house and hang out. Only now, the group had been stripped down to Kate and myself. One weekend my house, the next hers. Playing board games, watching movies, taking walks. We went out for two and a half years, Kate and I. Without missing a beat. It was downhill from New Year's, but I needed the relationship to hit rock bottom so I could walk away and not be remorseful of missed chances. The end came with a resigned sadness. I think on that night when I finally realized just what was going on, I could hear the relationship sigh. That Monday afterwards, I heard it cry. (It? Try me. I heard myself cry.) Its last shuddering breath. It shuddered out of my mouth. You want the long version? Alright. Here it is: That Friday. Junior prom. It wasn't even really an issue if Kate and I were going together. I'm not even sure I ever asked her. We were an item. We were going together. What comes with prom? The dress, the tux, the flowers, the dinner, the pictures, the dances. All of that was in place. Oh, and the sex. That's where the problem began. She had a very pretty black dress, with a slit in it. (A feature I have always found intrinsically sexy. I think it relates to items which are revealing without meaning to be. The subtleties of slits. It is a lot easier to bare all then selectively and sexily bare less. At any rate, I found her dress sexy.) I had rented a tux. The flowers were simple -- no problem. The dinner, still, not much of a problem. We ended up going with Amy and Robert, and Jason and Polly. We went to some low-class steak joint. A small step above a buffet place. Steak. It was Jason's choice, of course. Who else would have picked steak? Or the restaurant? A buffet? And, of course, Jason was the type that expected everyone else to want what he wanted. I'm bad, I'll admit that. I expect everyone to yield to me. That's a bad character flaw. But I'm not stupid enough to think everyone else wants what I want. An uneventful dinner. An uneventful prom. We danced. We didn't have much fun. To tell the truth, I don't really remember anything about the dance. I vaguely remember the room, but I can't tell you a single song they played. I felt too self-conscious to dance anyway. We slow danced. That's about it. I do remember the sophomore class handed out souvenir glasses to the prom-goers. Etched, telling all those who cared, when the prom was and its theme. Here's the flaw -- they handed out one per couple. Kate, of course, has mine. I guess it really isn't mine -- it has always been hers. It should be ours though. One per couple? So I don't even know what the theme of my junior prom was. (For that matter -- I don't know the theme from my senior prom -- I didn't get that glass either.) We left. My parents had decided to chaperone the after-prom party, which Kate and I were not attending. We went back to my house to change before we went over to a friend's house for an all night party there. While we were there changing, I tried to kiss you. And you wouldn't let me. You turned away. I wasn't asking to fuck you, I was asking for a kiss. On our prom night. Would I have wanted to make out, fool around since my parents weren't there? I'm sure. But you wouldn't even give me a kiss. A fucking single kiss. That's when I knew we were in trouble. It wasn't often something like that happened. But when it did, things followed suit until there wasn't anything left. A simple sign maybe, but one that has followed and haunted me throughout my life -- it is a fact. I have felt the shudders and the echoes of it in my present time here, as I write these words. The events caused by that night, by this period of time in my life have set a pattern I fear might never be broken. It was the course of things to follow. Unfortunate, really. Actually, it was a lot more than unfortunate. But I'm not sure of the right word. That one event, that one sign was the sigh I spoke about earlier. That's when I knew. (I don't remember now whether she and I talked over the rest of the weekend -- I can't imagine we didn't, but at the same time -- maybe it was something I wasn't yet ready to confront. Do you remember, Kate? Are you there? If you are, tell me please -- I want to know. Of course, if you are there, there is a lot I would like to know from you; call me. Get in touch with me. We could go have lunch one day somewhere and pretend we were old friends, rather than old lovers who probably still can't stand to be around each other. The only reason we would have lunch is to relive the ideals of a past time, to make sure the other person wasn't dying and to impress each other in any way possible. Is "lovers" a correct estimation? I have never found anyone who could answer this question for me -- is the term "lover" reserved for those in love who have sexual intercourse, or simply for those in love? It makes a difference to me; I'd like to know.) The following Monday, I spoke frankly and earnestly with her at lunch. This is what I said: "I need you in this relationship. I need you to give. I feel as if the relationship has become one sided -- I give; you take. " "Zach, blah blah blah." "Yes, but is it really so much to ask to see you at some point over a weekend or talk every couple of nights on the phone?" "Zach, blah blah blah." "Listen. I need you to make a decision. Either you're in the relationship with me and you give something to the relationship or there isn't a point to us being in one." ". . . " "It's not such a difficult question to answer." ". . . " "I guess you've made your mind up then." "I guess so." I promptly got up, walked two tables away, sat down and began bawling my eyes out. Not a pretty sight, but a needed one. I mean, cripes, I was in the middle of junior/senior lunch. When I spoke to Amy, years later, she didn't recall it. Even though she was the one who patted me on the shoulder as I bawled. I do wonder what went through Kate's mind -- she had to have seen me do this and had to have seen how devastated I was. Did she feel any sadness at her actions or any regret? Probably not. That being said -- I think I have made both of us act differently than in real life. I think I was more obsessive and she was more cold. More? Have I toned this down to make us more likeable, more understandable? Probably. Emotions, especially 16-year-olds' emotions, are irrational and unkind. Kate, are you there? Do you remember? How did you see it? Do you remember? Or have you forgotten too? Did we even date? Or was it the past me, not me as I am now? Just as I see the past you as a different person, do you do the same to me? How is it we remember everything differently? Who is that person who spent those two years committed to you? Where is he now, as I write these words? He isn't here with me; I haven't seen him in a long time. What does it mean to have dated you? I used to be a shy boy. After Kate broke it off with me, self-esteem took a leave of absence. Maybe not quite as long as I thought it did at the time -- maybe only for a year or so, as opposed to the two I would have likely said then. The year after she left me, before the beach, my senior year of high school, was an interesting time. I wanted so badly to rebound and rebound hard. Maybe that's what failed me. Maybe that had something to do with it. The profound want. The desire. Then again, maybe not. Regardless, because I couldn't get a date, because I just generally didn't find anyone so engrossing I wanted to talk to them all that much, I carried around a notebook with me and made a diary out of it. I filled over three volumes during the six months I carried it around. It became my best friend. ---*--- The party is in a one-story house, almost beach front, on stilts. Not an easy act to navigate for some of the group by this point. It's 10 P.M. I enter the house, unsure of what to expect. I wander a bit, poking around, finding the kitchen and making myself a strong Coke and ice. The house is full for so early. I didn't expect so many people. When I mention this to Polly, she says the party actually started at 4 P.M. We are six hours late. "He came in my mouth." Those words will live in infamy to me forever. Burned into my brain. The words are uttered by Amy as soon as I walk out of the kitchen. She had gone to the bathroom as soon as we walked into the house. A guy named Matt followed her into the bathroom. (Matt . . . oh Matt. What a ridiculous excuse for a human you are.) He shut the door and she found herself sucking his cock. How? I'll never know. One would hope by this point in her life (17 years old, after all), she would have more control over her body, her mind, even when she was drinking. But apparently she doesn't. "He was wasted." There it is. The excuse. Not for herself but for him. She needs to defend him so she doesn't think she has just sucked off an indecent guy. And, after all, who can blame her? No one wants to fuck around with losers. "I'm kinda tipsy myself." Now she is squealing. Almost like she's happy to be drunk. What am I saying? Of course she is happy -- she doesn't have to excuse her actions. She doesn't even have to take responsibility for them. Oh, sweet Amy. Over the course of the next several minutes I try and get an explanation out of her as to the exact details. Things become no clearer. For the moment her self-esteem has increased. Boys find her attractive and she, in turn, can make them happy. All she wants is to make someone happy. To feel self-worth. Things become no clearer. ---*--- I carried my diary around with me for years. A little notebook that I was always waiting for the right girl to ask to read. She never did. No one wanted to read it. After a while, I took solace in this. I grew numb to it. Having someone read your diary is like telling someone your dream. And what's the quote about that? "Only lovers care about your dreams." At some point, I put it down. Or it turned into what you are reading right now. It is an interesting fact to notice: sex on prom night. I was speaking to someone the other day about prom. They spoke of getting laid. I didn't know anyone really did get laid on prom. I thought it was a big joke. Honest. I never even got a kiss on prom. So now I am confused as to whom the correct person is -- do most people get laid on prom night? Is it only (as was in this person's case) those with a significant other? Or are your odds good simply by having a date and going? I'm certainly not going to be able to answer that question here, but it is something I had never really considered until recently. Is there anything more trite than fucking on prom night? With the possible exception of acting like prom is an activity (or night) that is beneath you. (Much as I am doing above -- however; in my defense: I own up to it and will take full responsibility for my snotty attitude.) I think this friend is the only person I know that actually did fuck on prom. I didn't. My roommate didn't; my closest friends didn't. Wait. I dated several girls in college who did. Who did it on prom night and hadn't since. That's even more trite than simply doing it. They were doing it out of some kind of expectation. Why didn't I get to date girls like that then? Instead, I dated them in college and found them begging for it because it had been so long. That was such a huge turn-off. Not the begging, but the whole prom issue. I bet Jason and Polly did it. Oh, they did because Jason (with his infinite sense of class) rented a room in the same hotel as prom so they didn't even have to go anywhere to fuck. That or he was renting in some dingy hotel out in the middle of nowhere so he wouldn't be caught. I don't recall and it doesn't really matter -- he and Polly were like bunnies. I remember when she first told me they were having sex. She was the first close friend I had that was humping regularly. It was tenth grade. Right around Christmas. She was waiting for Jason to pick her up -- we had both ended up staying after school for something or other -- it was about 5:30 or 6 in the evening. Dusky. Winter. Standing outside the brick walls of the school, talking. She and I had always been close and then she just spilled it out to me. Spoke very highly of it, though it occurred in the back seat of Jason's car down a deserted road in town. I will admit I took Kate down that same deserted road on more than one instance once she and I were old enough to drive. I actually haven't thought about that in quite some time -- one of the few times I have fooled around in a car. Thanks to Polly, I knew where to park the car. Polly later told me a story regarding that same parking place -- she and Jason were busy one fine night when a strange man walks up to the car. He knocks on the window and tells them to move along or he'll call the cops. Polly always wondered how long he stood there before coming out of the darkness to interrupt them. She was creeped out. I can't say I blame her. This parking spot was in an undeveloped cul-de-sac in a neighborhood. It was wooded and circular enough you could pull the car over and not be seen unless you drove down the several hundred foot stretch of woods to the end of the road. The logic being that if anyone were to do that, you would see the headlights coming and be prepared. So how this man knew they were down there when he was on foot remains a mystery. The only solution anyone was able to formulate was that he saw the car drive down, but not come back up the road. So he walked down to investigate. Before that story was told to me, I used to fear Kate and I would drive down there and Jason and Polly would already be parked there. After I heard that story, I was afraid to go at all. I did a couple of times. It was worth the risk at the time. Getting caught paled to getting a blow job. After I heard the story, I just found a new spot to go parking. So anyway, the moral of that story is Jason and Polly loved to fuck. And that they fucked on prom night. So it does happen. The size of my body sometimes surprises me. I am in the shower and I look down. And there my feet are, so far from my eyes. I can stretch out my arms and they go on for what seems like forever. I curl my fingers and watch my fingers move. They are almost three feet from my body. And yet all of that is me. It's all me. It boggles my mind. The amount of mass I take up. The amount of space that is me. I stare at myself before I get into the shower. When did I get so much space between my belly button and my pubic hair? I feel so large. I feel huge. Are my feet an annexed property? Do they know they are a part of me, like that Gogol story? Will I one day wake up without my nose? Is there anything behind my eyes, like that Borges story? I feel disconnected. I feel huge. I do not understand my physical being. I want to reach out to you, ask you what happened. Ask how you remember my body. You certainly wouldn't remember me like this. When you picture me naked, this isn't what you see. You don't see the oval bellybutton with the lint still in it; the lumpy torso, the signs of a body breaking down. You must see a younger version, before the hair, before the lumps, before my metabolism slowed down. You don't remember me. You remember a different person. Or do you remember him at all? Do you care to? ---*--- An old woman walks past while I am on the balcony of the hotel. It's impossible to determine her age. I think of Crime and Punishment. The radio sings on about "fire from a hand" which really does very little to make me stop thinking about killing her. She moves very slowly. Each step is slow enough to be premeditated. She just wants to get home. And while each step takes her closer to that goal, she isn't savoring each step as an individual. As a solid in its own right. I have found myself doing that a lot recently. Hearing music as I walk, I bounce. I swing my arms. I dance. I enjoy the moment, the momentum of walking. The work of getting yourself there with your own body. Of being. It becomes something larger than simply walking. Than moving. Than exerting. It becomes about the specific time I exist in. To say it's fun is simplistic. By saying that I'm not giving it its due. What is my problem? It's not that I want to be unhappy. I don't try to make myself unhappy. You think I sit around and plan it? No. The answer, the correct answer, to that question would be no. Yet nothing seems to go right. The smell of sulfur, of someone lighting a match, makes its way into my lungs as I sit on a sofa, having failed to keep up with Amy. I convince myself it's for the better, listening to mediocre music and watching people. "It's a beautiful night tonight." "I told him to go to hell." "I bought them down at that shop on the boardwalk. Down by 12 South." I can't decide if I want this night to live in my memory forever or not. Good and bad points all around. All abound. People, dialogue, frustrations with them. With myself. Seeing everyone run around with Cool Whip and homebrew (brought and made by someone I didn't know named Lance, but I bond with him as we try to get people to drink it for money. Inspired by sheer boredom, it keeps me entertained for 20 minutes or so until people wise up that the stuff tastes like fire and makes them vomit.), arguing about identically dressed sluts. Their age and their motivation. 15 is the consensus for their age, but they think they are 19 and, thus, want to be treated as such. Hot pink tube tops and black stretch pants, both to match your high, stiff bangs and bleach-damaged hair does not make you 19. Or attractive. Listening to Lance and a girl named Comfort talk about drugs and fall into each other which might make me sad until I realize, cute or not, she's into drugs. We wouldn't click. The night continues to improve. Maybe. There have been no more blow job stories. From Amy or anyone else. A crowded, noisy den as people wander in and out and I find myself wanting to up the ante knowing it won't be long until I have to leave. Or at least go outside. I won't have to deal with whatever mess I make. Lance's real name is Wayne. Why am I so bad with names? "I ain't going back," as the sign for cocaine is made. "She's got a man so I can't even do her." "I've never enjoyed my time here." "But ape should never kill ape?" I catch bits of conversations; I wonder if they would make more sense in context. I don't think they would. People have taken over the back porch to smoke weed. It's 2 A.M. Digable Planets is playing in distantly in the den. I'm sitting in a bedroom -- interesting what people bring on a week's vacation with them. This person has 2 books sitting out -- The Faerie Queen and On the Road. I wish I knew whose room this was. They might be someone I would like to talk to. Or at least meet. Amy walks in, gazing around. ---*--- I am not a big breast man, as they are called. I find that whole categorization absurd anyway. And I'm not a man -- I'm still a boy at heart. I always wanted to be Peter Pan. Not that I'd run around the house as a child pretending to fly and having Tinkerbell follow me around. No, I just didn't want to grow up. I did all I could to avoid becoming the adults that surrounded me -- tired, unhappy and no longer filled with the sense of wonder and excitement that consumed me as a child. When I was younger, I had a vivid imagination. I had to -- that's all I had. As I have grown older, I haven't had to rely on it as much and so it doesn't hang around as much as it used to. It still ducks in at unexpected moments, but it no longer has to provide me with sanity. I no longer blindly believe in magic. That bothers me the most. I have bills to pay, rent and insurance payments. That kind of shit strips the child out of you, regardless of whether you want it to or not. But I manage. So I'm not a breast man. Seems like most boys are. I wonder why, really. I think it's more something inherent in our genetic makeup than anything we can control. I am also sure conditioning could change that. Since Kate and I have broken up, I have only been out with one girl. Seriously at least. Over years and years. A long time, at least in my estimation. The closest I have gotten to girls has been at shows and the closest I have gotten to making out with one has been when they have brushed up against me in an effort to secure a new position for themselves in relation to the stage. I wasn't too angry to notice. Do you think everyone is discontented with their bodies? At least to some extent? Do you think that has come from conditioning -- from things like MTV and soap operas -- or do you think it is some kind of inherited trait (is that even what it would be called? Miss Bio teacher . . . where are you? I had a crush on my tenth grade Biology teacher -- I can't remember her name now. Yearbook? Where are you?) Miss Lupis. No, that's not it. But close. I had a crush on her. My junior year. She wasn't that attractive. She was nice, she was funny and perhaps most importantly, she was weird. Towards the end of the year though, she stopped being as fun loving with me. Maybe she felt too weird flirting with a 15-year-old. She had gotten engaged recently. Who knows what it was really? She stopped being as nice to me though. ---*--- While sleeping in the chair in the hotel, I dream my teeth are falling out. Much like a dream I had several years before, but in that one I had grown another set of teeth out of my gums. I remember that second set being attributed to some kind of fungal growth -- nasty really. But of the current dream -- all I remember is the sensation of spitting big, crunchy, sharp molars out of my mouth. Imagine biting down on a tooth -- a big one. Then spitting it out. That was the impression this dream gave off. Nasty, really. In my defense, I won't say I get off brushing up against girls. I much prefer pretending I am picking them up. That they notice me as much as I notice them. Well, that's close to true. That they are as interested in me as I am in them; a fact I know is not true. I like to pretend things are so sly no one else picks up on the two of us connecting. Love (or even lust) at first sight. That at some point in between the songs, she will turn to me and speak. It never happens. Not once. Maybe she's waiting for me to do the same thing. What a thought -- we waste our one chance because neither one of us wants to speak. Of course, that right there proves we shouldn't be together. But it's a depressing thought nonetheless. There isn't enough time or understanding in the world for me to love everyone I want to love. Does it make me more perverse that I like to inhale deeply as girls pass so I can smell their shampoo? Or perfume, but usually it's their hair I smell. Or baby powder. Which is always sexy though it seems as if it shouldn't be. Especially since it conjures to mind white cotton underwear. I don't plan it, I don't look for it -- I don't even try to make it happen. I'm not perverse like that. Like that -- I'm just digging my own hole aren't I? Does it make me more perverse? To see if it is perfume or baby powder or fruity shampoo or cigarette smoke? To want to know? Am I a worse person for doing this? And why am I letting it get to me like this? Why do I feel I have justify my love for girls to you? Of girls. ---*--- The dream I had last night was of being a slave of some corporation or group of men. They shuttled a lot of us into the Rocky Mountains and kept track of us through tracking devices they had implanted into us. They then had us do errands and other odd dealings with other corporations and people. I discovered by keeping metal (in this case it was a necklace and a nickel-sized coin) on one's person, you would appear invisible to their tracking, thus allowing one to escape. Part of the dilemma though was whether I should escape and if so, who I should take with me, or whether I should stay and lead a revolt against these men with the limited resources I had at my disposal. It was an issue that never got resolved. I woke up. It reminds me too much of real life. It reminds me too much of me. I sipped my water. It was warm, no doubt due to the weather. It was hot. I looked at her. Without breaking her stare at me, she reached down into her cup, grabbed her ice and placed it in mine. I smiled. It was a beautiful gesture. And when I raised the cup to my lips, the water was so cold my teeth hurt. Penthouse has always been an intriguing magazine to me. I don't think it's very special, perhaps even sub-par, except when it comes to the "Forum" section. That's really the only thing that makes Penthouse remotely interesting to me. Penthouse was the second porn I ever got to look at. Third if you count the scraps of paper that supposedly came from a Playboy in fourth grade (although the scraps could have been a Time magazine with regards to the legibility). Kevin Wilson had those, or perhaps it was Felix Brown. They found them in the tree house behind Felix's house. I'm not sure they ever really figured out who had put them up there. They were small scraps of paper that looked as if they had been through the wash. I think they had been left in the treehouse through several storms and then had been carried around in these boys' back pockets so much the white, raw creases on the paper had become the predominant features. The paper was so worn it appeared as fabric. The whole thing was treated as a spectacle and both boys were treated with awe. I was too young to know what these things meant. The second time I saw a porn magazine was the summer I baby-sat kids from my church. The Playboy was filed in the den with the other magazines. I snuck it into the bathroom and masturbated looking at pictures of Marilyn Monroe. Not terribly exciting. Or proud. But it's Marilyn. Then a good friend in eighth grade found some Penthouse issues at his house, took them, and they made the rounds among three or four of us for six months. During the period I had them, they were hidden under the mattress of my top bunk bed. I slept on the bottom one -- a seemingly foolproof hiding place. Except when I went away to church camp. And my mother changed the sheets on the top bunk. I don't know to this day whether or not she found them but she never said anything. Never even hinted. But that's when Penthouse "Forum" and I got to know each other intimately. The letters are absurd. Anyone will agree with this. Every man has at least an eight-inch cock. I can honestly stand up right now and say that mine isn't. Most are the thickness of a soda can. Again, I can say that mine isn't. Every man in there can make a woman have multiple orgasms just by looking at her. I have only Kate's word on this one: "Did you ever have an orgasm while we were going out?" "Yes, of course." "Did you ever fake an orgasm while we were going out?" "Yes, of course." ". . . " "Don't feel bad. It's just that sometimes, it just wasn't going anywhere and there was no need to prolong it. That wouldn't have been good for either of us." ". . . " "Stop sulking." (I hear this phrase far too often for my liking. Am I really so used to getting my own way I can't bear to not? I'd like to think not, but at the same time, isn't life too short for you not to get your own way? I mean, really. Think about it for a moment. Here you are, you've got a finite number of days, hours, and minutes on this earth and you are going to spend your time not doing whatever it is you want to do? Fuck that. So I guess I sulk a bit when I don't get my way. But due to this previous enlightening thought, I'm not going to worry about it much from now on. Yeah, right. I wish I could be this confident and smug in real life, not just when I'm writing.) So I guess I have brought a woman (well, a girl) to orgasm. But Penthouse letters did make me envious -- I mean, people were fucking all the time in every possible place and way. But let's look at this objectively. I need to, just so I can feel normal. Even if everyone in his or her life has an experience like this -- the world is some kind of fucked up place. And if not everyone has something like that, well then, that knocks all the uptight folk right out of the mix. That leaves the sluts to pick up the pieces. A bit over-simplified, I admit, but true. Is it any wonder these people get laid a lot? I don't think so. It's not hard to get laid if you're a girl. This is true, end of story. Why? Why should it be any easier for a girl? Because it is the girl who decides. The guy doesn't ever get enough, so he takes it whenever she says yes. ---*--- I find stereotypes to be an interesting phenomenon. How people of one sex view those of the opposite sex. How girls are trained as they become women by society to expect men to be hard. Not in any sexual sense, but an emotional one. How they expect men to not get upset by loud voices or violence. I love violence as much as the next person, but I can't tolerate it when a loved one raises their fist against me. Even in jest. And I hate yelling. I can't say I don't do it, but it isn't something I like. Or like used against me. It seems most everyone in the world is simply a weak, submissive person when it comes down to it. To get off on power, on control, is just another weakness. Right now, Jason and Polly are showering, together, while I lay on the bed, listening to Cypress Hill and watching some cop show muted on TV. I hate cop shows. I hate them showering together. I hate the beach. I think I might even hate myself. Who I am. What I have become. What I want to become. I am unsure of what I stand for anymore. I thought I was strong enough to not need some true release, some trivial entertainment to make me feel better about myself. I thought coming down here would be enough. A uniformed man pulls a shirtless man out of a car. What does it take to be happy? To accept yourself as a decent person? These are the questions I don't have answers for. They keep me up at night. A uniformed man kicks a door in. I don't think I know myself half as well as I need to. To accept myself as a person. The water in the bathroom cuts off. I don't move. Instead, I sigh and prepare for my space to be invaded again. Do you think attraction is genetic? Does it come out of something intrinsic or primal? Or does it work in a simpler way? Is it based on something superficial? If so, where does it come from? I mean, why do I fall in love three or four times a week? Why do I love blonde-haired girls? Why are legs more important to me than breasts? ---*--- It was the summer after eighth grade, after Jessica and I had broken up that I got a phone call from her. From her new boyfriend. Who was an acquaintance of mine. Band. Dan was an odd duck. Very weird. Treated the world as if it made no sense to him. Not because it was complicated, but because it was somehow beneath him. As if he couldn't understand anything because it was below his most basic level of understanding. He called. One summer afternoon, with Jessica in the background. I don't remember why. The only part of the conversation I remember is this: "Guess what Jessica told me?" "I don't know," I answer. Jessica giggled in the background. "That I have a bigger penis than you do." "Um . . . ok. Is that it?" "She said a couple of other things, but that was the one I wanted to tell you." "I'm glad it makes you so happy, Dan." More giggling from Jessica. "Listen, Zach, I need to go. Jessica is all over me and I really don't want to keep her waiting. I'll talk to you later." ". . . " Click. Of course, at that age, it didn't help my masculinity (or my ego or my self-esteem or any of a number of other things that influenced my character at the time) to be told this sort of thing. I can't really imagine the impetus for such a conversation either. This was the last time I ever spoke to either one of them. This is how I imagine the scene building before my phone rang: Jessica on Dan's bed. He is putting on some music. Everyone is very aware of Jessica and my investigations of one another. Somehow the word got out to everyone we had tread that far around the baseball diamond, a fact which was most unfortunate. I was known as "Third Base" for a short period of time. (Any period of time was too long. I found the name both insulting and embarrassing. Next time I get inside a girl's pants in the back seat of her parent's car while her parents sit in the front, I won't be so quick to brag.) "So what was it like with Zach?" "What do you mean?" "You guys were really in your parent's car?" "Yeah." "Was it good?" "Not really. I didn't have anything to compare it to." "And now you do." "Yeah. And I can say it wasn't good." "Is he bigger than me?" "Oh, no." "Really?" "Absolutely. His penis wasn't very big at all." Giggle. Dan climbs onto the bed. "I want to tell him." "Be my guest. I don't care. He's an asshole anyway." "What's his number?" And this picks up basically where I came in. I have no idea if that's how it happened or not, but surely I can't be too far off. How else do you manage to have you new boyfriend call up your old one and tell him his dick is smaller than the new boy's while you make out with the new boy? Takes some fucking balls. Takes some fucking balls. Do you understand department stores? I only ask because they seem to be a dying breed. I go in them so much less often than as a child, which I'm sure is less still than my parents and so on back. They seem outdated -- they have no real brand name on which to build an empire, they depend on others to do that for them. They're a middleman for your public image. Your self-esteem. An odd thing. If I ever find an item or brand in one, it's gone by the time I return. Of course there are usually a couple of seasons in between, but still. I go in, buy a certain style of jeans. Return a year later -- they no longer carry the brand. Makes no sense. I forget who told me this story, maybe it was . . . no, I have no idea. Whoever relayed it was trustworthy enough I believed it. Maybe it was Stephanie. Let's say for the sake of retelling this story it was. It doesn't really matter; the story is about Stephanie no matter who told it to me. Stephanie has met this boy, they are going out. He's in college, she's in high school. Sounds like a match made in heaven, right? It is. She loves him, they fuck, you know the deal. After about three weeks, they go to buy her a dress or something like that. For prom. They go to a department store (there's the connection) to buy it. She picks out her several dresses and goes to the dressing room to try them on. She comes out to model one for him -- the second one -- and he's gone. Not leaning on the display where she left him, his jean shorts and sandals with his pool-bleached mulleted hair and sunglasses. She thinks he's wandered off, to sit down or something like that. So she changes back into her clothes and walks around the department. No Charlie. She walks over to the men's department and looks. No Charlie. Now she's a little worried. After all, he drove them both here. She has him paged. She waits 20 minutes. No Charlie. She walks out to where the car was parked. It's gone. He fucking left her at the mall. Gone. I have always found it a crazy story -- I mean, who really has enough balls to do that sort of thing? No matter how much I hated whomever it was I was with, no matter what, I still don't think I could do that. Especially unprovoked. Which is how she always told the story. She called someone to come get her and made it home fine. Against better judgment, she called him on returning home. Personally, bad idea. But it was her life. What would you really say to someone who so obviously wants less than nothing from you? If the fucker was smart enough, he either would have let the machine get it or he would have had his calls screened. Answers the phone like nothings happened. "Yeah?" "Charlie?" ". . . yeah." "What the fuck happened? Why the hell did you leave me at the mall?" Now, the smart thing to do, I think, would be this: "I didn't. I told you I was going over to the bookstore to pick something up. When I got back you were gone. I figured you ran into someone you knew and left, so I left. Are you at home?" And then put her off as far as any more dates. But I suppose when you've gone so far as to break up with your girlfriend by running away and leaving her at the mall when she's in a dressing room, you don't really care about any sort of recovery. Even so, I think something like: "I've got to go." is a better excuse than what actually happened: "I didn't want to see you anymore." Dead silence. How do you respond to something so blatant and obvious? "Oh." Click. My bio teacher's name was Lupa. Miss Lupa. It was sometime during junior year that I began to make other friends, other connections and bond with other people, especially girls. Amy and I had become good friends. (Yet another one lost to wind. I heard she was trying to track me down recently. Try harder, is all I can say. I'm not a difficult person to find. It's a shame we drifted so far apart -- wanting such different things out of life. Out of people. Ourselves. Rumor has it she hasn't changed at all. And lives in the desert somewhere. Almost surreal. How people have spread out. And how I still manage to follow them. Ten years gone and I still can find you Amy.) Amy and I were good support for each other over the better part of a couple years. We drove each other crazy but it worked. Opposites did attract. Maybe not in a relationship sense; nonetheless. It was most interesting when our relationship drove us to the point of attraction. The mental game of sexual attraction and flirting. Our constant confiding in each only drove us closer, leading our relationship down the path of sexuality. That sounds corny. This is the best episode I remember: Sitting in her car one night. My driveway. She was bringing me home from a show. We sat there talking about Kate and I, how much the relationship was sliding and I felt helpless. About Amy and her newest boy Robert. He was a year ahead of us. Her talking of their relationship and our common bonds in dealing with these people that, at the time, meant so much to us. Our loved ones. The conversation somehow turned to sex in some form. Suddenly we were discussing our attraction to each other. "We shouldn't kiss." "How would we ever explain it to them?" "Kate would break up with me." "Robert would kill me and beat the shit out of you." "But I want to." "So do I." In the end, I climbed into the back seat to at least somewhat remove the temptation. But I wanted it to happen. I just wanted to have tried to say no. Enough so I could get what I wanted while giving my morals something to hold on to. Nothing has changed. This is still what I want in life. Amy's cooler girl head prevailed and I exited the car, grudgingly. I stalled as much as possible, hoping it would happen. But without me to take matters into my own hands, me waiting for the air between us to force it to happen, it never did. I staggered out of the car, closing the door and wandered through the front door of my house. Sad. Depressed. Even though I had a girlfriend. Even though she had a boyfriend. In retrospect, it's easy to see why. A recurring trend, it seems, in my life. When the communication of a relationship breaks down, I turn to another for the support I think I need. And project onto them what I am missing from the relationship. Kate was not, at that point, making me feel loved. That's a really vague, open statement. But it is true. Later that night, I talked to Kate. I told her what had almost happened and what had actually occurred. She didn't seem to care. I should have taken that as a warning. I found out the next day at school Amy had told Robert as well. The whole confession thing was especially funny since Amy and I had agreed not to say anything at all to either of them. At any rate, Robert never really liked me after that. He was jealous of me and couldn't figure out why that night had ever come as close to reality as it did. I made him nervous. This was a month and a half before the prom. Amy was the second girl who ever told me she masturbated. Kate was the first. Of course that made Amy intriguing in my eyes. How could it not? I'm a boy. I like the idea of a girl being driven to that. I stood in front of a mirror, masturbating to see what I looked like when I orgasmed. I tried once to hold the face right as I came and ran to a mirror. It didn't work. So then I simply had to stand in front of a mirror. I didn't like what I saw. I've tried several times since then, with varying degrees of success. My face scares me. Especially when it's drawn and distorted from sexual pleasure. Kate said she found my faces funny. In an endearing way. Of course, I found her noises the same. She made high-pitched whistles. Almost like Lamaze breathing. We were even in my mind. You know what I find funny? No, you probably don't. Well, maybe you do. At any rate, lets stop squabbling over details and I'll tell you. (Insert high-pitched, whiny girl voice: "We aren't squabbling." Yeah, whatever. Anyway.) Capitalist society has discovered that, by utilizing the consumer model, they can (and have to) project you as ugly as they need to in order to make their product appear more beneficial and necessary. Fucked up, isn't it? A society where we have to put each other down in order to bring home a paycheck. "Yes, you need this cologne, because only people who are remarkably skinny and attractive use it." Or from the other point of view, "Only people who aren't traits x, y and z wouldn't use our product. And you don't want to be one of them, do you?" Fear of disclusion. Of rejection. By others. ---*--- What does it take to keep a relationship alive? I fell in love (well, Zach-love) with this waitress at a restaurant/bar right near the hotel. It was instantaneous, as my crushes tend to be. Hard and fast. I find myself eating there a lot. Fuck the Apple Jacks I brought with me; I want to see this girl. It is getting absurd, as things in my life are prone to do. I don't know what to say to her. She's working. How do you hit on a waitress? And have it work? Do I suffer silently? Well, yes. I don't want to, but what's the solution to the puzzle? Am I just an idiot? ---*--- "What a dreary day." "I don't know . . . it's kinda nice." "It's overcast, dark and drizzling." "Yeah?" "You're incorrigible." "Do you even know what the word means?" "Yes." "Well then, thank you." "I went out last night." "With what's his name?" "The same one I told you about last week." "The weed one?" "What? Be nice, jackass." "Amy, I have such a hard time telling all your boys apart, I have to separate them in my mind in regards to their redeeming features. His happens to be pot." "He's nice." "I have no doubt that his motives are pure." "Then why are you giving him such a hard time about pot?" "Cause you told me he smokes it at least twice a day." "So?" "You tell me. You're the one that's all upset over it." "No -- you're the one that's being a jackass about it." "Anyway. You went out." "We went over to his house and watched TV." "And?" "What do you mean, 'and?'" "You wouldn't have brought it up unless there was more to the story. What else happened?" "Nothing." "Liar." At this point, Bucky jumped in. After eavesdropping for several minutes while pretending to read his paperback copy of The Stand, he had to interject. "Did you let him fuck you up the ass with the plunger?" Bucky sat in front of me during government, with vibrant red hair and large front teeth. While amusing, he was incredibly immature and crude. "What?" "Bucky, what the fuck are you talking about?" "I don't know. I just wanted to say it. Amy's always saying she wants it up the ass with a toilet plunger -- I thought last night might have been her lucky night." Amy and I traded confused glances and she returned the ball to his court: "Bucky, I don't know what the fuck you're talking about but just turn around and read some more." "Looks like someone is a little testy. Sore, Amy? Those things . . . " Bucky's attempt at jokes fizzled out as Amy gave him a hate-stare. "So what did happen?" "We smoked up." "What?" Bucky rejoined the conversation, unable to resist the leverage this information provided him. "Amy's an addict. Amy's an addict . . . " he sang, taunting her. "Bucky. I will say this. Only. One. More. Time. Shut the fuck up." Bucky, lacking some social skills, did know when to shut up. And he returned to the book. "You smoked up with him?" I was incredulous. "Why? How?" "Zach. Do I really have to explain this to you?" "Why? That's all I want to know. That's it. Why?" "If you would shut up for a minute I would tell you." ". . . " "I wanted to see what it was like." "And that's it?" "Yeah." "Are you going to do it again?" Bucky started nodding his head vigorously up and down. Amy couldn't stand Bucky. "What do you know, Bucky? Maybe. I don't know." "Great. That's all I needed to hear." "Shut up. Like I really need you preaching to me today." "Today?" "Any day then." "So is there anything else you'd like to tell me? " "She got fucked up the ass by a toilet plunger," Bucky muttered. "That's it, Bucky," Amy growled. "You and me. During lunch. I've had it with your shit." I chuckled. I wanted to cry. I wanted Amy to be better than that. Able to live for herself -- not someone else's projection of her. Of course, I don't know what gave me the right to dictate she wasn't living for herself. It just felt wrong. It seemed to me she should be better than that. Stronger than that. Better. ---*--- I thought about backing out of the trip several times. But it didn't seem fair to the others. To be completely honest, I had gone so far as to bring it up to Amy. She didn't take it -- she gave me a shitload of grief for it. Then she tried to tell me not to go. It was a mess. It's not that I didn't want to go. Well, I had my doubts about going. Spending a week at the beach was going to be fun. Spending a week watching your best friends get fucked and fucked up was less fun. Safe to say, I was dreading the outcome. The impact on our friendship. And why not? I knew this trip would end it. But I went anyway. These are people I saw every day. I had committed out of fear of getting left out. I had peer-pressured myself into the trip. And all I could do now was make the best of it. My eyes close. It is late; I am tired. I don't want to think anymore. The day had been bad, the night even worse. It is three in the morning. I spent the day with Kate floating in my periphery the entire time. Amy thought it was funny. I didn't and I don't think Kate did. Why am I here? This is a bad idea. After all. It takes a lot to be able to look at someone and realize you hate him. Immediately. But that's exactly what I could do with Shem. He was an idiot. Just look at his name. That's reason enough. And I knew as soon as I met him he was going to fuck Stephanie over. Was I wrong? Stephanie has just returned from going to see him. She was picking up a CD he had been borrowing all week. Since we were in the process of getting ready to leave, she had gone over to his hotel to get it from him. "I went to get my CD from Shem just a few minutes ago." Stephanie's voice is shaking a bit. Amy looks up. "Did you get it?" "Before or after he threw the glass at my head?" "What?" "He threw a bottle at my head." "What happened? Are you okay?" Amy leaps up to comfort her. Everyone else in the room is watching Stephanie, pausing in their packing. "I think so." "That fucker. What happened?" "I went over there, right? And knocked on his door. And I'm standing there and standing there waiting for him to open it. And I hear some noise, the lock rattles and he's standing there in a tee shirt and his boxers. I say: "Hey, sexy. I just dropped by to pick up the CD you borrowed from me." He looks at me real funny, like he doesn't know what I'm talking about. "You know. That David Bowie CD I let you borrow three days ago." "Oh . . . yeah. Listen. Come back in a little while?" "Aaahm . . . well, I guess I could, why?" "I don't know where it's at. I gotta look for it." Noise from inside. Shem looks towards the bathroom. He's got somebody else over there. "I need to get it back -- I'm packing up, we are going to leave soon . . . you understand, right?" I'm not budging now. "Wait here while I look for the fuckin' thing." He doesn't care, he just wants me gone. Before I say anything, the bathroom door opens. Some dumb-ass, ugly-ass bitch walks out wearing a nothing but a towel. I look at him. "You sonofabitch. You fucking asshole!" "Fuck off. You ain't nothing but a stupid skank anyway." He starts rummaging around, finds the CD by the little portable stereo he has on the night-stand and throws it at me. The girl stands there, confused. She's trying to decide whether she should return to the bathroom or stay and watch the drama. "You lying sack of shit!" I'm really yelling now. He's confused. Like he doesn't know why I would be as upset as I am. I keep yelling. "You're nothing but a liar! A cheating, chickenshit bastard! I fucking regret you, you bastard!" At this point the girl looks like she is not only going to stay in the room, but she is going to say something. I cut her off. "And you -- don't even open your mouth, you fucking tramp. I don't want to hear anything your slut mouth is going to say. I don't want to imagine where that fucking mouth has been." Shem looks at me, he's pissed. He reached down behind the bed and pulled up an almost empty bottle of whiskey. A nice big 1.75. Threw it at my head. He was drunk. I ducked. It shattered about two feet behind and above me on the wall. I spun and ran out the door, slamming it behind me." "That's fucked up. Are you okay?" Everyone is in shock; Amy can only repeat herself. "Yeah. I mean, I'm shaken up. I could see the bottle coming towards me. Glass and whiskey got all on my back. I'm sure I have glass all in my hair. I think I'm okay." "Lock the door," I say. "If he shows up here, it wouldn't be a good idea to have it open or unlocked." He never showed. I was relieved when we pulled out to go home. Stephanie never got her CD back. It's that hollow feeling when nothing seems to be talking to you in the way that you want. Nothing seems real; you float through a nonsense land, a mirror world -- a dimension beyond sight and sound. The moon has risen and I'm walking on the beach. Well, I'm not walking now. I can't walk and write on the beach in the middle of the night. Half the room wasn't home, the other half was passed out. I couldn't sleep. I'm sitting here on the sand, listening to the surf and seeing the occasional crab dash across the sand in the dusk. I can barely see them, just shadows of movement in my peripheral vision. The sound of the surf reminds me of you. It hurts. Everything hurts. I feel hollow. I said that already. I don't want everyone else to feel the way I do. That would be absurdly unrealistic. But I want to either not feel this way or have people understand. Neither seems to be happening. It's like 2:30 in the morning. We came in early tonight. That's for the best I think. First night here, I'm glad we didn't hit too hard. Except for the fact that I can't sleep. And the fact that I'm the only one sober. And everyone that is still out. OK. So I'm glad I didn't hit too hard the first night here. So what's really bothering me? The fact that Amy hung out with Kate this evening. That's what's bothering me. The fact that my so-called best friend, at least as far as this trip is concerned, is making life awkward for me by remaining close to my ex. Especially right now. Here. I don't even know how to respond to this. It's not even something I can say anything about. I mean, what can you say? "No, you can't be friends with my ex anymore cause I'm not." Or: "Because she used to be my best friend and I'm not over her yet? Because I'm a jealous, neurotic, obsessive boy?" I don't think so. She (both of them, for that matter) would shut me down so quickly I wouldn't even be able to blink first. First night here and I'm already trying to deal with this. I shouldn't have expected any different. I'm a fool. The stars look nice out here. You can see forever. The blackness of the ocean makes it seem like you can see forever. A couple walk past, murmuring to themselves. They notice me, but fail to acknowledge. I imagine the girl and I share a glance. That she understands what is going on. That she would help if she didn't have this idiot prep boy attached to her arm. I am painfully aware of this look as she passes. Dark or not, I am confident of what I see. I want to sit here for a while, to see if she comes back after leaving him. Comes back to help me. To talk to me. To understand me. Somehow even my deluded mind knows better than to imagine this as truth. But yet I'm still sitting here waiting for her. I'll give it another 15 or 20 minutes. A bunch of drunken guys (frat dicks) wander by. Scary. I think for a minute they are going to stop and beat the shit out of me because I look too fruity for them. (Fruity? Where the hell did that word come from?) They don't. Thankfully. I'm not even sure they see me. It has been 15 minutes. No sign of her. You know what my problem is? My problem is I want to believe so badly in the one person that understands me. The one person that can see exactly who I am and why I have done everything I have ever done in my life. That's the person I want to meet. To be completely understood. Is that possible? Is it unrealistic? It's easy to say that was why Kate and I broke up. In fact, it's easy to say that's why any relationship breaks up. But is it easy to say that is never going to happen to me? I wish I knew. Is it easy to say that even exists at all? How do I know? I can only feel what I think must be true. She never comes back. Sad, but not unexpected. If she was the one who completely understood me, the one who could wake me up the middle of the night to share something with me, she would have come back. I really didn't expect her to, even if I talked like it. I'm starting to get sleepy. I guess I should go home. But what if she's late? What if she is having trouble getting rid of her man, the one she was walking down the beach with and can't come back to me as quickly as I expected? Or what if she's in bed with him right now getting her brains fucked out? Kind of hard to tell. I mean, which it is? Well, to me, the answer is pretty clear. I try to trick myself into believing she's thinking of me while she's getting fucked. A small and perverse consolation. Everyone is asleep when I get back. I wake someone up to let me into the hotel room. Do you have any idea how long I beat on the door before a strange boy let me in? I double-check the room number -- I have never seen him before. Then I see Stephanie asleep next to him. It seems vaguely cute that he and Stephanie had passed out on the floor together. Her newest conquest had crawled over her and opened the door, still on his knees. Stephanie's arm lying around his ankles, shifted from where they had been around his waist until he opened the door. I step over them and go to collapse into my bed. Except, much to my delight, I find out why they had passed out on the floor. Amy has brought her new boy home. No room in the inn for Zach. Motherfuckers. What the hell? I wasn't even gone that long. Did all these people hook up in front of each other while I was gone? I am disappointed and disgusted. I debate. Then give in -- fuck it; she'll be pissed only if she remembers. I climb over to Amy. Out like a light. I grab her pillow away from her. She frowns, looks like she is going to wake up, rolls over in search of a pillow, finds her man, moves in and resettles. Good enough. I enter the bathroom and go to get into the shower. Uncomfortable, but possible. Until I realize someone has thrown up in the bathroom. And has missed the toilet. Not badly, but enough that because they didn't clean it up; it stinks. Fuckin' hell. I wander back out in the main room. Choices are now limited to the kitchen floor (nasty linoleum covered with food crumbs), the kitchen table (hard wooden piece of shit) or a chair (cheap vinyl covered, wooden frame piece of shit). The floor would be tempting, if Stephanie and whomever weren't all over it. My choice with the floor amounts to wrapping myself around the side and the end of a bed, at a 90-degree angle and then getting stepped on when someone gets up. I am fucked. Do I leave and sleep on the beach now? Try to make new friends? Suck it up? Why does it suck so much to be the lame-ass who doesn't drink? I go with the chair. Seems the most uncomfortable, yes, but also the most decent. The least likely to make me feel really gross in the morning. When I wake up, I don't feel gross. Just sore. Not that it is a surprise. I spend a lot of time during the day at the arcade right down the street from our hotel. Seems the easiest way to pass time. That, my Discman and my journal are all I think that keep me sane during the week. I get really good at some arcade games, which in itself is pretty sad. But it is an escape. From the things I don't enjoy -- the drinking, the bullshit. Yes, flirting is fun. The pursuit is fun. But I haven't met anyone who is worthy enough to be pursued. Are my standards too high? Do I care? No. I don't. And I don't want to change. I like having high standards. One day they will be met, or they won't. Either way will be okay with me. I won't have compromised. That is important to me. Well, let's be honest. What's the point of all of this if I'm not going to be honest? Of course I want to find someone. But the point is that I'm not going to sacrifice my standards for someone who didn't meet mine. And I would think that they would have equally high standards. It's just the nature of the game. My game, at least. That's the only game I want to play. I just wish someone else wanted to play as well. "I wish I'd stayed . . . " I am confronted with the beauty of the world as it relates to me (or doesn't) as I sit here, waiting for everyone to show up for dinner, a waitress brings me a glass of water with a lemon in it. In a wondrously unprovoked fashion. That simple fact (as someone in the next booth makes a sound imitating a Transformer [or else water pipes with air in them]) causes me to reconsider my previous statement. Then a girl at the next table stands up, revealing pinstriped pants that cause me to revert back to the simple truth of my first statement. This is the same waitress I have been in love with all week. Am I any closer to talking to her? Letting her know? Of course not, I simply smile little weak smiles at her when she brings something to the table. And then leave good tips. So maybe she does realize. Who knows? I just finished poking holes in my lemon with my straw. A new experience. (The pants again. And now goths have walked in. Sigh. Goths? At the beach? I shake my head. There are three of them. One is bald and wearing a Leaetherstrip tee shirt. One is a girl. The other is carrying a guitar. An acoustic guitar. They are discussing Christianity. Something about Jesus being a bastard.) The radio behind me, from the kitchen, plays; Robert Smith sings about making himself sick. The beauty of others as it relates to me. Hollywood has, I think, forever ruined the word glamorous. "Normal" people are always the most glamorous to me -- those rare moments when a person (at least to me, it is usually a woman) looks beautiful. Relaxed. Poised. Loved. Confident. I can't explain it any better than that. She just is. And there is beauty there. But here, at the beach -- it seems harder to find. I guess it's not that it doesn't exist -- I simply can't connect to it as easily as I have in other places. Times. People who look like people who I wish reminded me of people I want to like. The other waitress (the one who isn't mine) isn't smiling. I wonder why. Is it her job? Or her personal life? Has someone been treating her like shit? Or has it simply been a long day? And where the fuck is everyone? Now the waitress is half-smiling. Maybe I caught her at a bad instant. It does look that way. Or else she read over my shoulder and is now putting up a front in order to appear happy when in my line of sight. She has adopted me -- she just gave me a refill of water and said "No problem" when thanked. Maybe she was meditating on an unpleasant subject before. I'm starting to almost feel guilty for taking up a table -- Amy and everyone are nowhere to be found. Leaning into the aisle, I look for something familiar. I can't imagine I missed them when I came in. And I'm not in the wrong place -- two blocks from the hotel room is tough to screw up. I have just realized my eyebrows have become permanently lifted, as if I am surprised. Suspended in disbelief might be a better description. Could it be the slight bit of sugar I put in my water? I have found recently that I am trying to envision how a given woman's breasts would look if she were naked (or at least topless -- pants have very little to do with how unconfined breasts behave). This isn't meant as gross or perverse. It doesn't arouse or erect me. I simply wonder how they would fall on her chest. Nothing like the actual surface (hair, nipples, blemishes, moles, etc.). No. Just simply how physics reacts with them as a solid, complete object. It's an interesting subject to me because I don't have enough knowledge on the subject (she was frowning again) to draw any conclusions that satisfy me. All conjecture. Hypothesis. All in the name of the scientific process. I think being at the beach, however, aggravates the subject in my mind. How can you be at the beach, with hundreds of girls walking around in bathing suits and not be thinking about their breasts? I'm only human. And a boy. "Soul Finger" just came on the jukebox. What a great song. Sadly enough, though, I can hear the music from the kitchen, which is competing with the song in volume. And I'm in the middle. The kitchen has something I don't recognize playing now. Something indie rock-ish. A bad Superchunk. The kitchen is winning. I wish I could move tables. And they all walk in, with no acknowledgment they are late. Girls captivate me. They amaze me. I could watch them forever, I think. My waitress in the restaurant, Amy, even the goth girl. It seems to be a rare thing that a boy appreciates a girl for simply being a person. This is something I don't understand. To take it back several levels: the media lies. The media downplays all it doesn't find sexy. What doesn't it find sexy? Hair. Shit. Pimples. Scars for the most part (or blemishes, if you prefer). It makes me sad. I want to love everyone. Yes, mainly girls, but everyone. I want to appreciate everyone as a human being, as a 3D character in my play of life. And not 'my life' as mine. But my life as the limit of what I experience. Honestly though? It isn't working and it doesn't work. Why? Because people are inherently fucking stupid. Because they are morons. Because I end up hating 80 percent of them. Because I expect people to take control of their lives. To take control of themselves. People are weak and will not stand up for anything. To anything. (I spent too much of my life standing up for myself. Life is too short to not get what you want. That isn't an excuse to be a demanding asshole though. It's a fine line.) Standards? Morals? What are those? And you know what? Fuck those kids. Those are the kids I end up hating. The ones that accept life without any fuss, without a word -- until they don't like where they have ended up and then they complain. They don't do anything to change it. All they do is gripe about how much it sucks. Or how much pain they are in. But they don't take the steps to change it. They get no respect, no sympathy from me. You know who I do respect? The people who have managed to define their sexuality within a set of standards. People who can both be okay with the fact they are sexual creature by design, but yet can restrain themselves to the point where they apply it intelligently. How does that translate to English? I'm not after sluts. We drive past a church. "Was that a bunch of people drinking on the church steps?" I ask outloud, unable to conceal my amazement. "Yup," is the only answer from the front seat. To be honest, I can't even tell who said it. I think about it for a moment. And then I am not sure it matters. A dog barks, off in the distance. Amazing. It is extremely surreal. Dogs at the beach are rare. They imply responsibility, not relaxation. Especially during beach week. No one wants to remember to take care of an animal. The barking is unexpected; it defines the moment for me. It not only brings me to the here and now, it expands the moment. It makes the moment more concrete, more solid. I watch people move about the sidewalks, about their lives. About the town. (Is it a town? I don't even know. It certainly can't be a city. That only leaves town, right?) Couples. Girls. Boys. Whatever. They walk with a purpose. With a mission and I feel as if, by observing them, I am part of the action. Part of them. It is more romantic that way. And if you learn anything about me, it is that I can't pass up an opportunity to enjoy a romantic moment. Even if it is my own stupidity that creates it. It's eight-thirty at night. And I'm sitting here writing. Watching people drift past. A Wednesday night and as time moves on (as it is prone to do) more and more people begin to drift by. I've actually gotten somewhat drunk. Why? Fuck if I know. It only took a bit of wine and here I am, typos and envy, writing like a mad poet. (Mussolini: "I am not a statesman, I am a mad poet.") I just drooled on myself. I don't think anyone noticed, but it certainly measures where I am, where I have come from. Is this a good thing? I mean, I fought against this. Well, fought is such a strong word. A girl walks past. No, she saunters. I'm not sure if it's because I'm slightly drunk or if it's because it's the truth, but it's a saunter if I've ever seen one. I want to love her. If I had noticed her before she passed me, I would be in love with her right now. As it is, I'm not to the point where I will fall in love with her ass. I want to though. I feel like I owe her that much. I think I fall in love about 3 times a week. Not for real, of course. But real enough that the girl I fall in love with mesmerizes the rest of my day. Whom did I fall in love with last? I don't remember. I find girls immensely interesting because I think they are beautiful and smart. Sexy and chaste. Flawless and yet individual. In truth, they always manage to let me down. But that doesn't deter me. For the next several hours, I'll think about her. Then I forget. Then she becomes another faceless statistic. Even worse, she won't. I won't even think about her after that. I forget I ever saw her. I think it's a beautiful thing. To want to know someone so intimately. To be so immediately attracted to someone. To want to acknowledge they are worth being here. Walking the earth. Existing. It never works out that way though. I think most people find it offensive. Or freakish. Abnormal. The ones that don't don't care at all. Which is the most depressing of all. How bad does it suck to think someone could be the light of your life only to find out they don't care at all what you think? That they don't even know you exist? It happens all the time to me. Quite sad. But that's how I've learned to realize they aren't for me anyway. It's all I can do. A girl rides by in the back of a pickup truck. She is really quite pretty -- straight red hair. She is wearing overalls and a tight white shirt, which, while not indecent, certainly does nothing to diminish or hide her breasts. Very decidedly un-beach type of clothing. There is a boy on either side of her. One is my age, with glasses and a beard; the other seems older and more muscled. Not sculptured. Raw. Army. Or else Marines. She looks drunk. They look happy -- each has a hand on one of her thighs. She and I make eye contact and I can't tell if she is profoundly sad or simply wasted. Her eyes don't focus. I worry. My eyes linger on her as the truck disappears down the strip fading in with the dozens of other cars, all in a line. The police cruise by. Several times. I can't tell if it is the same car or not. It cruises down the block, as if it is daring someone to come out of a hotel room and challenge the big man with the gun. Everyone is too drunk, though even drunk everyone is smart enough to avoid the officer. It is funny. I want to explain to him that in order for it to work, it needs to be on a more subtle level. A level he simply doesn't care about. I turn my gaze back inside and forget about him after he passes the second time. As if he wants to single-handedly bust a party on the 5th floor of a Holiday Inn tonight. Even with help, I don't think that is his idea of a good time. I think the police have a timid acceptance of what is happening. They will rock the boat only if things get too bad. Otherwise the kids won't come back next year. Bad for the economy. Capitalism has its advantages, I suppose. A guy with a video camera runs past on the sidewalk. I wonder what it is all about, wonder if I'm somehow caught, anonymously, on his tape. How many places has this happened in the world to me? How many digital copies of me exist? How many of those copies do I even know about? Are they any more real than I am? How many places in the world do I exist? Little pieces of my soul; pieces that somehow influence others' lives without me even knowing. What makes a person attractive? What makes me love someone? Or, once I know them, what makes me like them? I'm not even talking about the innate abilities or attributes I might be looking for in someone. I'm talking about the base level, the part that can be applied to anyone. What makes me like one person and not the next? I mean, everyone has stories. Everyone has likes and dislikes. Everyone has a life. How can one be more interesting to me than another? This idea intrigues me. How can you display your core values to another person? How do we display them? What makes me love you? Somewhere across the way, I hear a girl talking on the phone. A cell, I suppose, a rarity. What other phone would be on the beach carried along the radio currents like a sailboat on the sea? She says: "I'll call you tomorrow." Yeah, I bet. The girl will never call. Tomorrow never comes; let's keep that in mind -- even if it a cliche. "Wow. You didn't?!" I cease to care at this point, even though her voice continues to reach me, even though I am forced to hear her half of the conversation. She sounds lame. Is that catty and shallow of me? A motorcycle races past on the main street behind me. It's early and not many cars are cruising the strip yet. Which is worse: the roar of cars tearing up and down the strip of land quickly or people cruising more slowly up and down the strip looking for people to pick up as the bass of their music vibrates the hairs on the back of your neck? "What did you tell him?" I can't answer either question. Mine or hers. The girl and her conversation leave my hearing range. I'm glad she's gone. The sun sets off to my right. Right? West? What's the difference? Sure, I am on the beach but somehow, the sun sets to my right. Not behind me as most would think. Rises east, sets west. I'm on the east coast, facing the ocean. It should set behind me. Not to my right. The beach is empty. The kids have moved in for the evening. Away from the water, into the rooms with electricity to begin the drunken rituals of being a child. Or of growing into an adult. I don't know. I never professed to understand. And I don't. What am I supposed to learn anyway? Will I be forever lacking if I haven't? I don't care. I glance over to my right. Fuck. It isn't the sun setting -- it is a light on one of the beach houses. At some point the fucking thing cut on, distracted my peripheral vision and I tricked myself into thinking it was the sun. Fuckin' hell. Leave it to me to make something more romantic than it really is. Figures. And now it's almost too dark to write anything. Fuck. So many thoughts flowing through my head and yet I can't get them down because I can't see to write. Thanks a bunch, God. Cut me off in the middle of a decent thought. Typical somehow. And with that, we load up the car and start the drive home. The sun is just starting to rise above the buildings, reflecting off the water as the ocean disappears behind us. I smile. Come over. Love me like you used to when the sun was high and so were we, as if the love we shared was forever and even if we thought that it was, we knew that deep down we were merely tricking each other with thoughts that could be made to look like someone else as we embraced and our tongues danced on the surface of each other like licking porcelain which might seem foul but at the same time gives the tongue a brilliant cool feeling like sucking on an ice cube but without the harsh coldness or the cube actually being in your mouth like you used to be when I was in love with you. ---*--- I tried not to think too much during the week. Otherwise, I wouldn't enjoy it. I didn't want to question why I was there, why everyone else was there or what I should be doing. I should have been doing what I wanted to do, not necessarily what was expected of me. It was difficult. It drained me. Like most things tended to do. ---*--- Stocking cap, sunglasses, white wife-beater tee shirt with some punk rock design silk-screened onto the front of it. A breeze blows by. I'm sweating in my black tee shirt and swim trunks. I wonder who this fuck thinks he is. And why he is wearing this stocking cap? My hand writes in time to the music in my ears, my cursive swishing to the beat. Will I be able to read this later? Probably not. But it feels the way life should. The way I should. The way I wish I did. ---*--- So here I go again on my own. I wanted to make an example out of you. Why is it so much better to hear jazz in a coffeehouse than anything else? Or is it just me? It took me weeks to convince you to go out with me again. After New Year's. You didn't want to break up yet, but you felt weird around me. Distant. Sometime in February maybe? It was right after that Montreal baseball game. Can that be right? Is there baseball that early in the year? Isn't it football season still? I'm not sure why I remember it that way. I know that's when we went to the coffeehouse, though. Not a house, but that's almost a given -- right? I mean, there is no room in a city for a house. We got to laughing (thankfully) when I drew angry faces on Styrofoam plates (which had held cookies), underneath the faces I wrote "motherfucker" and "bad sex." If you hadn't found this funny, I would have been in deep shit. I still have those plates. Motherfucker. ---*--- And another question (I know you're tired of them. I am too.): What makes any one person smarter than any other one? Given that the majority of intelligence is not based on I.Q. but experiences (a big if, I will admit), what works? (Intelligence can't just be determined before birth; it can't be just neuron connections. There is conditioning in there, right?) And (excuse me for presuming this) since you are shrugging, why has no one investigated this? What were the conditions that created an Einstein? When you get right down to it, it was luck. More concretely, what was it? Wouldn't you think the government would be working on this? Look at what good old Albert gave us. Them. So what would the Army produce if they tried? Let's take a trip, you and I. To old Hollywood. The one where everything is in grainy Technicolor. Not those recolored pictures, but to those first few years of colored movies. When black and whites mixed with those in grainy color. Because you know that's what people looked like then. Where only dreams come true and were never ever squashed by drugs or violence. Where the backdrops were painted and minorities did not exist. Is that bad to have said? I don't really want to be there, you know. I just miss you. I miss the idea of you. I wish things felt right. That things would end right. Like they should. Simple. I miss the idea of you. Of things being right. I want to cry. Inevitably, I've gotten annoyed during the week. Not simply annoyed, I feel trapped. I haven't seen or met anyone that relates to me on any substantial level. It is frustrating and unpleasant. The fifth night we are here, I decide I can't take it anymore. I leave the room around 8:30, right about the time everyone else is making preparations and drinks to go out. They don't try and stop me -- they know better. When I get in these moods, it's much better to just let me alone. Otherwise I get cranky and fussy and I act like a 5-year-old. Isn't that what all of you have ever said? When I don't get my way. I clear out. The town is divided into two halves. North and south. Along the beach. We are staying in the middle of 7th South Street. First stop is the arcade. Filled with people with much larger problems than myself (it is a Thursday, but it is a Thursday two blocks from the beach, during beach week at nine at night. Prime pre-party time); I can't stay long. It is filled with losers; it is depressing with its heavy, resigned, static-heavy atmosphere of monitors, quarters and body odor. I don't want to associate with this crowd, this mentality. The air is thick and it makes me depressed. Resigned despair. I feed the machine a dollar in quarters, play my two games, clear nine stages and leave. I don't have the heart for it. I walk. I left my Discman back in the room on purpose. I want to try and absorb this atmosphere. Or understand it. I don't want to be a part of it, but I want another point of view. I can't get that if I trap myself in a world of thumping clangs, rhythmic noises and looped vocals. I want to play by everyone else's rules tonight. Not mine. I look up. 10 North. I have already walked 17 blocks. I haven't even soaked anything in yet. I keep walking, paying more attention this time. Walking more slowly. Trying to learn. So many people. I think that's what scares me the most. Too many people in too small a space. All wanting the same thing. What they consider a good time. I watch the cars and trucks roll by, barely moving faster than I am walking. Music blasts out of most of them, most bass lines distorted and amped beyond recognition. What is that song? "Women Respond To Bass." Perhaps they do. But the women this bass attracts aren't the type I want. That in itself makes me stop envying these peoples' vehicles as they crawl past me, neon trim glowing in purples and blues underneath the car frames. Gold rims, vanity plates. Motorcycles rev past me, the drivers and the girls hanging onto them, all without helmets. The girls all seem to look the same. To give them some credit, I can distinguish one from the other when standing here, seeing them. But from a distance, of time or space, they are the same. They all look like Playboy centerfolds -- airbrushed, mostly naked, blonde and painted. Breasts popping out of whatever piece of cloth they are pretending covers them. Fake. On every level. I try not to shake my head, knowing they all can see me. See me as the odd man out, the boy walking down the street, alone and without a car and a girl. A loser. I start walking again. A wave of hot air pushes itself off a car and onto me. It feels gross. Dirty. It takes all people. It really does. Am I only another piece in the puzzle, the mosaic? Am I part of something larger, even here, where I don't want to be? ---*--- I used to worry about sex. A lot. Not about the actual event, but how I related to it. How many partners people had in life, how many amounted to normal. Where I fell on the scale. For the most part this has evaporated as I've learned who I am and what I want out of life. But sometimes, it will sneak up on me and I feel some weird obligation to pursue mindless sex with random strangers. I can't ever act on it, but the thought is enough to worry me. It tires me. Like everything else in my life. ---*--- Boys on motorcycles roar by. There is a small open patch of road. They rev the engines, pop wheelies and roar down the strip, squealing to a stop when they hit traffic. I yell and clap, cheering them on. Why? Oh, I want them to crash. Burn. I'm acknowledging they have huge cocks. Showing off like that proves they are more of a man than me. Dumb fucks. I end up walking 34 blocks, one way. Up to 27 North. I never find what I am looking for while walking. People keep drifting by, headlights and noise. That's really it. No one speaks to me; I speak to no one. Nothing more than cursory glances. Well, I pay more attention to people than they do to me. Even my once- or twice-overs don't last long though. And no one pays me any mind. Until I get to 27 North. There is a party in a house. I had walked past the hotels and souvenir shops, past the more expensive hotels, and into a residential area. More houses, less crap. The house, like most here, is on stilts. In case the ocean floods. Music, loud rock music (White Zombie), comes from inside, through the walls, through the open windows. Through the open door. A girl is sitting in the windowsill, looking out, while talking to several people (I assume -- I can't see them) inside. She sees me, as I stand there, both frozen by the party and the distance I have walked. "Hey!" She is cute. A bob cut, dark hair. She looks very small. She is wearing a tank top that exposes her flat stomach, even sitting as she is on the sill. She has a plastic cup in her hand. I fall for it. As in most comedies, I look behind me, around me. Finally I look back at her and point at myself. Mouthing the word, "Me?" "You look bored -- come have a drink!" I consider it for a moment. But isn't this what I am looking for? I walk up. How can I refuse? This is it. The house isn't full of people, but it is more crowded than I expect. I make my way over to the windowsill. "Hi." I am nervous and shy. She is sitting alone, no longer talking to anyone, if she had been to begin with. Her lip is pierced. "Hi! What are you doing?" She is peppy. And cute. "Talking to you?" "No. I meant before. Before I yelled at you." "Nothing. I mean, I was walking. But I wasn't doing anything particular." I am so scared of blowing this. So crazy frightened. I am shaking. She giggles. "From where?" "My hotel. 7th South." "Jesus. Why?" "I was just bored I guess. Lonely and bored." "I'm Liz." "Zach." "Nice to meet you." "And I you." She starts swirling her cup around, watching the contents stick to the inside wall of the cup. Counterclockwise. "So why weren't you doing anything?" She seems almost insulted. Almost concerned. "I don't know. I just, I just haven't felt like it. I've been . . . I don't know." "Unhappy?" "Yeah. I suppose that's the right word. It seems oversimplified." "Well, you should have fun, dear. Relax. That's why you're down here, right? Do you drink?" "No." "Well, that's probably half your problem. Do you like OJ?" "Yeah. But no alcohol." "I'll go get you some OJ. Just OJ. Stay here. You'll have fun yet. I promise." "Okay . . . " "No, it's all right. I'll be right back." She hops off the sill, gives me a hug (I consider passing out) and scampers off. I am numb. This is it. This is what I have been looking for all along. I can't fucking believe it. I am ecstatic. Numb is the right word. But insanely happy as well. A hug? What did I do to get that? For the first five minutes I am insanely happy. She will come back and we will talk. She will tell me about the awful boys who hit on her, her dream of being to be a forensic pathologist for the FBI, how many times a week she flosses. We will get along well, at least for the time being, and I will have someone to spend time with the rest of the week. That's all I want. Then, the longer I stand there, the less I think she is going to come back. I start getting self-conscious. What if she is giving me something other than just orange juice? I start getting worried. Five minutes turn into 10. I wonder if she is held up talking to someone, if she is fucking with me. I wonder exactly what is going on. 11 minutes. 12. Probably not peeing at this point. Where else could she be? Giving head in a bathroom? That's unfair. I am getting defensive. Nervous. I look around. Should I go looking for her? 13. 14. I almost don't want her to come back now; I want to hold onto this depressive feeling. I want something to hurt me, something to dwell on and complain about. At 17, I walk out without looking back. I walk the whole way home. Without pause. My eyes not shifting from staring straight in front of me. I don't want to take in anything. Perhaps I am overreacting. Perhaps I am a drama queen and am running away rather than facing what I thought I wanted. But it's what I feel I have to do. I haven't been this hurt in a long time. And I want to be hurt. I want that opportunity to remain in my bubble. I know she will walk back up with a drink for me two minutes after I leave. I have no problem leaving, even knowing that. It is the way things always work for me. It is never good enough. I wake up in the middle of the night. I'm not sure if it is from a dream, from something in the real world or from nothing at all. I lay there, on my side, facing the bathroom. Amy passed out beside me. The room is dark. Not pitch though. Lights from the boardwalk, from the front of the motel, flood though the cheap curtains, filtered just enough to prevent it from being inappropriately sheer. It produces a hazy yellow light almost as if we are underwater. The notion strikes me with a romantic fascination. It is beautiful. But then, I find most things beautiful. I can't actually see the curtains from where I am laying. Instead, I can see the light bouncing onto the facing wall -- the same wall I am facing. There is also a night-light in the kitchen area. I don't know why it hadn't been unplugged before we all went to sleep. Guess no one noticed it. Maybe someone was comforted by the little candle-shaped glow from its 15-watt bulb. I consider rolling over, seeing if anything is stirring. I debate. And rule against it. I don't care that much. I also want my space. Turning would put me in a nurturing position with Amy. The thought makes me feel awkward. I consider getting up to go to the bathroom. And then decide against that, too. I don't really have to pee. Wanting to pee is one of those reflexive actions when you wake up at night. You feel as if you should get up and relieve yourself, whether you need to or not. Like getting a drink of water. I think about it some more. No. Don't have to pee. I feel like by 18, I should instinctively know whether or not I have to pee. I shouldn't have to weigh the possibilities. I shouldn't have to stop and think to make sure. I should know. Reflex, it's all about the reflex. But I guess I'm not there yet. Not even after 18 years. ---*--- Do you hate it when you see someone and they totally captivate you? Doesn't it tear you up? Because no matter what, the odds of them staring at you even half as long as you have stared at them is astronomical. A depressing scenario. I spent the entire week walking, looking, digging for someone like that, just so I could feel like something had come from my time there. From my emotions. My desires. No. Nothing. No one. Really quite depressing. I'm not sure if it was the drinking. Or the parties, the cars or the people. I don't know what went into it that made every person I met seem lame, uninteresting or unattractive. But it's the truth. I was looking. I wanted it. I wanted to meet someone (or even just see someone) that I could connect with. If not in real life, then in my mind. Solace. Eventually, though, I made peace with myself. I assumed people were doing the same to me. I had to believe that, otherwise I'd go crazy. And I accepted the fact that these times were something to be valued. Not to press my luck. Not to hope for more than that. And that made it more bearable in my mind. I think about girls. About wanting them to be perfect. Clean. Right. Smelling of baby powder, tasting like jellybeans. I don't want them like me -- picking their noses and streaking their underwear. Is that bad? I want them to know the importance of keeping me at bay. Of keeping me at bay. ---*--- Where did you go? When I needed you most you left me. I saw you. I saw you. You were there. Around me. Floating. Maybe like an angel out of the corner of my eye. Flirting, laughing, making a mockery of me. Of my emotions. And I'd turn to face you, you were gone. Disappeared. Back into a crowd of people. The music, so loud. Pounding. You. Me. It's the only thing I can do -- you drove me to this. Here. I'm all that's left. Can't you see? I weep for us. I truly do. There's nothing left but pain between us. In the space between us. In the air between us. Zeno, the tortoise and Achilles, when ever closer isn't good enough. But if that were really true, why do I miss you so badly? Is it like junk? Easier to just keep self-destructing rather than deal with withdrawal? Why do you avoid me? Is that why you do? I saw you there, at that party. You were there, weren't you? Pushed around while Earth, Wind and Fire played on the stereo. I want to scream. It isn't even September. I am frantic. Frantic with you. Am I happy? I am happy. And? I want to scream. Am I truly content? I am content. And? I scream. I am walking down the sidewalk. Someone across the street sneezes. I say, "Bless you." It reminds me of you. You bless everyone when they sneeze. I do it now. Not consciously. But when I notice myself doing it, I think of you. Is there anything in my life now that doesn't remind me of you? The person who sneezed says, "Thank you." It surprises me they heard. From across the street. The car ride is amazing. The sights. The billboards. The cars. The people in cars. The lights. Watching people, especially girls, race by as profiles. People speeding up, slowing down. Falling in love with the person in the car next to yours. I guess everyone does this; how could they not? To be able to see someone for that second. To be able to decide whether this person is attractive to you. Based solely on their profile in that instant. Do girls do this? I know boys do. Well, I do. Every time I get in the car. I think I can meet my soulmate while driving down the interstate. Never mind the logistics of actually getting her attention, stopping her, talking to her, loving her. That doesn't matter. What matters is that it could happen. In my mind. This is an unfortunate side effect of hearing a story about Stephanie. A girl almost dies because someone is mixing Everclear with tequila. A security guard comes in looking for the alcohol. We don't have anything to do with it. But Jason is drunk, which makes the whole ordeal even more fucked up and stressful. "I'm a penis with arms." "That's nice." "Yeah, I bet you think so." "I like penises with arms. Actually." "Why do you tease like that? No girl loves the penis. It's ugly. They love the boy. The penis is residual." "Maybe. Maybe that means I love you." "Let's be honest. Do you?" "No." The party is actually tolerable. This is because Amy makes me drink a bit of wine before we leave the room. This is a sad reality. I have let myself down. Finally. But that's okay. Well, it isn't, but it's what I tell myself. I am lonely. Depressed. And that brought out all the things I don't like or want in my personality. It makes me needy. Sad. Destructive. Even if the destruction is simply having a couple of glasses of wine. And the past is done. And my choices are to regret it and have a miserable time or try and understand what it is I have been fighting all this time. I go with the latter. I don't have enough to really matter. Wine. And maybe that is the problem; I'm not having any better of a time. It is wine. I can write that off more easily as "not really drinking." Pearl Jam comes on. I sit in a chair and try to decide whether to go with it or fight it. I go with it. Perhaps a mistake. I sing along, my eyes closed, trying to feel the song. And I do. But it is too much. The song ends and I have to get up and walk around. It is too much. I'm not sure whether it is the drinks or the music. The room might be spinning. Or maybe it is me. People drift past me, talking, screaming. Least that's how I feel it. I almost feel good. Which is weird. It's like I am punishing myself. A release of some sort. My head hurts. Stupid fucking cheap red wine. Amy seems pleased with herself. This fact alone makes me want to never again get drunk. I don't like her smugness. It is taunting. And it is certainly rude -- she doesn't care about showing me how to have fun. Several glasses of wine and I am no longer unique. I was hoping for some sort of guide. Some sort of friend. But it seems her whole point is to corrupt me. Not to nurture me. This realization stings me a bit. It dawns on me she isn't as much as I have made her out to be. I shake it off. I have to. Another song comes on. I know it, too. I go through a "Do I sing or do I not?" deliberation. Like driving alone in your car. You listen for a minute, weighing the possibility of being embarrassed versus the feeling of screaming lyrics you love at the top of your voice. Or at least mouthing them to yourself like a silent prayer. I opt to not sing. This is the right choice. It saves some face; I need as much as I can get. The muscles, the skin inside my mouth feels like someone's genitals. Maybe my own after a dream of you. Wet, soft, but muscles tight under the skin. I'm drunk. I make a face at an Asian boy in a polo shirt across the room. I want to dance. I started the week wanting to be happy. Halfway through the week I thought I was falling in love too easily. Even though it was buying me nothing, getting me nowhere. Now? I'm giving up. I'm savoring the opportunity to find every girl I see to be beautiful in her way. Violins, Mr. Caulfield. Violins, man. But I am not going to dive after them in a needy, emotional sense. I'll admire them from afar. It'll be healthier that way. Who do I think I'm kidding? Salty like your mouth. I miss it, can you tell? I believe I have it and think, "Well, that's the last time I am going to fall in love," and then that girl over there crosses the street with her tight red shirt on, the one that looks like shit, even on her, but for some reason I can't help but to love her because she is wearing it. And I have to watch her cross the street, admire her for the moment that she is living right then and you watch me watch her as you sit across from me at this pizza place, jealous and hurt that I can watch another human being, a girl, with such interest and awe, especially when she looks like such a slut and is only crossing the street. You wonder why I don't look at you with such awe. It's a question for which I have no real answer. I can say we have moved past that, that our relationship actually hinges on something true, rather than a shared (or in this case, observed) instance in time where everything else seems to stand still. Or maybe that's what you expect -- a lifetime of those movements. I wish I could agree. I wish I thought that's what love was. I flash back to months ago -- to being on a school bus with you. Changing for marching band. For some football game or other. The bus is full of kids changing into uniforms -- girls in bras, boys in boxers. I had forgotten the smell. I had forgotten the experience. The close quarters of a bus, all of you miles away from home, performing. Working. Staring at each other as you change, throwing water balloons and smoking in rest stop bathrooms. But the smell of the bus, after you had performed, was always the worst. The combination of each sex's locker room. The combined sweat of 100 adolescents of both sexes. The bus windows fogged up and white underwear abounded. No one wore anything but white then. No one wanted to appear sexy. Blocking each other as you change. The music plays on in the background and suddenly (because I'm thinking of band), it seems more full, more vibrant. I can almost feel it moving me, rather than something my ears translate in their own tone-deaf fashion. The lights flicker, my head spins and I bring myself back up to reality -- through the layers of memories I have created in the past second for myself -- away from band, from buses and restaurants. I open my eyes. I think I'm going to puke. I'm not sure what I think of my drinking. Well, not the drinking as much as what I feel like I should learn from the drinking. Is it a good thing? Something I approve of? Something I want to do again? I don't know. I feel like the answer should be no. Like saying the answer is yes is admitting some kind of weakness to myself. Let the night finish before I decide how it should be wrapped up. Whether I am as weak as I appear to myself. I sit here. The candles are smoking (who lights candles for a party?) and the shadows are dancing. I wish people just weren't so silly. I mean, really. Girls whispering secrets about thongs and flowers. Boys placing bets on sports and girls. It is too much. It really doesn't take much to overwhelm me these days, does it? It's times like these that make me feel as if life is a waste of time. Sitting on a sofa, in a room, lit by candles. Bored, tired, dark. Watching people pass and girls talk. Wondering why the ceiling fan isn't on and running my fingers through my hair. A girl gives me a double-take and talks about getting up early. I have to pee. And my eyes hurt. You show up at the party. Yes, I have avoided you somehow through most of the week. As if you are only a ghost, a memory of some parallel universe I no longer have to contend with. But then you are here. Along with everyone else. I feel the air thicken. It doesn't, of course; I think I feel it though. Maybe it does. Which is worse? I feel like I am in some angst-ridden teen movie -- where everything should slow down as you walk into the room. It doesn't. Things begin to move in double-time for me. You don't even see me. I fall into fear-shock. Panic. I've been drinking. I am nervous, embarrassed and more vulnerable to your siren call. To the hurt. To the past. I cast around the room for something or someone to hide behind. I am praying in my head as I let my eyes dart around for my body. It is a fucking rental house. There isn't anywhere for me to hide. Once this has been established firmly in my mind, I do the next best thing -- I march right up to you and confront my problem. I am drunk. "Hi." I don't give you time to translate my greeting. "I didn't expect to see you here." You smile, politely. I am not sure if it is actually politeness or if you are amused at my drunkenness. "I hadn't planned on it. But here I am." Your eyes dart away from me as soon as you finish the sentence. You don't want to be talking to me. And who can blame you? I feel sure you are laughing at me for drinking. I confirm your suspicion. "I've been drinking." "I can tell." You smile again, humoring me. You glance away. "I've missed you." I realize I've veered off course. I didn't want to say that. At no point had the plan be to admit that weakness to you. "I know. Listen -- have you seen Amy? I need to talk to her." I motion towards the kitchen, where I last saw her. "She's in there." "Thanks." You wander away, nimbly stepping through the crowd, never once looking back. I expect it. It doesn't make me as sad as I thought it would. It wasn't terribly painful to speak to you and even though I poured my secret out to you, your reaction was no real surprise. The truth? I do miss you. I have been drinking. What else do you want me to say? You walked away. Time regains its normal course. I can gather my thoughts. I am no longer afraid of the words slipping out of my mouth before I have even thought them. And then I realize I am standing very much by myself in the middle of the room. I know no one here. This realization only leads to more panic. I glance around the room, in circles, almost comically. Nothing. No one is even looking towards me. This sets off alarms in my head. And I weigh my options. Drunkenly. I wander into the kitchen, the same way I had pointed you not two minutes before. This is going to be more trouble. But I can't stop myself. People are more easily convinced of things after drinking. I have been drinking. My eye twitches. I'm not sure if it is because of the situation, my drinking or something else entirely. Echoes of life, my life, myself, flash before me. Every step I take seems like deja vu. Is this what it is like to be drunk? Is this how love is supposed to feel all the time? Which is worse? Not seeing you when I come into the kitchen or realizing I am still alone? I can't decide. I can't even think at this point anyway. It doesn't matter. I am alone. A giant furry moth is on the screen leading outside. It is on the inside, clinging, absorbing the light from the kitchen light. Maybe resting. I study it closely and then walk out the back door, shutting it behind me. I sit down on the back stairs, drink in hand. And for the first time since I picked the drink up I realize I am holding a cup of alcohol. I look around. I pour the liquid out of the cup, watching it step down the stairs like some sort of Asian water garden. It doesn't even go all the way down. It never hits the ground. This saddens me. I think to myself if there is any time this week that I should meet the perfect girl, that this will be it. Me, at my most vulnerable. Drunk. Almost drunk. Sitting antisocially on the back steps of this party. Giving up. Waiting for a conversation. For company. For love. Or infatuation. Then I think to myself -- how long do I sit here waiting for this girl? What period of time is acceptable for this sad display? When do I give up and realize it simply isn't going to happen tonight? Maybe never? The entire time, The Smiths runs through my head -- "How Soon Is Now?" plays on a loop. How long will I sit here before I go home and cry on my own? I sit for about 25 minutes. That's how long it takes for me to face facts that the universe and life aren't as perfect or beautiful as in a movie. Or a book. That magic and fate aren't riding with me now. That parties aren't glamorous. Or if they are, it's because you make them. That my uniqueness, my intriguing-ness, my attractiveness will not magically deliver that which I most desire effortlessly and automatically. Part of me wants to cry. The other wants to kick that part's ass. I get up and walk back inside. "Between the destination and the journey." It is on the car ride home that I notice this. You can trick your eyes into believing the wheels of cars are not actually touching the ground. The two surfaces move across each other so quickly, you can make your eyes believe there is a fraction of space between the two. I want us to be flying. I want to feel that way. That special, supernatural. That unique. I haven't all week. ---*--- I'm sitting on my balcony, years later. A cool night, Soul Coughing playing, Belgian white ale in my bloodstream. And the bass strums on. People scurry past -- it's night and they no longer wish to be walking the streets. Boys with no shirts on and backwards baseball caps. Time changes nothing. "5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, 35, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70, 75, 80, 85, 90, 95, 100" It's amazing how few stars you can see in the sky from where I am on this balcony. Sad. I wonder why speed and movement were so important to me. Or why I expected so much from people. Why did I feel such an urge to rise above? This book has taken years of writing. And I'm no closer to making myself happy. Sure, this balcony provides some nice moments I'd like to believe I can hold onto forever, but I won't. I wish life was like this eternally. Or at least more often. Timeless. Comfortable. Not simply once or twice a year. My head presses up against the glass door behind me and I feel it give slightly. It's comfortable and scary at the same time. A girl and her dog walk by. What does it say when I'm more interested in the dog? And the steeple across the street is lit like a Christmas tree. I'll miss this place when I'm gone. One more chapter finished. ---*--- Amy gave me the brochure for the place months ago. I never read the thing. I didn't care. In the slightest. I had no input on the plan anyway; it was a cursory gesture. But what did interest me on this brochure was the woman pictured on the front. She was looking at the camera -- as I saw it, she was looking at me. She was holding a pair of glasses. She had dark hair that fell in straight strands around her face and onto her neck. Large, deep, Bambi eyes. A slight Italian or Middle Eastern complexion. But it was the look on her face that gave it away. Her eyes, they were wide and knowing. They saw right through me. And her mouth. It wasn't smiling. It was smirking. In a sexy way. Like: "I know you. I know what you want. And I want it, too." As if we shared a secret. We did. I masturbated over that picture. Over that secret. It wasn't her. It wasn't her hair. Or her eyes. Or even her mouth. It was what was supposed to be inside her. Does that make sense? I loved the idea of her. The picture was a gorgeous moment. I fell in love with her like my dozens of other girls. For one simple movement, one second. That moment propels them into my heart while they are in my line of sight. I move on, my heart broken and healed in the span of minutes. And that's exactly what made this brochure so special. I had the moment, frozen in front of me whenever I wanted it. It wasn't something I had to carry inside of myself while I moved through life. It was at my fingertips whenever I wanted it. And I loved that. It was God at the mall, frozen in 2D for me whenever I needed her. Does this make sense? Does this make me sad, pathetic? I'd like to think not. But I fear it does. On some level. Especially the way I've simply described the whole idea to you in a couple hundred words. It can't do my feelings justice. Or my love. A girl walks by. A cute girl. As she passes, right after she walks past me, after I can't really see her very well anymore, after we make eye contact, she licks her lips. That's all. It is a small victory. But small victories are better than no victories at all. I take what I can get. I like believing that, at least on some small level, I have some amount of sway over girls. That some of them find me attractive. So I keep running into this girl. Not my ex. This other girl. One I'd like to meet. No. Not really meet. I don't want an introduction, really. What I want is to talk to her. To really talk. To have a conversation that seems to mean something. Not that my conversations don't mean anything usually, but I want to feel important. No. That's wrong too. I want us to feel important. There's a difference. I'm not looking for someone to talk to that increases my self-confidence. I want to talk to someone like we will rule the world. Together. Like the Three Musketeers. Except there would be two of us. Actually, not like the Three Musketeers at all. I've seen her around, in a store. On the street. Maybe on the beach once. Never at a party. Always when she is with people, so I can't approach her. She never looks at me. I gave up thinking about her after the third time of seeing her out and her pretending not to notice me. When Kate and I broke up it tore me up. From the inside out. Or maybe the outside in. Or, to put it very simply: it fucked me up. I feel better but the pain she left me with will never be entirely gone. I am a romantic. I am needy. I am sad. Suddenly I want to cry. ---*--- I really do believe there is a girl out there for me. A soulmate? I really want to believe this is true. Maybe I feel like it might not be because I no longer believe that word is the end all and be all. It sounds nice. But it also sounds tired. Cliched. One could even argue it sounds silly. I do believe there is a girl out there, perhaps where I am right now. Perhaps she just looked at me. Who I could get along with entirely. Without any real work, without any real question. Who I could see as both a person as well as a supreme being. As God. Is that blasphemous? To want to take communion of my wife? The steeple rises high in the sky piercing me like your tongue -- the forked one, not the one with the hole in it from years ago (yesterday). It was recently because you couldn't eat anything solid for weeks -- and then when you picked up the phone and it was me on the other end, you sounded surprised as the theme song to my life played on even though you scoffed at the idea of this being our song and you never wanted me like I wanted you. It hurt. Do you hear me? It hurt me when you said this wasn't our song -- even though it had been our song to me every time I fucking heard it. Every time it came on the radio, every time I was out and it came on a jukebox, I thought of you. And you ruined it. So I am taking it back -- it no longer belongs to you. Or us. I take it back and it's mine again. So fuck you and don't tell me you never hurt my feelings. And the song scrapes out of the radio. ---*--- As the girl walks by, her feet land in beat with the music playing through my headphones. How often does this happen? I wonder. Do other people notice this? Am I normal? Does it matter? I am at the party. In a hotel, after I left the stairs, after we left the house. My wine has worn off. A high-rise hotel building overlooking the beach. Overlooking? On the beach. Perverted. Thankfully though, as sick as that fact makes me feel, as sick as the wine made me feel, I don't dwell on either and try to move on with my life. Try to. I want to enjoy the evening. Amy. Stephanie, me. And the group from before: Paul, David, Travis, Vanessa, the hot girl, and the boy with the girl's name. He has a big crush on the hot girl. It's almost amusing to see something that could so closely parallel my own life played out in front of me. It seems to put my life into perspective. More pathetic. Less pathetic. It doesn't fucking matter. But I think I love that girl. I'm not sure if it's because she reminds me of this girl I used to love from camp or if it's something more. Either way it doesn't change the fact that I feel as if I must have some sort of emotional struggle with this guy over her. This guy who has had many more experiences with this girl who I will never see again. It's fucked up. But this girl . . . oh, this girl. She is blonde. Tan. Well-formed. A pierced belly button, which I usually hate, but somehow she makes it endearing. Maybe I'm just desperate. Or stupid. Much like this story. Hanging out in a hotel room with a bunch of people would normally make me so uncomfortable I would flee. I'm not sure how this gets by me. Maybe I'm trying to show off. Maybe I'm more predictable and stupid than I would like to believe. It always seems to be others who can read you like a book. Never yourself. I told this to you once. You didn't like it. You had gotten mad at me sometime towards the end of our relationship. Fair enough. You always said I was the jackass. You called me. You got mad. You hung up. And then you called back. I knew you would. I told you. This wasn't said to rub it in. To make you even more angry. You didn't buy it. Instead you called me the jackass. But it took me to notice your patterns. Because you saw them as random. You couldn't see the overall picture. So here I am, on the 11th floor of a hotel in a room I don't want to be in. Playing cards. Or, more honestly, watching everyone else play cards around me. For the second time this day, in the same room, the same people. ---*--- I like riding in cars. This shouldn't surprise you at this point. There's something isolated about it. About being cut off from the rest of the world. About the motion. The motion I think is what really gets me. So what did I learn? What did being out at the beach teach me about life? About me? What can I walk away from it with? I don't know, to be honest. And to tell you would be a cop-out. I want to tell you the story, not solve it for you. What would I like to believe? I would like to believe I'm less stupid now. Less foolish, less expectant. That I'm not imagining this perfect girl to fall out of the sky. (An eyelash falls on the "a" key. I spend 30 seconds or so trying to get it off the keyboard without having it fall in-between keys where I will never be able to pick it out again. The song ends and in the few seconds of silence before the next one begins, I hear the quiet, almost comforting hum of the warm computer which is sitting in my lap.) The cursor blinks at me and my mind is blank. ---*--- An old man wearing white Reeboks shuffles by. His head is down, way down, though he seems to walk more comfortably than the old woman previously. His pace is fast and smooth. White hair stands shocked, straight up, defying gravity in a way I thought only cartoons could portray. He is simply unhappy. And why not? He reminds me of myself in 60 years. He's stuck at the beach, surrounded by this? And I'm surprised he is unhappy? I don't think so. I think, perhaps, totally naked, all girls are ugly. Without any setting, any accessories. But I want them all. This is how I know I am straight. I don't want to consider anything but the present. Like the fact that this girl will never be what I want her to be. Instead I will press ever onwards, until something completely derails me. It doesn't take much when it comes to girls. The pierced bellybutton tells me enough. I don't want it to. I am a picky boy. I'll admit that. But when I'm looking for attention like I am now, I want to believe in people very badly. It never works out the way I want it to though. Instead I'm inevitably disappointed, unhappy. These things happen. The boy's name is something girly, I think. Maybe Kelly. No, Twiggy. Like the supermodel. The girl's name -- this is much more important. Maybe she is the Kelly, though I think it is something like Emily. But not. I wish I could remember. I know I said I drank tonight. But I don't think I really did. A glass or two of wine doesn't really count, even if it did get me buzzed. It could have been three or four glasses. I don't really remember. I don't really want to. That part at least. After cards, they all take off for the second time that evening and I am left with Amy in the hotel room. Nothing happens; it isn't like that at all. Everyone else is drunk and decides they want to go swimming naked. They first head to the pool in the hotel, find it closed and locked for the night (and why not? It is, after all, 1 A.M. by this point), and head for the ocean. I watch from the room window as smallish dots fly across the sand, stripped naked and, leaving small white dots like eggs, dive into the water. I am out on the balcony with Amy and we can hear their yelps of laughter, drunkenness and chilliness sweeping from the ocean to where we are. We laugh. And talk. The talking is important. And nice. Long overdue. "So, how are you doing?" I'm afraid to begin this conversation in any other way. Actually, this isn't what begins the conversation at all. I'll back up. The kids run out of the room, whooping and hollering like they are mad. I think of Ginsberg -- "I saw the best minds of my generation . . . " Except they aren't. They are just fucking crazy. In some way, I'm glad. I would be sad if these are the best minds this generation has to offer the world. Amy is in the bathroom. I decline the invitation to join them. No, I don't. They don't invite me -- they either expect me to be right with them or they don't notice that I'm not. I don't want to go; I'm not drunk. And I figure it will be rude to leave Amy. So I wait. I sit down on the bed. The toilet flushes. The idea of bathrooms is weird. Not in that they are unnecessary, but they seem so obvious. So embarrassing. Do you ever feel self-conscious when you are in the bathroom and you can hear people on the other side of that door? And since you can hear them, you wonder if they can hear you. It always makes me feel odd. Unnerved. Self-conscious. Amy comes out. "Where is everyone?" "They went swimming." "Oh." She doesn't need to ask why I didn't go. She knows me well enough to not have to ask, a fact I find amusing. I smile a little, still amused at this thought. At the idea that I'm predictably anti-social. At least when it comes to being insane. Or insane in a way that doesn't involve me falling head over heels for a girl I don't even really like. "They're going to the swimming pool." Amy checks her watch. "Won't it be closed? It's 1 A.M." "Yeah, I guess so. I wonder if they'll come back up?" She doesn't join me on the bed; instead she walks over to the glass doors that open to the balcony, which in turn, overlooks the beach and a black expanse of water. "They're heading for the ocean." I stand up, amazed for some reason at them. I walk over to the doors with her. We both kind of fumble for a moment, both of us unsure if we want to open the door or simply look through the glass. Neither one of us wants to decide. In the end, Amy takes the lead and pulls the door open, to the right. I follow her outside -- I'm going to be cold; I can't be rude. It is chilly, but not uncomfortably so. It's the middle of June. But we are also on the 11th floor of a hotel directly overlooking the ocean. The winds created, coming in from the ocean, over 100 and some feet in the air, are enough to make it chilly on the tiny hotel balcony. "How are you doing?" I'm cautious. I don't want to step on her toes; I don't want her on the defensive. She looks at me a little funny, a little drunk, and smiles a drunken smile. When you feel like everything is going well, but the only reason you feel that way is because you're buzzing. Me, a few hours ago. "I'm okay. How are you?" She spaces these sentences out, not with an awkward pause, but as if she is considering both her answer and the follow-up question very seriously. Intently. She wants her words to come out correctly. She's drunk. "I just wanted to make sure you weren't getting sick." This is stupid and I know it. I know she wasn't getting sick; she was peeing. But she looks relieved -- her guard is down, she doesn't think I'm going to lecture her or anything. I'm not going to. I'm trying to show concern. Some love. "Oh, no. I was just peeing." She smiles again and looks out at the kids swimming. We can still hear them whooping and hollering. "Are you having fun?" "Yeah. It's a little boring just sitting here . . . " "I meant in general. Being here." "Oh. Well, yeah. We're done with school. Why wouldn't I be happy?" "Good. I worry about you, you know." "You worry about me?" "Yeah. Of course I do." "Why?" "Because you're important to me. Because you're my friend. Because I see you getting into trouble." She giggles a bit. She smells what she knew was a lecture all along. I back up a step. "I'm not lecturing you. And I'm not going to. If anything, I feel protective. That's all." She looks at me, a little too long for it to be completely casual. She looks down like she wants to take my hand. I try to decide how uncomfortable that would make me. Instead she laughs. "I'm fine. I can take care of myself. You're so silly sometimes." I smile awkwardly. I'm not looking for this. I was asking because I honestly wanted to make sure she was all right. Not because I'm trying to get into her pants. It turns out not to matter. She turns to go inside. Possibly to make out with me, possibly as an exit to escape the moment. It's funny to me that in my head it could go either way and be perfectly reasonable. I am feeling vulnerable. Open. Either reaction would have been okay with me. Though both side-step the real issue. And then the door to the room opens. How the kids snuck past us and made it upstairs without us noticing freaks me out a bit. But here they are. Except for Emily. Amanda. Whatever. The boy who has this crush is hysterical. Madly. Twiggy. He has shoulder length reddish brown hair. A southern twang to his voice . . . I think they are from Georgia. He is yelling and screaming and thrashing. "Something's in the way, don't want it all!" He is screaming. His voices echoes, even in this carpeted hotel room. My first thought is "Good God, she's been swept out sea. She was drunk and she drowned. What the fuck are we going to do?" My second thought is "How do we calm this fucker down?" The solution of hitting him over the head with a bottle follows quickly out of pure panic. I disregard both thoughts and watch the other two boys try to hold him down. I could help but, at the same time, I don't know this fucker; they do. I prefer not to get involved. Amy freaks out. "What is going on?" She's yelling. That volume doesn't register because Twiggy is yelling so loudly that her voice sounds normal. Even yelling, she is difficult to understand over his screams. "Where did you sleep last night?" he screams. One of the boy answers. "Adria." My heart jumps at the mention of her name. "Someone threw some water balloons at us on the way back in. She and David went to find them." Shit. So this girl I hardly know is running around the hotel, with another boy, trying to find another party. Twiggy is flipping out because the girl he likes has left to party hop with people, leaving him behind. He thinks she's going to screw somebody else, leaving him by himself. Again. Maybe it's even this guy David. I can't decide if I respect this reaction or not from him. It is too close to home. He yells. "About a girl, even in his youth." Eventually Twiggy passes out. They just keep giving him beers until he falls. It isn't easy. They don't want to leave after that, leaving him unsupervised. If he wakes up and runs into Adria hooking up, there's no telling what will ensue. It's funny to me that is the worst case -- not that he might die, not that he might try to go to the bathroom to throw up and hit his head and bust his brains all over the hard floor. No, it is simply, "He might see this girl." And you know what? Right now, it makes perfect sense. I can relate. Eventually Vanessa and Travis go looking for Adria and David. And we leave shortly after that. It wasn't much fun to watch them baby-sit him while he was awake, it is even less fun when he is asleep. We don't owe them anything. I don't feel bad leaving. Someone had met these kids -- either at the party the night before or at the club the night before that. I can't keep up. We were invited over for shots, we all went to the house party before ending up at their hotel again. I know I will never see them again after tonight. I'm not sure I would recognize them if I did. Sometime before they all go down to the beach, Twiggy writes this in my journal: "Thank you from my sick insides -- I'm a moody, silly, unpredictable baby! Oh well, whatever. Remember, I'd rather burn out than fade." One night, standing out on the balcony of the hotel. Watching the world roll by, in front of me. I want to imagine I am moving, that everything else is standing still -- it makes me feel comforted. As if I'm not standing still. As if I'm not wasting my life. I only stand here for about 10 minutes. Five. If that. (Why is it that time estimations always seem to be longer in hindsight? Things move very quickly; it's amazing how you can convince yourself that time moves so slowly. Is it because you process so much information in a single second that it seems much longer once stored in your memory?) Two minutes. A girl walks by on the sidewalk, green shirt on. Bright green. Some kind of tee shirt, though I see no printing on it. I look at her, as I have been looking at everyone who passes. Nothing more, nothing less -- I am observing my surroundings. She looks up at me, I look away. She looks away and I look back at her. She catches me and we both look away. We look back at each other and she smiles at me and holds it. I smile back. And hold it. And she keeps walking. It is like the girl on the beach all over again -- I wait for her to come back and say something. The hotel door is open behind me -- she knows where I am staying. She can find me. I have to laugh at my foolishness. My eagerness. Nonetheless. A recurring theme? It appears so. But it makes my day. And isn't that the important part? A warm, jazzy night. It feels like years ago. Maybe it is. Sometimes life grabs you and you almost don't feel like it's really happening. Or that you are living it. Your writing flows, your handwriting relaxes. You don't even have to think about it. And you don't. Notes tense and release. The way these ink spots form words, the tense grip I have on this pen in my hand. It hurts. ---*--- The beeper. I still have the notes in my wallet. Stephanie wrote me in the middle of government class to tell me she was getting a beeper, a fact I didn't care about at all. Keeping in mind that this was during the brief period before cell phones really existed and only drug dealers and doctors carried beepers. She told me she was getting one, making sure to emphasize that anyone could now call her whenever they want to. I didn't really care. Not that I didn't like Stephanie; I did. She was a good friend. My closest memory of her is spending an afternoon walking around a Civil War battlefield with her, talking. It was nothing romantic; I felt like her shrink. She had a lot of bad shit in her life and while I always felt honored she could share with me, it never really led me to the point where I felt a romantic tug with her. I think she wanted me to start calling her, to start leaning on her as perhaps she felt she was doing with me. She wanted reciprocated emotions from me. Reciprocated from what she thought she was giving me. And maybe I should have, but I think somewhere along the line the message had drifted through the air a bit too long -- what she was giving and what I was getting were not the same thing. As I perceived it. I never even found out her beeper number. And, as I said a bit ago, I didn't really care. I still have the notes though. ---*--- The last night of beach week. She has nothing to lose. None of us really do at this point -- we are leaving by 11 A.M. the next morning. Our time here is spent, our friendships ruined. Which isn't meant to sound as negative as it comes across. We are at a mini-golf place. Stephanie is drunk. She is worrying me a bit, drunk and behaving like a fool. I don't want to get kicked out because of her. It isn't an easy task. She is bumping into me, running into me, talking loudly and blurred. "Zachhh." "Yes, Stephanie?" "Zaaaach, you're soooo nice to me. Why you so nice to me?" "Stephanie, I'm your friend. It's what friends do." "But . . . " "Sshhh . . . not so loud. We would like to stay here for a bit longer. Try not to get us thrown out, okay?" "What? I'm not being loud." "Yes, you are. Just a bit softer. Maybe you can use your inside voice?" "We aren't inside." Vigorous head shaking, accompanied by an exaggerated wink. "Yes, well, I know, but it'll make me happy. For me?" I don't try and be an ass when people are drunk and I'm dealing with them. Honest. It's just how I am around drunken people. I end up treating them like 5-year-olds because it seems to work. Or maybe I just don't give people enough credit. "Zach, you're an assss." She giggles. Least she whispers. "Yes, well, you know me." "Can I tell a secret?" This sends off the warning bells. A large robot stumbles into my mind, waving useless arms yelling, "Danger, Zach, danger, danger." I wince. "Yeah, I guess so. What's up?" "I luve you." I try not to stop walking. I try not to look shocked. I try not to look utterly and completely stunned. I fail. "You're drunk, dear. You love everyone." "I do though, really, ya know? I alwaaaaays have. I just wanted you to know. You're so cute and nice and why couldn't we have daaaaated, huh? Why did you not liiiiiike me?" She stretches out her vowels for emphasis. I don't need the extra clarification. My mind is working 186,282 miles per second. I am simultaneously weighing my options for interrupting, ignoring and comprehending this new information. Though maybe not in that order. It's not going so well. I decide to ignore it in the end, given Stephanie's state of mind. ---*--- Was it the best recourse, to ignore her? In hindsight, I still say yes. I spoke to her maybe twice after that week and I haven't seen her since. I never had to confront the reality of her statements. I'm not even sure they were real statements. (Do you even remember this, Stephanie? Is this something you recall? Is it something you meant? Why did it take you until it was too late for it to change anything to tell me? Does that answer itself?) The rest of the evening played itself out cautiously for me, but without any real incident. The next day we packed up by noon and cleared out of the hotel, rushing back home, no different -- no happier, no more relaxed, no wiser. It was disappointing on some level. Of course, I suppose life would be a lot easier if you could point to specific moments and say, "This is when I grew up." Or, "This is when I finally learned what it is to be a person." I find you always believe you have reached some sort of pinnacle in the present. Only to discover that, in looking back, you aren't wise at all. In fact, you aren't clever, witty or intelligent. You're a kid. And a stupid one at that. So how do I balance that out? I place symbolic meaning on events, even if it wasn't there to begin with. What did I learn? How does this end? It doesn't. There is still a lot more to talk about. To learn. But as far as this story goes . . . I don't know. Am I an ass? Maybe. Should I not have gone to the beach? No. I needed to go. It didn't kill me. In theory, I'm stronger then. It made me value the things I hold dear. Did it make me lose respect for my friends? Of course. But then, isn't that what friends are for? What the hell is the point? The point is this: I learned a little more about what it means to be human. To live. I understood a little more about how people -- others and myself -- think. Why do they act like they do? That I can't answer. It was a trial by fire for me. It marked the end of an era. Which, after all, is what it was supposed to do. It really was the last time I hung out with any of those people. They drifted in and out of my life for a while after that, for years after that. But that power we had between us then was never reclaimed. Amy dated some friends of mine in college. Polly dumped Jason and married someone 15 years older than herself. Jason got married, continued to drink and got divorced. He emails me once in a while. I ignore them. I never saw Stephanie again, though gossip says she sometimes drifts near me. Why am I going on and on about the point? Because I feel that, unlike real life, there should be some defining message to a story. But like real life, this story doesn't seem to have a unified message. It shows me at a tender age trying to develop myself into the person I want to be. This was a time in my life that my beliefs held me back -- for better or worse. I let my definition of myself rule me. Instead of letting my actions speak for me, I made up rules to live by. Is this bad? Maybe. That was my one chance to act like a huge drunken idiot for a week. But at the same time, I didn't throw away the things I cared about. I made the best decisions I could at the time. And the words tumble out of me. ---*--- It's disgusting to me that I can be at the beach and still not be able to see the stars. Of all the places on Earth, you would think that by losing 50 percent of your world to water, where there aren't really any lights blocking the sky that the other 50 percent ought to be able to contain itself so you can at least see your favorite constellation. Is everyone's favorite constellation Orion? Simply because you can find the belt at almost any time during the year? I feel sleepy. Only because I know you are near me, like some kind of non-mutative spider-sense. You drift, almost on a silk rope, from room to room, almost as if you were defying gravity -- like you were rappelling into a room, as if the entire house had been rotated 90 degrees, placing all of us in the walls as you drop in from an open doorway. I feel as if I have spun in too many circles, as if I can hear the music rising and dropping volume as my ears rotate towards the speaker and then away and then close again. Far. Close. I am so scared of you and I don't know why. That's profound. I hope I can remember when I wake up in the morning. Because I know, somewhere, that's the root of my problems with our current status. I want to swim through the smoke that is pervading the party. I want to know what it is like to feel like a human being, like you, like me, like the world, as we open our arms and stretch towards you. God. You. What am I talking about? Do you even care about me anymore? You claim "yes" but then there is all the nonsense you say about me. Us. I'm just doubting Thomas these days aren't I? Me and my Discman -- we are a regular anti-social army. The bells go off in my head and I wake up like I want to know what is going on. But by doing that, I surrender to the feelings inside myself and charge the erotic part of myself like it needs the attention that I know it doesn't. The sides of my personality float around in some kind of juices, stirring and feeling like a Matisse painting, like a late Picasso. Not true -- like Picasso during the 20s or 30s. Right as he started experimenting with Cubism. Maybe a Kline or Pollack though. A fucking mess. A middle finger to the world, the first half of the century, when no one realized what was happening. Not even those in the middle of it. Things were moving too fast. And now? Is it any different now? Popular culture devours as it creates now, so yes, it is different. Time no longer makes anything great. It's over before it begins now. The serpent eating its own tail. Like you ate me. The Odyssey and me. A journey in three parts. I drink and I think and my thoughts become larger than I mean them to and the sentences never seem to end even though they take too long to construct in my head. It hurts me like you do as I spin. Sit. Stand. Sing. I am so confused. Well, so be it. I have resigned myself to a life of non-communal servitude to myself and my Lord. Now is the time. The goddess of pleasure and lust has once again turned her multi-faced head away from me for what (for the moment) will be the last time. I will become a vehicle by which all others will be judged as was foretold earlier today in a room by a foreign man who had no previous experience in the Netherworld. An unlit cigarette hangs from my mouth, the unburned tobacco hanging from the end like a torn ligament. A gaze to the ceiling reminds me of why I am here. Or is it the floor? How have you rotated the room now? Confrontation. You. It has occurred. In your web. And I have lost. This is how I will lose myself; this is how I will devour myself -- I will disappear -- unloved, unwept and unsung. What is that from? People never take the time. I take a deep drag on the cigarette held in my mouth by the clamp of my teeth. The flavor drifts into my mouth, smoke nowhere to be found. The filter tickles my tongue. The cool beach air (seemingly from nowhere) drifts through the filter and dries out my mouth. I taste salt. Where did this cigarette come from? Did I bum it from someone as I held that cup in my hand and fucked myself up more than I thought I had as the beetles crawl over my face as if I was underground, away from you? It makes me nervous to consider these thoughts; I wonder if this counts as sacrilege and I hope that it doesn't. I deserve better. Better than you and that Parisian McDonald's. How did I go halfway around the world with you and manage to end up eating at McDonald's? It's amazing how people exist. I have lived for 18 years, three months, 20 days 16 hours and five minutes. And I have the memories to prove it. But what about everyone else? How can there be billions of us running around? Everyone is experiencing right now. How can that be? All I know is myself. What is right for me and what I know can never be passed on to anyone else except by what I can say and what they are willing to hear. Who listens anymore? Communism is dead my friend. Fuck sharing. Isolationism. Let's go to the sperm banks. I don't need you. This is not the world I belong to. My place is elsewhere in a world I have yet to find for myself. Am I here to understand or merely live (whether that be for God, myself or some other being entirely)? This world is not mine and it will never belong to me or I to it. I don't know if that is a good thing or not. I may never know. I may never want to know. Do I exist? In what manner, sir? Am I here to entertain, do I exist only in my deluded mind? Have I been dead all these years, since that car wreck when I was 4? What solace do I have in feeling? In stepping out of this room? Of laying on the bed and sheets where other people have fucked? Reflections drift over my face like shadows in a pool. In the ocean. In water. In life. I fall further into the trance. Make me feel -- there is no beauty to numbness. They are all wrong. I hate this. Inject me. I am hot and tired and a bit drunk and finally I am beginning to understand. I feel myself. I can see. I can exist. And comfort returns to me in this way. I will be able to belong to myself. For myself. One day. One day soon. And I smile with this knowledge. I am Zach. And I am immortal. Closed eyes watch me -- no one cares what I am doing, no one cares where I have been. Did I just climb in from that room or this one? Who cares? I simply don't attract attention. And if I did, I would write it off as not mattering. No one wants to gaze upon me any longer than they have to. Which is what I want. Not truly, but I would never admit otherwise. Things never succeed in holding onto me in the long run. Because I don't let them. But is that bad? Should I be ashamed? I mean, one more thing to be sad about, why not? The pages of time give me paper cuts. What a lame metaphor. It hurts to think back, mainly because I would trick myself into believing I was more secure, more happy than I am now. I certainly wasn't more independent. Which is bad. On some level. Tomorrow I eat out, an expensive meal, without you. For no real reason. Because I want to spend money that isn't on you. Because I want to feel loved. Is this how I do it? It isn't a cloudy night, which makes it even more odd to me that I can't see the stars. I take another sip of my drink, pour it out and get up from the back stairs. This fucking place is a trap. By place, I mean my mind. My body. My life. Branches crunch slightly under my feet. Not branches -- we are at the beach. There aren't really enough trees. Is it leaves? Gravel? Something. Drunk and clad in shoes, I can't tell. Then I realize it's glass and I'm walking through the garbage pile. I push myself out, worried in the back of my mind I'm going to stumble and cut myself to bloody hell. ---*--- I remember being vaguely concerned the rest of the night that I would have shards of glass in my shoes which might end up causing damage when they finally extricated themselves from the cells that were the soles and treads of my shoes. I almost left my shoes outside the hotel door when I finally made it home, but refrained knowing they wouldn't be there in the morning for one reason or another. So I left them inside our door, not tracked or tromped around inside. Later, Jason got a small piece of glass in his foot when he walked outside the threshold of the hotel when the girl ODed. A small part of myself was vindicated. Even if it was just to prove to myself I wasn't wrong in worrying. More likely because I wanted to see Jason get his in some fashion. He had earned it. Our relationship was very teenage. Kate and I. I can look back now and say that with a large degree of confidence. Not that it's a bad thing; it's a fact, like most things in life. It was our first serious relationship. It was the first time I had opened up to someone so thoroughly. It was the first time I had felt mature. Grown up. I thought I was an adult. That was at age 14. I remember the first time I saw you touch yourself. A crude example perhaps, but surreal in retrospect. We were standing in the hotel in Paris. A band trip with school. Paris. Of all the spots in the world to be able to associate with that event in my life. Surreal, perfect and beautiful. People had gone to bed and we had been on the phone, though our rooms were next door. You told me to stick my head out into the hallway. You stepped out of your room, with your hand down your underwear. You were wearing that and a tee shirt. Then you dove back into your room. Oh, Paris. You. The fact I thought we might get married then. That was naivete, which I knew in my head at some point anyway. I knew it wouldn't last. Or maybe somewhere in the back of my head I don't expect it to ever work. But I was ready to marry you in Paris. ---*--- My mother has begun buying things for me to take to college. For once she has decided to pamper me. It's odd because so much of my life is going to change. Not change. Shift. Shift is the right word. Because even though there are boxes gathering in the spare bedroom, filled with Tide and towels and coffee and notebooks and Chex mix, none of these things separate me from myself. And none of them mark a change. ---*--- I spoke to her the next several days about us, about her not pulling away from me quite so much -- a sign in my mind that she no longer wanted to be with me. She finally snapped. And proclaimed she didn't want to be with me if she had to choose between no relationship and giving the relationship more time. It hit me like a truck. I didn't expect it. I was talking to her about what I perceived as problems. Not as things I expected not to change. She wasn't interested in fixing things. I got up from the cafeteria table where we had been talking, walked about three tables away and bawled my eyes out. That was the Wednesday after our junior prom. It was over. You know when you see your doppelgaenger you die within 24 hours? It's true. Passed on horseback and died from fever the next day. When the time changes and I meet my past self, what does that signify? With a bottle in my hand but still no friends, does death still greet me like an old friend, even though I'm not old enough to deliver the message he wants to hear with my two coins for the ferry ride across the Midwest where I still think of you? The clouds move in between us, blocking and shading us as if we were in a Disney cartoon. Does this make you the stepmother from Snow White or Cinderella? Or Maleficent? Is that harsh? How do you measure the impact of someone's influence in your life? How do I know I am not simply a product of other factors? Am I genetic? Have I learned from others? Who can say this whole story isn't inspired by those who taught me how to write? How do I know what I am supposed to be? When we broke up, I didn't eat solid food for a week. Did you know that? Not that I expect this to change anything for you at all, it shouldn't. But it's still a fact. A testament to how much losing fucked you me up. How unhealthy the relationship was for me, at least in my head. I'm not blaming you -- I did it to myself. I drank water all week, but I couldn't eat. I lost a lot of weight; I didn't do well at all. Do you remember when I told you that I tried to drown myself in the bathtub because I felt so depressed? It couldn't have ever worked -- I couldn't hold my own head underwater until I passed out -- my body has that intrinsic survival instinct built into it. Nonetheless. I spoke to Kate about a year ago, on New Year's Eve. She was drunk and depressed. I was drunk and fighting to stay awake after having passed out for several hours. She admitted several extremely personal details to me I don't think she recalled saying the next morning. If she did, she played it off as if she didn't. We talked a lot about our relationship, for the first time. It was very cathartic. To approach it again after years and talk about our reactions without being clouded by emotions. We remembered completely different things -- all the things I mentioned throughout this book? The Exorcist, me calling drunk, me bawling when we broke up, her masturbating for me in Paris. Fuck. Paris. She didn't remember a single one of them. I've already forgotten what she did remember about our time together. Things that, as far as I am concerned, never happened. It was almost as if we were dating other people. Certainly not each other. It's funny the things that stick in your head. Clouds. Movement. Smoke. Maybe it's even the smoke that makes me think of clouds. ---*--- Sometimes I think that everything in the world is hardcoded. That there is no such thing as a variable; that people are only able to behave in one manner. A predetermined manner. Knowledge, therefore, does not change behavior. You. Me. Nothing is going to change. Why am I thinking this? What brought this on? Drinking? Getting verbally abused for the clothes I wear? For the things I like? For the people I love? It's like elementary school all over again. Sometimes I wish I smoked. That way, I could say things like: "Smoke circles and drifts around me like vultures," and it would be true. Even though as I write this, I am sitting in a sparsely furnished hotel room. Where are you? And why aren't you answering me? I haven't ever thought about it prior to now, but shocks on a car are amazing. Now I can't imagine riding in a car without them. The bouncing that would otherwise occur is amazing to me. I'm listening to Rage Against The Machine's "Township Rebellion." What a superb work of something. We pass a monster truck sitting on a pedestal for some sort of shop or museum as we drive past. I'm tempted to ask Jason to stop but think the better of it. People's voices come through and I think back to the party the other night. To my drinking. Why? Why did I do it? It isn't hesitation to confront as much as it is nothing to say. I got drunk. I caved. Not drunk badly, but enough that I don't really want to talk about it. Amy decided to invite Kate over and we would all drink. Well, to be fair, Kate and a bunch of other people as well. Twiggy and all those kids. I'm still not sure who knew them or how. So a bunch of kids were supposed to come over to the hotel room around three in the afternoon before everyone evaporated to their own parties. That or we congealed into a large group to head out for the night. As soon as I caught wind of this, I had two options. I could either stay or flee. Fleeing meant I would be tired the rest of the night because I would have nothing to do the entire time. I would stay out late, wandering, bored, lonely, trying to avoid feeling those exact same emotions, failing and feeling all the worse for it. Or I could stay. Being drained emotionally I opted for the latter, even though I knew that it would drain me even more. I decided in a fit of absurdity I would drink. I didn't have much -- a couple of glasses of wine. Maybe two or three. Enough to feel happy. Which is all I wanted really. Happy when discussing drinking is a relative term. I'm sure at some point I will drink, maybe. Regularly. But it seems an unnecessary complication right now. It seems like something that simply masks my thought process. When it truly comes time to drink, I'll drink. The other night was not it. We ended up in those kid's room. Twice, with a party in-between visits. That party, where Kate appeared like a ghost for two minutes. I drank to deal with a problem that didn't even end up existing. Not entirely true, since I saw her at the party. And that problem, that problem existed because I was drunk. Not in spite of it. ---*--- Memory is tricky. I didn't realize how much of that week had run together. I can't put any particular order to anything. I remember my basic schedule. I would wake up, watch Saved By The Bell for an hour on TV. I would watch World Cup soccer. I would walk down the street and play Centipede in the arcade. I would go out at night. I remember the one night where I walked all those blocks. I remember these parties I'm describing. But I don't honestly remember the order that they happened. Ah, the good old unreliable narrator? You know what I remember from the trip? Really remember? Not the events but the images, the smells, the lessons learned? High school kids make me sick. No -- not true. Weak people make me sick. Stupid people make me sick. The sound of car alarms and people throwing up. The flash of headlights, of bright plastic signs. Horrible music, bass boosted by shitty car stereo amplifiers. The cold, salty ocean water, which I don't think I ever swam in. The reason I remember it as cold when it was June? I only saw it three times the whole week while the sun was up. And no matter what you might think, the water gets cold at night once the sun isn't heating it up. That's kind of a pathetic list of items, isn't it? Shrug. I wonder how many people are like me. That is, how many people have this notion of happiness they are looking for? How many people are romantics at heart? How many people would behave differently if they weren't so fearful, so scared? Of results they shouldn't even want to control? Take this as my single piece of unrequited advice; one I learned the hard way: You can't change people. Relationships fail for a reason. You can't ever force someone back into one. You can't make them into someone else. I am sipping on iced tea through a straw. Raspberry flavored iced tea, room temperature now. For some reason, the liquid in the straw sits at a slightly higher level than the liquid in the cup. The rain is about to begin. I'm listening to Pet Shop Boys. It is becoming more and more clear that I am a hopeless romantic idealist. I love. Perfect. Perfection. Even though I can't live up to my own expectations. Dark rooms. Smoky halls. Wondering who you are seeing. Who's your friend? "You shouldn't encourage that kind of immaturity." I know I have said before, Kate and I had a very sexual relationship. It was one of exploration, of awakening as much as it was anything. I can't even tell you now about the non-physical parts of our time together. I simply don't remember them. I wonder if that happens to everyone? I wonder if it's that easy to forget the nuances of spending years dating someone, only to have the whole thing summed up by the dirtiest place you fucked? It's the art history classes I took in college, where a single slide summed up an artist. As if everything that person was and everything that person had worked for was easily digested and compacted into a single piece of work. I don't think anyone wants that for themselves -- I know I don't. Nonetheless, I realize a person is defined by that which they create. A painting, a play, an album -- even a book. Especially a book. The irony here is not lost on me. Your work, invariably, reduces you to a two-dimensional creature that is much easier for people to absorb. Digest. In some cases, worship. At any rate, I'm embarrassed I can't define my time with Kate in any other way. That, like the studied artist, I reduce what we had to fleeting moments that have been notched on my bedpost. That said and out of the way, the notches on said bedpost have some good memories attached to them. The time we were discovered by her stepfather remains one of the most nerve-wracking, scariest moments of my life. We had been watching The Exorcist. We were bored. Her mother wasn't home; her stepfather was out back cutting grass. She ends up on top of me on the sofa, struggling to have her tight-ass jeans work for her rather than against her. She gives up and decides it would just be easiest if we retire to her bedroom. Not the best plan, in hindsight. Once there, I proceed to paw her, she proceeds to strip. Sweater off. Pants down. Yes, that's better. Knock at the door. What's that? It's her stepfather, wondering what's going on, why the door is closed. "Kate?" See, it's funny because we even left the movie running. We were that impatient and that stupid. Though stupid might not be the right word. Door opens. I dive across the room to her closet. "What's going on here?" She is already whipping her clothes on; she yells something about having no shirt on; the door gets slammed again so she can get dressed. She is half-naked, after all. I'm in the closet, the door open, quaking behind it, unseen. "Where's Zach?" comes his voice from the other side of the closed door. "In the closet." She might have added, "Scared shitless." I knew her mother didn't like me. This would give her the perfect excuse to make Kate break up with me. I was young and still fearful of adults at this period. They controlled too many factors of my life for me to not be intimidated. Like if I was allowed to date the girl I loved. "Get dressed and then come talk to me." I spent the next hour, praying and hoping it would all be okay. That nothing would come of it. It turned out Kate simply said she was letting me watch her change. The response from her stepfather? "Kate, that's unlike you." Don, years have passed but even then and even now, I can tell you this: it wasn't unlike Kate at all. If anything, it was unlike her because we weren't doing more. Just having me watch made it unlike her. She emerged, some time later, with a promise from Don that he wouldn't say anything to her mother, which he didn't. That is my worst memory of a make-out with Kate, which amuses me because it has nothing to do with anything directly between the two of us. Sometimes you are dealt a funny hand. I'm on a plane as I write this, using my old, out-of-date laptop, which functions only as a portable word processor. It's dark outside and there is turbulence. I'm sitting on a very large plane (the brochure to explain the safety of this craft labels it as a MD-11), near the middle bathroom. I feel old hat at flying now; I'm jaded. Flying across the country? Bah. Give me something tough. Layovers, stopovers, shitty food and jet lag? I don't even think jet lag exists. Not in 1, 2, 3 hour increments. I feel hardened. Like a real traveler. Underworld's "Moaner" comes on my headphones. Giant 1970's style stereo headphones. Headphones so heavy they make my ears hurt and my hair stand up at funny angles. I tap my foot, using the turbulence to make the flight better, not worse. The light that is keeping my keyboard lit is being blackened as my fingers dance over the keys which makes it difficult for me to type -- I become distracted, lose my place. Stephanie had some issues. The only other story I know about her paints her in a less sympathetic light. This might help explain why, even if I had known about her feelings toward me, I would have tried my hardest to keep a safe distance. She was driving on the interstate somewhere around town. Going? Coming? Who knows. It doesn't matter. She was there. She somehow managed to pull even with another car, one that is being driven by a boy, someone in some branch of the Armed Services. I think Army, though, really, that too is unimportant for the story. Or less important -- it's important for me to imagine both his mindset being in the military and his haircut. Apparently there was some car-to-car flirting back and forth. I'm not sure what this entailed, though I can imagine. Actually, I can't. I've always thought about flirting with people in other cars, but girls, see, girls know this. Girls are trained (possibly by greasy, ugly, perverted men) at an early age to avoid eye contact when in a car. They don't scope out the other car at the stoplight, they don't chase people on the highway. Or try and run beside (or if not beside, than speeding up and slowing down, so the person ends up passing and getting passed by you multiple times) a car. I think Stephanie must have thrown all this conditioning out by this point. She knew better, she had to. Maybe she was trying to swallow her pain by creating something that would distract her. Or something that could replace her other feelings. At any rate, I'm unsure. Of her motives, I mean. But I do know she did this. Revenge on the male species, general revenge for a specific person. She led him back to her parent's house, where they had sex. And then he left. As far I know, she never saw him again, never talked to him again. One-night stands aren't evil things like I believed then. That's naive and foolish. They aren't for me, this is a fair thing for me to say. Not my scene. But I can't really fault someone for them. Whether it's for a night of meaningless sex or it's to feel closer to someone (anyone). How can you find fault in either? But to carry that goal out by picking someone up on the interstate -- what kind of gestures, movements, insinuations must be made for this to happen? If I was that boy, I think I would be scared somehow of the situation (no matter how exciting it might be) I had gotten myself into. What girl would reduce herself to this? I do have to admit this though: I've always wanted to pick someone up somehow from my car with her in hers. Not that I think it's a good plan or a realistic one. Not that I want to pick someone up so I could take her home for a random fuck. It seems romantic to me on some level -- the picking up, not the notion of sex with the person. Desire to meet someone that in love with me. That instant attraction to my profile. ---*--- The last party we attend is odd. The climate, the atmosphere is weird to me, not the actual party. There are a lot of details that take me by surprise. Things that are probably alike all over, but I've never noticed. Of course, to be honest, I don't have a lot to go on in this category. How many parties have I been to in my life? Real parties, without parental units? Real parties, where I didn't wander in at the end, attempting to avoid everyone? I can count on two hands. And if we narrow it down to parties being defined by there being more than six or eight people, then we are down to one hand. I have always felt cheated. Growing up, I had teen movies (Heathers, Risky Business, Revenge of the Nerds, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, Ferris Bueller's Day Off) to show me how teenage parties happen. I can go to a video store and rent them on a whim. The other fads from my youth had been choked out by cultural Darwinism. Hardy Boys, Pac-Man, Danger Mouse, Double Dare, trouble in Central America, Ollie North, Cyndi Lauper. All forgotten. Video stores don't have this problem -- you have the entire catalog in front of you. Not simply the newest fad. It makes you spoiled. You forget all the other things that have happened in the last 100 years. You think that is what life was like. You learn to expect the same. The parties in the movies were a lot more fun. More real. Maybe it's because there aren't many people here for me to cling to and the ones I do want to see or talk to are drunk. Maybe it is because I want to avoid Kate. It doesn't really matter. As appears to be the usual trend, cans of beer fill the bathtub. The kegs are in the kitchen, but there are also cans in the bathroom. Bring your own liquor. I head into the bathroom, to pee. The genius of this setup is that there is a single bathroom so while you urinate, people can't get cans of beer. It isn't genius at all. So I go in, closing and locking the door. I walk over to the toilet. On my way past the tub, I realize it isn't simply full of beer cans. There is a boy passed out in the tub, surrounded by ice and floating cans of beer. Face up. I debate for a moment. I walk over and make sure he is breathing. I ask him his name. Nothing. Thinking for another moment, I go and pee. He isn't going anywhere, isn't in such bad shape another minute or so is going to matter. He isn't drowning. I really have to go. I finish and flush. Wash my hands. Open the door and look around for someone I know. No one. The little hallway is empty. Surprising. I walk back in and reach down. I am wearing shorts and a tee shirt; I'm not concerned about getting wet. It takes several minutes of work before I pull him completely out of the tub. His hands over his head, arms out, head out, torso, legs. There, he won't drown. I wipe my hands together, in a dusting type motion, as if to signify I have accomplished something. A job well done. I walk out. A minor thing I noticed in the bathroom while peeing -- there is a window right beside the toilet. While I stood there peeing, I was staring out the window. At another beach house. It brought to the forefront of my mind the idea of windows in bathrooms. And why? Maybe it's just me. I don't really care if people can watch me in the bathroom; I've been enough places in my life that I'm not modest when peeing. Shitting? Yes. But not peeing. But why houses are built with giant windows that allow others to easily watch you is beyond me. Isn't there some level of basic privacy? I've never understood the concept of big windows in bathrooms. It's all well and good to have natural light and even a window (perhaps better served by a skylight though) in the bathroom. I'm not against that. But to back the damn thing right up against the toilet? Especially in places where people, other people, can easily see in? Isn't that just plain silly? I don't understand. It's not really important though. It's just one of those things in life I've never figured out. It happens to me all the time. There are too many things in this world I simply don't understand. Now what really struck me in that bathroom. If I had had more time to investigate, I would have. There are magazines by the toilet. A rather large stack. I had assumed this was a boy's house, or there are boys staying here. Some stereo magazine, a car magazine, even some porn perhaps. But no. On top of the stack is a Cosmo magazine. With a subscription label. The significance of all of this does not, for a second, pass by me. Maybe you're the type of person I am, in that you know where this is going before I get there. I don't have to spell this out for you. But I will, in case you don't think like I do. To my fragile 18-year-old mind, clearly without enough experience or perspective. I thought only boys read in the bathroom. I thought only boys were dirty and stupid and insipid enough to have to have large piles of magazines to take their minds off the fact they were spending months in the bathroom taking a dump. But, you see, this magazine implies otherwise. How? Boys don't read Cosmo. And they certainly don't subscribe to it. And boys do not have a name like "Elizabeth Stokely." This blows my mind. Girls actually take long shits in the bathroom too. And they read while doing it. To say this astounds me is an understatement. Girls are people too. Not simply people. Girls, like it or not, are like me. They really aren't any different. They have different hormones; they have different features and perhaps even different chromosomes. But the changes are tiny compared to what is similar. They are in my league. They are not some unapproachable unicorn, some Greek fantasy, some Roman goddess. Adam's rib, indeed. I will marry one of them. She might even take month-long dumps in the bathroom while reading Cosmo as well. ---*--- Since then, I've read articles, interviews, people talking about things that blew their mind as they grew up, developed as a person. Drugs, music, art, other people. This was what blew my mind. This was my version of the story. Nothing has ever hit me as hard as this realization. I'm sure my age and my situation, my emotional frame at the time has a lot to do with this. Right place, right time, blah blah blah. Nonetheless. It doesn't detract from the entire feeling in my mind. This was important. ---*--- There is a boy running around the party with his shoes off. He is drunk. He looks a bit hippie-like. I don't know if he had taken them off to prove something to someone or to feel more at home. His pair of Birkenstocks sit in a corner, hastily thrown off, clumsily stacked. It is a weird party. I know that is easy to say, but it really is. The house apparently belongs to a bunch of theater students. And as stereotypes go, they are theater students. It isn't simply the black clothes or the dyed hair. I know enough of those to not be phased. It is the obviously sexually confused kids, the stuffed animals, the blatant and uninhibited making out. The yelling and the inside jokes, usually set off by a quote from some show or other, which invariably leads to either several people reciting a scene or singing some song I've never heard before comes next. I am jealous. I want a crew, people to feed me my lines from across the room. I only have to deliver them well. I don't have to write them. I want a script for my life. There is a blonde girl in the corner. Blonde for me implies I find her attractive. But in this case, it isn't her hair. Not that she is unattractive. She is one of those people my friends and I argue over exactly how she rates on whatever scale we are using that week to measure a girl (the Uma, the Wynnona, the Basinger). But the interesting part is this: I watch her watch herself. As she is sitting there, she is staring at her midriff, not bare, like so many other girls at the party. But she is inspecting herself. I wonder in my head whether she is happy or not. I see her suck her bottom lip into her mouth and then hold it there, her jaw clenching a bit, keeping her lip in place. She is biting her lip, as if to hold in her emotions. It is incredibly erotic. I can't tell if she is happy or not. Still. I want to think she is. I like to think she is a well-adjusted young girl who is happy to be herself. She lets her lip go a second later and her right hand is drawn to her mouth and she picks at her lip for a good 15 or 20 seconds, distractedly. Her left moves to her stomach. Then she seems to remember she is here and now and not wherever she had been visiting in her mind and she stops, stands up and walks into the mass of people to mingle and forget whatever memory had been holding her enthralled. My night is made, living happily through her. ---*--- I hate spell-checkers. I'm sitting here, typing away, a happy little boy. Every once in a while, my fingers will slip; my mind will want a word it doesn't remember how to spell. And I'll type it the way I recall it being, press enter and a nice little red bar appears under the word, to remind me, to tell me, I've done wrong. It's not that I don't think I'm making mistakes or that I don't like having my mistakes pointed out. It's that a spell-checker makes me lazy; it doesn't teach me how to spell correctly. It simply accepts my errors and cleans them up without any fuss. It makes us lazy. Much the same way photos, videos, even the written word does. We build things to remember for us. And what do we fill our brains up with once we aren't expected to remember this information? Garbage. Shit. Plotlines and theme songs from old shows. Quotes from movies and songs that don't really mean anything. I've always wanted to write something where one of the main characters only speaks in song lyrics. I'm sure it could easily be done, were it not for legal wranglings, permission fees and copyrights. As appealing of an experiment as it might be, it would prove little and probably be unreadable. ---*--- I leave the party to walk this girl home. She is attractive, but I have no ulterior motives. She is wasted and had been flashing people. I feel bad for her. I know, somehow (and as sure as I am, I'm also sure I am wrong) that she will regret it all in the morning. Genuine regret. Regret enough so that she won't want do it again. (I really don't believe this -- she will wake up in the morning and whine for a bit about how stupidly she acted. But it won't be enough to stop her from doing it again in a couple of months. Or, more likely, next weekend. Tomorrow night. She is too needy to not.). "When in Rome . . . " You know the lesson learned this week? That baring one's soul isn't sexy. That being open is a dead end. No one cares. Bottom line -- it makes you human. And really, who wants to be dating a human? The less you know about someone, the more you can love them. Look at God. No one has heard much from Him in a long time. Yet he seems to be getting along just fine. They all love Him. No one wants to think of their lover as anything but pristine. Or ideal. Like farting in my sleep. I walk into a bedroom, wandering around the party, after I leave the bathroom. The door is open. On the bed are two girls. With a boy on each side, a symmetric pair, a palindrome. Led Zeppelin is playing. "Dy'er Mak'er." The girls are making out. One of the girls is the same one that had been dancing on the sofa earlier, pulling her shirt up over her tits. There are two other boys standing on the other side of the bed, away from me. They are watching the girls, poking each other with their elbows and mumbling. It disgusts me. One of the boys on the bed runs his fingers through one of the girl's hair while the girls tongue wrestle. When I walk in, the girls notice me and after a few seconds, they stop making out. All eyes turn on me. "What's up?" I ask. Icebreaker. Silence. I know at this point I should walk away. Probably any of these guys can kick my ass. All of them would destroy me, especially if I steal their free porn. I take a step in. I have already decided I hate these boys. They hate me too. I flash them a sly smile, as if I know why they are all standing around (I do) and that I want to watch as well (I don't). It seems to work. I am going to have fun then. Lord help me if I get my ass kicked. I take another step, moving so I can lean against the dresser. I'm not going to say another word. Thankfully, I don't have to. One of the boys: "Do it again." The girls shift a bit to better face each other and start licking each other's faces again. The boys are enjoying this. The girls don't seem to care. In actuality, they are doing nothing but caring. ---*--- I'm sitting here, typing. I'm out on my balcony and I'm thinking about how little parties and life and my feelings have changed. Since I started interacting on a somewhat social level with people. Certainly since I've started writing this book. It's sad to me because this balcony has become the only place I can write anymore. Out in the air, watching people go past me. Maybe I'm getting near the end of this expulsion and it's time to move on to the next one. Maybe it'll be time to let the past go and grow up. Accepting and aware. ---*--- "So what else do you want us to do?" One boy: "Take your shirts off." Another: "Eat each other out. Finger each other." The other girl: "Hey -- I want to show you guys what Landon sent me." A third boy: "Lick each other's nipples." Silence. The girls look at each other, unsure. Knowing what they think they should do so these boys will like them but not being quite that drunk, even if they are that pathetic. More silence as they shift. Then I speak. "I think you should kick everyone out. That or leave and let me walk you home." I say this looking right at the girl who said something about Landon. I think of Michael Landon, glad they took that show off of the air finally. Wasn't it on NBC? Surprising in retrospect. Seems more like something CBS would show. Stupid fucking Highway to Heaven. While I'm considering TV shows from years ago, all eyes in the room have turned to me, staring me down. I don't budge, don't back off. Don't move. Or blink. I am still looking at the girl who I had spoken to. At. Whatever. She is looking at me now. "Yeah. Everybody get out." She pulls away from the other girl. That girl shifts and gets up off the bed. She looks bored. "Fuck you," a boy says. "This is my room. I'm not leaving and neither are you." Fuck. Figures. The girl I'm trying to get out of here, trying to stop from being date-raped, stands up on the side of the bed closest to the door beside me and across from the boy who just said this. I reach for her arm and say, "Let's go. I need to get you home." She nods. The boys are ready to pounce. She and I step out the bedroom door and I pull it shut behind me. I make a beeline into the den, into the party, into a crowd. Away from them. It has been a rough year for me. I have been lonely a lot. ---*--- I'm outside, typing. The sun has set, though it's dusk. It has gotten very cold out and every two or three sentences, I make a fist and breathe into it. I'm wearing a tee shirt and khakis with sandals and it's way too cold for these clothes in this weather, for fall in Chicago. "We are beautiful." The boys didn't follow us. I saw Polly, knew she was responsible, told her she needed to find someone and head to the bedroom to make sure the other girl wasn't being raped. The next morning I asked her about it. She didn't remember talking to me. Though she thought that at some point at the party, she tried to find the bathroom and walked into the bedroom. Someone had walked in after her and stopped her from drunkenly peeing on the bed. Then she realized she couldn't remember if it was the same party or not. I still wonder if anything horrible happened that night. I feel slightly responsible, though if I hadn't done what I did, it certainly could have been much worse. Of course I'm trying to make myself feel better. But the thing with the other girl was that she was out on the prowl for cock and simply dragging this desperate girl with her. Why do I think that? I had overheard her earlier in the evening, in the den, maybe 20 minutes before this other girl climbed onto the sofa to dance and strip. She was talking to another girl. "If I'm ever going to fuck more than one boy in a night, it's going to be here." "At this party?" "Yeah. I meant the beach, but yeah, I want some dick tonight." She laughed. Her friend nervously tittered. Her friend apparently had a bit of restraint. "How about him?" I turned, none too discretely, to see her quickly pointing at a boy in the corner wearing a hat. The boy that would be on the bed behind her, watching her with another girl in less than an hour. I always feel uncomfortable seeing tampons in a box in a girl's bathroom. This happened a lot more in college, but happened at this party too. Right next to the damn Cosmo. I felt like I should avert my eyes. I still do. It seems so private, such a personal thing -- I shouldn't know what brand of tampons a girl I don't even know uses. Or whether a girl uses medium or heavy Maxi pads. It embarrasses me somehow. Can I blame society for that? I'd like to. In reality, it's just me being a boy. Scared of what I don't understand. An ant crawls over my foot and I wonder, briefly, how an ant got up here. It's cold now, the season has changed. It's cold and it's time to move on. Time to finish this story. Time to close this entire chapter, from then to now. ---*--- The road keeps rushing by as I sit in the seat. I'm not moving on my own, but there I am watching trees and churches and life blur by me. I shift my gaze to the road, watching the lines on the road, the dotted lines, blur into an almost imperceptible line of pale white. I turn my Discman down. I hadn't realized how loud it was -- I couldn't hear the car over the music. I don't like that fact. I want to be a part of the rushing, the exertion. I want to take part in the struggle of the wheels pushing against the blacktop. The friction. Sexual when thought of like this. I close my eyes, immediately feeling less dizzy. Less like I am fighting the motion. Bass pounds in my ears. I want to come, to orgasm, not out of hormones, but out of respect. Out of ecstasy. Does that make sense? Karl Hyde sings to me, reminds me I'm human. Or perhaps that I'm more than human. Not in any sort of pretentious way. But that I, as an individual, embody more of everything than I could ever think possible. This is a good feeling and part of the reason I want to feel that release. That return to feeling as if I am part of the entire world as it breathes and pumps and lives and dies. Yes, that's it. Hope. I open my eyes, just enough to see, and roll the window down a bit. It's down for less than 10 seconds before I hear something. I've closed my eyes and I refuse to acknowledge. I feel a tap on my leg. I open my eyes and see Polly looking back at me. She smiles and her mouth moves. It keeps moving. She's talking to me. I pull off my headphones, feeling the air sweep over my face from the window. It's cool, but only because it's rushing through the window. It's very hot air once it stops moving and settles inside the car. I don't mind. I like the sensation and I like the feeling. It is, after all, June. It's hot and the car reeks of summer. The air is thick around me, smelling of heat and plastic, as cars seem to in the summer, in the heat. I can't smell sex though. I'm glad. "Jason has the AC on. Can you roll up your window?" A produce stand rushes by on the left. It seems on the way to the beach, they are always on the right. As if the farmers want to catch you on your way to the beach, before you have been caught by sculptures made out of shells and cheap towels. It's an interesting phenomenon and one I've never noticed, even though I've been to the beach with my family almost every summer since birth. I nod at Polly, who is still looking at me expectantly, and roll the window up. It pains me. I wanted to be one with the car. With the voyage. With the trip. It's okay though, in the longer, bigger run of things. I don't really need the window down. I don't have to feel like I'm the one zooming down the road. And I don't really want to come in the back seat of Jason's car where he has dropped his seed in Polly so many times. Polly, satisfied, turns back to a normal sitting position and I pull my headphones back over myself. The music burps. Or farts, I'm not sure which. And I turn it back up. ---*--- You know this is the reason. You know this is what it means. I didn't love Kate. I loved the idea of Kate. I loved the ideal. I loved having a girl I loved. I loved because I loved the idea of being in love. She will always be my first love. But now, years on, years later, I know more about true love. About people. And I understand, finally, the mistakes I made. The assumptions, the tricks. I understand how I loved her, not as a person, but as a trophy. A signifier. This story was about me growing up: the journey, not the destination. But I finally know, now, upon finishing it, that it is also about preconceived notions and re-categorizing relationships I never fully understood. It makes me a little sad. ---*--- This girl doesn't live far away -- about eight blocks. She holds onto my arm, her head jerking and bobbing as if it is a fishing lure. She is apologizing. (See? It's that regret thing.) We get back and she asks me to stay until she is in bed. A comfort thing I suppose. I agree, no harm done. She goes into the bathroom and I sit on the bed, bored. A minute goes by. Two. Three. I get up and see, sitting on top of some bags, a journal. I pick it up, thumbing through it absent-mindedly. It is hers. Should I feel bad about going through it? Should that bother me? I don't think so, clearly. And she is taking too long. I sit at the end of the bed, and start thumbing through it, reading. She wants to attend the college I am going to in the fall. She didn't get in. It really upset her. She thinks she should have gotten in. I couldn't care less to be honest. But it is interesting to see it from the other side. I didn't have to deal with that rejection. I am glad. She comes out of the bathroom. And sees what I am doing. She is either too drunk or too tired to care. She comments briefly and falls into bed, barely peeling the covers away before her body hits. She starts talking. I don't want to be overly rude (any more than I already have been), so I put the journal back and turn, standing up, to face her. She is crying. "You read about college?" "Yeah." "I just wanted to go there." I don't know whether it is better to tell her I had gotten in or not. I don't want to make her feel bad or have her think too much of me somehow. I nod. Trying to keep it simple and low-key. "Where are you going?" she asks, tears still rolling. So much for that ploy. I answer. "That's all I wanted. That's it. I got good grades, I really did. I don't understand why they would keep me out. That's even near my boyfriend. I'm going to marry him." "What's his name?" "Landon." "Like Highway to Heaven?" "Huh?" "Nothing." I forgot how easy it is to confuse drunks. "You love him, don't you?" I am trying to move from schools to this boy in an effort to calm her down. I'm not going to get to leave until she is comfortable. And I do want my bed, even if it is in a hotel with a bunch of people I hate sharing a room with. "Yes. He's my man." I nod, not knowing what else to do. "I shouldn't have flashed all those people at the party, should I have? I mean, that was bad, wasn't it?" Fuck. I'm never getting to sleep. Or going home. "Why does it matter?" "Landon would have been mad." "That's understandable." "Oh my God. I was acting like a whore, wasn't I?" "I don't think I would go that far. You were acting . . . a bit out of control. I'm not sure the whole dancing and flashing two step thing you had going on was such a good idea." "Oh God. I'm so drunk. I didn't mean for this to happen." "I know. It's okay." "Will you stay here," (Fuck. Here it comes. Fuck. I really don't want to spend the night.) "until I fall asleep?" "Can I sit over here on this bed?" "Yeah." "You sure? I didn't think you wanted me in your bed." "No, I don't. That's fine." She shifts and rolls, like a jet fighter, making herself comfortable in the bed. After two dives and wraps, I can't see her anymore. "Will you get the light?" She's almost asleep already. I have to play back the sentence in my head twice before I realize what she is asking. I get up without a word and walk to the door. And turn the light off. I stand by the door for two minutes. I can't see anything in the room; I can only see the beach outside, lit by streetlights, hotel lights, cars, boardwalk lights. From here, the ocean looks black. And silent. "Are you awake?" I wait thirty seconds for her to answer. She doesn't. I smile and slip out the door. It's time to go home. . . . pop music, or call it what you will, creates some of the most magical moments in life. And those moments can be so magical, all you want to do sometimes is write about them, hold them in place. Everything has to end. Even the twentieth century. paul morely ----------------------------------------------------- Tripp Millican lives in California and loves you all. I didn't anticipate needing a section of thank you's, but this book would not have been possible without amazing help from: Aubrey Harrison, Elizabeth Corlett and Rachael Esterkin for their advice and editing, Kelley Semanka for designing every piece of this book, Ray Easterling, Michael Fearnow and a host of others. Thank you to everyone for every bit you played in making this novel a reality.