by David Arnold
Last year, AP English, Mr. Tuttle instructed us to write a “concise history,” wherein we explored something specific from our own lives that intersected with a piece of world history. A vague assignment, maybe, but I latched on to it, and when it was over, I didn’t let go, just kept writing all these historical vignettes. Eventually, I combined what I had into a single project entitled “A Concise History of Me” and entered it into a national contest hosted by the New Voices Teen Lit Journal. I didn’t tell anyone, because of course I wouldn’t win.
And then I won.
“You’re becoming a hermit,” says Val. “You know that, right?”
“I am not.”
“You never go out.”
“I go out.”
“The Rosa-Haas pool doesn’t count, No.”
“I go . . . other places.”
“What other places?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “Places.”
“You know Bowie died the same year as Prince and Muhammad Ali?” says Alan, holding my copy of David Bowie’s biography. “That shit always happens in threes.”
“George Michael died that year too,” I say.
“Oh. Fours, then.”
“And I’d like to know what’s so bad about becoming a hermit,” I say. “Hermits get a bad rap, now that I think of it. All they want is to stay home and be left alone. What’s wrong with that?”
Alan is all, “Hermits don’t get laid, bro.”
At that exact moment, Mom pokes her head in the open doorway. “Who’s not getting laid?”
“Mrs. O!” Alan rushes over for a hug. The two of them have this weird sort of connection where Alan flirts with her in exaggerated and inappropriate ways, and my mom pretends she doesn’t like it. She is fooling exactly no one.
“I thought you guys were out hiking for the day,” says Alan.
Mom, blushing like crazy: “Just Todd. He has this little posse that goes up to Starved Rock every few months, try to prove they haven’t aged.”
Alan gives Mom—my mother, understand, the one who brought me into this world and has repeatedly threatened to take me out of it—an exaggerated up-and-down, a look only he can get away with. “Well, I don’t know about your husband, Mrs. O, but I think you’re aging backward.”
Val says, “Okay, Alan.”
“Seriously, we may have a Benjamin Button situation on our hands here.”
“That’s enough now.”
“Noah, tell me your mom isn’t smoking hot.”
“Alan, God.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. Oakman,” says Val. “My brother was dropped on his head many, many times as a child.”
Alan winks at my mom, gives her that winning Rosa-Haas smile. “Don’t listen to her, Mrs. O. You’re looking good today. Extra crispy.”
“Well, I’m not sure what that means,” says Mom, just eating it up, totally pretending this isn’t exactly why she came in the room to begin with. Actually . . .
“Mom, you need something?”
I can tell she wants to ask about Coach Stevens’s voicemail but is unsure whether to bring it up around Alan and Val.
“I just wanted to see if you guys wanted . . . some snacks or something.”
“Some snacks?”
She nods. “Or something.”
“We’re not seven, Mom.”
“Neither am I,” she says, “and I love snacks.”
“You got any Cheetos?” asks Alan.
Mom scrunches her nose. “Rice cakes?”
I jump in before Alan can pretend he loves rice cakes. “Thank you, Mom. We’re good, though.”
After Mom leaves, I scroll to an old Radiohead playlist. Val sets the laptop on the floor, lies down on the opposite end of the bed so we’re foot to head, and then Alan flops next to me, and the three of us stare up at the ceiling, listening to music. Sometimes simple things and complicated things are the same things, and the three of us moving as one, listening to music in the same bed is like that, intimacy dialed into some strange underground frequency.
“Think of Iverton as a stage,” Val says, almost in a whisper. “The show is almost over, and this party is our final bow.”
“Rather dramatic of you,” I say. “Plus, senior year hasn’t even started. Plus plus, who says we’ll be separated after high school?”
Alan has his eye on DePaul’s animation program; Val, with her ever-expanding photography portfolio, has talked about the School of the Art Institute of Chicago the way Rory Gilmore talked about Harvard. Recent frustrations aside, the knowledge that my best friends aren’t moving across the country next year is hugely comforting.
“Any word on scholarships?” asks Val.
I could tell them about the voicemail, but I know what they’d say. The only people more excited than my parents about the potential of my attending Milwaukee next year are Val and Alan. Assuming they land at DePaul and SAIC, the quick drive to UM would keep the triangle intact.
But there are other ways to make that happen.
“Maybe I’ll just get a job in the city,” I say, ignoring Val’s question. “Do the whole college thing later.”
“Noah.”
“Val.”
“Be serious.”
“I am.”
“What would you even do?”
“The world is wide, Val. I’m sure there are plenty of opportunities for a strapping young lad such as myself.”
“You say that, but you know you’d end up at Starbucks.”
Alan says, “I hear they have great benefits,” to which Val sticks her foot in his face. He swats it away, and for a second we just lie there listening to “Everything in Its Right Place,” which I often think of as my own personal anthem: the unadorned walls, the alphabetized bookshelves, everything white or pastel, my desk with its perfectly angled stacks of paper, and I say, “You know what it is?”
“What,” says Val.
I remember when Penny was younger, but growing fast, there were times I’d see this idea dawn on her that she wouldn’t always be a kid, and in those moments she regressed—she’d talk like a baby or cling to my mom in ways she’d long since abandoned.
The further away I felt from my friends, the stronger the urge to draw them in.
“I love you guys.” I wrap one arm around Alan’s neck, the other around Val’s ankles. “I love you guys, and I love our summer, and I just—don’t want to be with other people right now.”
The song ends and a different one begins, “Daydreaming,” which is the kind of song that seeps melancholy into the air like a sinking oil tanker.
Val sits up, claps her hands. “Okay, boys. We’re not spending the entire day in this sterilized bedroom, listening to sad bastard music like . . .”
“Sad bastards?” says Alan.
“Exactly. We are not sad bastards. We are young and vigorous and thirsty, and we have, you know . . .”
“Thirst?”
“Unquenchable thirst is what I’m saying. Luckily, I know just the party for kids like us.”
I grab my laptop off the floor, plop it back onto my chest, and pick up where I left off with Gilmore Girls. “You can’t make me go.”
Val leans over, positions her head so her eyes barely peek over the top of the screen. “Noah.”
“I have rights.”
“It would be a pity if I accidentally ruined the ending for you.”
I look up a few inches, slowly meet Val’s gaze. “You wouldn’t.”
If eyebrows could shrug, Val’s just did. “You’ll never guess who runs off to California.”
“Not funny.”
“Or who gets married on a cruise ship.”
“You actually think I’d go to some dumb party to avoid Gilmore Girls spoilers?”
“Or who doesn’t get into Harvard.�
�
7 → I go to some dumb party
Will and Jake Longmire fell out of the douche tree and hit every nozzle on the way down. Also, and not entirely unrelated, they’re really good-looking, but in the same way Lochte or the Hemsworth brothers might be called good-looking, by which I mean, when one sees them, one senses the overwhelming urge to punch them in the face. And I’d feel bad thinking it, only I’ve seen the way they treat their girlfriends, and I’ve heard the “jokes” they toss at Alan, so I don’t punch them, but I’m fine with wanting to.
The Longmire house sits a solid football field off the curb, and if there’s one residence in Iverton that stands out as bigger, flashier, more Ivertonian than all the rest, it’s theirs. Val parks her black BMW between two other BMWs, and the three of us climb out. Alan pulls a case of something out of the trunk, and it looks like beer, but seems a touch too—I don’t know— bedazzled? Against my better judgment, I ask what it is.
“Case of Hurricanes,” says Alan.
“Case of what?”
“Mixx Tail Hurricanes.”
“Sounds . . . catastrophic.”
“Only around bottle number four, dude.”
I’m not much of a drinker. I mean, I drink on occasion, but being a “drinker” conjures images of sweaty foreheads and glazed eyes, and I don’t know—I prefer my forehead dry and my eyes clear.
“And that?” I point to the plastic takeout bag in Alan’s other hand.
“Bulgogi,” he says. “Korean barbecue. But not barbecue like you think of barbecue. Bulgogi has its own thing going on.”
We cut through the front yard, the lawn composed of the most perfect blades known to man, and suddenly I feel like the collar on my T-shirt is strangling me.
“You okay, No?” Val throws an arm over my shoulder. “You seem a little tweaked, or something.”
“I’m fine. Just wish I’d known to bring a dish.”
Alan chuckles. “It’s not a fucking potluck, son. This isn’t to share.”
“Okay, well, also, I really don’t want to be here right now, so there’s that.”
“Calm your bones, man,” Val says. “We’ll get inside, get you a drink—you’ll be glad you came, I promise.”
“And who knows,” Alan says. “Maybe we can prove wrong that age-old proverb about celibate hermits.”
No matter how many times I tell Alan I’m not interested in having sex yet, he doesn’t believe me. And okay, over the years I’ve gotten close. Probably thrown away a half dozen pairs of underwear just to keep my parents from asking too many questions on laundry days. (I know. But it’s easier to play dumb about one’s curiously dwindling underwear supply than to explain that.) And I mean, look: my decision to not have sex isn’t for lack of abilities or urges. I know what a dad thing this is to say, but it’s more like—I’ve always felt this potential for real depth in a relationship. I know what sex can mean, and how it would most certainly affect that depth one way or the other, and for me that’s a weighty scale, too precarious to fuck with (so to speak). It’s a modest and oft misunderstood outfit, we Virgins by Choice, but I’m okay with that.
Val stops us for a selfie in front of the Longmire house, and because I’m fairly certain my mood is showing, I hope she doesn’t post it anywhere. A year ago I wouldn’t have cared, but a year ago Val didn’t have over 100k followers.
Valeria Rosa-Haas has become something of a social media sensation. Which I guess plenty of people aspire to, but for her it’s the medium that matters: photography. It started with the usual buffet of street signs through grainy filters, sunrise walks, cool shoes at dusk. Eventually she shifted into what is now her trademark, these elaborate prop photos from her favorite movies: recognizable items or outfits the characters wore, books they discussed, records they listened to, geographical references, thematic colors. It’s all very artistic and tasteful, and if her follower count is any indication, I’m not the only one who thinks so.
She supplements these posts with the occasional social commentary photo, my favorite of which is a shot of a man at the zoo, head down, on his phone, while on the other side of a thick glass pane, a gorilla watches him. Val captioned the photo, simply: “Cages.”
She is going to kill it at SAIC next year.
The closer we get to the front door, the more the ground shakes: a pounding bass, a rumble of chatter and laughter, the house is absolutely bouncing, all systems go. Val leads the way, pushing the door open without ringing the bell, and Alan and I follow. Kids are everywhere, drinking and laughing, groping, talking, like that. We walk through the front hallway and pass four grandfather clocks, two on either side of the entry. There’s a massive chandelier hanging over our heads and a wide, winding staircase going up the left side of the wall. It’s all very modern Gatsby, and Val, in true East Egg fashion, takes subtle command of the room, never once being too loud, never once too demanding, but somehow more present than the rest of us.
“Hey, No,” says Alan, pointing to the chandelier. “You could probably park your fun guy ballsack in that chandelier,” and that’s about the time I make a very important decision: I will get drunk this evening. Sweaty forehead and all, eyes glazed as a doughnut. It is my only hope of survival.
* * *
The kitchen isn’t so much a kitchen as a Food and Beverage Atrium: a double-wide refrigerator, vaulted ceilings, hanging pots and pans, exposed brick. It would really be a sight to see if it weren’t currently littered with cans and bottles, bags of chips, and takeout boxes that appear to have undergone a variety of experimental surgeries.
The whole thing makes me want to go ape with a DustBuster and a pair of industrial rubber gloves.
“Just FYI,” says Alan as I tear into the case of Hurricanes, “those things are eight percent by volume,” and since I’m not a big drinker, I have no clue what he’s babbling about, so I guzzle the thing. It’s cherry red and tastes like a Jolly Rancher, and before I know it, it’s gone, so I grab a second one, and as I drink, I begin to feel the possibility of having an actual conversation with another person without the overwhelming desire to slowly insert my fist into my mouth. Or their mouth. Or anyone’s mouth, really.
Just sip my Hurricane, walk around the house without any real plan.
There’s an enormous pool out back that makes the Rosa-Haas pool look like a moderately portioned appetizer. It’s packed, of course—kids drinking, climbing up the slide, making out on a giant swan float, doing pull-ups off the edge of the diving board, splashing, screaming, all very Lord of the Flies and whatnot.
Hurricane gone.
Back to the kitchen for number three, and there are just so many rooms in this house, most of them filled with kids I recognize from school, though a few faces are new. Eventually I wind up in a roomful of people dancing, ground zero for the booming stereo, let the music take over, and before I know it, I’m dancing with some girl whose name I haven’t caught yet. She’s hot, so I’m not sweating it, but I’m sweating because it’s hot, and also this Hurricane is posing an interesting question: Was I actually born this awesome? I mean, right? Or was it more of a nurtured thing?
“So you wore that yesterday?” asks the girl.
We’re up against a wall now, on the perimeter of the action. At some point we decided to take a break (from dancing, I assure myself, not from being innately awesome), and I’m explaining my love of Henry David Thoreau and how he inspired me to wear the same clothes every day.
“Yes, I wore this outfit yesterday. Also the day before that, and the day before that, and so on and so forth.”
“So then . . .” The girl takes a single step back, eyebrows raised.
“No, I mean—I have, like, ten pairs of the same pants and shirt. Just put it on rotation, like that.”
She nods slowly, sips her beer, looks around.
I’m all, “So my clothes are super-clean, is what I’m saying
.” Attaboy, Oakman, keep talking about those freshly washed linens, you’re doing great. I don’t know why I listen to myself, but I do. “Decision fatigue is a real thing, though,” and like the party animal I am, I’m telling this girl about how I went to the mall with my mom, chose my favorite outfit—slim-fitting cuffed navy pants and a white David Bowie T-shirt (a picture of him smoking, and across the top in bold letters: BOWIE)—and bought ten of each. I round it off with my favorite pair of brown lace-up boots, and that’s that. Val calls the ensemble my “Navy Bowie.”
“It helps with daily efficiency,” I continue, “but like I said, Thoreau was the real catalyst. ‘Our life is frittered away by detail,’ he said, which I think is true, don’t you? And I know what you’re thinking.”
The girl says, “Bet you don’t,” but I go on.
“You’re thinking, most people go through a Thoreau phase and grow out of it, and then they’re all, Oh, how cute, those days when I was young and thought Thoreau was so fancy, but fuck that. I love Thoreau and his fucking righteous philosophy of simplicity. Walden especially, am I right? Have you read that?” Gulp the Hurricane. “The idea that we strip away the clutter, just go live by a lake somewhere and write? That’s essentially what Mila Henry did too, you know.” Essence of cherry-flavored malt liquor goodness is dropping some knowledge tonight! “And I guarantee you, neither of them ever labored over whether or not the requisite amount of days had passed between wearing their favorite ironic T-shirt. ‘Simplify, simplify.’ I try, I really do. Anyway.”
Only now do I notice the girl in front of me is not the girl I was originally talking to. This new girl is chugging something that smells like straight whiskey out of a Solo cup. She laughs, all, “You’re so funny, Jared.”
“Who’s Jared?”
The girl laughs hysterically. “See? Who’s Jared?” she says, waving her arms around in the air, some of her drink splashing onto the floor. “Uh, fuck, I’m gonna throw up . . . Not really, I mean, but. What?”
The room is at a fever pitch, so it’s possible I missed something. “What?”