• bitchsquealer
• “Drink with me,” he says, and I shake my head, but then Jane pokes me in the back, and I realize that I have to take a bullet for Tiny. I dig into my pocket and hand Jane my car keys. The only sure way to prevent him from drinking the rest of the plutonium-green booze is to down one myself. So I grab the shot glass and Tiny says, “Aw, fuck him, anyway, Grayson. Fuck everybody,” and I say, “I’ll drink to that,” and I do, and then it hits my tongue and it’s like a burning Molotov cocktail—glass and all. I involuntarily spit the entire shot out onto Tiny Cooper’s shirt. “A monochrome Jackson Pollock,” Jane says, and then tells Tiny, “We gotta bolt. This band is like a root canal sans painkiller.”
• Tiny takes a shot, grimaces, and exhales. “Tastes like Satan’s fire cock,” Tiny says, and then pushes another shot in my direction. “Sounds delightful,” I say, “but I’ll pass.”
• I’m not quite sure how to describe this band’s music, except to say that it sounds like a hundred thousand weasels being dropped into a boiling ocean.
• “Will, you can pick your friends, and you can pick your nose, but you can’t pick your friend’s nose.”
• “I’m not cynical, Tiny,” I answer. “I’m practical.” “You’re a robot,” he says. Tiny thinks that I am incapable of what humans call emotion because I have not cried since my seventh birthday, when I saw the movie All Dogs Go to Heaven. I suppose I should have known from the title that it wouldn’t end merrily, but in my defense, I was seven. Anyway, I haven’t cried since then. I don’t really understand the point of crying. Also, I feel that crying is almost—like, aside from deaths of relatives or whatever— totally avoidable if you follow two very simple rules: 1. Don’t care too much. 2. Shut up. Everything unfortunate that has ever happened to me has stemmed from failure to follow one of the rules.
• “How can you just be so wrong about something?” Tiny is asking over the noisy screechiness of Jane’s favorite (and my least favorite) NMH song. I’m cruising up Lake Shore and can hear Jane singing along in the back, a little off-key but closer than I’d be if I sang in front of people, which I don’t, due to the Shutting Up Rule. And Tiny is saying, “If you can’t trust your gut then what can you trust?” And I say, “You can trust that caring, as a rule, ends poorly,” which is true. Caring doesn’t sometimes lead to misery. It always does.
• I jump out of the car and push my seat forward so Jane can get out behind me. Then we walk around to the passenger seat. Jane opens the door, reaches across Tiny, manages through a miracle of dexterity to unfasten his seat belt, and then says, “All right, Tiny. Time for bed,” and Tiny says, “I’m a fool,” and then unleashes a sob that probably registers on the Richter scale in Kansas. But he gets up and weaves toward his back door.
• We’re about to leave when all of Tiny’s snotting finally catches up with him, and he begins to make these hideous noises that sound like snoring, except more sinister, and also more wet. I lean down to his face and see that he’s inhaling and exhaling these disgusting bubbly strands of snot from the last throes of his cryathon. There’s so much of the stuff that I worry he’ll choke.
• “Tiny,” I say. “You gotta get the snot outta your nose, man,” but he doesn’t stir. So I get down right by his ear-drum and shout, “Tiny!” Nothing. Then Jane smacks him across the face, really rather hard. Nada. Just the awful, drowning-in-snot snoring. And that is when I realize that Tiny Cooper cannot pick his nose, countering the second part of my dad’s theorem. And shortly thereafter, with Jane looking on, I disprove the theorem entirely when I reach down and clear Tiny’s airways of snot. In short: I cannot pick my friend; he cannot pick his nose; and I can—nay, I must—pick it for him.
• i am constantly torn between killing myself and killing everyone around me. those seem to be the two choices. everything else is just killing time.
• mom: don’t let your hair fall in your face like that - i can’t see your eyes. but you see, mom, that’s the whole fucking point. i feel bad for her - i do. a damn shame, really, that i had to have a mother. it can’t be easy having me for a son. nothing can prepare someone for that kind of disappointment. me: bye
• i do not say ‘good-bye.’ i believe that’s one of the bullshittiest words ever invented. it’s not like you’re given the choice to say ‘bad-bye’ or ‘awful-bye’ or ‘couldn’t-careless-about-youbye. ’ every time you leave, it’s supposed to be a good one. well, i don’t believe in that. i believe against that.
• i just want to say, ‘i feel sorry for you, really i do.’ but that might start a conversation, and a conversation might start a fight, and then i’d feel so guilty i might have to move away to portland or something. i need coffee.
• every morning i pray that the school bus will crash and we’ll all die in a fiery wreck. then my mom will be able to sue the school bus company for never making school buses with seat belts, and she’ll be able to get more money for my tragic death than i would’ve ever made in my tragic life. unless the lawyers from the school bus company can prove to the jury that i was guaranteed to be a fuckup. then they’d get away with buying my mom a used ford fiesta and calling it even.
• me: give me your math homework. simon: sure. here.

what a friend.

• the first bell rings. like all the bells in our fine institution of lower learning, it’s not a bell at all, it’s a long beep, like you’re about to leave a voicemail saying you’re having the suckiest day ever. and nobody’s ever going to listen to it.
• everyone in our school has afterschool activities. mine is going home.
• ‘if this period doesn’t end soon i am going to slit my own skull.’
• i have no idea why anyone would want to become a teacher. i mean, you have to spend the day with a group of kids who either hate your guts or are kissing up to you to get a good grade. that has to get to you after a while, being surrounded by people who will never like you for any real reason. i’d feel bad for them if they weren’t such sadists and losers. with the sadists, it’s all about the power and the control. they teach so they can have an official reason to dominate other people. and the losers make up pretty much all the other teachers, from the ones who are too incompetent to do anything else to the ones who want to be their students’ best friends because they never had friends when they were in high school. and there are the ones who honestly think we’re going to remember a thing they say to us after final exams are over. right.
• every now and then you get a teacher like mrs. grover, who’s a sadistic loser. i mean, it can’t be easy being a french teacher, because nobody really needs to know how to speak french anymore. and while she kisses the honors kids’ derrieres , with standard kids she resents the fact that we’re taking up her time. so she responds by giving us quizzes every day and giving us gay projects like ‘design your own ride for euro disney’ and then acting all surprised when i’m like ‘yeah, my ride for euro disney is minnie using a baguette as a dildo to have some fun with mickey.’ since i don’t have any idea how to say ‘dildo’ in french (dildot?), i just say ‘dildo’ and she pretends to have no idea what i’m talking about and says that minnie and mickey eating baguettes isn’t a ride. no doubt she gives me a check-minus for the day. i know i’m supposed to care, but really it’s hard to imagine something i could care less about than my grade in french.
• now, if there’s anything stupider than buddy lists, it’s lol. if anyone ever uses lol with me, i rip my computer right out of the wall and smash it over the nearest head. i mean, it’s not like anyone is laughing out loud about the things they lol. i think it should be spelled loll, like what a lobotomized person’s tongue does. loll. loll. i can’t think any more. loll. loll!
• i have a friend request from some stranger on facebook and i delete it without looking at the profile because that doesn’t seem natural. ’cause friendship should not be as easy as that. it’s like people believe all you need to do is like the same bands in order to be soulmates. or books. omg . . . U like the outsiders 2 . . . it’s like we’re the same person! no we’re not. it’s like we have the same english teacher. there’s a difference.
• mom: how was your day?

me: mom, i’m watching tv.

mom: will you be ready for dinner in fifteen minutes?

me: mom, i’m watching tv!

mom: well, set the table during the commercials.

me: FINE.

i totally don’t get this - is there anything more boring and pathetic than setting the table when there are only two of you? i mean, with place mats and salad forks and everything. who is she kidding? i would give anything not to have to spend the next twenty minutes sitting across from her, because she doesn’t believe in letting silence go. no, she has to fill it up with talk. i want to tell her that’s what the voices in your head are for, to get you through all the silent parts. but she doesn’t want to be with her thoughts unless she’s saying them out loud.

• boundbydad: i wish you.

grayscale: i wish you, too.

this is dangerous because as a rule i don’t let myself wish for things. too many times when i was a kid, i would put my hands together or squinch my eyes shut and i would devote myself fully to hoping for something. i even thought that there were some places in my room that were better for wishing than others - under the bed was okay, but on the bed wasn’t; the bottom of the closet would do, as long as my shoebox of baseball cards was in my lap. never, ever at my desk, but always with the sock drawer open. nobody had told me these rules - i’d figured them out for myself. i could spend hours setting up a particular wish - and every single time, i’d be met with a resounding wall of complete indifference. whether it was for a pet hamster or for my mom to stop crying - the sock drawer would be open and i would be sitting behind my toy chest with three action figures in one hand and a matchbox car in the other. i never hoped for everything to get better - only for one thing to get better. and it never did. so eventually i gave up. i give up every single day.

• Nothing happens for a week. I don’t mean this figuratively, like there is a shortage of significant events. I mean that no things occur. Total stasis. It’s sort of heavenly, to tell you the truth.
• There’s the getting up, and the showering, and the school, and the miracle of Tiny Cooper and the desk, and the plaintive glancing at my Burger King Kids Meal Magic School Bus watch during each class, and the relief of the eighth period bell, and the bus home, and the homework, and the dinner, and the parents, and the locking the door, and the good music, and the Facebook, and the reading of people’s status updates without writing my own because my policy on shutting up extends to textual communication, and then there’s the bed and the waking and the shower and the school again. I don’t mind it. As lives go, I’ll take the quietly desperate over the radically bipolar.
• torn asunder by love
• Tiny Cooper is splayed out across the thin carpet, using his backpack as a pillow. He’s wearing skinny jeans, which look very much like denim sausage casings.
• “I would never come on to you, because you’re not gay. And, like, boys who like girls are inherently unhot. Why would you like someone who can’t like you back?” The question is rhetorical, but if I wasn’t trying to shut up, I’d answer it: You like someone who can’t like you back because unrequited love can be survived in a way that once-requited love cannot.
• Tiny Cooper has brought me to a Gay-Straight Alliance meeting to hook me up with a girl. Which is of course idiotic in the kind of profound and multivalent way that only an English teacher could fully elucidate.

“You should date Grayson,” Tiny says. “He thinks you’re super cute.” If I were to stand on a scale fully dressed, sopping wet, holding ten-pound dumbbells in each hand and balancing a stack of hardcover books on my head, I’d weigh about 180 pounds, which is approximately equal to the weight of Tiny Cooper’s left tricep. But in this moment, I could beat the holy living shit out of Tiny Cooper. And I would, I swear to God, except I’m too busy trying to disappear.

• I’m sitting here thinking, God, I swear I will take a vow of silence and move to a monastery and worship you for all my days if you just this once provide me with an invisibility cloak, come on come on, please please invisibility cloak now now now.
• And then it’s over, and out of my peripheral vision I see everyone leaving, but I stay put. In the past half hour, I’ve collected a mental list of approximately 412 ways I might kill Tiny Cooper, and I’m not going to leave until I’ve settled on just the right one. I finally decide I’m going to just stab him a thousand times with a ballpoint pen. Jailhouse-style. I stand up ramrod straight and walk outside.
• I take a long, deep breath. “That’s terrible. I’m not into her, Tiny.” He rolls his eyes. “And you think I’m crazy? She’s adorable. I just totally made your life!” I realize this is not, like, boyish. I realize that properly speaking guys should only think about sex and the acquisition of it, and that they should run crotch-first toward every girl who likes them and etc. But: The part I enjoy most is not the doing, but the noticing. Noticing the way she smells like oversugared coffee, and the difference between her smile and her photographed smile, and the way she bites her lower lip, and the pale skin of her back. I just want the pleasure of noticing these things at a safe distance—I don’t want to have to acknowledge that I am noticing. I don’t want to talk about it or do stuff about it. I did think about it while we were there with unconscious, snot-crying Tiny below us. I thought about stepping over the fallen giant and kissing her and my hand on her face and her improbably warm breath, and having a girlfriend who gets mad at me for being so quiet and then only getting quieter because the thing I liked was one smile with a sleeping leviathan between us, and then I feel like crap for a while until finally we break up, at which point I reaffirm my vow to live by the rules.
• my eyes get wide, and I do the slit-the-throat motion
• frakking
• she comes over and messes up all the bottles that i’ve been putting in rows. i almost pick one up and throw it at the back of her head while she leaves, but the truth is if i brained her here, my manager would make me clean it up, and that would suck. the last thing i need is gray matter on my new shoes. do you know how hard that shit is to get out?
• i make a mental note to buy her coffee or something, but my mental noteboard is a joke, because as soon as i put something on there it disappears.
• eric and mary and greta are all talking about parties they’re going to, and even roger, our square-headed manager, is telling us that he and his wife are going to be ‘having a night in’ - wink wink, nudge nudge, hump hump, spew spew. i’d rather picture a festering wound with maggots crawling into it. roger is bald and fat and his wife is probably bald and fat, too, and the last thing i want to hear about is them having bald and fat sex. especially ’cause you know that he’s making it sound all winknudge when the truth is he’ll probably get home and the two of them will watch a tom hanks movie and then one of them will lie in bed listening to the other one pee and then they’ll switch places and then when the second person is done in the bathroom, the lights will go off and they’ll go to sleep.
• me: so what’s up?

maura: you’re a prick.

me: this is a news flash?

maura: shut up for a second.

me: only if you shut up, too.

maura: stop it.

me: you started it.

maura: just stop it.

i decide, okay, i’ll shut up. and what do i get? fifteen fucking seconds of silence.

• me: maura maura maura . . . isaac’s a character. he doesn’t actually exist. fuck! it’s just this thing i’m working on. this - i don’t know - idea. i have all these stories in my head. starring this character, isaac.

i don’t know where this shit comes from. it’s like it’s just being given to me by some divine force of fabrication. maura looks like she wants to believe it, but doesn’t really. me: like pogo dog. only he’s not a dog, and he’s not on a pogo stick. maura: god, i forgot all about pogo dog.

• i don’t know if there’s anything more horrifying than a goth girl getting all cuddly. maura’s not only leaning, but now she’s examining my hand like somebody stamped it with the meaning of life. in braille.
• i know as soon as maura gets home, she’s going to dive right into her notebook of skull-blood poetry, and i’m doing my best not to get a bad review. maura once showed me one of her poems.

hang me

like a dead rose

preserve me

and my petals won’t fall

until you touch them

and i dissolve

and i wrote her a poem back

i am like

a dead begonia

hanging upside down

because

like a dead begonia

i don’t give a fuck

to which she replied

not all flowers

depend on light

to grow

so now maybe tonight i’ll inspire

i thought his soil was gay

but maybe there’s a chance

i can get myself some play

and get into his pants

• mom: i really have to stop doing this. i need to get a life.

i think she’s directing this at herself, or the universe, not really at me. still, i can’t help thinking that ‘getting a life’ is something only a complete idiot could believe. like you can just drive to a store and get a life. see it in its shiny box and look inside the plastic window and catch a glimpse of yourself in a new life and say, ‘wow, i look much happier - i think this is the life i need to get!’ take it to the counter, ring it up, put it on your credit card.

• me giving my mom romantic advice is kind of like a goldfish giving a snail advice on how to fly.
• god bless the mood equalizers. and all moods shall be created equal. i am the fucking civil rights movement of moods.
• boundbydad: u there?

boundbydad: i’m wishin’

boundbydad: and hopin’

boundbydad: and prayin’

all sorts of yayness floods my brain. love is such a drug.

grayscale: please be the one voice of sanity left in the world

boundbydad: you’re there!

• grayscale: you should be. how was the bday celebration?

boundbydad: small. kara just wanted to see a movie with me and janine. good time, lame movie. the one with the guy who learns that the girl he marries is a sucubus boundbydad: sucubbus?

boundbydad: succubus?

grayscale: succubus

boundbydad: yeah, one of those. it was really stupid. then it was really boring. then it got loud and stupid. then there were about two minutes where it was so stupid it was funny. then it went back to being dumb, and finally ended lame.

boundbydad: good times, good times

• grayscale: **sighs forlornly** i wish i could’ve been there.

boundbydad: i wish i was there with you right now.

grayscale: really? ☺

boundbydad: yessirreebob.

grayscale: and if you were here . . .

boundbydad: what would i do?

grayscale: ☺

boundbydad: let me tell you what i’d do.

this is a game we play. most of the time we’re not serious. like, there are different ways it could go. the first is we basically make fun of people who have IM sex by inventing our own ridiculous scornographic dialogue.

grayscale: i want you to lick my clavicle.

boundbydad: i am licking your clavicle.

grayscale: ooh my clavicle feels so good.

boundbydad: naughty, naughty clavicle.

grayscale: mmmmmm

boundbydad: wwwwwwww

grayscale: rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr boundbydad: tttttttttttttttttttt

other times we go for the romance novel approach. corn porn.

boundbydad: thrust your fierce quavering manpole at me, stud

grayscale: your dastardly appendage engorges me with hellfire

boundbydad: my search party is creeping into your no man’s land grayscale: baste me like a thanksgiving turkey!!!

• grayscale: seriously?

boundbydad: deliriously

• colder than a witch’s tit in a steel bra
• My dad is very tall, and very thin, and very bald, and he has long thin fingers, which he taps against an arm of a floral-print couch. I sit across from him in an overstuffed, overgreen armchair. The finger tapping goes on for about thirty-four years, but he doesn’t say anything, and then finally I say, “Hey, Dad.”

He has a very formalized, intense way of talking, my dad. He always talks to you as if he’s informing you that you have terminal cancer—which is actually a big part of his job, so it makes sense. He looks at me with those sad, intense you-have-cancer eyes, and he says, “Your mother and I are wondering about your plans.”

• You know how people are always saying your parents are always right? “Follow your parents’ advice; they know what’s good for you.” And you know how no one ever listens to this advice, because even if it’s true it’s so annoying and condescending that it just makes you want to go, like, develop a meth addiction and have unprotected sex with eighty-seven thousand anonymous partners? Well, I listen to my parents.
• The buses let off, and the lawn starts to fill up with freshmen, none of whom seems particularly impressed by me. And then I see Clint, a tenured member of my former Group of Friends, walking toward me from the junior parking lot, and I’m able to convince myself that he’s not really walking toward me until his visible breath is blowing over me like a small, malodorous cloud. And I’m not going to lie: I kind of hope he’s about to apologize for the smallmindedness of certain of his friends.

“Hey, fucker,” he says. He calls everyone fucker. Is it a compliment? An insult? Or maybe it is both at once, which is precisely what makes it so useful.

I wince a little from the sourness of his breath, and then just say, “Hey.” Equally noncommittal. Every conversation I ever had with Clint or any of the Group of Friends is identical: all the words we use are stripped bare, so that no one ever knows what anyone else is saying, so that all kindness is cruelty, all selfishness generous, all care callous. And he says, “Got a call from Tiny this weekend about his musical. Wants student council to fund it.” Clint is student council vice president. “He told me all the fuck about it. A musical about a big gay bastard and his best friend who uses tweezers to jack off ’cause his dick’s so small.” He’s saying all this with a smile. He’s not being mean. Not exactly. And I want to say, That’s so incredibly original. Where do you come up with these zingers, Clint? Do you own some kind of joke factory in Indonesia where you’ve got eight-yearolds working ninety hours a week to deliver you that kind of top-quality witticism? There are boy bands with more original material. But I say nothing.

• “Tiny, you have a really warped understanding of compromise.”

He laughs. “Compromise is when you do what I tell you and I do what I want. Which reminds me: I’m gonna need you to be in the play.”

• “Absolutely not. No. NO. Also, I insist that you write me out of it.”

Tiny sighs. “You just don’t get it, do you? Gil Wrayson isn’t you; he’s a fictional character. I can’t just change my art because you’re uncomfortable with it.”

• “They’re not bad, yeah. A bit pseudointellectual but, hey, aren’t we all?”
• I unfold the paper:

Mr. Grayson,

You should always make sure no one’s watching when you unlock your locker. You never know (18) when someone (26) will memorize (4) your combination. Thanks for the coat. I guess chivalry isn’t dead.

yours,

Jane

p.s. I like how you treat your pockets the way I treat my car.

Upon finishing the note, I read it again. It makes both truths more true. I want her. I don’t. Maybe I am a robot after all. I have no idea what to say, so I go ahead and say the worst possible thing. “Very cute.” This is why I should adhere to Rule 2. In the ensuing silence, I have time to contemplate the word cute—how dismissive it is, how it’s the equivalent of calling someone little, how it makes a person into a baby, how the word is a neon sign burning through the dark reading, “Feel Bad About Yourself.”

And then finally she says, “Not my favorite adjective.”

“Sorry. I mean, it’s—”

“I know what you mean, Will,” she says. “I’m sorry. I, uh, I don’t know. I just got out of a relationship, and I think I’m, like, kind of just looking to fill that hole, and you’re the most obvious candidate to fill the hole, and oh my God that sounds dirty. Oh, God. I’m just gonna hang up.”

• “Forget it. Forget the note, really. I don’t even . . . Just don’t worry about it, Grayson.” After an awkward hanging up, I realize the intended ending of the “I don’t even . . .” sentence. “I don’t even . . . like you, Grayson, because you’re kind of how can I say this politely not that smart. Like, you had to look up that physicist on Wikipedia. I just miss my boyfriend, and you wouldn’t kiss me, so I kind of want to just because you wouldn’t, and it’s really actually not a big deal but I can’t find a way to tell you that without hurting your feelings, and since I’m far more compassionate and thoughtful than you with your cutes, I’m just going to stop the sentence at I don’t even.”
• I know the approximate location of her locker. It is approximately across from the hallway mural in which a poorly painted version of our school mascot, Willie the Wildkit, says in a speech bubble, “Wildkits Respect EVERYONE,” which is hilarious on at least fourteen different levels, the fourteenth being that there is no such thing as a wildkit. Willie the Wildkit looks approximately like a mountain lion, though, and while I am admittedly not an expert in zoology, I’m reasonably sure that mountain lions do not, in fact, respect everyone. So I’m leaning against the Willie the Wildkit mural in such a way that it appears that I’m the one saying that Wildkits Respect EVERYONE, and I have to wait like that for about ten minutes, just trying to look like I’m doing something and wishing I’d brought a book or whatever so I wouldn’t look so aggressively stalkerish, and then finally the period bell rings and the hallway floods with people.
• I pull the door open, and step into a room bright with fluorescent light. To my left, a guy with more piercings than a pincushion stands behind a counter, staring at me.

“You browsing or you want tokens?” he asks me. I don’t have the first idea what tokens are, so I say, “Browsing?”

“Okay. Go on in,” he tells me.

“What?”

“Go ahead.”

“You’re not going to ID me?”

The guy laughs. “What, are you sixteen or something?”

He nailed it exactly, but I say, “No, I’m twenty.”

“Well, yeah. So that’s what I figured. Go ahead.”

And I’m thinking, Oh, my God. How hard can it fucking be to successfully use a fake ID in this town? This is ridiculous! I won’t stand for it. “No,” I say, forcefully. “ID me.”

“All right, man. If that’s what gets your maracas shakin’.” And then, real dramatically, he asks, “Can I see some ID, please?”

“You may,” I answer, and hand it to him. He glances at it, hands it back, and says, “Thanks, Ishmael.”

“You’re welcome,” I say, exasperated. And then I’m in a porn store.

• Other than Señor Muy Pierced, the place is empty, and I very much want to leave because this is possibly the most uncomfortable and unpleasant portion of what has heretofore been a pretty uncomfortable and unpleasant day.
• derek: aren’t you psyched for mathletes tomorrow?

with that simple word - mathletes - it’s like every ounce of anesthesia i’ve ever collected in my body wears off at once.

me: holy sweet f-ing a

there are four mathletes in our school. i am number four. derek and simon are numbers one and two, and in order to enter competitions they need at least four members. (number three is a freshman whose name i deliberately forget. his pencil has more personality than he does.) simon: you do remember, right?

they’ve both put their meatburgers down (that’s what the cafeteria menu calls them - meatburgers), and they’re staring at me with looks so blank i swear i can see the computer screens reflected in their glasses.

me: i dunno. i’m not feeling very mathletic. maybe you should find a subset-stitute?

derek: that’s not funny.

me: ha ha! wasn’t meant to be!

• i can tell derek’s upset because it looks like he’s considering having a slight emotional response to the informational stimuli being presented to him.
• maura’s been in a good mood all day - well, a maura version of a good mood, which means the forecast calls for drizzle instead of thunderstorms.
• smashed on theorems and rhombazoids
• when it’s time for her to go her way and me to go mine, she makes one more stab for the truth. maura: is there anything you want to tell me? me: yeah. i want to tell you that my third nipple is lactating and my butt cheeks are threatening to unionize. what do you think i should do about it?
• me: i’ll tell you when i have something to tell you, okay? now go home and practice your math. here . . . i made you flash cards. i reach into my bag and take out these cards i made seventh period, kinda knowing maura was going to say yes. they’re not actually cards, since it’s not like i carry a set of index cards around in my bag for indexing emergencies. but i made all these dotted lines on the piece of paper so she’ll know where to cut. each card has its own equation. 2 + 2 = 4

50 x 40 = 2000

834620 x 375002 = who really gives a fuck?

x + y = z

cock + pussy = a happy rooster-kitten couple

red + blue = purple

me - mathletes = me + gratitude to you

maura looks at them for a second, then folds the piece of paper along the dotted lines, squaring it together like a map. she doesn’t smile or anything, but she looks unpissed for a second.

• if it’s a girl, you should name her logorrhea. if it’s a boy, go for trig.
• friday after school is brutal. i want to commit murder about a thousand different ways, and it’s my closet i want to kill. i have no fucking idea what to wear - and i am not a what-do-i-wear kind of guy at all, so it’s like i can’t even begin to comprehend the task at hand. every single goddamn piece of clothing i own seems to have chosen now to reveal its faults. i put on this one shirt which i’ve always thought made me look good, and sure enough it makes my chest look like it actually has some definition. but then i realize it’s so small that if i raise my arms even an inch, my belly pubes are on full display. so then i try this black shirt which makes me look like i’m trying too hard, and then this white shirt which is cool until i find this stain near the bottom which i’m hoping is orange juice, but is probably from when i tucked before i tapped. band t-shirts are too obvious - if i wear a shirt from one of his favorites, it’s like i’m being a kiss-ass, and if i wear one for a band he might not like, he might think my taste is lame. my gray hoodie is too blech and this blue shirt i have is practically the same color as my jeans, and looking all-blue is something only cookie monster can pull off. for the first time in my life i realize why hangers are called hangers, because after fifteen minutes of trying things on and throwing them aside, all i want to do is hook one to the top of my closet door, lean my neck into the loop, and let my weight fall. my mother will come in and think it’s some autoerotic asphyxiation where i didn’t even have the time to get my dick out, and i won’t be alive enough to tell her that i think autoerotic asphyxiation is one of the dumbest things in the whole universe, right up there with gay republicans. but, yeah, i’ll be dead. and it’ll be like an episode of CSI: FU, where the investigators will come in and spend forty-three minutes plus commercials scouring over my life, and at the end they’ll bring my mother to the station house and they’ll sit her down and give her the truth. cop: ma’am, your son wasn’t murdered. he was just getting ready for a first date. i’m kind-of smiling, picturing how the scene would be shot, then i remember that i’m standing shirtless in the middle of my room, and i have a train to catch.
• i try to read to kill a mockingbird for english class, but it’s like the letters are this nice design on the page and don’t mean anything more to me than the patterns on the train seats. it could be an action movie called die, mockingbird, die! and i still wouldn’t be into it.
• i thought i was going to be early, but of course by the time i get near where we’re supposed to meet, i’m later than a pregnant girl’s period.
• sweaty palms. check. shaky bones. check. the feeling that all oxygen in the air has been replaced by helium. yup.
• “People are pretty fucking weird, if you haven’t noticed.”
• i am so freaked out, you could pull a clown out of my ass and i wouldn’t be at all surprised. it would make maybe a little sense if this OTHER WILL GRAYSON standing right next to me wasn’t a will grayson at all but was instead the gold medal champion of the mindfuck olympics.
• i turned back to the dvd case i was pretending to study, which was for this porno called the sound and the furry. it was all about ‘moo sex,’ with these people pictured on the cover wearing cow suits (one udder). i was glad that no real cows were harmed (or pleasured) in the making of the film. but still. not my thing. next to it was a dvd called as i get laid dying, which had a hospital scene on the front. it was like grey’s anatomy, only with less grey and more anatomy.
• it’s hitting. that moment of ‘did an anvil really just fall on my head?’ has passed and i am feeling that anvil. oh lord am i feeling that anvil.
• yes, the synapses are conveying the information now. newsflash: isaac never existed.
• me: it is only my respect for your parents that will prevent me from murdering you outright. but please understand this: i am never, ever speaking to you or passing notes to you or texting you or doing fucking sign language with you ever again. i would rather eat dog shit full of razor blades than have anything to do with you.
• there’s hurt. there’s pain. and there’s hurt-and-pain-at-once. i am experiencing hurt-and-pain-at-once.
• but reality. well, reality is the anvil.
• all of my instincts are telling me to curl into a tiny ball and roll into the nearest sewer - but i don’t want to do that to o.w.g. i feel he deserves more than being an eyewitness to my self-destruction.
• maura. isaac.

isaac. maura.

anvil.

anvil.

anvil.

• lord, send me amnesia. make me forget every moment i ever didn’t really have with isaac. make me forget that maura exists. this must be what my mother felt when my dad said it was over. i get it now. i get it. the things you hope for the most are the things that destroy you in the end.
• love is tied to truth
• TAnd when I finish there’s a lull and she says, “Can I ask you something random?”

“Yeah, of course.” We’re walking past Tiffany, and I stop for a second. The pale yellow streetlights illuminate the storefront just enough that through triple-paned glass and a security grate, I can see an empty display—a gray velvet outline of a neck wearing no jewelry.

“Do you believe in epiphanies?” she asks. We start walking again.

“Um, can you unpack the question?”

“Like, do you believe that people’s attitudes can change? One day you wake up and you realize something, you see something in a way that you never saw it before, and boom, epiphany. Something is different forever. Do you believe in that?”

“No,” I say. “I don’t think anything happens all at once. Like, Tiny? You think Tiny falls in love every day? No way. He thinks he does, but he doesn’t really. I mean, anything that happens all at once is just as likely to unhappen all at once, you know?” She doesn’t say anything for a while. She just walks. My hand is down next to her hand, and they brush but nothing happens between us. “Yeah. Maybe you’re right,” she says finally. “Why do you ask?” I say. “I don’t know. No reason, really.” The English language has a long and storied history. And in all that time, no one has ever asked a “random question” about “epiphanies” for “no reason.” “Random questions” are the least random of all questions.

• “Look, you’re right. Maybe I don’t like you the way someone should like you. I don’t like you in the call-you-and-read-you-a-poem-every-night-beforeyou-go-to-bed way. I’m crazy, okay? Sometimes I think, like, God, she’s superhot and smart and kind of pretentious but the pretentiousness just makes me kind of want her, and then other times I think it’s an amazingly bad idea, that dating you would be like a series of unnecessary root canals interspersed with occasional makeout sessions.”
• I call Tiny. He doesn’t answer. I get the voice mail. “You’ve reached the voice mail of Tiny Cooper, writer, producer, and star of the new musical Tiny Dancer: The Tiny Cooper Story. I’m sorry, but it appears something more fabulous than your phone call is happening right now. When fabulous levels fall a bit, I’ll get back to you. BEEP.”
• asshat
• tiny cooper.

tiny cooper.

tiny cooper.

i am saying his name over and over in my head.

tiny cooper.

tiny cooper.

it’s a ridiculous name, and the whole thing is ridiculous, and i couldn’t stop it if i tried. tiny cooper.

if i say it enough times, maybe it will be okay that isaac doesn’t exist. it starts that night. in front of frenchy’s. i am still in shock. i can’t tell whether it’s posttraumatic stress or post-stress trauma. whatever it is, a good part of my life has just been erased, and i have no desire to fill in the new blank. leave it empty, i say. just let me die. tiny, though, won’t let me. he’s playing the i’ve-had-it-worse game, which never works, because either the person says something that’s not worse at all (‘he wasn’t a natural blond’) or they say something that’s so much worse that you feel like all your feelings are being completely negated. (‘well, i once had a guy stand me up for a date . . . and it ended up that he’d been eaten by a lion! his last word was my name!’)

• this is about as inspirational as a movie of hitler making out with his girlfriend and having a good time. it runs afoul of what i call the birdshit rule. you know, how people say it’s good luck if a bird shits on you? and people believe it! i just want to grab them and say, ‘dude, don’t you realize this whole superstition was made up because no one could think of anything else good to say to a person who’d just been shit upon?’ and people do that all the time - and not with something as temporary as birdshit, either. you lost your job? great opportunity! failed at life? there’s only one way to go - up! dumped by a boyfriend who never existed? i know it sucks, but in a way, it’s good!
• i am in a completely demolished state. my mind is having a heart attack.
• tiny doesn’t just sing these words - he belts them. it’s like a parade coming out of his mouth. i have no doubt the words travel over lake michigan to most of canada and on to the north pole. the farmers of saskatchewan are crying. santa is turning to mrs. claus and saying ‘what the fuck is that?’ i am completely mortified, but then tiny opens his eyes and looks at me with such obvious caring that i have no idea what to do. no one’s tried to give me something like this in ages.
• as we walk over to millennium park, tiny tells me all about tiny dancer and how hard he’s struggled to write, act, direct, produce, choreograph, costume-design, lighting-design, setdesign, and attain funding for it. basically, he’s out of his mind, and since i’m trying really hard to get out of my mind, too, i attempt to follow. like with maura (fucking witch ass bitch mussolini al-qaeda darth vader non-entity), i don’t have to say a word myself, which is fine. when we get to the park, tiny makes a great-big beeline to the bean. somehow i’m not surprised. the bean is this really stupid sculpture that they did for millennium park - i guess at the millennium - which originally had another name, but everyone started calling it the bean and the name stuck. it’s basically this big reflective metal bean that you can walk under and see yourself all distorted. i mean, i’ve been here before on school trips, but i’ve never been here with someone as huge as tiny before. usually it’s hard at first to locate yourself in the reflection, but this time i know i’m the wavy twig standing next to the big blob of humanity. tiny giggles when he sees himself like that. a genuine, tee-heehee giggle. i hate it when girls do that shit, because it’s always so fake. but with tiny it isn’t fake at all. it’s like he’s being tickled by life.
• after tiny has tried ballerina pose, swing-batter-batter pose, pump-up-the-jam pose, and topof-the-mountain-sound-of-music pose in the reflection of the bean, he walks us to a bench overlooking lake shore drive. i think he’ll be all sweaty because, let’s face it, most fat people get sweaty just from lifting the twinkie to their mouth. but tiny is just too fabulous to sweat.
• tiny: but surely you must like yourself?

holy shit, i want to be from this boy’s planet. is he serious? i look at him and see that, yes, he is.

• here’s the sick, twisted thing: part of me thinks i deserve this. that maybe if i wasn’t such an asshole, isaac would have been real. if i wasn’t such a lame excuse for a person, something right might happen to me. it’s not fair, because i didn’t ask for dad to leave, and i didn’t ask to be depressed, and i didn’t ask for us to have no money, and i didn’t ask to want to fuck boys, and i didn’t ask to be so stupid, and i didn’t ask to have no real friends, and i didn’t ask to have half the shit that comes out of my mouth come out of my mouth. all i wanted was one fucking break, one idiotic good thing, and that was clearly too much to ask for, too much to want.
• nobody’s really watching us, but i’m beginning to feel that they are. so we stop and i can’t help but think about isaac, and how even though this whole tiny thing is an interesting development, all-in-all things still suck in a tornado-destroyed-my-home kind of way. tiny’s like the one room left standing. i feel i owe him something for that, so i say me: i’m glad that you exist.
• I’m sitting against my locker ten minutes before the first period bell when Tiny comes running down the hallway, his arms a jumble of Tiny Dancer audition posters. “Grayson!” he shouts. “Hey,” I answer. I get up, grab a poster from him, and hold it against the wall. He lets the others fall to the ground and then starts taping, ripping off the masking tape with his teeth. He tapes the poster up, then we gather up the ones he dropped, walk a few paces, and repeat. And all the while, he talks. His heart beats and his eyelids blink and he breathes and his kidneys process toxins and he talks, and all of it utterly involuntary.
• The Isaac/Maura namescrewing reminds me of something. “Tiny,” I say. “Grayson,” he answers. “Will you please rename that character in your play, the sidekick guy?” “Gil Wrayson?” I nod. Tiny throws his hands up in the air and announces, “I can’t change Gil Wrayson’s name! It’s thematically vital to the whole production.” “I’m really not in the mood for your bullshit,” I say. “I’m not bullshitting you. His name has to be Wrayson. Say it slow. Ray-sin. Rays-in. It’s a double meaning—Gil Wrayson is undergoing a transformation. And he has to let the rays of sunlight in—those rays of sunlight coming in the form of Tiny’s songs—in order to become his true self—no longer a plum, but a sun-soaked raisin. Don’t you see?” “Oh, come on, Tiny. If that’s true, why the hell is his name Gil?” That stops him for a moment. “Hmm,” he says, squinting down the still-quiet hallway. “It just always sounded right to me. But I suppose I could change it. I’ll think about it, okay?” “Thank you,” I say.
• I’m just reveling in the glory of not having to hear the neediness and impotence of my own voice.
• “Oh, text!” Tiny pulls out his phone, reads the text, sighs loudly, and begins trying to type a response with his meaty hands. While he’s thumbing, I say, “I get to pick who plays him.” Tiny nods distractedly. “Tiny,” I repeat, “I get to pick who plays him.” He looks up. “What? No no no. I’m the director. I’m the writer, producer, director, assistantcostume designer, and casting director.”
• Number 2 is a boy, a husky lad with hair too long to be considered normal but too short to be considered long. He sings a song by a band apparently called Damn Yankees—Jane knows them, natch. I don’t know how the original sounds, but this guy’s howler-monkey a cappella rendition of it leaves a lot to be desired. “He sounds like someone just kicked him in the nuts,” Jane says; to which I respond, “If he doesn’t stop soon, someone will.”
• Gary comes up and says, “I liked numbers six, nineteen, thirty-one, and forty-two. The others, well,” and then Gary puts his hand to his chest and begins to sing, “Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high / The sound of singing Wildkits, makes me want to die.”
• tell her the truth - that it’s over and it’s never going to be un-over. please.
• then i go back to my room, turn on my computer, and create a new screenname. willupleasebequiet: tiny?

bluejeanbaby: here!

willupleasebequiet: are you ready?

bluejeanbaby: for what?

willupleasebequiet: the future

willupleasebequiet: because i think it just started

tiny sends me a file of one of the songs from tiny dancer. he says he hopes it will give me inspiration. i put it on my ipod and listen to it as i’m heading to school the next morning. There was a time

When I thought I liked vagina

But then came a summer

When i realized something finer

I knew from the moment he took top bunk

How desperately i wanted into his trunk

Joseph Templeton Oglethorpe the Third

Left my heart singing like a little bird

Summer of gay!

So lovely! So queer!

Summer of gay!

Set the tone for my year!

Mama and Papa didn’t know they were lighting the lamp

The moment they sent me to Starstruck Drama Camp

So many Hamlets to choose from

Some tortured, some cute

I was all ready to swordfight

Or take the Ophelia route

There were boys who called me sister

And sistahs who taught me about boys

Joseph whispered me sweet nothings

And i fed him Almond Joys

Summer of gay!

So fruity! So whole!

Summer of gay!

I realized Angel would be my role!

Mama and Papa didn’t know how well their money was spent

When I learned about love from our production of Rent

Such kissing on the catwalks

Such competition for the leads

We fell in love so often and fully

Across all races and sexualities and creeds . . .

Summer of gay!

Ended soon! Lasted long!

Summer of gay!

My heart still carries its song!

Joseph and I didn’t make it to September

But you can’t unlight a gay-colored ember

I will never go back

To the heterosexual way

’Cause now every day

(Yes, every day)

Is the sum-mer

of gay!

• once i get there, she’s right in front of me, and the mountain reminds me it’s a volcano, and i can’t help but want to spray lava everywhere. i walk right past the place we usually meet up, but that doesn’t stop her. she launches right behind me, saying all the things that would be in a hallmark card if hallmark made cards for people who invented internet boyfriends for other people and then were suddenly caught in the lie.
• i am just going to pretend that she doesn’t exist. because all the other options would get me expelled and/or arrested.
• she’s crying now, and i don’t care. the tears are for her own benefit, not mine. let her feel the pain her poetry desires. it has nothing to do with me. not anymore. she tries to pass me notes during class. i knock them off my desk and leave them on the ground. she sends me texts, and i delete them unread. she tries to come up to me at the beginning of lunch, and i build a wall of silence that no goth sorrow can climb.
• when things break, it’s not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. it’s because a little piece gets lost - the two remaining ends couldn’t fit together even if they wanted to. the whole shape has changed. i am never, ever going to be friends with maura again. and the sooner she realizes it, the less annoying it’s going to be.
• simon: wait a sec - you’re gay?

me: yup. i suppose that’s the correct conclusion for you to draw. simon: that’s disgusting!

this is not exactly the reaction i was expecting from simon. i was betting on something a little closer to indifference.

me: what’s disgusting?

simon: you know. that you put your thing in the place where he, um, defecates. me: first of all, i haven’t put my thing anywhere. and you do realize, don’t you, that when a guy and a girl get together, he puts his thing where she urinates and gets her period?

simon: oh. i hadn’t thought about that.

me: exactly.

simon: still, it’s weird. me: it’s no weirder than jerking off to video game characters.

simon: who told you that? he whacks derek on the head with his plastic fork. simon: did you tell him that?

derek: i didn’t tell him anything!

me: i figured it out myself. honestly.

simon: it’s only the girl characters.

derek: and some warlocks!

simon: SHUT UP!

• this is not, i have to admit, how i thought being gay was going to be. luckily, tiny texts me every five minutes or so. i don’t know how he does it without getting caught in class. maybe he hides the phone in the folds of his stomach or something. whatever the case, i’m grateful. because it’s hard to hate life too much when you have someone interrupting your day with things like

I’M THINKING HAPPY GAY THOUGHTS ABOUT U and

I WANT TO KNIT U A SWEATER. WHAT COLOR? and

I THINK I JUST FAILED A MATH TEST BECAUSE I WAS THINKING OF U 2 MUCH

and

WHAT RHYMES WITH SODOMY TRIAL? then

LOBOTOMY VILE? then

BOTTOM ME, KYLE? then

BOTTOMY NILE then

BOTTOMY GUILE! then

BTW—ITS 4 THE SCENE WHEN OSCAR WILD’S GHOST COMES TO ME IN A (DREAM)

• me: why don’t you sit with me and simon and derek at lunch?

gideon: are they gay, too?

me: only if you’re a warlock.

i text tiny a minute later.

MADE NEW GAY FRIEND.

and he texts back PROGRESS!!!

• “Exactly!” he shouts, pounding the steering wheel. “And no great musical is ever about a person, not really. And that’s the problem. That’s the whole problem with the play. It’s not about tolerance or understanding or love or anything. It’s about me. And, like, nothing against me. I mean, I am pretty fabulous. Am I not?” “You’re a pillar of fabulosity in the community,” I tell him.
• “So I realized, in spite of my great and terrible fabulousness, the play can’t be about me. It must be about something even more fabulous: love. The polychromic manysplendored dreamcoat of love in all its myriad glories. And so it had to be revised.
• Then people start to file in for their first period drama class, so Tiny and I go to precalc, and Tiny performs the Big-Man-in-Small-Desk miracle, and I experience the traditional amazement, and school is boring, and then at lunch I’m sitting with Gary and Nick and Tiny, and Tiny is talking about his blinding light spiritual awakening in a manner that—nothing against Tiny—kind of implies that maybe Tiny has not fully internalized the idea that the earth does not spin around the axis of Tiny Cooper, and then I say to Gary, “Hey, where is Jane?” And Gary says, “Sick.” To which Nick adds, “Sick in the I’m-spending-the-day-with-my-boyfriend-at-the-botanicalgardens kind of way.” Gary shoots Nick a disapproving look. Tiny quickly changes the subject, and I try to laugh at all the appropriate moments for the rest of lunch, but I’m not listening.
• I know that she is dating Douchepants McWater Polo, and I know that sometimes when you date people you engage in idiotic activities like going to the botanical gardens, but in spite of all the knowledge that ought to protect me, I still feel like shit for the rest of the day. One of these days, I keep telling myself, you’ll learn to truly shut up and not care. And until then . . . well, until then I’ll keep taking deep breaths because it feels like the wind got knocked out of me. For all my not crying, I sure feel a hell of a lot worse than I did at the end of All Dogs Go to Heaven.
• Watching the movie, I can’t stop thinking about wanting to be at the ridiculous botanical gardens with Jane. Just walking around, her in that hoodie, and me making jokes about the Latin names of the plants, and her saying that ficaria verna would be a good name for a nerdcore hip-hop crew that only raps in Latin, and so on. I can picture the whole damned thing, actually, and it almost makes me desperate enough to complain to Mom about the situation, but that will only mean questions about Jane for the next seven to ten years. My parents get so few details about my private life that whenever they do stumble upon some morsel, they cling to it for eons. I wish they’d do a better job of hiding their desire for me to have tons of friends and girlfriends.
• And then I’m quiet for a while, and finally he says, “Sorry, I just got an IM from Will. He’s telling me about lunch with this new gay friend he’s got. I know it’s not a date if it’s in the cafeteria, but still. Gideon. He sounds hot. It is pretty awesome that Will’s so out, though. He like came out to everyone in the entire world. I swear to God I think he wrote the president of the United States and was like, ‘Dear Mr. President, I am gay. Yours truly, Will Grayson. ’ It’s fucking beautiful, Grayson.”
• Tiny and me at the gay pride parade in Boys Town, ninth grade, him saying, “Grayson, I’m gay,” and me being like, “Oh, really? Is the sky blue? Does the sun rise in the east? Is the Pope Catholic?” and him being like, “Is Tiny Cooper fabulous? Do birds weep from the beauty when they hear Tiny Cooper sing?”
• I think about how much depends upon a best friend. When you wake up in the morning you swing your legs out of bed and you put your feet on the ground and you stand up. You don’t scoot to the edge of the bed and look down to make sure the floor is there. The floor is always there. Until it’s not.
• no finger foods left to finger
• tiny hits me on the shoulder. i think he means to do it lightly, but i feel like someone’s just driven a volkswagen into my arm.
• i lead him to my room, and even manage a ta-da! when i open the door. he walks to the center of the room and takes it all in, smiling the whole time.

tiny: goldfish!

he goes right over to the bowl. i explain to him that if goldfish ever take over the world and decide to have a war crimes trial, i am going to be noosebait, because the mortality rate of my little goldfish bowl is much much higher than if they’d lived in the moat at some chinese restaurant.

tiny: what are their names?

oh, lord.

me: samson and delilah.

tiny: really?

me: she’s a total slut.

• four days before his show is supposed to go on, tiny calls me and tells me he needs to take a mental health day. it’s not just because the show is in chaos. the other will grayson isn’t talking to him. i mean, he’s talking to him, but he’s not saying anything. and part of tiny is pissed that o.w.g. is ‘pulling this shit so close to curtain time’ and part of him seems really, really afraid that something is really, really wrong.
• i think the idea of a ‘mental health day’ is something completely invented by people who have no clue what it’s like to have bad mental health. the idea that your mind can be aired out in twenty-four hours is kind of like saying heart disease can be cured if you eat the right breakfast cereal. mental health days only exist for people who have the luxury of saying ‘i don’t want to deal with things today’ and then can take the whole day off, while the rest of us are stuck fighting the fights we always fight, with no one really caring one way or another, unless we choose to bring a gun to school or ruin the morning announcements with a suicide. i don’t say any of this to tiny.
• i am constantly telling him that i’m not sure the laws of sex and the city apply when there’s no sex and there’s no city, but then he looks at me like i’m throwing spiked darts at the heartshaped helium balloons that populate his mind, so i let it go.
• if you’d like, i can show you the trophy case on the way out so you can bask in the achievements of the alumni who are now old enough to be suffering from erectile dysfunction, memory loss, and death.
• i’d love to live in his musical cartoon world, where witches like maura get vanquished with one heroic word, and all the forest creatures are happy when two gay guys walk hand-in-hand through the meadow, and gideon is the himbo suitor you know the princess can’t marry, because her heart belongs to the beast. i’m sure it’s a lovely world, where these things happen. a rich, spoiled, colorful world. maybe one day i’ll get to visit, but i doubt it. worlds like that don’t tend to issue visas to fuckups like me.
• do you know what it’s like to work so hard to make sure everyone’s happy, and to have not a single person recognize it? i can work my ass off bringing together the other will grayson and jane - no appreciation, only grief. i write this whole musical that’s basically about love, and the main character in it - besides me, of course - is phil wrayson, who needs to figure some things out, but is all-in-all a pretty wonderful guy. and does will get that? no. he freaks out. i do everything i can to be a good boyfriend with you - no appreciation, only grief. i try to make this musical so it can create something, to show that we all have something to sing - no appreciation, only grief. this musical is a gift, will. my gift to the world. it’s not about me. it’s about what i have to share. there’s a difference - i see it, but i am worried that i am the only frickin’ one who sees it. you think i have it easy, will? are you really dying to try on these size fifteens? because every morning when i wake up, i have to convince myself that, yes, by the end of the day, i will be able to do something good. that’s all i ask - to be able to do something good. not for myself, you whiny shithead bastard complainer who, incidentally, i really, really like. but for my friends. for other people.
• “When you date someone, you have the markers along the way, right: You kiss, you have The Talk, you say the Three Little Words, you sit on a swing set and break up. You can plot the points on a graph. And you check up with each other along the way: Can I do this? If I say this, will you say it back? “But with friendship, there’s nothing like that. Being in a relationship, that’s something you choose. Being friends, that’s just something you are.” I just stare out at the ball field for a minute. Tiny sniffles. “I’d pick you,” I say. “Fuck it, I do pick you. I want you to come over to my house in twenty years with your dude and your adopted kids and I want our fucking kids to hang out and I want to, like, drink wine and talk about the Middle East or whatever the fuck we’re gonna want to do when we’re old. We’ve been friends too long to pick, but if we could pick, I’d pick you.” “Yeah, okay. You’re getting a little feelingsy, Grayson,” he says. “It’s kinda freaking me out.” “Got it.” “Like, don’t ever say you love me again.” “But I do love you. I’m not embarrassed about it.” “Seriously, Grayson, stop it. You’re making me throw up in the back of my mouth a little.”
• at school, i ask gideon

me: why is it upset? shouldn’t it be downset?

gideon: i will file a lawsuit against the dictionaries first thing tomorrow morning. we’re going to tear merriam a new asshole and throw webster inside of it.

me: you are such a dork.

gideon: only if you catch me on a good day.

• willupleasebequiet: good night, will grayson.

WGrayson7: good night, will grayson.

i want to say this calms me. i want to say i fall immediately to sleep. but the whole night my mind goes

try-error-?

try-error-?

try-error-?

by the morning, i am wreckage. i wake up and i think, today’s the day. and then i think, it has nothing to do with me. it’s not like i even helped him with it. it’s just that now i’m not getting to see it. i know that’s fair, but it doesn’t feel fair. it feels like i’ve screwed myself over. mom notices my unparalleled self-hatred at breakfast. it’s probably the way i drown the cocoa puffs until the milk overflows that tips her off.

• shitmonger
• fuckweasel
• gideon: can we just say ‘fuck you’ to the ‘you’re joking’ part? all right? i’m not saying you and tiny should be together forever and have huge, depressed babies that have periods of manic thinness, but i do think the way the two of you left it is pretty unhelpful, and i’d bet twenty dollars if i had twenty dollars that he is suffering from the same waves of crappiness that you’re suffering from. or he’s found a new boyfriend. maybe also named will grayson. whatever the case, you are going to be this walking, talking splinter unless someone takes your ass to wherever he is, and in this particular case, and in any other particular case where you need me, i am that someone. i am the knight with a shining jetta. i am your fucking steed. me: gideon, i had no idea . . .

gideon: shut the fuck up.

me: say it again!

gideon (laughing): shut the fuck up!

me: but why?

gideon: why should you shut the fuck up?

me: no - why are you my fucking steed?

gideon: because you’re my friend, wingnut. because underneath all that denial, you’re someone who’s deeply, deeply nice. and because ever since you first mentioned it to me, i’ve been dying to see this musical.

me: okay, okay, okay.

• this is why we call people exes, i guess - because the paths that cross in the middle end up separating at the end. it’s too easy to see an X as a cross-out. it’s not, because there’s no way to cross out something like that. the X is a diagram of two paths.
• “You’re Facebook friends with Tiny?”

“Yes. He request-friended me,” Mom says, epically failing to speak Facebook.

• Tiny says,

“I just want to say thank you and you’re all amazing and it’s all about falling. Also I’m sorry I hurled earlier. I was hurling because I actually got awesome-poisoning from being around so many awesome people.” That gets a bit of nervous laughter. “I know you’re freaked out but just trust me: you’re fabulous. And anyway, it’s not about you. Let’s go make some dreams come true.”

• A disembodied voice says, “To prevent interruptions of the fabulousness, please turn off your cell phones.”
• what’s in front of me is the trippiest thing i’ve ever seen. by far. i honestly didn’t think gideon and i would make it on time. chicago traffic is unkind to begin with, but in this case it was moving slower than a stoner’s thoughts. gideon and i had to have a swearing contest in order to calm ourselves down.
• tiny: but there is the word, this word phil wrayson taught me once: weltschmerz. it’s the depression you feel when the world as it is does not line up with the world as you think it should be. i live in a big goddamned weltzschermz ocean, you know? and so do you. and so does everyone. because everyone thinks it should be possible just to keep falling and falling forever, to feel the rush of the air on your face as you fall, that air pulling your face into a brilliant goddamned smile. and that should be possible. you should be able to fall forever.