Me Being Me Is Exactly as Insane as You Being You

by Todd Hasak-Lowy

  19. Is she totally insane?

  20. Or is this proof that she wants me to wait for her until she gets back?

  21. Because she must have thought a lot about us holding hands while she worked on this, right?

  22. But seriously, one lousy sentence?

  23. When is she getting back?

  24. And should I wait until she does?

  25. Where the hell is Belén, New Mexico?

  26. Should I write her back, even though I just wrote her?

  27. What’s going to happen now?

  28. Who do I tell?

  29. Should I tell anyone?

  30. Rachel?

  31. What would happen if I told Rachel?

  32. Would that be mean?

  33. Would she still want to fool around if I did?

  34. Would I still want to?

  35. Do I still want to?

  36. What am I supposed to do?

  37. Why isn’t it obvious?

  38. Or is it?

  39. Why is my life like this?

  10 Diversions Darren Calls Upon in Order to Delay His Exit from the Bathroom

  1. Washing his hands, again.

  2. Brushing his teeth.

  3. Examining this one little, not-really-a-zit-yet zit that might be coming in on his chin.

  4. Looking again at the rest of the mail, which is all clearly junk.

  5. Washing his face.

  6. Examining the two types of medication his mom brought him.

  7. Performing some simple calculations.

  8. Opening a box.

  9. Taking two capsules.

  10. Peeing again.

  3 Forces Darren Surrenders To

  1. RACHEL’S AFFECTION

  When Darren finally opens the door and begins walking toward the stairs, he hears her say, “Over here.” She’s in his bedroom. So he turns around.

  The room is dark, except for two candles. Not the Shabbat candles his mom lit before, but Shabbat candles all the same.

  She grins, kind of sheepishly. “Am I like breaking a law or something? We can put them out.”

  “Who gives a shit,” Darren says, unsure what, if anything, lies beyond his indifference. He’s never seen his room lit only by candles. He has no idea if he likes it. He doesn’t dislike it, that’s for damn sure.

  Rachel is by his computer. She presses a button. The song from before, the one he played for her, starts playing again. The lighting is absurdly appropriate. She comes over to him, her eyes all business. “How long until your mom comes home?”

  “An hour, maybe. She’ll text first.” He’s holding the mail. Meaning they’re not exactly alone, him and Rachel.

  “You know what the first thing I liked about you was?” Rachel asks between kisses, her voice accompanied by the sophisticated sounds of the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

  “Huh?”

  “Your name.”

  “My name stinks. It’s stupid.”

  “No, it’s not. I liked it. I saw it on a list of the bunks. ‘Darren Jacobs.’ It seemed like, I don’t know, like a kind name. I wanted to hug your name. I swear. I liked you before I saw you, Darren. Before I knew you at all.”

  She raises her mouth to his ear and whispers his name into it.

  2. THE MEMORY OF HIS LAST DAY AT CAMP GREEN RIDGE

  Darren estimates that about a third of the campers at Green Ridge cried the last day of camp, which wasn’t really a day at all, but just breakfast and then getting on the buses. And though it was about a third overall, it was way more than half among the girls, definitely including Rachel. Because she might have been quiet when the whole camp was together, but this didn’t mean she wouldn’t cry, no siree. She was already crying the night before, when maybe only about 10 percent of campers (all girls) cried, and so she cried straight through breakfast and kept going when they all went outside where the different buses were waiting.

  Darren hugged her a bunch that morning (more to comfort her than because he was all that sad to have to say good-bye to her). But after a while, around the time her face started to freak him out a little, because her eyes were puffy and her skin was red and splotchy, Darren just sort of decided that he would hug her some more but that they were kind of already broken up in his head, something he had been considering for a couple of days by that point, but that seemed sort of pointless with camp almost over.

  Then there was this weird half-hour stretch during which the counselors had already told them they really had to get on the buses “now,” but before everyone was finally on them (in fact, pretty much no one except some of the youngest boys got on a bus in the first ten minutes). Meaning camp was already over, but no one seemed ready to admit it. And even though Darren had a feeling that Rachel intended to be one of the very last people to get on her bus, Darren didn’t himself feel like being a part of all this much longer, because there was something creepy about looking over at his bunk and knowing it was now totally empty except for the bed frames and mattresses.

  So the first moment it seemed kind of reasonable for him to get on the bus, he took her hand, hugged her once more, and said, “I think I’m going to get on now.”

  She smiled this super weird smile for him, reached into her backpack, and handed him a letter in a purple envelope. “For the bus,” she said.

  “Okay,” Darren said. “Thanks.” They kissed one last time (a pretty good kiss actually, like her crying had done something to make her lips softer than normal), and he got on the bus.

  Darren forgot about the letter until around Madison (he’d passed out almost as soon as he sat down, since he had stayed up pretty much the entire night before). Inside was a card with a drawing of fireworks printed on it. Rachel had written, Once upon a time there was a girl. One day the girl met a boy. The boy made the girl very, very happy. But then the girl had to say good-bye to the boy. This made her very, very sad. The girl began to cry and could not stop. She cried for days and weeks and months until the land was flooded, until the water rose all the way up to her bedroom window. The girl built a boat out of her bed and sailed away. She sailed past all the cities and all the towns and all the villages, but still, she could not stop crying. She met a kind seagull, who tried to cheer her up. But it could not, so it flew away. She met a friendly otter, who tried to make her smile. But it could not, so it swam away. She met a funny turtle, who tried to make her laugh. But it could not, so it crawled inside its shell and floated away. The girl was left alone with her tears. Until one day another boat appeared on the horizon. The girl sailed toward it. It was the boy. He stepped onto her boat and wiped the tears off her cheeks. She stopped crying. His boat drifted away. They kept on sailing together, in the slowly receding waters, past the far horizon. The End. Always, always, Rachel.

  Darren, still just sort of half-awake, reread Rachel’s story a few times, until he started wondering what would have happened if they were at a camp for creative writing instead of music, and if he would have come to like Rachel more instead of less if he got to see her read her stories, because her piano playing sort of bummed him out and convinced him that there wasn’t really anything so special about her, but this story, even though it was pretty corny and everything, it somehow got to him anyway.

  Because if he knew this about her before, who knows, maybe he would have cried when they hugged and kissed that last time, because he did almost start to feel something then but didn’t feel like letting himself feel it, so instead he kind of whispered, “Okay, I should probably get on the bus. Bye.”

  3. DOXYLAMINE SUCCINATE

  Kissing is an awfully strange activity when you think about it. Like of all the things you can do with your mouth, it’s weird that you can do this, too. Did someone have to invent it first? Because have you ever seen animals kiss?

  It must be the lighting, or the horn section, or how he can taste Rachel’s mouth more than he could before (maybe because he brushed his teeth). All he knows is that kissing her right now, not that it’s bad, not at a
ll, but if they sat here softly tugging at each other’s ears, that wouldn’t seem any more bizarre to him than this.

  Life would be a lot easier if you liked the same person who liked you. Or at least liked the person who likes you the same amount that they like you. Assuming you’re lucky enough to have someone like you in the first place. And especially if that person knows how to act with adults, and likes not just making out, but also most of the other stuff that people do with and for each other after they’ve been making out for a while. Because that stuff’s probably pretty great when you’re doing it with a person you like exactly as much as they like you.

  His mom said he should only take the green capsules right before he goes to bed, since they’re for nighttime. Plus it had only been about two hours since he took the other ones. But sometimes being awake is an enormous inconvenience. Like when girls keep giving you letters that won’t leave you alone.

  It’s probably not fair to Rachel to concentrate on her hair, or find ways of encouraging her to stick to his ear. She deserves better. Though the weird thing is she’s definitely really happy right now. Or pleased. But then later on, at some point, he’s not going to be able to keep this up forever, whatever it is he’s keeping up right now.

  The truth is, it feels quite nice to have her pressed against him like she is. She’s so warm. But not too warm. Not hot. If there was some way to convince her to fall asleep on top of him, the way he’s going to fall asleep below her, it would be sort of perfect, at least in the short term.

  Is she the nicest person ever? And if so, how can that possibly be not enough?

  When he finally passes out in a moment or two, there will remain the question of where she will sleep. Definitely not in Nate’s room. Because who knows. His mom might put her down on the couch, or even give her the office. It is Shabbat, after all. So maybe it’s okay, then. Just letting himself say good night to her and this Friday already without actually saying it out loud.

  Good night.

  4. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 29

  2 More Months That Have Passed

  1. October

  2. November, at least most of it

  4 Regrettable Ways the Morning Greets Darren

  1. His right leg is off the bed, with the attached foot fully touching the ground, something his right leg and foot have been doing in his sleep on and off for a couple of months now.

  2. He has an erection, which he has been holding unconsciously, which wouldn’t be so bad, except:

  3. Sonny is sniffing it. Not licking it, just sniffing it, but still. Not to mention (and worst of all):

  4. His dad’s head is peeking through the door, a head that is saying, “Sonny, stop that, let him sleep!”

  5 Physical Changes Darren Has Undergone since the End of September

  1. Crept over five feet seven and a half inches

  2. Crept below 180 pounds

  3. Each foot now requires a size eleven

  4. Has grown, depending on the quality of the lighting, between three and four new chest hairs, bringing the grand total to four or five

  5. Could reasonably justify shaving his mustache region once a month or so

  10 Lousy Aspects of Having Your Birthday on November 29, Both in General and Especially This Year and Last

  1. It stinks having your birthday around the time of another holiday, even if Thanksgiving is a pretty good holiday in general. Because the holiday sort of sucks the attention and excitement away from your birthday. Sure, his parents would have a couple of days off to make all the arrangements for his party, but what good is that if half the kids you invited are going to be out of town? Plus, it wasn’t that the laser tag party for his eleventh birthday was bad, it was that you could just tell that people were pretty distracted and kind of tired, since everyone had been going to bed super late the past couple of nights and had eaten about four hundred pounds of food over the previous seventy-two hours.

  So then some years they would just push his party back a week or so to get it far away from Thanksgiving, but then it’s not his birthday anymore. And don’t even get Darren started on what happens at school, where all the stupid Thanksgiving excitement and assemblies also stand in the way of him getting the treatment other students get on their birthday. Too bad his birthday isn’t in mid-February like Nate’s.

  2. And Nate is pretty likely to make Darren’s sixteenth weird somehow. Overall it maybe hasn’t been so great having him back home. He’s high all the time, delivers pizza for La Luna’s (excellent pizza, but still), and keeps finding these kind of gross and stupid girls to go out with and even sometimes bring home. Darren’s pretty sure he has sex with most of them and then doesn’t see them much after that.

  Nate still fights with their mom a lot, mostly because she won’t stop asking him to just please enroll at Oakton Community College and take a class or two. Nate’s still extremely nice to Darren most of the time, but for some reasons it seems like he’s chosen Darren as the person he’s going to impart all sorts of supposed wisdom to, wisdom that doesn’t seem much like wisdom to Darren.

  So Darren just has this feeling that Nate is going to do something in honor of Darren’s birthday, something that Nate will think is deep and meaningful and even revelatory (or at least undeniably awesome), but won’t really be any of those things, but is going to require Darren to pretend that it is.

  3. This isn’t his first birthday since his parents split up—that was last year—but at least last year his mom was in California, which she apologized for about ninety-four times but which Darren was sort of grateful for. Since she was in California, he could just pretend that was the reason only his dad was at the dinner, even though he knew it wasn’t. Which made last year’s birthday kind of lame too, but probably not as lame as this one will be.

  4. But this year he’s not so lucky, partially because he almost was. His mom was supposed to get back from San Jose on Wednesday night, but there was a big storm in Denver, where she had a layover, and her flight got canceled. So she decided to stay in California a couple more days, since apparently computer people work pretty much all the time, including over Thanksgiving weekend. Now she’s only getting in this afternoon.

  This has, of course, totally screwed up all the arrangements and agreements his parents took forever to work out, like where Darren will sleep and who he’s having dinner with and when they’ll do the hand-off, arrangements and agreements that ultimately required Darren’s involvement, since it’s his birthday they’re talking about here, and so a few times they just asked him, “What would you prefer, honey?” which was both considerate and totally stupid, because what he’d prefer is for his parents to be together and what he wouldn’t prefer (in addition to the divorce) is for them to make him choose between them in any way, which they both sort of acknowledged right before asking him, “What would you prefer, honey?” but still, they asked him anyway.

  So now, he can barely even keep it straight: He’ll have lunch with his mom and dinner with his dad (instead of the other way around), but it’s not clear if and when a movie and/or bowling might happen (and he can’t even remember agreeing to maybe going bowling; he has a feeling this was Nate’s suggestion, who’s been bowling a lot, too, who knows why) or how the hand-off is going to happen.

  5. Actually that last part is untrue. The hand-off isn’t technically going to be a hand-off. Because you don’t hand yourself off. Today is Darren’s sixteenth birthday, after all. And in addition to all the other complicated things planned today, he and his dad are going down to the good old DMV right after breakfast to take his driving test. That’s right, Darren gets to take a test on his birthday.

  And everyone just assumes he’s excited beyond belief about this. But he’s not. He’s more scared than excited. Scared and worried. Scared and worried and annoyed. Because he’s got enough stuff on his plate, in terms of his messed-up family and girl issues and school just kind of sucking hard, so why has the world decided that the additional responsibility of o
perating a massive, expensive, complicated machine is something he should be looking forward to? The truth is, he’d be very happy if they bought him a really nice bike for his sixteenth birthday.

  6. And sixteen in general is just way more pressure than Darren feels like dealing with right now. Because this birthday is definitely the most important birthday between thirteen and eighteen, whatever the hell that means. But Darren can just feel that he’s not up to (or is not even capable of) enjoying himself enough today to meet the expectations of the sixteenth birthday as some kind of tradition, again, whatever the hell that means. In other words, he just feels that it’s going to be a lousy birthday, and would be even if it was only his fifteenth or seventeenth. The fact that it’s his sixteenth will only make it worse.

  7. Not to mention, some years his birthday would be on the day right after Thanksgiving, which his mom and dad would for some reason act like is the greatest thing ever, since, they’d say, what can you be more thankful for than having such a wonderful son? But he wouldn’t be thankful at all, because the rest of the world doesn’t care one bit that it’s your birthday, meaning basically no restaurants are open that day, except the ones offering Thanksgiving feasts, meaning you have to have dinner at home on your birthday, which maybe wouldn’t be so bad if Darren wasn’t a vegetarian, because it’s not like everyone else is going to agree to give up turkey in his honor, which, even when he did eat meat he thought tasted horrible.

  8. Darren is going to try really hard to not eat too much today, because even though his body has sort of stretched itself over the last few months, he still feels like an oaf most of the time. But there’s no question that now that he spent the night at his dad’s instead of his mom’s, Ray is going to show up and make some insanely delicious breakfast for him. Which isn’t the end of the world, obviously, but his dad also asked Darren the night before if (now that he’d be waking up at his dad’s) it would be okay with Darren if Ray could come by early to honor Darren’s birthday the way they do in Ray’s family, which means singing to you and giving you your presents first thing in the morning while you’re still in bed.