by Matt Burns
The week before Valentine’s Day, I got manhandled by a barber who grabbed my cheeks and chin and tossed my head around with his oily hands like it was a ball of bread dough. Each time he touched my lumpy jawline, I knew the grime and strangers’ hairs on his fingertips were clogging every pore. But he wasn’t getting any enjoyment out of this, either. I must have ruined the barber’s day by bringing my pus-filled, chapped, bumpy face in there. I felt like my face had gotten worse over the past few weeks, but it was hard to know if that was real or just me feeling like shit. It looked redder than ever under the fluorescent lights, multiplied into infinity in the mirrors on every wall. I hated that he had to see my face, that I made him touch me. It was awful for everyone involved.
That night my chin was a mess — littered with bulbous, misshapen red bumps, all strung together like a giant bubble in a pizza crust. I knew I shouldn’t, but I touched it. It felt plump and full. I rolled the fullest part around between my fingers. I wanted all that crap out of my face. It felt hard as a marble between my fingertips. I massaged it toward the surface, kneaded it into a cone, and then — gush. I swear I heard it break the surface of the skin. A ton of red-beige, pulpy goo shot onto the mirror. More leaked down my chin. My heart raced. Blood rushed out and coated my fingers. I dabbed the wound with toilet paper; the mound underneath was more swollen than before. It hurt, but it had felt so satisfying to get it all out of me. I’d felt clearheaded doing it; just for a second the pain had made all my other thoughts go away.
Luke asked me what happened to my chin. Will, Sam, and Patrick stared at me, concerned and grossed out by the giant scab. Alex pulled me aside and asked, “Is everything okay?” She sounded exactly like my mom. I told her what I’d told Mom: I was fine. My face still sucked. Whatever.
Emma was the only person who said my haircut was nice.
And even though I’d just learned a valuable lesson about not falling for girls who are out of my league — which pretty much rules out all of them — I found myself replaying that sentence in my head over and over again. I’d felt deflated for weeks, and that comment had been the only thing that lifted me up.
“Your hair looks nice, Kevin.”
Now when I’d see Emma at school, I’d think about that night we spent in her hotel room watching that movie. Her legs beside mine on top of the covers. The way I’d impressed her by tricking Kyle into sprinting toward the promise of exposed breasts. It seemed unlikely that Emma would like me, but . . . she’d been so open and honest with me about breaking up with Kyle and being on birth control. Girls don’t tell any random guy about their birth control weight gain.
Emma would make a great first girlfriend. Going out with her would be like training wheels. I could get my embarrassments out of the way with her, figure out how to eat pizza in front of a girl. Alex was a roller coaster, but Emma was consistent. Sure, she was into the same mainstream music and movies as all the other kids at school, but at least she’d never made me think otherwise. There was no drama with her. Alex was like The Simpsons, great at first and then disappointing, and you debate forever about her in your head, holding out hope that she will again be the version you fell for. Emma was Scrubs — never peaking as high as The Simpsons, but consistently pretty solid. And I’d come to realize the fantasy girl who’d seen every movie in the Criterion Collection didn’t exist in my Georgia suburb, and probably didn’t exist anywhere outside my imagination. Emma was there, we’d had our night together, and she was nice to me. “Your hair looks nice, Kevin.”
The only hurdle was Luke. I should probably get his permission to ask out his ex-girlfriend. But after sitting through a forty-five-minute lunch period where he and Patrick did nothing but quote Dumb and Dumber, I decided I didn’t care and would just go for it.
But I couldn’t just ask Emma out with no warning. There were stories of kids who did that — crushed on girls for years, expecting that the girls had been taking equal note of them, and then they asked the girls out one afternoon by the lockers with no buildup or rapport established. The girls were mostly confused and always said no. You can’t blame the girls — it’s too startling, like if your dog suddenly asked you to drive him to the airport. You’ve got to ease into a switch like that.
I spent the week trying to strategize how I’d talk to Emma and plant the seed that would lead to us being a couple. I had absolutely no idea what to do. It must be great to be one of those guys who can casually talk to girls at school like it’s not a big deal. Maybe it’s because they have older sisters who give them advice. Kate had no advice, unless you want to know what to feed a horse.
Emma wasn’t into a lot of the things I was, but maybe that was an opportunity. I thought about what else I knew about her and realized that her being religious was probably the main thing about her. I thought about how religion could be cool. The routine of it, having a place to go on Sundays, being able to analyze and interpret the Bible. I looked up a list of denominations online and scrolled through, thinking she’d be able to steer me in the right direction.
And I knew she liked that Blink-182 song in the movie we’d watched in her hotel room. I used to like Blink-182 when I was a kid, but then again so does everyone. It can’t be a defining aspect of a personality any more than enjoying pizza or Jurassic Park. But Emma and I could start there, and then I’d get her into Box Car Racer and Say Anything and American Football, guiding her through the bands I’d discovered, and then I’d introduce her to all the movies I loved while we lay side by side on top of the covers.
If I planted the seed visually, the pressure wouldn’t be on me to conjure a conversation out of nothing, so I ordered a Blink-182 T-shirt online. I worried it’d be a step backward in my evolution to wear such a mainstream shirt to school, but the sacrifice would be worth it: a quick backtrack to put myself on the right path with the right girl.
The night the shirt showed up, I put on extra layers of nighttime moisturizer, and in the morning I did ten deodorant swipes before easing my arms through the shirt as delicately as possible to avoid streaks. I thought I actually looked pretty decent.
Mom stared at me while I ate cereal. “A smile,” she said. “That’s nice.”
“What?”
“You’ve got a little smile on.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Okay, okay, I won’t ask.”
Spanish finally came. Emma was sitting in her pod with her three friends when I walked in. I nodded at her. She didn’t notice me. My desk was behind hers, and I watched her head all through class, feeling my pits moisten and praying to the deodorant gods to hold up their end of the bargain.
Señora Rosenthal stopped teaching and gave us our fifteen minutes of free time. This was my chance. I stood up and walked over to Emma. “Hola.”
She didn’t look up at me. Was I standing too far away? Had I mumbled? Probably both.
“Hola,” I said. “Emma, hola.”
Her friend tapped her on the shoulder and pointed to me. “Oh, hey,” Emma said, and then she turned away from me.
“What, uh, what’s up?” I said. Then I shook my head. “I mean, um, qué pasa?”
“Not . . . much?” she said, confused. “What’s up with you?”
She wasn’t noticing the shirt. She’d looked up at me twice and wasn’t impressed by anything. Was this the price I had to pay for spending my entire life lying low and doing anything I could to avoid attracting attention? I want no one to ever notice me, except in specific situations when I want specific people to notice me, and in those cases I want them to really fawn and obsess over me.
Emma noticing the shirt was crucial, and it pained me to be so obvious, but I didn’t have any other choice. “I just got this shirt, and, like, so what’s your favorite Blink album, or song, or —? ”
Before I could finish, the noise of a tool chest falling down a staircase rattled and boomed behind me. Everyone turned around. Todd Lancaster was lying on the floor on top of his collapsed desk, holding a screwdriver.
A bunch of kids laughed, including Emma. Señora Rosenthal flipped out and dragged him into the hallway. Todd had unscrewed his desk just to see if he could do it. Fucking Todd Lancaster. I wished he would fall into a volcano and the whole thing would be videotaped and posted on the internet.
Emma and everyone rushed over to stare at the wrecked desk. I stood behind the rest of the class, frozen for I don’t know how long, until the bell rang. Emma turned back around to pick up her stuff from her desk said, “Hey, that’s, uh . . .” pointing at my shirt.
Oh, shit, here we go.
“My brother likes them.”
Wait, what? “Don’t you like them?”
“What do they sing?”
“Well, they do ‘Dammit,’ the song from the movie we watched in the hotel room.”
“I like whoever sings the ‘Time of Your Life’ song. Is that them?”
She was talking about Green Day. She didn’t know the difference. The music meant nothing to her. She only knew of the band because of her brother. So, technically, I had a crush on Emma’s brother. Jesus Christ.
I shouldn’t have assumed she was obsessed with a band she’d mentioned offhand one time. The same boneheaded blunder I’d made with Alex, assuming she’d memorized the Royal Tenenbaums script because she listened to one Elliott Smith song one time. Why had I let myself get my hopes up again? I shouldn’t have tried. I wasn’t ready even for a first-draft relationship.
I just wanted the school year to be over so I could lie to everyone that I was going to some summer camp and pass the time in my room alone.
That night I wadded up the Blink-182 T-shirt and stuffed it into the back corner of my closet on top of my old AC/DC shirt.
Valentine’s Day happened and I acted like it didn’t exist. A few girls got gigantic teddy bears they brought around to all their classes, which distracted everyone and negated the entire day’s worth of education. The bears seemed incredibly inconvenient and must have been huge pains in the ass to get home. Like, the girls who got them must have had to call their dads, who had to call their brothers with the pickup trucks to get in the carpool line just to get the things home.
I was pretty sure no one got Emma or Alex anything. For a second, I wished I had — but then I reminded myself that neither of them actually liked me and I should save my energy for something I was qualified to do, like unloading the dishwasher.
On the day of my February blood test, Alex came to my locker while I was putting my books in my backpack.
She smiled and said, “How’s it going?”
I shrugged. “Busy.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” I didn’t know why she came to my locker or what I was supposed to say to her, and the more I tried to figure it all out, the hotter and sweatier I got. Anything I might blurt out would probably sound stupid and wrong. Luckily I had a reason to leave. “I, uh, I gotta go to my blood test.”
“Yeah, I know. Say hi to Kim and Jodie for me.”
“Who?”
“The nurses?”
“Oh, okay.” I shut my locker and turned away from her.
Say hi to the nurses? As I drove out of the school parking lot with Mom in the passenger seat, I tried to figure that out. Had Alex developed relationships with them? It was always the same women working there. I never knew it was an option to talk to them. I just closed my eyes, offered up my arm vein, and let them have at it.
I sat in the waiting room alone, happy to be away from everyone. There was no chance of me saying something stupid. No one knew me in there. I closed my eyes and appreciated the stillness.
The nurse called my name and I walked to the back, perfectly numb. Feeling nothing was preferable to hot, sweaty embarrassment.
The nurse put the needle in my arm and I stared at it without feeling queasy for the first time. It was like the blood wasn’t even part of me.
I figured if I kept to myself for the rest of the year and didn’t make any effort to impress girls or teachers or myself, I wouldn’t have to beat myself up all the time. I just needed to coast through the next few months and it would all be fine again in the summer when my face was clear and I was off Accutane.
Weeks blended together. I’d smile and nod at Alex at school because I didn’t want her to think I was mad at her or anything, but I limited myself to the kind of direct responses I gave my parents: “Yeah, everything’s great!” “All good!” “Excellent, how about you?” If I let myself off my short leash, there was too big a chance I’d say something dumb and regret every word and hate myself for making the effort. It was better to stay safe and comfortable and out of everyone’s way.
I wasn’t bothered anymore that Sam and Patrick were in our group. I just didn’t really care. The time it took for me to check out of conversations with the guys dwindled. It used to take ten minutes of uninteresting discussion of a football game I hadn’t watched before I’d zone out and stop listening. Then it took five minutes, then three, then one. When I needed to, I could talk to the guys and make them laugh without thinking. Sam and Patrick cracked up at any dry, sarcastic reference to a teacher’s testicles. That was all it took with them. It was like Mad Libs — [teacher’s name] has [number that isn’t two] testicles and an [adjective to describe burnt meat] penis.
I knew the routine, the dance moves and repetitive lyrics that made up the Kevin show: smile, nod, laugh when everyone else does. I could do it without thinking. It was easy.
My friends seemed to enjoy having me in their circle even though I didn’t really care about their conversations. At home, my eyeballs bounced from my computer screen to my TV screen. I spent nights watching movies by myself in my room, working through a list I’d found online. But I wasn’t taking any of them in. I’d put them on and stare at them until they ended. Sometimes I’d catch myself ten minutes into a Korean movie and realize I hadn’t been reading any of the subtitles, but I wouldn’t care enough to go back and start over.
Days fused into each other and I’d have no memory of them when I looked back in my agenda. My life became an endless white noise loop with nothing to mark one part from the next, this uninteresting run-on sentence, an awful, formless jazz performance every bit as bad as that handyman had said jazz always was.
Todd Lancaster, noted dumb-ass, swung by our lunch table one day and cryptically said, “Microcock.” The guys laughed and told a story about some idiot getting his pants pulled down at Lauren Gordon’s sweet sixteen party. Then they joked about how much vodka some older kid named Ivan would bring to Katie Lipton’s sweet sixteen party. And apparently there had been a bonfire at Todd Lancaster’s house. I had no idea what they were talking about. I hadn’t heard about any of those parties. I certainly hadn’t been invited to a bonfire at Todd Lancaster’s house. I wished I could have gone. It sounded like it would have been an excellent opportunity to push Todd Lancaster into a bonfire.
Luke mentioned that the guys, Alex, and Emma had been talking about going to White Water, the water park, over spring break. It was the first I was hearing about that plan, too. Where were those conversations happening? Some online thread I wasn’t looped in on? A meeting in some rich kid’s massive tree house?
Events were happening without my knowledge. Things I’d never be able to be a part of. Those parties might as well have been the premiere of Romeo and Juliet or the day Weird Al’s parents decided to have unprotected sex — monumental historical events that happened regardless of my being alive or dead. If I was there, nothing would change. If I wasn’t, no one would miss me.
One Friday in March, Luke, Will, Sam, and Patrick decided to go to a movie. They said the girls would probably meet them there. They never explicitly invited me, but just in case they assumed I’d go, I texted Luke that I had some family stuff to do that night.
What stuff? You never do anything with your family, he responded.
Yeah, I know. That’s why it’s weird, I texted back.
There was just no way I could have gone with them. It woul
d be too complicated. I had to take my pill at exactly ten every night. They were seeing a 7:45 movie, so if you factored in twenty minutes of trailers, ten would be during the climax of the movie. I’d have to walk out of the theater in the middle of the most important part, and on the ride home they wouldn’t stop asking me why I’d left when I had. I’d have to lie about taking a dump, but the problem was we’d thoroughly discussed our defecating habits several times at our lunch table, and on more than one occasion I’d aggressively argued that the morning was the only logical time to shit, so my story wouldn’t check out. I’d called Luke “one of the strangest people to ever live” because he pooped in the evening. If I didn’t walk out of the theater, I’d have to dig through my pockets for my pill in my seat, pop it out of the plastic pack — since I couldn’t put a loose pill in my pocket and risk losing it — then try to secretly swallow it. But I’d get caught. I’d push it out of the pack during the one second of absolute silence in the movie, and it’d snap as loud as a firecracker. They’d turn to stare at me, one head at a time, and demand to know what drug I was taking and what was wrong with me.
I had to stay home. It was calm in my room. There was no risk of embarrassing myself.
After I went through my face-washing routine and took my pill, I got in bed and wondered if the guys were having fun at the movie theater. I wondered what they were joking about. I wondered if they’d all be talking about the movie at school next week. On weeknights, I knew that at ten everyone else from school was just as bored and alone as I was, all of us stranded in our bedrooms. But when everyone except me was out on a Friday, I started to worry. I probably should have gone. I was stressed out lying there in my bed, kicking the sheets away and rolling from one side to the other.