Week 3, Story 3

"A Tragedy of Errors: by Jack the Graduate"

Hugh had to sort of beg me to go the party with him anyway. It was the weekend before graduation, so he could pull out all the stops: come on man, last party of our high school years, we need to prep for college partying, you’d really make your best friend of seven years go by himself?, I can’t go without you man it wouldn’t be right, let’s be the crazy young bachelors we are- Hugh can really lay it on thick if he wants to. ‘Young bachelors?’ You see what I mean. So I went.
Parties are never like they are in movies, you know? In all these high school movies, the parties are completely insane: three hundred people crammed into some quasi-mansion owned by WASP-y parents who are out of town, with like seven kegs getting emptied; half naked girls everywhere, drunk and making out with guys that are totally random to them- Sodom and Gomorrah as constructed by sixteen to seventeen year-olds. Give me a break, right? Parties are never like this, or at least none of the ones I’ve ever been to. A huge party is maybe forty people, but most gatherings are like ten to twenty, and everyone sits around trying to talk over the stereo until they get wasted enough to throw someone in the pool and laugh about that, and then things die down again.
Do you remember what parties were like when you were a little kid? “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” was enough to get everyone going absolutely bat shit. Or “Musical Chairs,” remember that one? Man, stuff like that is so exciting when you’re a little kid; I think we pass our whole lives chasing that, the ability to be so easily electrified by the simplest things. Why do we forget that? We forget that ice cream should make us happy, or a band-aid can make pain go away just because it has Snoopy on it- cover the blood with a cartoon smile. I mean, I know problems get bigger and worse as we get older, but isn’t part of that due to the fact that somewhere along the line, we lose our simplicity? It’s gotta be. To be honest, I think that’s why we spend so much time and energy on waiting to fall in love, and then on working so hard to stay there. Because being in love is like being a kid again: it’s “Pin the Tail on the Donkey” or chocolate birthday cake with a big glass of milk. It’s being addicted to those small things again. I know, because that’s how I’m addicted to Seline.
Okay, high school is miserable, let’s all face it. Having just graduated, part of me has never been more relieved in my life. All those freaks who go around saying that these are the best years of your life: I’d hear that and think, Jesus God, then shoot me now. I mean, there are precious few things that make you actually look forward to coming down with the flu, just so you can avoid them. It’s completely deadening to some part of you, being herded around in total monotony like that. Fine, if I can’t speak for everyone else: it was deadening to me. And then sophomore year, I had a class with Seline. Junior year, I had none with her, but was in Woodshop and spent six weeks constructing the set for a play she was helping direct. This year, count ‘em, two classes with this unbelievable girl. There would also be the odd, far too infrequent occasion where our circles would come together, and this person would bring their friend who would bring theirs and simple as that, Seline and I would be hanging out in the same group, asking each other questions and cracking each other up. It was awesome. As embarrassing as it is to admit, I was so hung up, I kind of thought of her as my reason for getting up in the morning and then my reason for staying at school through the whole day. I know, beaten dog, right? She wasn’t even my girlfriend; we didn’t date or mess around or anything, but she was still that much to me. It goes back to what I was saying, about losing that simple excitement about your life, and then you meet a Seline: all of a sudden, there’s something in your day, that when you see it unexpectedly, has the power to throw your heart into your ribcage in a head-on collision that kills all the passengers and paralyzes the driver. With her, I was a little kid at a birthday party again, going crazy just because I was alive and this great thing of being in my place and time was happening, and it was enough. She was chocolate cake. She still is.
Here’s the thing though: love doesn’t make heroes of us all. I didn’t tell her. Of course I didn’t; am I fucking crazy? What if I did tell her, and she turned me down? Fear of rejection: it’s the oldest one in the book, and there’s power in the primordial. To have something be that important to you, and to have that crushed- how do you re-verify yourself after that? There’s no pain test to assure you from that dream; after a blow like that, you can pinch all you want, but you’re numb and you never wake up. Yet, high school was ending. The guarantee of seeing her nearly every day was almost up; I knew that the chances of us coming together in something like serendipity were going to get numbered down toward zero. Maybe all big milestones are this way- high school graduation is my only experience so far- but maybe that’s what these big life-markers are for. They ask you if you have the nerve to keep going, to do more than what this line here delineates. I guess it might sound kind of dramatic, but maybe the way these kind of things push you to think about “what happens next?” is a test of courage: we begin to ask ourselves if it’s worth it to take that breath and go for what we really want. I found that as the prospect of losing Seline loomed more threatening, it got to be more worth it: I really wanted to work up the courage to tell her that I think she’s the kindest person I’ve ever met, that her laugh is killer and I think she and I could be best friends if we gave it a chance.
The party that night was at this guy Nick’s house, and was turning out to be the inevitable: no National Lampoon antics, just a bunch of kids sitting around in the living room, out on the patio, standing in the kitchen leaning on the counters. We smoked a little, drank a little more; Ryan Weisman got thrown in the pool and then it hit that quiet time that all parties eventually wind down to, the last hour and a half or so where people with more initiative or something better to do have started to leave, and everyone else has settled onto couches and chairs or are dangling their feet in the pool. Talking is a murmur, and the steady couples start to nestle into each other with a familiarity that makes the girl halves of them giggle and everyone else around them really uncomfortable. I was sitting on the living room couch with Hugh, buzz all but dead because I had cut myself off hours earlier, when I finally saw Seline. My body did the old routine: skin hot/cold, wave of nausea, the works. I don’t know how long she had been at Nick’s; I didn’t know how long she would stay, so I had to make my mind up fast. Was tonight the night? I would have asked Hugh for some wingman support, but he was in no position to give a shit: the guy had been going nuts all night, knocking them back like every cell in his body had dried up and required Jack and Cokes to replenish; like he had been made thirsty for years in some profoundly deep cavern in himself, and was only now getting thrown the lifeline of moisture. I should have known something was up but I wasn’t paying attention to him: I was trying to work up the damn courage to tell make a move on Seline. Make a joke and touch her shoulder when she laughed so she’d suddenly get it, or ask her on a date, or tell her I’m madly in love with her and have been for almost three years. Anything, shit. She was in tow of two friends, standing right across the room from me while I sat with my dumb ass sunk into an old couch, friend blitzed beside me. She was wearing jeans and a tiny black tee shirt that her stomach kind of peeked out from, and her feet were bare. I couldn’t remember ever having seen her feet, her naked feet, and there it was. Chocolate cake.
I must have had the dopiest look on my face, taking her in, because she looks over and waves and throat choking on my stomach, I smile and wave back. I want her to come over and talk to me so badly but more than that, I want to go over and talk to her. I want to be that guy who can cross a room and talk to the girl of his dreams despite his heart going suicidal in his chest. I want to charm her and I want to tell her everything. I suddenly want all this more than I want to keep myself safe, protect myself from the agony of messing it up or getting turned down. Fuck it- I’m going to cross that room and ask her to go for a walk with me and out on the dark street somewhere, it will happen. This is it, I’m finally dead sure. And that’s when Hugh sits up beside me on the couch, leans over, and kisses my neck.
Most of the time, I think, we don’t really feel our lives: your job starts at nine and ends at five; the rules of driving become second nature; you could shampoo your hair while in a vegetative state, you’ve done it that many times. There are no more little kid birthday parties, because we won’t throw them for ourselves and no one else will do it for us, and yeah, that sucks, but maybe not worse than how life can have a way of turning on you and absolutely shredding your nerves. It’s times like these that you wish the numbness back, because even that would be better than being so keenly aware of burning and aching and just hurting. It’s the time when your best friend makes a pass at you, and the time when he turns up at your door crying the next day, wishing he could take it back. It’s the time when you mumble some stupid shit excuse about why you can’t talk right now before shutting the door in his face. It’s the time you watch the girl you’ve loved for years accept her diploma at graduation, knowing she’s starting college two states away; when she hugs you goodbye for “the last time,” which is so fucking ironic because that same hug happens to be the first the two of you have ever shared. It’s realizing that as badly as you had wanted to hold her, that’s a badly as he had wanted to hold you. I guess, in the end, we all just might be here to hurt each other. I don’t know.
So, that’s where I stand: down my best friend, and the only girl I want. These are the best years of your life, so I’ve heard.