“Whenever you write something, it’s out of your hands,” my friend (let’s call him Adam) said. I want to say we were in freshman English class discussing The Great Gatsby, but my memory may be backfilling these (inconsequential) details. I do remember we were in our high school’s upstairs computer lab, sitting in the uncomfortable curved plastic crimes against ergonomics we called chairs. We were discussing symbolism and author intent.
I smiled at him because it seemed like a cop-out excuse for him to justify whatever he was writing in his paper, but he went on. “No matter what you mean, my mind is going to interpret in its own way. If he failed, maybe the author should have chosen a better metaphor!” We laughed, but this conversation has stuck with me some two decades later.
Talks like this are why I came to like Adam so much as a friend. He was a funny, cheerful dude who loved stand-up comedy and had fairly assertive political stances[1]. He was very religious but, unlike his politics, kept that mostly to himself (I didn’t realize the irony between his author-intent proclamation and his religiosity until now, heh). He was smart, but had a mellow, slacker-like mentality, so he didn’t pursue honors courses with the fervor I did. But sometimes, like that day, he’d hit me with something that would challenge my ways of thinking; these are good people to surround yourself with.
He was right too. I love to write. I obsess over the words to use, the metaphors to deploy to get my point across. But I can’t tell you how many times in my relationships or career that I have spent hours crafting a text or email, only for its recipient to take it the wrong way or completely misunderstand it. For all the effort I expend writing these essays, do you, the reader, absorb what I intend for you to absorb? Probably not, at least not exactly, because our minds and hearts work in different ways, and language is an imperfect medium to convey thoughts and emotions. Try as I might, I can only get close to what I’m trying to say, but never exactly so. It’s out of my hands.
Adam and I became good buddies at the start of high school in gym class. The first half of the ninety-minute block was Coach Wray taking us through some activity, and then the last half of the class we had free time. Some guys went to the weight room, the less athletically inclined among us walked laps around the gym. As long as you participated in the first half, you were guaranteed a C in the class, so some kids were happy to use the second half to nap or sit and chat.
Early on in the year, Adam and his elementary buddies invited me to play basketball with them, and so this became our free time ritual: haphazard games of unathletic-but-enthusiastic five-on-five. Within days, they were my buddies too. We’d sit together at lunch and trade jokes or benignly argue about pop culture and, suddenly, they were no longer buddies, but friends. A few years later, we’d form a flag football team in a league run by Adam’s church. We’d go undefeated together.
“You know,” Thomas (one of my football boys) said to me with a sheepish grin, “if we buy our tickets together, we’ll save money.”
He was talking about prom. The girl he’d wanted to take had turned him down (we didn’t discuss this), and the girl I had wanted to take had brushed off my suggestion that we go together (it wasn’t cruel, I was far too meek and shy to ask her properly). I’d found out, third hand, that she wasn’t all that interested in me in that way anyway. And so, a crush that had driven me to handwrite 12 page chemistry study guide to help her get an A on the midterm[2], had died.
I could see no flaw in his pragmatic solution. We promptly went to Mrs. Franklin, our Spanish teacher, to buy our tickets as a couple. She laughed at our fiscal ingenuity. He turned to me theatrically, “I’ll pick you up for dinner, honey.”
“You two,” Mrs. Franklin chided, her eyes sparkling.
A few weeks later, he arrived at my house to pick me up in his dad’s beat up blue van. A group of his friends had invited us to join them in their limo, and he drove me to their house. All of them had a good-natured laugh as we emerged from the van in our rented (color coordinated!) tuxes, took the requisite pictures, and piled into the limousine. Prom that year was held in the Indianapolis Children’s Museum lobby, a venue coveted by all the high schools in the area. I don’t remember much of the night now, except I had a blast. I remember the joy of being silly, shoeless because my rented shoes hurt, “dancing” while music thumped and the museum’s signature water clock[3] loomed in the background.
What I remember most about that night was that I noticed my friend (let’s call her Pepper) for the first time. We’d been friends since eighth grade US History, when fate (or Mr. Bennett’s careful seat assignments) had placed us next to each other. She and I were cut from the same cloth academically, and were quasi-rivals in our quests to become valedictorian. As high school wore on, our pursuits practically forced us to have the same schedule. In such close proximity with one another, it was only natural that we’d become friends. She was interesting and had great taste in music, and though we “competed” we were kindred spirits in a way no one else in our grade was.
Prom night, it dawned on me that Pepper was beautiful. The tan sheath of a dress she wore accentuated her skin. Her hair was up in an elegant bun, and a pink flower rested above one of her ears. Her dark eyes shone with mirth as she laughed at something our friend Ted said. Her smile captivated me. And so: a new crush bloomed.
At one point in the night she said to me, “We should have just gone together.” It wasn’t a flirt. No, she’d said it in a matter-of-fact frank sort of way. How could we have not been as practical as you and Thomas had been, her demeanor seemed to suggest.
In the back of my mind, I found myself wishing I had asked her to be my actual date. I found that when it came to matters of the heart, those, too, were out of my hands.
I spent every Saturday that summer at Adam’s church, playing flag football. We’d become such good friends over the intervening years that I felt comfortable enough confiding my feelings to him about Pepper. Like a good friend, he was encouraging. “You gotta go for it dude. She’s awesome.”
Small wrinkle: she and I were such great friends, I didn’t want to damage our relationship if she wasn’t on the same page. We spent almost all of our school day together; it would be awkward to be around her if she rejected me. These are the usual sort of rationalizations the unconfident deploy when it comes to romance. The secret truth, I wouldn’t understand until years later, is that if you really are such good friends, your relationship will survive a few days of discomfort. After all, if a girl isn’t interested in you in that way, it’s out of your hands, too.
But a young mind unused to, and terrified of, rejection will find comfort in these excuses that you must tread carefully.
“Ask her out,” Adam insisted.
Well, she and I hung out a lot already. I’d often drive her to Best Buy or Barnes and Noble or the various malls around us to browse. We’d get food together and laugh; she obviously enjoyed my company, but if she had any feelings deeper than friendship, they were lost on me. I needed more intel. Adam understood my predicament, and helped me navigate my feelings in conversations before and after our games. As usual, the Lawn Darts remained undefeated.
You probably see where this is headed, so I will cut to the chase: my friendship with Adam ended in a spectacularly high school way.
As our senior year started, so did the football season, and one of my favorite extracurriculars was serving as our team’s equipment manager. My Friday nights were spoken for, so when Adam started hanging out with Pepper while I was otherwise busy, it bothered me. They were friends, he insisted, and he was hanging out with her to get a sense of how she felt about me, or some kind of explanation like that. On top of the the feelings that my two best friends weren’t including me, I could tell by the way he talked about her that he liked her too; something like jealousy began growing in my chest. I shoved them away.
Early that October, a group of us (of which Pepper and Adam were a part) decided to see Friday Night Lights together. I’d been running a little late for some forgotten reason, and my friends were nowhere to be found in the lobby when I arrived. I bought my ticket and waited. And waited. Frustrated, I stalked into the theater where I found the movie starting and everyone already seated.
And there, at the end of the row, was Adam, holding Pepper’s hand. I remember my annoyance fading into anger, my vision blurred and I had the absurd instinct to fight someone. I considered walking out and going home, but I had been looking forward to this movie: it was about high school football, a thing that had dominated almost all of my teenage life. I slumped into a chair next to another good friend Mark, boiling with pubescent rage.
Angrier than I’d probably ever been in my life, and being too civilized to yell or fight, I did the next best thing: throw something. Fortunately, the only thing I had at hand was a ticket stub. Unfortunately, when you launch a flimsy piece of cardstock as hard as you can, it travels about six inches. Looking back, the way the stub fluttered pitifully down to my feet, mocking the violence of my throw, was extremely hilarious. Mark was so shocked by my gesture he couldn’t laugh at it. We laugh about it now, but at the time it was anything but.
“What’s wrong?” Mark asked, his eyes wide with astonishment, concern, and maybe a little fear.
My jaw was clenched too tightly to speak, I just shook my head. I gestured down the aisle. He looked at Adam and Pepper. Then back to me. Then back to them. And finally me. He whispered a swear. “Sorry man.” I shook my head again, not daring to look at him, lest I catch a glimpse of the budding romance.
My emotions faded as the movie unfolded. I was enthralled. It’s to this day one of my favorite movies; might be my favorite movie of all time if you ask me on the right day. But my first viewing of it will be inextricably linked with this moment of my best friend beginning a relationship with the girl I was crushing on.
I have a memory of Adam coming up to me and apologizing and shaking my hand. I can’t remember if it was in the theatre or after a game of flag football or in the science lab or if it even happened at all. I muttered an “it’s alright” while it was anything but. I needed to be a bigger person, I tried to convince myself, but deep down it was just my instinct to avoid very uncomfortable feelings.
I don’t think I’ve spoken more than fifty words to him since then.
They broke up five or six months later. Pepper’d grown frustrated by his lack of ambition, I think. Her and my friendship rekindled, but was never quite the same. I’d successfully set aside my romantic feelings for her, or more likely, actively didn’t allow them to re-form in order to protect myself. Maybe it was because she was going off to Northwestern in the fall while I would be attending Purdue. We stayed in touch over AOL Instant Messenger for a year or so before we drifted apart, focusing our energy on new connections, our futures.
I’ve made my peace with this now. (Have you, Beau? You’re still writing about it almost twenty years later, heh. Yes, Beau, I have; I’m writing about it because I believe the wisdom of this experience is worthy of contemplation by a wider audience. Shush.) I can at least laugh about it. Pepper was pretty, smart, interesting, and challenging. How could he not be attracted to her? That was out of his hands, after all. But he did something about it when I would not. I have to respect that at least.
I reflect on all this from time to time, but not as lost romance or “what might have been”. Maybe she would have dated me instead. Maybe she would have rejected me. I’ll probably never know. Crushes like this come and go, dying almost as fast as they form.
What hurt was the feeling of betrayal. The disrespect of him not at least talking this out with me. He had violated that three word rhyme about ‘bros’ immature boys use as an honor code! His selfishness, at least in this one area, meant more to him than our years-long friendship did. That’s what broke my heart: learning the lesson that relationships with people have costs. Sometimes they’re really gonna hurt.
My heart healed, a little tougher than before, and I’d grown up a little.
People will step into your lives that you develop such an intense connection with, it will feel like you’ve known them forever. When you try to do the calculus of all the things that needed to happen for your lives to intersect, your mind will boggle and you will accept it as serendipity, or even Fate.
Adam was one of those people. Without him, I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed freshman gym class so much, nor would I have gotten marginally better at basketball. I wouldn’t have gloried in flag football with him, and I might have missed the sublimely beautiful wuxia film Hero. I wouldn’t have the memory of him comparing me to Jack Black, which remains one of the highest compliments anyone has ever paid me[4]. Maybe Friday Night Lights wouldn’t be my favorite movie if it hadn’t comforted me.
Maybe my friendship with Mark, another one of these inevitable people, wouldn’t have become as close as it is today. He and I started hanging out a lot our senior year and started a highly competitive bowling/putt-putt/skee ball rivalry as we navigated college, careers, and relationships. He and I were just texting last weekend about his family bowling trip. A beautiful family I have had the privilege of watching him build over the years since high school. I owe a part of that to Adam in some way.
These are the things I remind myself to focus on, instead of reopening a wound that happened so long ago it might as well have happened to someone else. He and I shared actual friendship, and that stuff is worth holding on to more than anything else.
Do I wish it had gone any differently? I don’t know. I don’t think so. All of it had a kind of inevitability to it, that I manage to find beautiful most days. I needed this to happen, needed to learn these lessons, or I wouldn’t have become the person I am now.
Inevitability. That word…I’m using it a lot here. Hmm. What’s another way to put it?
Ah, yes, of course. It’d make a good essay title.
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As assertive as someone whose politics are entirely formed by the Daily Show can be, at least. ↩
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She indeed got it and cemented her place in the top 10 of her class. She bought me a package of Butterfingers as a thank you gift, which I found incredibly sweet (pun intended). ↩
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It looks like a cartoon chemist’s entire laboratory smashed together into a single apparatus. It’s really freakin’ cool. ↩
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A compliment further compunded a few years ago, when thousands of women on Twitter named Jack Black as one of the sexiest men they could think of. Sure he was overweight and kinda goofy looking, but he was so jolly and unashamedly comfortable in his skin that he was irresistible. ↩