Boys Life

I’m toning down the narration for this part. I could draw conclusions and through lines, compare their lives to mine, but I like it how it is, raw and honest. 

Young Love Pt. 2

Max: I can do this easily and fast. Growing up, because me and my friends got so much box, we didn’t… [laughter] I mean, I got broken up with and cheated on at a young age, but I was like 16 so I got over it fast. And there were other girls. I didn’t care. And I met a girl who I got super affected by. I met a girl who was really, like, beautiful you know. It was the first girl I was like, holy shit she’s that good looking.

BL: It must have been more than just looks?

Max: Initially though, that was the reason we made eye contact and talked to each other. Looks. And then we talked: Oh my god we have the same initials! And we’re from the same place! And big families! And this and that. We had all these things in common and then once I got to know her it turned out to be TRUE. Like, oh this is a girl that only slept with a very limited amount of people. She doesn’t do drugs. She hasn’t fucked any of my friends. None of my friends know her. And that was really key because every dude I know that had a girlfriend, it was like: Oh that’s whats her name Billy, Joey, and Rudy all blazed her. That’s Joey’s girl. And to date a girl that didn’t date Joey [first] was nice. [Joey being a hypothetical friend]

BL: She was outside of the scene?

Max: Outside of the circle. Started dating her [and] realized, well didn’t realize this at such a young age, but realized it older, young girls, whether they’re wealthy or poor, I don’t see the difference, girls who’ve always gotten what they want their whole life, and I’m the same way, I’ve always gotten what I wanted too, so I can’t complain, but young girls can effect dudes and that’s when manipulation comes into play. And I wanted to believe this girl so bad because of how rad she was when things were good. I believed everything that came out of her mouth and a lot of the shit was inconsistent [and] dishonest. There was not loyalty and trust and no basis of consistency, which is important in my mind, with friendships, work, girls, anything. That being said…

BL: So she, um, you would overlook a lot of the bullshit?

Max: I placed it on a pedestal. Put her on a pedestal. Everything I caught her for: emotionally cheating, lying, being deceitful and inconsistent. I would get really mad in the moment, and then all she had to do was put on a puppy face and fuck me, Then tell me how awesome I am at drawing and skateboarding, and life. [I would] Start to think: there is no way this girl could deceive me if I’m that ill, right? This girl thinks I’m fucking, I might as well be Jesus Christ’s fucking son. How could this be? And [I] dealt with it for two years I think? We were together for a year and some change and I had been…

BL: You didn’t sleep with anyone else the entire time you were together?

Max: Oh no, absolutely not. The only time I slept with someone else is when we broke up, but even during that time…

BL: Was it hard for you to sleep with other people at first?

Max: I hated sleeping with other girls. Hated it. Every girl I’d be like it’s not as good. This doesn’t work. I don’t like that. They don’t feel that or they don’t do that thing, whatever it is I hated it. And that was actually a year, and this is the important part for anyone listening who wants to learn, I got dragged on for a year and didn’t listen to any of my family or friends’ advice who were only looking out for my well being.

me : All the homies were telling you to dead that?

Max: Every one of my friends and family was saying: tell this girl to Kick Rocks. You’ve gotten enough Dear John Letters, get the fuck outta there. I refused to listen to anyone that cared about me. I only listened to the irrational side of my personality, because I am obsessive about things.

BL: But you’re moving on?

Max: slowly but surely. 

Without prompting James starts in with his story as soon as Max finishes:

James: There might be something to what you were saying about me being intimidated by girls. Because when this one was in my French class I didn’t talk to her at first. We were on opposite sides of the class room and she was attractive. I was always showing up late.

BL: In every class you’d sit in the same seat? So you never got to holler, you could not, like, move your seat?

James: Initially, I could have, but there was no particular inclination. Then one night we were at a really sweet party, Josh was there, it was one of the best parties of our lives! It was in Brooklyn, was it at the Mckibbin Lofts?

Unknown: It was at Pratt, the Pratt lofts.

There is some debate about the party’s location. Mentions of skaters who lived there, even a wall ride being close to its location: the Jefferson stop off the L Train.

James: So I was at this party, and I was in a great mood, I was wearing all white.

BL: White jeans?

James: White jeans. So I’m ripping around, and I see her sitting on a sofa, and I’m like:oooh whats up we’re in the same French class. So we talked about that. and then I showed the next class and sat beside her. And we spent the spring passing notes back and forth during class, and it was good. I tried to get it in early, but she was like:aaaah, holding out. We would spend a lot of time together.

BL: But you wouldn’t make out with her or anything?

James: No. It was like this for maybe a month or two. There would be times I’d slept over and I’d be behind her and have my arm around her, but we still wouldn’t have kissed.

BL: Why not. Why didn’t you just grab her and kiss her?

James: I’ve rarely done that, I didn’t…

BL: What do you do, wait for magic?

James: I was waiting for the magic.

BL: I mean I’ve done that too, where you just kinda like…

Kevin: Waiting for your courage to peak.

BL: Yea, but as I’ve gotten older I just feel like I can’t do that anymore. I just grab em and try and make out cause why am I gonna spend like six hours of my night waiting for this thing to happen? So you guys are spending all this time together and then what happened what took it….

James: Probably before I tried to kiss her I asked if she’d want to date or something like that. And she asked me if I thought we would make a good team. like Whooooa!

BL: That’s very substantial.

James: Yea, it was more substantial than I thought it would be. So then we kept doing the passing notes and kicking it. We’d get high before class sometimes, that was cool.
Then a week before she leaves, we’d always talk online at night, and then one night when we were online she asked me how I’d feel about dating? and I got excited and said yes. Kevin was there for all this, we were listening to Rilo Kiley and skating Mid Town. And then we started dating 2 or 3 days before we left for the summer.

BL: So this is the first time you make out with her? When she says yes to dating you?

James: That hasn’t happened yet because this happened online. Yea, so then this dude had an end of the year party, a lot of people were there and another friend of ours was trying to take a photo of us kissing [for the first time] and we were like: naw chill.

BL:How long from the Brooklyn loft party to the first kiss?

James: February 10th to may 3rd.

BL: Wow, that’s intense dude.

James: It was. I was psyched.

BL: So what happened from there?

James: I wrote her a four page letter every day that summer.

Kevin: Yea, until that one day! Take it from my perspective then his. I’m asleep in California, on vacation sleeping with my new girlfriend. It’s like 4 am our time, and I get a call. I’m like: oh my god who’s calling me.  It’s James, and I go: what! He’s hysterical:

I don’t know what to do man, I don’t know whats going on I’m just wondering the streets at home, I cheated on Rachel already! Should I tell her or keep it a secret cause it doesn’t really matter.

And I was like: KEEP IT A SECRET! And my girlfriend gets handed the phone, and she tells him: Tell her the truth. So what does he do, he goes and tells the truth!

BL: WHAT HAPPENED! This is a girl your writing four page letters every day. What happened that you hooked up with some other chick?

James: We would have a lot of parties, was one thing. There’s another thing where….

BL: She wasn’t there?

James: She wasn’t there, but she came and visited me, that was very nice of her. When I was in high school I broke my wrist but didn’t do anything about it at the time. So instead of healing as one bone, it healed as two. Then I fell on it once and thought I broke it, but then when I went to the hospital they told me that I’d already broken it and I’d just started to feel it more. I was gonna have to have a surgery to bring my bones back together. The first doctor we went to was crazy, this is when Rachel was there to visit me. The day before she came out this [skateboarding accident] happened. So when she was visiting me we went to the doctor’s office and all this shit. The first doctor I went to was Dr. Tumuluri. He was this Indian dude who couldn’t speak very good English. These other people who’d been there many times were in the waiting room with us and they were making magic carpet ride jokes about him, in front of Rachel and me. They were talking about how he’d do his diagnosis on a magic carpet, and how he would have to retreat to go say his prayers all the time. They were telling us Rachel looked like Ashlee Simpson, and I looked like I was in Blink 182. I went and talked to him and he said I was gonna have to have surgery, and I was gonna have to keep my wrist elevated above my heart for two months straight, and I wouldn’t be able to return to school, and all these things and I thought: fuck this is terrible. And then Rachel went up to Chicago. We thought that was going to happen and she was like:

Oh we spent so much time apart I don’t know if we could be apart for another semester…

And I was like, Oh Really, cause that hadn’t occurred to me at all. That was a minor heart break there because when she said that I was surprised.

BL: Oh, because the possibility of you guys not sticking it out had never occurred to you?

James: Right, and then she did that. That’s not my excuse, but that was a time I felt a pang. The first pang.

James: And so then I took acid the first night I got back, and she hadn’t talked to me the whole time.

I stop James here and we establish that summer’s time line: wrist accident, Rachel visits the next day, Fear of long Healing, Rachel leaves after a week long visit. Later in the summer: Drunk Cheating. Calls Rachel the next day and confesses. Wrist healing not as drastic as expected. Returns to NYU in the fall, and has not spoken to Rachel since the phone call.

BL: Touch down in NY what do you do?

James: Touch down in NY, hook up with the team. Kevin has acid. So it’s me, Kevin, and David, [another friend not present at the interview] and we take acid. It hits Kevin first; he has this great trip. At one point we’re walking along the street and we’re all talking, and then Kevin hits his head against an air conditioner. He completely falls to the ground. [the air conditioner] Was right at head level, the corner of it. Then this guy was walking by, who was a Columbia grad student for medicine, he says: 
What happened to your friend!
Well, he’s on acid and he just hit his head on the air conditioner.
How many times has he taken acid?
It’s both of our third times.
After three times your supposed to be legally insane!
We’re all freaking out, and eventually me and Kevin go back to his place. Right when he starts to go to sleep, I think I’m ready to go to sleep too, but then my acid starts to work! So I decide it’s a good idea to call Rachel. So I give her a call. No one picks up, so I leave a message. I want to apologize to her of course.

Kevin: He goes, he goes: Rachel I’m really… pfffffftttt, and starts laughing, so I go:hang up, hang up!

James: So I hang up.

Kevin: So he tries to do it again: I think I can make my laugh sound like I was crying. So he calls back and goes: Rachel I’m just really upset that wasn’t me laughing, it was me CRYIIIING. And he starts laughing again!

James: And then she sends me a text that says: stop calling me, faggot

Max: That’s brutal!

BL: You guys were only together for a real short period, it never really comes together, and suddenly your apart. From February to May you build this thing, then May hits and you’re apart.

James: We had sex for the first time the night before I left.

BL: There you go. You consummate this big build up and then you’re apart. Then you go a basically sexless summer except when she visits and the one time you cheat on her, then you’re back in New York in the fall, on acid trying to win her back over the phone.

James: Right, So then I have to meet my parents for breakfast. And I realize I’m on acid at this point, so I’m like alright, my parents are staying in Battery Park, I just have to make it to Battery Park by sunrise. So I start walking downtown [from the Upper East Side] and Kevin is with me at first, and we see all this crazy shit. Like there’s this father teaching his son to ride a bicycle. There’s this guy walking down the street with a surfboard under his arm and we’re just: WOW… Then I start freaking out, so I tell Kevin he needs to leave. I swipe him in at Grand Central and I keep walking down on my own. I’m really scared. I call a couple friends and no one was picking up. So I give Rachel a call and she picks up and she’s like:
what do you want?
I’m on acid and I’m pretty sure I’m gonna die so can I just like kick it at your place for a while, till breakfast?
Do you know how stupid you sound?
Yea, but I’d like to come over.
So she let me cruise over, then we lay in bed beside each other, kicked it, we didn’t have sex that morning, but we like were still kissing and everything. I couldn’t believe my luck! And we still didn’t talk that much for the next couple weeks, but like two weeks later we’re kicking it and that began a 3 year period where we were not officially dating, but together every day.

BL: So she was never officially your girlfriend again after that?

James: She was for a point maybe, I don’t even remember cause it was all the same sorta thing.

BL: Back and forth back and forth? Did she sleep with other people?

James: If she did, I didn’t know about it. I didn’t inquire too hard.

BL: Did you?

James: Through that whole time period. Yes. We were together officially and I didn’t then, and I would not again, I realized that cheating is bad, when I didn’t know that before.

BL: Is cheating bad?

James: Totally.

BL: Why is it bad?

James: imboycrazy explains it well in one of her posts. If you’re gonna be cheating you might as well break up with them and then cheat, that would be a much better way to go about it, cause then it wouldn’t be cheating.

BL: I’m sorta a firm believer in: whatever guilt I feel about what I’ve done, I don’t need to unburden onto the other person, and like, hurt them with that.

James: That makes sense to me too. I didn’t consider that at the time.

BL: That you might be doing more harm than good?

James: I thought the ultimate truth….

BL: So it turns out you guys are not together anymore, whys that?

James: Because she went away to Berlin for the summer. I didn’t write her letters or anything but we talked on g-chat. Then Kevin and I had a threesome with a prostitute, and somehow that got back to her. I know it got out, which is sorta to be expected, because another friend was there as well. But some how, someone told her, and she found out and was really upset, and we have not had a full conversation since. Although we’ve spoken twice.

BL: Would you like to date her again?

James: Sure, I would in a second.

BL: You would in a second if she would have you? There’s no bad blood? I sorta feel like a lot of your friends feel like she does not treat you that well?

James: She didn’t treat me that well because we weren’t dating. I wouldn’t go back to the situation that we were in where we were not dating.

BL: But you would go exclusive?

James: Yea.

BL: Would you say that part of you still loves her.

James: Sure, yea.

BL: She has not done anything rash that would make you not want to be with her?

James: I still have a good opinion of her; she’s not lied to me before that I know of; she has always been very sweet.

BL: She has a new boyfriend?

James: She has a new boyfriend that wears suspenders.

BL: That’s rough.

James: it’s not that bad; I did a front slappy in front of them.