Boys Life

Going home for Thanksgiving had me thinking a lot about the old days. Before New York. It’s not really that long ago, under ten years. Sometimes it’s hard to believe things happened at all, that I even lived before. The journey to New York from my home town cut a canyon between my lives. My father drove a U-haul and I was close behind in my Honda. Some magic odometer stretched time, miles were weeks and rest stops marked the years. When I finally arrived my old life was so far away that change was inevitable. I was not reinvented, I was still me, but I did let the past become the then. This is a story from then. Simpler times they were not. Just different.

I’m in this Ihop outside my home town with about eight other suburbanite girls and boys. Our denim is slightly over sized, all different shades of blue, all equally unattractive. Christ, I’m probably wearing jeans with that painters pocket on the right thigh. With the exception of the baby blue syrup dispensers and coffee pots, everything in the restaurant is a different shade of beige or khaki. Incandescent lighting fixtures illuminate the room to interrogation standards and every flaw of food and face is clear as day. I’m sitting across from Jessica, the groups resident gossip and general shifty female character. Jessica is telling me how Tracy, the girl I’ve been seeing, has slept with a mutual acquaintance over the weekend.

“That’s bullshit, you’re just fucking with me.”

“I’m not lying. I swear to god.”

“Jessica, Jessica, don’t do this shit, seriously.”

“It’s true, I’m not lying.”

Trust is not exactly what Jessica has built her reputation on, but in this harsh light I see a moment of honesty. Her face admits flaws and past transgressions, her eyes insist fact. Even though I think she’s doing it to be closer to the center of something exciting, I believe she’s telling the truth.

I want to puke.

I walk outside and into the relatively empty parking lot. Planted in the middle of a parking divider is a tree. Leafless and ratty for early September, it juts up from a small oval of dirt and mulch inside an oval of green in a bigger oval of white concrete. I stand with the tree for a while. I want to cry. I like the drama, anything to make my life seem more like a movie and less like my life. A good crying scene would be perfect right now. The top, or maybe the bottom, of the ark in my story. Maybe someone could cue some rain? No tears come. Jessica comes out and we talk for a while. I realize quickly that my anger is mostly bruised ego. I just don’t care enough to call Tracy and scream at her or to lie down in the grass and mulch and cry like the script suggests.

Eventually I get in my car and drive home, in the same Honda that I brought to New York. It was just a Honda then, with no magical powers. It was four wheels to get me to and from work, therapy, my parents house, or tonight, home from Ihop.

To really set up the situation I have to take it back a few steps further, to my first serious girlfriend. We had been together a year and broke up in January. She dumped me. I was deep in this gnarly depression that had been affecting everyone around me, so she pulled the plug. In hindsight it was the best thing that ever happened to me but at the time I was heartbroken. I spent the rest of winter on my parents couch. Unable to eat, I’d be up all night watching TV, depressed and sick. Eventually I started to come around. I got some help. I had abandoned my old gang 3 years prior, for no other reason than to be cool. Utterly defeated and totally uncool, I sought the old crew out. I did not have to beg for forgiveness or explain anything, I was simply welcomed home. By the time I’m eating healthy and off the couch permanently it’s spring. Spring turns into summer and I meet Tracy.

Part 2 later this week…