Real Live Boyfriends (6 page)

Roo: Oh
.

Hutch: So then I wasn’t trying to be popular
anymore
.

Roo: Weren’t you lonely?

Hutch: I didn’t say it was fun. (He bites his
thumbnail, bonsai dirt and all.) I said it was
for the best
.

After Grandma’s funeral, and after Hanson went home to crawl into whatever hole he lives in, Dad had to clear through Grandma’s things and field condolence notes from all her friends. One afternoon, he came home from walking Polka-dot with tears streaming down his face.

The next day I found him weeping into a pot of miniature roses. And from then on it was pretty typical to have him sobbing into his salad at dinner, or to find him lying on the couch in the morning, insomniac, staring at the ceiling fan with a quivering lip.

Mom got progressively impatient with him—she’d say things like “Kevin, if you have to sob, do it in the bedroom. I’m trying to write an e-mail here” and

“Kevin, blow your nose like an adult human being, won’t you? There’s no reason there should be snotty tissues on the table while I’m trying to eat my kiwi.”

“He was always overly attached to her,” Mom said one day when she was driving me to my job at the Woodland Park Zoo. Polka was sticking his ginormous head out the back window of the Honda.

“She was his
mother
,” I said. “She
died
.”

“Yeah,” said Mom. “But Kevin has always been something of a mama’s boy. That’s why he’s such a wreck now that she’s gone. Overattachment.”

“Shouldn’t people be attached?” I asked. “Isn’t that the point of human relationships, to be attached?”

“Well, there’s such a thing as too much,” she said, pulling off the freeway. “still ”—she checked her eye makeup in the rearview mirror—“he’ll get better in a couple days, I bet. Don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried.”

“Yes, you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

But I was.

And Dad didn’t get better in a couple of days. He got a lot worse.

1
Roly-poly: A roly-poly is a bug, technically
a woodlouse, that curls up in a hard little
ball if you touch it. But what I mean is,
Hutch is a social outcast
.

2
In case you care:
Grizzly Man
and
Super

Size Me
.
We watched a bunch of others,
too, but those were the best
.

Agony and Love Poems!

a video clip:

Noel sits before an outdoor table at the coffee shop down the road from Roo’s house. In front of him is a sesame bagel with cheddar cheese. His favorite.

Noel: Whenever you’re ready
.

Roo: (behind the camera) So. How do you
define … friendship?

Noel: (bitterly) My dad says it’s something
that gets in the way of a business deal
.

Roo: Ag
.

Noel: Yeah. Well. That’s probably why he’s
divorced
.

Roo: No kidding
.

Noel: And my brother Claude says
friendship is a method of castration that
doesn’t use a sharp object
.

Roo: Huh?

Noel: Like, friendship is a word girls use
when they want to turn down guys. As in,

“Oh, I can’t go out with you because I’m
afraid of what it will do to our friendship.
”
Roo: Oh
.

Noel: Or in Claude’s case
, guys
use it to
turn down guys
.

Roo: But how do
you
define it?

Noel: A lot of people see friends as
something you have on Twitter or
Facebook or wherever. If someone wants to
read your updates and you want to read
their updates, then you’re friends. You don’t
ever have to see each other. But that
seems like a stupid definition to me
.

Roo: Yeah
.

Noel: Although on the other hand, rethink.

Maybe a friend
is
someone who wants your
updates. Even if they’re boring. Or sad. Or
annoyingly cutesy. A friend says “Sign me
up for your boring crap, yes indeed”—

because he likes you anyway. He’ll tolerate
your junk
.

Roo: You have a lot of friends
.

Noel: No, I don’t
.

Roo: You do. You know everyone at
school. You get invited to parties
.

Noel: I get invited to parties, yeah. And I
know people. But I don’t want their updates
.

Roo: Oh
.

Noel: And I sincerely doubt they want mine
.

Roo: I want your updates
.

Noel: I want
your
updates. (He looks down,
bashfully.) I do. I want all your updates,
Ruby
.

Roo: Trust me. You don’t want them
all.

Noel: I do. Even the boring ones
.

Roo: It’s not the boring ones that are the
problem. It’s the crazy ones
.

Noel: (shakes his head disbelievingly)
Roo: I have some very deeply mental
updates, Noel. You don’t need to be around
for those
.

Noel: You’re not mental. You
think
you’re
mental. That’s a different thing
.

Roo: Isn’t that mental?

Noel: Can I have the updates, please? I
said I wanted
all the updates.

Roo: (laughing) Fine. Your funeral
.

Noel was leaving Seattle for most of August. He was headed to New York City to stay with his brother Claude and Claude’s boyfriend Booth on the Lower East Side. He had gone last year and the year before, too. He and Claude were really close.

Noel talked about his brother like he was golden.

Smart and brave. Comfortable in school or in nightclubs or biking the dangerous streets of New York City. A sharp dresser. I think Claude treated Noel like a grown-up, even though they were almost four years apart. Made him feel like his opinion mattered.

Booth and Claude were a funny couple, Noel said.

Booth was bitter and probably partied more than was good for anybody, while Claude was quieter: idealistic, a dreamer. Still, they had been each other’s real live boyfriend since the end of their freshman year of college. Now they were juniors and had a four-bedroom apartment with a bunch of fell ow students in a converted factory, living in what Noel described as

“domestic bliss and squalor.”

Noel was
my
real live boyfriend, so when he got to New York he called me on his cell from places like the Guggenheim, a cheap dumpling place in Chinatown, a flea market in Chelsea—leaving messages on our machine saying he was thinking of me.1 His e-mails were full of rhymes he made up, links to sill iness on the Internet, descriptions of the city.

Number of languages heard on the street
yesterday: 8. English, Spanish, Portuguese (I
think), Russian, French, German, Japanese,
Chinese
.

Number of miles Booth and I biked yesterday,
going to the Met and home again: probably 10
.

Number of pizza slices consumed while
walking, since arrival: 6
.

Minutes spent staring at the water lily painting
in the MoMA: 13
.

Number of Spider-Man-shaped ice creams
bought from the truck on the corner of
Broadway and Prince: 1
.

Number of guys actually dressed as Spider-Man I saw
while eating the ice cream:
1
.

(I love New York.)

(But I miss you.)

Noel

Then one day, a day like any other as far as I knew, he didn’t pick up when I called his cell.

Later that day, he still hadn’t replied to my last two e-mails.

Next day, he didn’t answer his cell or call me back.

And the day after that, still nothing.

The day after that was my seventeenth birthday, and I was sure Noel would call, or a present would arrive, or something. My parents gave me a stack of mystery novels and a new Speedo for swim team, but because of Mom’s raw food obsession, there wasn’t any cake. There were dehydrated banana-barley cookies with candles.

I couldn’t even laugh at them.

Hutch drove over in the evening and brought me a cupcake.

I cried because it wasn’t from Noel.

Why hadn’t he called?

He knew when my birthday was.

It was so strange, his sudden absence from my life.

The day after my birthday, a short e-mail made everything wonderful again, if only for a moment:
I miss you

like a limb

like a leg I’ve lost

in a war, maybe

in an accident, maybe

in a tragedy
.

But I can still feel my leg
,

pumping with blood
,

itching to move
.

I can still feel it
,

so that I think it is there
,

still part of my body
,

and when I wake up in the morning

I am surprised to remember it’s gone
.

Then I am sad
,

and disabled without it
.

I limp through my day
,

off balance
,

needing it
.

He’d sent me a love poem.

A weird and bloody love poem, but a love poem.

I tried to write him back a poem, but I couldn’t. I didn’t feel inspired, the way Noel must have: biking the streets of New York, seeing amazing paintings, going to the theater, eating hot pretzels on the street.

So I wrote back, but I just wrote about regular stuff. I told him about my birthday presents, and joked about the foul barley cookies, and told about Hutch and the cupcake.

Actually: I’m not telling you the whole truth.

I was still mad he hadn’t called me back, I guess.

And hadn’t answered my e-mails. I’d spent the last few days wondering if he’d call, wondering why he
didn’t
call.

So I was angry.

Even though I loved the poem.

Even though it had made me happy for a few minutes.

What I wrote back was meant to make him feel guilty. For my lonely birthday. The sadness of no cake.

The fact that Hutch had shown up and done what Noel should have done. I wrote it all as if I were cheerful as could be—just “Let me tell you this funny story about yesterday”—but all the cheer was fake. Secretly, I wanted him to read the e-mail and notice he’d forgotten my birthday and feel horrible and make it up to me.

Later, I would wonder, over and over, what would have happened if I’d written Noel a poem back.

Or even an honestly angry note.

If, instead of being fake and cheerful to cover up how hurt I was, I had been raw and true and told him everything that was in my heart.

Anyway, he didn’t write back.

For one day. Two. Three.

I called.

He still wasn’t picking up his phone.

Then one day, another e-mail:

Sixteen days (I’ve been gone)

Plus eight more days (till I come back)
.

That’s twenty-four days
,

A ridiculous number of hours
,

an insane number of minutes
,

when every minute lasts an hour

and every hour lasts a day
.

The clocks have nearly stopped

themselves
.

No batteries will speed them up
.

No power boost, no winding
.

They hardly move, these clocks
.

Watching the hands go round is like
watching someone’s blood drip onto
the street

while you wait for an ambulance

and wait

and wait

and the blessed siren does not sound
.

The clocks will hardly move

and hardly move

and hardly move

Until

I

am

home
.

Maybe when I see you they will start
again
.

Oh.

Wow.

That.

For me.

How can you be mad at a guy who writes you a poem like that?

Most people would say you can’t. Noel was so honest on the page. When I first read his words, I felt like he was reaching out to me through them.

Except, when I thought about it later–he wasn’t. Not really.

1. He loves me! Poemy poem goodness!

Romance!

2. No. If he loved you, he’d call you back.

3. Maybe his phone broke.

4. Then he’d e-mail you that his phone broke.

5. But a poem!
Two
poems! Romantic poems!

6. Yeah, but what’s stopping him from writing you back about Hutch’s going-away party? He needs to write back about that. A real live boyfriend would write back about that.