Unfinished.
Every school year seemed to start the same way. All of the friends I'd weaseled my way into having the year before would come up and assert their dominance over me, verbally punching me in the stomach. Fourth grade was no different.
On the first day, I climbed on the bus, hoping that things would change and I would become popular by some miracle of nature. All four of the people I had called my friends came up, one by one, to deliver their nicely-packaged blows.
"Hey, um. I just wanted to tell you that you were kind of a freak last year," John said, his tone even, completely unphazed by what he was saying, "And honestly, I hated your guts. A lot, actually, and you were weird. But I guess I'm cool with you now. See ya, Paul."
He walked off down the aisle, trying desperately to find a seat that was nowhere near mine. He wasn't shying away from me after having said such a horrible thing, filled with shame. Rather, he just didn't like me, despite his lame attempt at sugar-coating it. I was used to this, honestly. He and all the others had said the same thing at the start of last year, and then after my constant sucking-up had allowed me to be their friend. Somehow it still bothered me. It also still bothered me that people were sitting three to a seat in the back, and yet my adjacent seat was still empty.
I couldn't make sense of the fact that I wasn't popular. I wasn't necessarily picked on, and certainly wasn't an outcast, I just wasn't liked by anyone. 'Could it possibly,' I pondered, 'have something to do with the sweatpants I wear every day and wash but once a week? My awful home haircut that was cut straight across my eyebrows and served to accentuate my fat cheeks? My inability to speak above a whisper? My waist pack filled with playing cards and fantasy action figures that I played with alone behind the trees during recess? My lazy eye? My tendency to burst out in moronic guffaws when nervous or bored? Nah. Couldn't be. They're all just jealous.'
That was the year I decided to go it alone, friends be damned. Weeks into the school year, I hadn't spoken to anyone, preferring instead to draw in my notebook or write journal entries about how much better I obviously was than everyone else. I enjoyed my new solitude. It was certainly less tempestuous than the constant struggle of maintaining friendships with people who obviously hated me. I couldn't then see why I had desperately craved such companionship. I didn't need help, I didn't need protection, and I didn't need company. It would have been great if my self-sufficiency could have been sustained, if someone else hadn't forced his way into my private bubble, ruining everything.
That person would be Alex. I had met Alex three years earlier in first grade, when he had handed me a note that said, "Alex like you!" He said he didn't know how to spell "likes" and had wanted to tell me I was his friend. The rest of that year, I spent my time staring at him in shock and awe as he was reprimanded daily for sucking his thumb and continued to do it anyway. I couldn’t believe that a school-aged child didn’t have a more healthy sense of shame. Shame never even seemed to touch him. Not only did he suck his thumb, but he had a constant, glaring wedgie that he never dealt with. The embarrassment he never felt transferred to me, and I felt it for him. I was mortified just to look at him. I didn't speak to him for three years. I didn't actually think about him until we were in the same class in fourth grade. Honestly, I didn't think about him that much even then. Sure, I knew he was there, and I knew his name. I didn't give him much thought because to do so would have somehow brought me down to his level. I was terrified, somehow, that he would know I was thinking about him and assume wrongfully, again, that we were friends. So he didn‘t cross my mind often, he was just the blubbery kid with the clouded glasses and bad posture. The kid with the obnoxious earnestness, penchant for asking obvious questions, and the ability to be the perfect target for bullies. I let the wolf pack devour him every day when he raised his hand with a stupid comment, unrelated personal story, or strange compliment for the teacher. He drew attention away from my own flaws and kept me from being bullied. It never occurred to me to feel sorry for him. He helped me maintain my low profile because his defects were so alarming, even compared to mine.
Alex, first and foremost, didn't know how to keep himself in check or keep his fucking mouth shut. I may have been a mess, but I paled in comparison to him. He had no self-control, scratching his ass in the lunch line and not realizing why people were laughing at him, talking about cartoon shows that we had all outgrown two years ago and obviously wondering why people thought he may have had some sort of developmental problem. He wasn't overweight at all, but gave the impression of flabbiness, no muscle mass, everything stored in flimsy arms, a doughy midsection, and wobbly legs. He was the kind of kid who talked about Star Trek without an appropriate amount of secrecy. Fuck, I watched it, too, every goddamned day, but I still knew better than to come to school ranting about Captain Picard. People just don't do those sorts of things.
His reputation as a freak only hurt him as he revealed to the world that he was also a mooch. People soon knew better than to eat in front of him or use nice school supplies. He was the type of person with such poor social skills that he actually asked if he could have your stuff. I was appalled. Because I so completely despised sharing, I did all that I could to avoid forcing others to share with me. The very idea seemed unspeakably gauche, because when I am forced to share, I burn with resentment. To refuse a blatant request makes you a Selfish Asshole. When asked to share, you are trapped. By that year, I had become so acutely attuned to my hatred of selflessness that I no longer showed open interest in someone else's things lest they felt obligated to give me some. There was nothing worse than getting a cupcake in your lunch and having some asshole come up and ask if they could have half.
It was my aversion to sharing that brought Alex to my attention again full-force. The day before Christmas Break that year, class was informal. We spent the day cutting out paper Santas and snowflakes, doing pointless worksheets about holiday terms, and exchanging gifts, if we had friends. I was surprised by how many people brought gifts for the teacher. I thought only the most dedicated suck ups and grade-grubbers would stoop to that level of groveling. Almost everyone had a gift for Miss Cameron that year. It took almost thirty minutes to unwrap them all, to pass them all around and appreciate all the identical mugs, lotions, and candles. Five minutes before the bell rang, she began to clear up the mess, thanking everyone one last time and allowing us to relax and chat until school let out.
Out of nowhere, a sickly hand shot up. For once, Alex sat upright in his seat, abandoning his usual stooped posture. There was a glint of interest in his usually dull eyes. Or there seemed to be, behind his monstrous glasses.
"Miss Cameron?" he said, looking her in the eye, "Can I have the wrapping paper?"
For a moment, the world stopped. At first, I thought maybe my horror was unique to me, but the sudden silence and gaping mouths of my classmates told me otherwise.
Miss Cameron looked at first shocked, then falsely kind as she nodded. "Of course you may, Alex," she said, handing him the crumpled pile of garbage which he treasured like a grotesque gnome in a gold mine. He spent the remainder of the class period neatly folding each into his backpack, and I spent the remainder of the class period staring at him in open horror. He caught me, just before we were about to leave. I stood frozen in my tracks, a look of shock plainly on my face. His eyes met mine, blank and cold, and I smiled at him so as not to alarm him. Maybe it would trick him into thinking I hadn't been staring at him, mystified and sickened, for the entire class.
I thought about the wrapping paper incident often over the break, running the scene over and over again in my mind. There was something inherently wrong with someone who boldly asked to be given something that belonged to someone else. Especially if it was essentially garbage. This marked Alex, undoubtedly, as both a mooch and a scrounge. Both were unforgivable things to be, and together they butchered any chance of Alex having a healthy social life.
Perhaps most disturbing was my unanswered question: what was he going to do with that wrapping paper? Why did he want it so badly? From what I could tell, Alex's family was in good financial standing. Hell, they seemed to have more money than mine, as they bought new clothes and we shopped exclusively at thrift stores. Even my family could afford wrapping paper. He didn't need it to wrap presents in, I was sure. First off, everyone hated him and he didn't have anyone to give gifts to, and second, he was too selfish to give something when he could be taking. It didn't add up. I had to know, but finding out would mean talking to him, which I intended to avoid at all costs.
That didn't work out so well. I had thought about Alex constantly over the break, and he apparently had been thinking of me as well. Encouraged by my fake smile, he came up to me the first day back in class, stood behind my desk, and watched me doodle for thirty seconds or so, silently, before I turned around.
"Hi, Paul," he said, smiling brightly.
"Oh. Hey, Alex," I responded.
We stared at each other for a few moments before he shuffled off and I shot his retreating back a dirty look, hoping that others would see my hatred and not think we were friends.
That day at lunch, he sat beside me. I had a tape player, drowning out the sounds of my classmates with In Utero. He set his grubby bag next to mine and yelled something. Furious at his rudeness, I calmed myself for a moment before switching off the tape player and giving him my attention.
"What?"
"Hi, Paul! What are you listening to?" he seemed genuinely interested, so I ruefully humored him.
"Nirvana," I said, "They're the best."
"I don't know them," he said, and I almost had a fit.
"Really, now," I said, suddenly not that surprised that he was the type to have not heard of such a famous, currently popular band. "You should give them a listen."
Somehow he conned me into lending him a CD, which I resented. Then it began. Within a few days, he became an instant fan. My seething hatred of him was still entirely present, but I squelched it because finally I had someone to talk about my obsession with. It was all we ever talked about, getting together after school to go look at posters in the mall, to listen to their records over and over, and to pretend that one day we'd be friends with Kurt Cobain. One of us would do a particularly good fan art drawing, and we'd say, "Kurt will love this when he sees it." Our friendship was based entirely on our one common interest, but as it ran so deeply, we pretended our friendship ran that deeply as well.
So it went for months before he invited me to something very different. One day as we walked home, he turned to me and said, "Hey. I've got youth group tomorrow night, would you like to come?"
I didn't know what a Youth Group was, and assumed it was some sort of club, so I agreed, more curious than anything else. I realized then that I knew absolutely nothing about Alex's life.
"My mom can pick you up. Then we can come back to my house and have pizza. We always have pizza after youth group."
I had never been inside his house before. The thought struck me as odd all of a sudden, and I decided to go. I wanted to know what sort of environment had created such a loathsome troll as Alex. I still hated him, but somehow felt the need to be a part of his life, as if by having me there I might fix him and make him likeable. If I was stuck with him, I might at least try to rub off some of my own traits on him. It didn't occur to me that I was a dork and an asshole, so using myself as a mold wasn't a good a recipe for making a friend.
When I got home, I told my mother that Alex had invited me to some sort of “Kid’s Club Thing.” I couldn’t remember when it was called and still didn’t know what it was, though I didn’t really want to admit that. I pictured a gymnasium full of rowdy kids my age and bored adults. Stupid games that no one played and watery punch. At least it was something to do.
Alex arrived that night at 5 and led me out to his mother’s dingy van. The outside was grape-colored and seemed rickety somehow. When I stepped inside, I noticed the floors were caked with sand and dirt, like Alex’s pants and shoes. I could see the preserved remains of fast food beneath the foul seats. I was too concentrated on the filth to notice his mother until she turned around with great effort and greeted me.
“Hello, Paul,” she said, her voice strangely pitched. She sounded strained somehow, and her words seemed a little slurred. I noticed that first, and then I was able to take in her girth as my eyes adjusted to the sight staring me down. She was enormous. At that point, I’d never seen someone so fat up close. Other than that, she looked just like Alex. The same greasy hair, the same jaundiced-looking face. She even had the same gigantic glasses and annoying habit of holding them up by scrunching her nose.
She stared at me for longer than was comfortable, finally breaking the silence when she noticed the picture of a dog on my shirt.
“You like dogs?” she asked, and I slowly nodded. This seemed to please her. “You know how they can train dogs to do things for people?”
“Yeah?” I asked, expecting an anecdote about a particular service dog, or a dog that was trained to cook dinner, or something amazing that would make this fat woman bring up the subject.
She never finished the thought. I don’t think there was a second half, she just wanted to remark on the marvels of animal training. The dog had been domesticated at this point for thousands of years and this woman was just now noticing it. I was completely aghast and spent the rest of the ride not really listening while Alex babbled on about Nirvana. I never thought I’d say it, but there were more important things to think about just then than Kurt.
He jarred me to attention when he asked, “So, what do you think about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints?” It was odd how robotic his voice sounded when he hammered off that name, like it had been meticulously taught to him but he still didn’t know what it meant.
“Um, I don’t really know,” I said truthfully, having never heard of such a thing.
“Well,” Alex’s mother chimed in, “I’m glad we’re taking you along then, Paul!”
I didn’t really know what that meant. Any of it. At that point, I was too confused to even make the connection with religion, even after hearing the words “church”, “Jesus Christ”, and “saints.” I thought maybe it was just something Alex had heard about somewhere. Some group, or maybe a school.
We pulled up and his mother dropped us off. I was glad to be away from her. This went beyond the usual feeling of confinement caused by an adult’s presence. She was stiflingly weird. Even more uncomfortable than the feeling of being around an adult was the feeling of being around an adult who didn’t possess adult social skills. She behaved the way Alex did, which was even more unsettling in a fully grown woman than it was in him. Alex was pathetic, but seeing his actions and mannerisms mirrored by his middle-aged mother was grotesque. I felt slightly ashamed after being near her, unable to really pinpoint why.
The building we walked towards was plain, brick, and square. It looked like the recreation center downtown where I could swim indoors during the winter. For a moment, I thought this wouldn’t be nearly as bad as I had expected, picturing a pool and one of those indoor racquetball courts. Despite my pudginess, I liked running around and swimming, so this didn’t seem so awful. I told myself that hanging around a recreation center with a bunch of kids my age and swimming would be fun. I forgot for a moment that I hated kids my age.
I wanted something to talk about with Alex when we went inside so that I didn’t have to think too hard about how much I hated him and wished I were here by myself. Even though his speech was annoying, it was somehow easier to hate Alex when he was quiet. He had this unblinking stare that brought out the worst in me.
“So, what exactly is this place?” I asked him, pretending I didn’t already have a pretty good idea.
“It’s church,” he said, giving me a look that suggested I was profoundly ignorant, “Where else would they have a Youth Group meeting?”
“Oh.” I said. “Right.” My stomach lurched with dread and my gorge rose a little. I hadn’t had any clue that this Youth Group thing was religious, but once I found out I wanted no part of it. Church was where I was forced to go when I visited my grandmother. It was a place that served no purpose other than to ruin half my weekend, hurt my back with the hard pews, and bore me to tears. It was where I wore uncomfortable clothes and got lectured about sins that I thought were just mild flaws.
Sure enough, there was a giant cross visible inside as soon as we entered the building. Children swarmed around me, looking excited.
‘These fucking idiots,’ I thought. ‘Who the hell gets excited about church? Don’t you have anything better to do than worship Christ?’ I wasn’t usually destructive, but I felt the urge to throw a rock through the window. Anything to disturb this place.
“This is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,” Alex said, that robotic tone surfacing again as he rattled off the title. “This is where we worship the Lord.”
A woman swooped down to our level, kneeling as if we were too short to see from her great height. “And Youth Group is where we come to celebrate Him. Hi, you must be Paul,” she said. “Alex has told us so much about you. Welcome to the flock.”
It disturbed me greatly that Alex had told so many people we were friends. I spent most of my time denying that very thing, and here he was, sitting in church and talking about me when he should have been talking about God.
On the first day, I climbed on the bus, hoping that things would change and I would become popular by some miracle of nature. All four of the people I had called my friends came up, one by one, to deliver their nicely-packaged blows.
"Hey, um. I just wanted to tell you that you were kind of a freak last year," John said, his tone even, completely unphazed by what he was saying, "And honestly, I hated your guts. A lot, actually, and you were weird. But I guess I'm cool with you now. See ya, Paul."
He walked off down the aisle, trying desperately to find a seat that was nowhere near mine. He wasn't shying away from me after having said such a horrible thing, filled with shame. Rather, he just didn't like me, despite his lame attempt at sugar-coating it. I was used to this, honestly. He and all the others had said the same thing at the start of last year, and then after my constant sucking-up had allowed me to be their friend. Somehow it still bothered me. It also still bothered me that people were sitting three to a seat in the back, and yet my adjacent seat was still empty.
I couldn't make sense of the fact that I wasn't popular. I wasn't necessarily picked on, and certainly wasn't an outcast, I just wasn't liked by anyone. 'Could it possibly,' I pondered, 'have something to do with the sweatpants I wear every day and wash but once a week? My awful home haircut that was cut straight across my eyebrows and served to accentuate my fat cheeks? My inability to speak above a whisper? My waist pack filled with playing cards and fantasy action figures that I played with alone behind the trees during recess? My lazy eye? My tendency to burst out in moronic guffaws when nervous or bored? Nah. Couldn't be. They're all just jealous.'
That was the year I decided to go it alone, friends be damned. Weeks into the school year, I hadn't spoken to anyone, preferring instead to draw in my notebook or write journal entries about how much better I obviously was than everyone else. I enjoyed my new solitude. It was certainly less tempestuous than the constant struggle of maintaining friendships with people who obviously hated me. I couldn't then see why I had desperately craved such companionship. I didn't need help, I didn't need protection, and I didn't need company. It would have been great if my self-sufficiency could have been sustained, if someone else hadn't forced his way into my private bubble, ruining everything.
That person would be Alex. I had met Alex three years earlier in first grade, when he had handed me a note that said, "Alex like you!" He said he didn't know how to spell "likes" and had wanted to tell me I was his friend. The rest of that year, I spent my time staring at him in shock and awe as he was reprimanded daily for sucking his thumb and continued to do it anyway. I couldn’t believe that a school-aged child didn’t have a more healthy sense of shame. Shame never even seemed to touch him. Not only did he suck his thumb, but he had a constant, glaring wedgie that he never dealt with. The embarrassment he never felt transferred to me, and I felt it for him. I was mortified just to look at him. I didn't speak to him for three years. I didn't actually think about him until we were in the same class in fourth grade. Honestly, I didn't think about him that much even then. Sure, I knew he was there, and I knew his name. I didn't give him much thought because to do so would have somehow brought me down to his level. I was terrified, somehow, that he would know I was thinking about him and assume wrongfully, again, that we were friends. So he didn‘t cross my mind often, he was just the blubbery kid with the clouded glasses and bad posture. The kid with the obnoxious earnestness, penchant for asking obvious questions, and the ability to be the perfect target for bullies. I let the wolf pack devour him every day when he raised his hand with a stupid comment, unrelated personal story, or strange compliment for the teacher. He drew attention away from my own flaws and kept me from being bullied. It never occurred to me to feel sorry for him. He helped me maintain my low profile because his defects were so alarming, even compared to mine.
Alex, first and foremost, didn't know how to keep himself in check or keep his fucking mouth shut. I may have been a mess, but I paled in comparison to him. He had no self-control, scratching his ass in the lunch line and not realizing why people were laughing at him, talking about cartoon shows that we had all outgrown two years ago and obviously wondering why people thought he may have had some sort of developmental problem. He wasn't overweight at all, but gave the impression of flabbiness, no muscle mass, everything stored in flimsy arms, a doughy midsection, and wobbly legs. He was the kind of kid who talked about Star Trek without an appropriate amount of secrecy. Fuck, I watched it, too, every goddamned day, but I still knew better than to come to school ranting about Captain Picard. People just don't do those sorts of things.
His reputation as a freak only hurt him as he revealed to the world that he was also a mooch. People soon knew better than to eat in front of him or use nice school supplies. He was the type of person with such poor social skills that he actually asked if he could have your stuff. I was appalled. Because I so completely despised sharing, I did all that I could to avoid forcing others to share with me. The very idea seemed unspeakably gauche, because when I am forced to share, I burn with resentment. To refuse a blatant request makes you a Selfish Asshole. When asked to share, you are trapped. By that year, I had become so acutely attuned to my hatred of selflessness that I no longer showed open interest in someone else's things lest they felt obligated to give me some. There was nothing worse than getting a cupcake in your lunch and having some asshole come up and ask if they could have half.
It was my aversion to sharing that brought Alex to my attention again full-force. The day before Christmas Break that year, class was informal. We spent the day cutting out paper Santas and snowflakes, doing pointless worksheets about holiday terms, and exchanging gifts, if we had friends. I was surprised by how many people brought gifts for the teacher. I thought only the most dedicated suck ups and grade-grubbers would stoop to that level of groveling. Almost everyone had a gift for Miss Cameron that year. It took almost thirty minutes to unwrap them all, to pass them all around and appreciate all the identical mugs, lotions, and candles. Five minutes before the bell rang, she began to clear up the mess, thanking everyone one last time and allowing us to relax and chat until school let out.
Out of nowhere, a sickly hand shot up. For once, Alex sat upright in his seat, abandoning his usual stooped posture. There was a glint of interest in his usually dull eyes. Or there seemed to be, behind his monstrous glasses.
"Miss Cameron?" he said, looking her in the eye, "Can I have the wrapping paper?"
For a moment, the world stopped. At first, I thought maybe my horror was unique to me, but the sudden silence and gaping mouths of my classmates told me otherwise.
Miss Cameron looked at first shocked, then falsely kind as she nodded. "Of course you may, Alex," she said, handing him the crumpled pile of garbage which he treasured like a grotesque gnome in a gold mine. He spent the remainder of the class period neatly folding each into his backpack, and I spent the remainder of the class period staring at him in open horror. He caught me, just before we were about to leave. I stood frozen in my tracks, a look of shock plainly on my face. His eyes met mine, blank and cold, and I smiled at him so as not to alarm him. Maybe it would trick him into thinking I hadn't been staring at him, mystified and sickened, for the entire class.
I thought about the wrapping paper incident often over the break, running the scene over and over again in my mind. There was something inherently wrong with someone who boldly asked to be given something that belonged to someone else. Especially if it was essentially garbage. This marked Alex, undoubtedly, as both a mooch and a scrounge. Both were unforgivable things to be, and together they butchered any chance of Alex having a healthy social life.
Perhaps most disturbing was my unanswered question: what was he going to do with that wrapping paper? Why did he want it so badly? From what I could tell, Alex's family was in good financial standing. Hell, they seemed to have more money than mine, as they bought new clothes and we shopped exclusively at thrift stores. Even my family could afford wrapping paper. He didn't need it to wrap presents in, I was sure. First off, everyone hated him and he didn't have anyone to give gifts to, and second, he was too selfish to give something when he could be taking. It didn't add up. I had to know, but finding out would mean talking to him, which I intended to avoid at all costs.
That didn't work out so well. I had thought about Alex constantly over the break, and he apparently had been thinking of me as well. Encouraged by my fake smile, he came up to me the first day back in class, stood behind my desk, and watched me doodle for thirty seconds or so, silently, before I turned around.
"Hi, Paul," he said, smiling brightly.
"Oh. Hey, Alex," I responded.
We stared at each other for a few moments before he shuffled off and I shot his retreating back a dirty look, hoping that others would see my hatred and not think we were friends.
That day at lunch, he sat beside me. I had a tape player, drowning out the sounds of my classmates with In Utero. He set his grubby bag next to mine and yelled something. Furious at his rudeness, I calmed myself for a moment before switching off the tape player and giving him my attention.
"What?"
"Hi, Paul! What are you listening to?" he seemed genuinely interested, so I ruefully humored him.
"Nirvana," I said, "They're the best."
"I don't know them," he said, and I almost had a fit.
"Really, now," I said, suddenly not that surprised that he was the type to have not heard of such a famous, currently popular band. "You should give them a listen."
Somehow he conned me into lending him a CD, which I resented. Then it began. Within a few days, he became an instant fan. My seething hatred of him was still entirely present, but I squelched it because finally I had someone to talk about my obsession with. It was all we ever talked about, getting together after school to go look at posters in the mall, to listen to their records over and over, and to pretend that one day we'd be friends with Kurt Cobain. One of us would do a particularly good fan art drawing, and we'd say, "Kurt will love this when he sees it." Our friendship was based entirely on our one common interest, but as it ran so deeply, we pretended our friendship ran that deeply as well.
So it went for months before he invited me to something very different. One day as we walked home, he turned to me and said, "Hey. I've got youth group tomorrow night, would you like to come?"
I didn't know what a Youth Group was, and assumed it was some sort of club, so I agreed, more curious than anything else. I realized then that I knew absolutely nothing about Alex's life.
"My mom can pick you up. Then we can come back to my house and have pizza. We always have pizza after youth group."
I had never been inside his house before. The thought struck me as odd all of a sudden, and I decided to go. I wanted to know what sort of environment had created such a loathsome troll as Alex. I still hated him, but somehow felt the need to be a part of his life, as if by having me there I might fix him and make him likeable. If I was stuck with him, I might at least try to rub off some of my own traits on him. It didn't occur to me that I was a dork and an asshole, so using myself as a mold wasn't a good a recipe for making a friend.
When I got home, I told my mother that Alex had invited me to some sort of “Kid’s Club Thing.” I couldn’t remember when it was called and still didn’t know what it was, though I didn’t really want to admit that. I pictured a gymnasium full of rowdy kids my age and bored adults. Stupid games that no one played and watery punch. At least it was something to do.
Alex arrived that night at 5 and led me out to his mother’s dingy van. The outside was grape-colored and seemed rickety somehow. When I stepped inside, I noticed the floors were caked with sand and dirt, like Alex’s pants and shoes. I could see the preserved remains of fast food beneath the foul seats. I was too concentrated on the filth to notice his mother until she turned around with great effort and greeted me.
“Hello, Paul,” she said, her voice strangely pitched. She sounded strained somehow, and her words seemed a little slurred. I noticed that first, and then I was able to take in her girth as my eyes adjusted to the sight staring me down. She was enormous. At that point, I’d never seen someone so fat up close. Other than that, she looked just like Alex. The same greasy hair, the same jaundiced-looking face. She even had the same gigantic glasses and annoying habit of holding them up by scrunching her nose.
She stared at me for longer than was comfortable, finally breaking the silence when she noticed the picture of a dog on my shirt.
“You like dogs?” she asked, and I slowly nodded. This seemed to please her. “You know how they can train dogs to do things for people?”
“Yeah?” I asked, expecting an anecdote about a particular service dog, or a dog that was trained to cook dinner, or something amazing that would make this fat woman bring up the subject.
She never finished the thought. I don’t think there was a second half, she just wanted to remark on the marvels of animal training. The dog had been domesticated at this point for thousands of years and this woman was just now noticing it. I was completely aghast and spent the rest of the ride not really listening while Alex babbled on about Nirvana. I never thought I’d say it, but there were more important things to think about just then than Kurt.
He jarred me to attention when he asked, “So, what do you think about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints?” It was odd how robotic his voice sounded when he hammered off that name, like it had been meticulously taught to him but he still didn’t know what it meant.
“Um, I don’t really know,” I said truthfully, having never heard of such a thing.
“Well,” Alex’s mother chimed in, “I’m glad we’re taking you along then, Paul!”
I didn’t really know what that meant. Any of it. At that point, I was too confused to even make the connection with religion, even after hearing the words “church”, “Jesus Christ”, and “saints.” I thought maybe it was just something Alex had heard about somewhere. Some group, or maybe a school.
We pulled up and his mother dropped us off. I was glad to be away from her. This went beyond the usual feeling of confinement caused by an adult’s presence. She was stiflingly weird. Even more uncomfortable than the feeling of being around an adult was the feeling of being around an adult who didn’t possess adult social skills. She behaved the way Alex did, which was even more unsettling in a fully grown woman than it was in him. Alex was pathetic, but seeing his actions and mannerisms mirrored by his middle-aged mother was grotesque. I felt slightly ashamed after being near her, unable to really pinpoint why.
The building we walked towards was plain, brick, and square. It looked like the recreation center downtown where I could swim indoors during the winter. For a moment, I thought this wouldn’t be nearly as bad as I had expected, picturing a pool and one of those indoor racquetball courts. Despite my pudginess, I liked running around and swimming, so this didn’t seem so awful. I told myself that hanging around a recreation center with a bunch of kids my age and swimming would be fun. I forgot for a moment that I hated kids my age.
I wanted something to talk about with Alex when we went inside so that I didn’t have to think too hard about how much I hated him and wished I were here by myself. Even though his speech was annoying, it was somehow easier to hate Alex when he was quiet. He had this unblinking stare that brought out the worst in me.
“So, what exactly is this place?” I asked him, pretending I didn’t already have a pretty good idea.
“It’s church,” he said, giving me a look that suggested I was profoundly ignorant, “Where else would they have a Youth Group meeting?”
“Oh.” I said. “Right.” My stomach lurched with dread and my gorge rose a little. I hadn’t had any clue that this Youth Group thing was religious, but once I found out I wanted no part of it. Church was where I was forced to go when I visited my grandmother. It was a place that served no purpose other than to ruin half my weekend, hurt my back with the hard pews, and bore me to tears. It was where I wore uncomfortable clothes and got lectured about sins that I thought were just mild flaws.
Sure enough, there was a giant cross visible inside as soon as we entered the building. Children swarmed around me, looking excited.
‘These fucking idiots,’ I thought. ‘Who the hell gets excited about church? Don’t you have anything better to do than worship Christ?’ I wasn’t usually destructive, but I felt the urge to throw a rock through the window. Anything to disturb this place.
“This is the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints,” Alex said, that robotic tone surfacing again as he rattled off the title. “This is where we worship the Lord.”
A woman swooped down to our level, kneeling as if we were too short to see from her great height. “And Youth Group is where we come to celebrate Him. Hi, you must be Paul,” she said. “Alex has told us so much about you. Welcome to the flock.”
It disturbed me greatly that Alex had told so many people we were friends. I spent most of my time denying that very thing, and here he was, sitting in church and talking about me when he should have been talking about God.
posted by Anna at
2:55 PM
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