i shall number the things you talked about so that i can reference them much more easily. some of them i will not talk about at all. but i will say honest things that will hopefully make you smile, for your soul is rainy right now. although i may crack a joke here and there.
1. lose 10 pounds
2. the endings of all your romantic possibilities
3. thinking for yourself
4. having a job
5. senior project (may i just say right now: fuck that shit)
6. high school
7. the loves of your life
8. new york
9. california
10. missing people.
here we go.
1. remember how i said you were humble, and that i'd let slip complements here and there when appropriate? honest complements, i mean, not just bullshit ones. well i want you to know that i think you are beautiful, and that is all i shall say for now.
2. you should not so quickly discount any romantic possibilities, even though september looms ever nearer and you and whoever-he-may-be will be pulled away geographically. and yes, you were hurt, and yes, i'm fairly certain all of us want to crush him (to be said in borat voice), but it doesn't always have to be for naught: happiness does not always end in pain. usually in melancholy. but not always in pain. be cautious, ms harley, but if you feel like someone or something presents itself perfectly in front of you as if it couldn't get any better or make any more sense, allow yourself to step forward into whatever spotlight shines on you. you deserve it, you know. to finish high school happy in any sense of the word.
3. you think wonderfully. and actually i don't remember exactly what you said, so i'll skip this one.
4. having a job is fun but overrated. besides, freshman year will be a workload, and you won't want a job. my advice? find a little rich boy who will pay for everything of yours. that's totally facetious (well, not totally...). i think you should be a librarian. but that's just me.
5. senior project is bullshit and should die in a fire.
6. how can you immortalize high school in words? i suppose you could; castro and james already did, and i plan to do so as well. try and remember the pretty times, though. when smiling was as natural taking that first morning breath.
7. the loves of your life. castro and james. there is no way the three of you will be separated. physically...perhaps. but the sheer power of the three of you combined cannot be matched or torn apart. i am jealous of you three, if you really want to know. i really am. and i'm glad i've been able to hang out with you guys a bit more this semester than before and sort of wend my way into the outer shell of your guys' inner heart.
8. new york is great, i agree, but a bitch of a winter. and it's for adults, anyway. not college kids. i have a feeling that all four of us (you/anna/james and then i) will end up in new york at one point. we all seem to have that wintry disposition that forces us to write. it's very new york. very artsy. plus i mean...well, no one's there anymore. they just used to be. like Karen O. and Mary Kate and Ashley Olson.
9. California is wonderful to want to get away from, but listen to "California" by Joni Mitchell. Or listen to Los Angeles, I'm Yours or California (by Rufus). Or Shores of California by the Dresden Dolls. And if you do end up staying here, you can be our reason for coming back to visit aside from obligatory family holidays, and that would be lovely. although go up north a bit. los angeles has gotten rather boring. but i firmly believe that you will end up where you belong and you will be happier than you've ever been (that you can be without anna and james [and then i]). and if you're not happy, i'll give you my decemberist dvd to cheer you up and make you smile and maybe cry if you listen to the engine driver, which i think makes all of us cry inside. i'm rambling now, i can feel it.
10. missing people. lord. we can't miss each other yet. not like this. especially you three. and i perhaps include myself. we all have nearly four months together. and we will all come up to canada during july and sing "july july!" over and over again and i'm determined to meet your crooked french canadian uncle. but you will miss anna, she will miss you, who will miss james, who you will also miss, who will miss you, and perhaps you will all miss me; i know i will miss the three of you greatly. we will all miss each other. it's sad. but let's all worry about that when the time comes for true goodbyes.
for now, enjoy canada and all it really doesn't have to offer. it's kind of like talking to the more boring of two twins, i suppose.
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on a completely separate note i wrote a new story: http://www.fictionpress.com/s/2343120/1/ (it's called "bold and daring children"). you may read it if you wish.
and i realized another thing as i was driving home today, and that is that everyone is who i want. i shall limit everyone to the triumvirate, the three of which are the three of the people i have ever felt the most similar to. there are a few others, of course. but never did i think i'd meet three people (all in my lit class!) that [through some weird web that had me separately connected to all three of them before they became themselves (castro through AP Euro, harley through robby, james through ancheta's class)] that were as similar to me as people come. i can never overshadow their own internal connection. it's far beyond that of which i've ever had with more than one person (my connection with michelle is probably the strongest thing i have and have ever had. she's undoubtedly the best friend i've ever had [i know you're crying if you're reading this!]); i've never been much of a best-group-of-friends type guy. but these three kids are just...man. brilliant, all three of them. individually and combined. people i can talk to at the level i talk and think on. i don't think we ever realize how much we've affected each other. especially our little book club that unconciously formed amongst us. Foer, Krauss, Kundera, Eggers, Marquez...anyway, i'm digressing. but i think about castro and harley and james and those three are, yes, three very different people, but they are all perfect for me. i mean, excepting the fact james is a boy. but i look at the three of them and i could picture myself being infinitely happy with any one of them, platonically or not. i could imagine being aging solipsistic friends with james forever. castro and i would tear the world apart. harley and i would be able to see the humble beauty in all things. that's why they work. and i work. because i would not change a single goddamn thing about any of them.
not a goddamn thing.
what the hell is happening to everyone?
1 comment:
Mikey,
(I like Mikey, even if you want to be Salem, because Mikey encompasses everything you are to me)
Thank you.
I will tell you a story, the story of how I know you, even if you do not remember me. Because we did not in fact meet through Robby, I remember you from long before.
I remember seeing you at freshman orientation before school even started that August so long ago. You stuck out of the crowd, maybe because of your attitude, which made you seem like more than a nervous little freshie, or your t-shirt which had the outline of a tuxedo on it.
I probably would have forgotten that had you not been in the same P.E. period as me for a while in ninth grade. You occasionally talked to Willis, who was one of the only people I knew, and I eventually came to learn that you liked both Monty Python and the Beatles and I was shocked, believe it or not, to find another soul that had this in common with me. (Ninth grade, for me, was about being unique, and not mainstream, it's what i used to justify my lack of popularity/friends and to avoid the big umbrella of peer pressure in so many forms. In hindsight, one of the smarter moves I ever made). Anyway, I remember being shocked, and I felt conencted to you, even though you did not know me. We once had a conversation about the Beatles and after that, I think I had a crush on you for about a week. And then, you left the class maybe, or just faded from my mind, until we re-met through Robby.
And that is the story of How Anna Met Mikey.
God, that was a long time ago.
Hope you enjoyed that.
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