This is a work of creative fiction.
There is a word I cannot bring myself to say to you. I fear that if I say, to you, this word, you’ll take it to mean that something erotic might happen between the two of us, which it cannot, nor should it. In a phrase lacking all possible eloquence, that would be “really gross.” You are not a sexual person in my life, but I have, of course, seen the way you undress me with those eyes of yours. Just keep things in perspective, will you? This word, which since 1742 has meant to score nothing in a tennis match, has been one I’ve wanted to say to you almost since the day I met you.
You were just about the pluckiest person I’d ever met. You still are. There was fire behind your eyes about brackets. I’d never seen someone get so riled up about punctuation before. It made me laugh – on the inside, of course. Laughing on the outside is unprofessional if you don’t work at a comedy club, which we do not
“This should be in parentheses!” you screamed at me, even though I had nothing to do with what we were looking at. “Parentheses. They’re not that hard to make. You just make a little ‘C’ and then a little backwards ‘C.’”
“Don’t look at me,” I said. “I didn’t write it.”
“You showed it to me. You showed it to me, and I am not against messenger shooting.”
“So, if I were a messenger pigeon instead of a person…”
“You’d be dead, and I’d be serving you to my dog for dinner.”
“You don’t look like the kind of person who has a dog.”
“Funny. You look like the kind of person who’s right.”
I did not laugh, but I wanted to. I asked your name. You gave it to me. I remember thinking that it wasn’t a name. A sound, maybe, but not a name. Later, I would change my mind. It wasn’t a name for anyone else but you. No one else could have pulled it off.
You were eighteen years old but reminded me you were almost nineteen until a month later when you turned nineteen. Of course, the minute you turned nineteen, you harped on the fact that you were almost twenty. You’re still like that – always itching to be a year ahead of where you really are. It doesn’t surprise me. I was the same way.
I considered saying this word that spring when you were nineteen but told everyone you were twenty. This word is what people claim they’re doing it for when their great aunts and uncles ask them why they’re writing a novel over the distant Thanksgiving table, which I know you understand. You were looking for someone else when you bumped into me. You started talking. Anyone else would have shut you down, but I always have liked listening to you. My favorite thing about you, once you start being you, is that nothing you say has any connection to anything else. It’s like you save coherence for the page. Here are some topics you brought up that day in a matter of minutes.
“Have you ever thought maybe this is Rihanna’s world, and the rest of us just live in it?”
“What if Washington Irving was still alive?”
“When I was in fifth grade, this kid cried because our field trip to the science center got canceled because of the snow. He also flipped over a table. This all happened on different days. Different years, actually. He was weird.”
I admire the way you talk because it’s just like you. Nothing about you adds up. You’re constantly exercising and then seemingly competing in the Most Crunchy Pretzels Consumed in a Single Week contest – although, who could you be competing against at this point? You paint your lips purple like you’re in an arranged marriage to Billy Idol, and your most played song in the year 2014 was “Duke of Earl.” You are the spit-on and beat-down floor at CBGB one hour and malt shops and soda pops the next. You are who you are.
I’ve been asked to describe my relationship with you time and again. I say that we are not friends. We know each other too silently to just be friends. Friends are the people who tell you a shirt makes you look nice because they think that’s what you want to hear. We’re not friends. We’ll never be friends. You are not a lover – see above. I don’t know what you are, but I wish I did. It would make this a lot easier to say.
I got home yesterday and opened the fridge to pull out one of those fizzy waters because I never grew out of my Coca-Cola phase, but I’m too old for all the sugar now. I noticed your six-pack of tiny Diet Coke cans and rolled my eyes.
“You don’t live here,” I murmured under my breath and shut the fridge.
Then I heard the cheerfully melancholic theme song to your favorite show, the one you’ve seen five times, all 192 episodes, and I knew you were here.
“Hi,” I called out, halfway annoyed, halfway amused.
“You left the door unlocked,” you called back to me. “That’s dangerous, you know. Someone could barge in.”
“Someone like you?” I asked as I sat down next to you and handed you a can of Diet Coke.
“Oh, thank you. And come on. You know I’m not going to steal anything.”
“You run my electric bill up when you do this.”
“Please.”
“You think just because I’m not married, you can sneak in here whenever you want? Because nobody’s going to get jealous of you?”
“Yeah, I do think that, actually. It’s kind of freeing that way, don’t you think?”
“You think. I don’t.”
“Better not let the gods hear you say you don’t think. That’s a dangerous game.”
“Oh, you’re hilarious. Are you packing up that apartment of yours?”
“The living room is done. Not looking forward to cleaning out the bedroom.”
“Scandalous.”
“Hardly.”
I wanted to say it to you, and I knew the time was running out, so I grabbed your shoulders and turned you around. Your back faced me. I felt better but not great.
“What the hell are you doing?” you snapped. “The back of my hair looks terrible.”
“Yeah, I really don’t care about that,” I said. “Listen, there’s something I have to say to you, and if I don’t have to look at your face, which reminds me how weird all of this is, I’ll actually be able to get it out, so just be quiet and listen. Okay? Good. There is a word in this language and many others. It has at least five different connotations. In the case of you and me, I would probably describe it as philia, that which is shared between friends, or literally, brothers, but over the years, it’s bordered slightly more on…”
“Wait.”
“What?”
“I love you very much.”
I smiled bigger than I ever remembered smiling before, and I thanked God your back was turned. I didn’t want you to see it.
