by Matt Burns
Did the older guys get Alex and Emma drunk? I felt like a concerned mother. I don’t know why I cared so much. I sat at my computer while the whole thing unfolded in my head: Luke, Will, Sam, and Patrick get there first and text everyone else that the coast is clear. Alex and Emma show up with the God Squad and other girls from our grade. Just before they pry open the window, a black pickup truck, overflowing with rowdy senior guys hanging off the sides like pirates clutching a sail, peels into the parking lot. They unload two beer kegs and an endless supply of twenty-four-packs that someone’s desperate dad, in an attempt to seem cool, bought them with his Costco membership. More cars pull in, full of girls who look like they should be headed to Cancún for an MTV spring break party. Everyone flows through the open window like rainwater draining into a sewer. Luke, Will, Sam, Patrick, Emma, and Alex get swept up in the rapids. They’re smiling, they’re laughing, they’re high-fiving people I’ve only seen in yearbooks. They march down the hallways pretending they’re in a parade. Most of these kids didn’t even go to our middle school. It means nothing to them. Luke and Will talk to some older girls in the cafeteria. They dance with them, sarcastically at first, and then it gets serious. They start making out. Some of the guys pick up Alex and Emma on their shoulders. They put the ends of those stupid beer-funnel things in their mouths and then they disappear around a corner. Alex and Emma are having fun and they’re not thinking about me.
A senior named Carter Canton posted socks on Alex’s wall and she commented lol. What the hell did that mean? Who were these people?
I kept clicking through pictures until I found the one I wish I’d never seen. In the background, behind a group of seniors I didn’t know, Alex and Luke were leaning against a locker, their faces an inch apart. They might have been holding hands. What the fuck? How can a guy who had sex with a cinnamon raisin bagel be so irresistible to girls? Were they making out? Were they going out? Would they even tell me if they were? I’d known Alex from before she transferred; he should know I had dibs on her. But Luke clearly didn’t care about crush-dib etiquette. Fuck.
Fuck!
Even though Alex and I didn’t have anything in common, I wanted what Luke had in that picture so bad. If I’d gone, could it have been me? Was that my chance and I blew it? Was that the perfect situation, the night the universe had carved out for me and Alex to start a romantic relationship, and I’d screwed it all up again by being too scared and too shy and too nervous and too pathetic? Goddamn it. How is it possible to be mad at everyone, including yourself, equally?
I felt like I didn’t even know Luke or Alex anymore — or maybe that I’d never known them. I thought I’d be the one to change that year, but it was those two and Will and Emma — everyone but me — who morphed into people I didn’t know, and didn’t want to know. I’d lost them. There’s no point in getting attached to anyone in high school. Everyone is the goo in a fucking lava lamp.
On Monday, everyone was talking about the middle school in hushed code words. The morons who’d uploaded pictures were all getting called into the principal’s office, so everyone was paranoid about getting in trouble.
I watched Luke and Alex all morning. They didn’t hold hands. It didn’t seem like anything was going on between them. But they’d probably keep it a secret anyway. I didn’t ask any questions when the guys whispered vaguely about the middle school at lunch. I didn’t want to know. They kept saying that I should have been there and they’d never go back because they didn’t want to ruin what was such a magical, once-in-a-lifetime experience they all shared. That made me feel great. They had a memory that would last forever, and meanwhile I couldn’t even remember what I’d eaten for dinner that evening I spent alone masturbating.
I overheard two kids in the locker room talking about it. “Brett Wilson finger-banged Courtney Thorpe at the middle school, you know?” one of them said. Then the other said, “Logan Furman finger-banged Sarah Carter. Dude, everyone was finger-banging everyone. Luke Rossi finger-banged Veronica Wesson.”
Wait, what?
The loud God Squadder who persuaded the school board to put recycling bins in the cafeteria? Luke finger-banged her? Ugh, that word is gross. Luke “manually stimulated” the girl who convinced the school board to add all the recycling bins to the cafeteria? Actually that’s worse. Whatever. There’s no good term for that.
Had he made out with Alex and gotten with Veronica Wesson on the same night? How many girls in our grade wanted Luke? All of them? And this was Luke Rossi, the guy I knew for a fact had had sexual intercourse with a box of Honey Nut Cheerios?
What the hell had happened that night? Had everyone made serious sexual progress and I completely missed it? Did that ship sail, and now there was a clear dividing line between the sexual haves, who blossomed that night, and the have-nots, who would forever be treated as the eunuchs of the grade? Was that night my grade’s Woodstock, and everyone would be wearing Middle School Night T-shirts for decades, and when I’m sixty I’ll develop a false memory of it and lie to my grandkids that I was really there?
If Luke — and maybe the other guys, too — had done stuff with girls, and everyone knew about it, why hadn’t they told me? How could they sprint to third base without even telling me the game had started? Did they think I wouldn’t be able to handle it? By not going to this weird middle-school sex party, had I become some sort of little-brother figure in my group, only good for talking about cartoons and video games?
I started to wonder if Luke or Will had actually had full-on sex before. Or Alex or Emma? Emma’d made that God Squad abstinence pledge, but reading a sentence to some youth group leader with a chain wallet and frosted tips wasn’t a legally binding contract. It was absolutely within the realm of possibilities that she’d had sex; it’s not like she would tell me. She and Luke had dated for three months. I wondered how far they had gone. Will had never dated anyone, but he was always friendly with a bunch of girls, so for all I knew, he could have been hooking up with tons of them after school and on weekends. I had no idea what those guys were doing with their penises when they were out of my sight, and that upset me more than it should have.
All day I wondered about the sexual histories of everyone around me. I bet every other kid had at least already made out with someone. I started looking at all my teachers differently. Mr. Tilly, despite looking like he mutated in a riverbed, had a grown daughter, meaning that at some point his odd penis had been presented to a woman and for some reason she hadn’t batted it away with a flyswatter. Mr. Meyer, as weird as he was, had probably wormed his dick past his bass guitar for a few minutes of intercourse with a woman. Or maybe several women — strange ones — all at the same time while wearing costumes at some unappealing poetry convention in a suburban hotel. I couldn’t stop picturing his dong dangling through homemade steampunk cosplay.
It’s difficult to focus on studying for finals when you’ve just realized that your school is teeming with sexual creatures who suppress the erotic sides of themselves for eight hours a day. It wasn’t the building full of uptight prudes I’d thought of it as before; it was a den of porn stars.
Now that Alex and Emma were no longer options, there wasn’t anyone in particular I wanted to have sex with, but with every hour that slipped by, I felt like I was losing ground in some race with Luke and Will. Like we started at the same time, but they were running at ten miles an hour and I was running at five miles an hour, so they kept getting further and further ahead of me, until they were at the finish-line orgy while I lagged behind, alone and preoccupied with the SAT math problem I’d written myself into.
As soon as I got home that afternoon, I went to my room and closed the door. I lay down on the carpet and tried to think about nothing, but the images of Luke and Will getting hand jobs on top of the kidney-shaped table where we’d discussed Tuck Everlasting were hard to fend off.
Were they really comfortable whipping their dongs out in front of a girl who’d see them at school on Monday morning?
Christ, can you imagine that confidence? If their shafts were bent even a single degree, if there was one blemish on the skin, the story would spread faster than any STD and their lives would be over. What was expected of their pubic hair? What styles were acceptable? Was there a popular cut I should have known about? Were they supposed to bring their own condoms? When were they supposed to buy them? Which stores had the best prices? Did Carter Canton’s post on Alex’s wall mean he’d used a sock as a condom with her?
If I’d gone and had the opportunity to finger-bang some unlucky girl from our grade, I wouldn’t have had any idea what I was doing. Guys talked about sex all the time, but no one ever offered any legitimate advice. Porn was obviously a grotesque illusion with no application to the real world, and everything I was taught in teen movies growing up were just the sexual fantasies of male screenwriters with names like Adam Herz and David T. Wagner. How was I supposed to know what girls actually wanted? I’d only been trained to seduce Adam Herz and David T. Wagner.
I wasn’t ready for sex. I wasn’t ready for anything.
And apparently I was the only person in my entire grade that felt that way. Everyone else had moved on; they were zip-lining away from me butt-naked, popping wheelies on dirt bikes and furiously banging each other on a big grass field between a lake and a Red Hot Chili Peppers concert.
I had been left behind. Or had inadvertently chosen to stay behind.
Dad knocked on my door and asked if I had any donations for Goodwill and I told him no and to please go away because I had a ton of homework.
It was silent for a while, and my phone scared the shit out of me when it buzzed with a call from Alex. At any point before that week, it would have been the greatest moment of my life. But I let it ring four times. “Yeah?” I said.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Nothing.”
“Cool.”
“Yeah.” A long pause. “Do you need something?”
“Oh, yeah. Can I ask you something?”
“Sure?”
“Is Luke, like, a good guy?”
I didn’t know how to respond.
“Kevin? Are you there?”
“. . . What?”
“He’s really funny at school, but I was just wondering if he’s, you know . . . nice? And sorry to sound like a middle-schooler, but does he, I don’t know . . . like anyone?”
I knew it was coming, but it hurt worse than I expected. Whatever hope I’d maintained about her, that annoying nuisance of a crush buzzing around my head like a fly, had been shotgun-blasted to death.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“He’s your best friend.”
“I guess.”
There was a long pause. “Well . . . okay. I don’t know. Just . . . what’s he like? Outside of school?”
“I don’t know. He can be an asshole sometimes. I mean, everyone can. Haven’t you hung out with him? Don’t you already know what he’s like?”
“Oh. Sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have — ”
“Whatever. It’s fine. Anything else I can help with?”
There was an awkward pause. I knew I was being a dick, but I couldn’t bring myself to care.
She finally said there was nothing else, and we hung up.
I felt blank and numb, letting gravity shove me deeper into the floor, hearing my heart beat in the silence.
An hour went by while I lay flat on my back. Maybe more. How’s it possible to feel frantic and dead at the same time?
At some point I got up to pee and blow my nose. When I flushed the tissue, the toilet clogged, but I didn’t care enough to deal with it. As I washed my hands, I looked at my face in the mirror. Scars covered my chin and cheeks. Each one of them was a stupid mistake, a time when I should have held strong and been confident and not popped a zit. But instead I always caved and went for the stupid short-term solution that caused more problems in the long run.
Goddamn it. My skin was still so red, I looked as perpetually embarrassed as I felt, and it was flecked with a scab, bump, and scar for each bad choice I’d made in my life.
Kate was downstairs with some friend, and I stepped onto her side of the bathroom and looked through her makeup. I opened a case of the beige powder with the little pad you smear it on with, and I wiped it across my cheeks. Jesus, it was like a cheat code. I wiped more on my chin, my jawline, my forehead and nose. Everything was erased. For a minute it made me feel like the whole year had never happened. It helped me disappear. My heart sped up and I got scared I’d get caught.
I clicked the makeup closed and stepped back into my room and locked the door. I felt like doing something, but there was nothing to actually do, and no reason to do anything. Even masturbating seemed like a waste. I already knew what it felt like. Why bother? I was sick of my computer. Nothing good ever came from sitting there. Video games and TV were a waste of time and I couldn’t focus on a book.
The color was fading from the world around me. It had been for months. Was that what growing up felt like? Being disappointed over and over again, so often you get used to the numbness, and gauzy emotional scar tissue builds up between you and the world that washes out its color and smell and taste, a steady fade to black and white that starts in adolescence and ends when the last dots of light fizzle out and all that’s left is darkness and silence and death?
Christ.
I was sick of my own thoughts. I needed a distraction, some way to get energy out of me without thinking. I dug that kid-size guitar I’d gotten for Christmas out of my closet. I’d barely thought about it, since it was made for a nine-year-old, but I sat on the edge of my bed and I banged out notes without knowing what I was doing, and it cleared my head for a second. A pure transmission of energy from my fingers into sounds that didn’t require me to hear my own dumb thoughts. For a minute it felt good to be totally consumed, fully distracted.
I had no idea how to actually play it, but I landed on some notes that sort of sounded like Weezer’s “Butterfly,” and I started singing it, barely above a whisper. I’d heard the song about a thousand times and knew every word. The lyrics came out of my mouth like some head-clearing mantra, and for about thirty seconds I was completely lost, focused. The best kind of alone.
Then Kate and her friend screamed with laughter from the other side of my door.
My left hand choked the fret board and my teeth clenched, and I stood up and threw the guitar onto the carpet.
I pulled open the door. Kate and Courtney giggled more. Their laughter sounded like those kids in the football stadium bathroom last fall. They sounded like everyone at my school finally laughing at me, telling me what they really thought about me. Every individual giggle confirmed how pathetic I’d become.
“Shut the fuck up!” I slammed the door as hard as I could at them. My hands rolled into fists and I breathed hard.
They screamed and ran downstairs and I heard Kate crying to Mom.
Mom yelled upstairs, “Kevin. Kitchen. Now.”
I stood there for a second, heart racing.
“Kevin!”
I shook my head and opened the door and stomped downstairs into the kitchen, where Kate and Courtney wiped fake tears from their eyes in front of Mom and Dad. Kate tilted her head at me and squinted. “Are you wearing makeup?”
I stared at the floor and walked past them, muttering, “This is bullshit.” I opened the door to the garage and walked outside.
“That’s my makeup, isn’t it!” she yelled after me. Dad yelled something, too, but I kicked the door shut behind me and cut him off. I went through the garage, slipped on flip-flops, and stalked down the driveway and onto the dark street, lit up by just the streetlights.
My arms were tense and fists clenched and I breathed hard and could feel in my chest how frustrated and pissed off I was. I could have fought someone right then, if I knew how to do that.
I kept walking out of our cul-de-sac, down the first street in the neighborhood, through the side yard of the last house,
into the woods, down the small path between the trees — feeling my way in the humid darkness — then huffed and stomped through the rough and finally made it onto the wide-open fairway of the golf course.
I could see stars in the sky. The anger vibrating through me settled as I walked, and my heartbeat calmed down. It was just me, alone on four hundred yards of moonlit grass, silent and away from everyone.
I tried to pinpoint what I was so mad about. Kate was the spark, but it wasn’t just her. It was everything that had built up and compounded over the last year — the frustrations and annoyances and stress and anxieties and humiliations and people I hated and the hours I spent hating myself, doubting myself, wondering if Accutane was responsible for my thoughts. It was noise from every direction, inward and out. I wished I was pissed off at a thing. Then I could kick the thing and move on. It would have been so much simpler if Leatherface were chasing me with his revving chain saw. But my rage was obnoxiously unspecific. I was mad at every goddamned atom in existence, including my own.
Christ, what an original thought: The universe sucks! Everything I did was a cliché. Even my dream-girl version of Alex was the same generic romantic fantasy in a million other suburban losers’ heads. Was I supposed to rebel against society somehow to differentiate myself? Become an anarchist punk? But there’s a uniform for that, too; there might as well be a national convention of identical high-school punk kids to convene and realize they’re all the same. But that observation was itself a cliché. Everyone knows punk is just as much of a prepackaged group identity as playing lacrosse.
Goddamn it! My thoughts added nothing to the world.
Was there any legitimate reason for me to exist?