Category Archives: Essay

college, Essay

IN MY LANE

I’ve been avoiding going on Snapchat. And when I do go on, I avoid the Stories of my friends and peers, preferring to stick to innocuous celebrities and “influencers.” I’m avoiding Snapchat because I’m jealous, and if I see one more “I’m employed” snap, I might crack my iPhone over my knee and use the shard to slit a jugular.

So staying off Snapchat is a way to protect me from me, and more specifically, my jealousy. It’s hard not to be jealous around this time. People are broadcasting their successes on social media—suddenly we’ve turned into our parents and narrate every goings-on digitally: “Insert Name is so pleased to announce that I’ve accepted a job at Such&Such! Message me if you’re also moving to (this place)!”—and those that aren’t are silently stewing or, in my case, broadcasting their feelings on their blog.

But jealousy is a complex emotion—particularly right now—because it’s hardly ever just jealousy. It’s jealousy mixed with pride for your friends and their accomplishments, soured by a seething monster named “Why Not Me” and reddened by anger at yourself for not just being blindly and simply happy. So you’re jealous and happy and resentful and self-admonishing and stressed and depressed and can’t stop eating French fries.

I realized I was becoming jealous but I wasn’t able to really verbalize why. Why was I gritting my teeth so hard bone shards were popping out of my mouth? Why were there half-moon crescents on my palms from my nails? For me, the most lingering of the emotions was shame—embarrassment that I have not gotten a job but the more pressing shame of being so jealous. No one wants to believe that they can get jealous, particularly over others’ success, but I think—at least for me, and I’m hoping others—naming it and saying it out loud can help process through it.

A friend of mine—someone who has made regular appearances on this blog, Nina—said something that’s stuck with me since I vented about it Saturday night.

“Do you want to switch places with them?” she asked as I took a sharp staccato breath after ranting until all air had been squeezed from my lungs. “Do you want their lives?”

I thought about it for a second. Everyone I was jealous of…I wasn’t particularly jealous of what they had achieved, only that they had achieved something. And the accomplishments I’ve made seemed paltry and invisible in the face of a tactile job offer, a definite plan.

“No,” I admitted. “I don’t want their lives.”

“So,” she shrugged and leaned back in her chair, “if you don’t want their lives, wouldn’t want to switch, then you don’t need to be jealous.” And just like that, the stoppered green bottle in my chest loosened and exhaled a little bit. It didn’t empty completely, but I felt some pressure alleviated.

I’m happy for them and in the same breath I’m anxious for myself. It’s not weird or bad or good—it just is. And if I can separate my own emotions and name them and recognize them, I can begin the process of staying in my lane. There is not a finite amount of success, especially not across industries. One person succeeding in this moment does not mean that my moment has spluttered out on the floor. Stay in your lane, and focus on your end-point.

On Friday, I found out that I’m graduating magna cum laude for my journalism degree and cum laude for my English (English, wtf, I’ve been speaking you forever). In the moment, I diminished it because I thought, “Hey, that didn’t get me any jobs, so what does it even matter?” But after telling a few people and having them be excited, I reconsidered. If you know me in real life, I’m constantly cutting emotion with humor and I have a chronic disability to receive a compliment.

But these Latin honors are more than just Latin honors. During college I started to grow (started—haven’t finished yet). I came to terms with my own depression and anxiety and went on medication. I went to London and interned. I started my blog, this very weird, wonderful blog, as a method for self-expression and honing of my own voice. I got two degrees in four years. I had an on-campus job and worked as a fashion writer and city editor and a radio DJ and a copywriter and blogger and did plays and organized events and gave tours. I started going to the gym and coming to terms with my own body issues. I made friends. I lost friends. I made new ones. I came into my queerness. I traveled to six countries and countless cities. I wrote pages and pages of articles, blogs, essays. Hundreds of Instagrams, thousands of Tweets. Walks in chilly night air and in hot summer heat. I was sad, I was happy.

These might seem small or big or extreme or obvious—but that’s kind of the point, no? I’ve had millions of experiences, kaleidoscopic and varied and sharp. And I’m here. I fought the good fight. We all did. I cried and laughed my way to the top (some moments had more of one or the other).

And the point is that these things shouldn’t be erased because I don’t have a job lined up right away after graduation. In fact, I refuse to them be erased. I became a more full and depthful and wide and colorful person. Every moment, good or bad or heartbreaking or joyful—these things don’t lose their meaning because I don’t know where my foot will land next.

I’m looking forward to the future, but this past has been great. Horribly, wonderfully, weirdly great.

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Essay, Humor

A TALE OF TOO SWEATY

Alternately titled “Gland to Meet You” and “Sweaty Pie”

I don’t sweat like a whore in church, I sweat like a brothel in a clown car on the sun.

Over the Easter break, my mother stuffed an Old Navy gift card in my Easter basket. I don’t eat chocolate bars (or bunnies) and I don’t eat jelly beans, so besides Peeps, gift cards are the safest bet. You could argue that I’m too old for Easter baskets, but my response is *plugs ears* “LALACAN’THEARYOU!”

Old Navy holds a special place in my family’s collective heart (we share one, like the Three Fates in Hercules, and pass it around—my turn is next Saturday). Apparently a few years ago they switched designers and that, coupled with the cheap prices and frequent sales, means that in our thrifty household, an Old Navy gift card is Gospel. My mother’s favorite activity is to pick at something you’re wearing and say, “What is this? Where is this from?”

So from Old Navy, I got three shirts. One was simple striped—boring—one was a Golden Girls homage—I’m wearing it right now and I look like the gay Mount Rushmore—and one was a black t-shirt with a Reptar patch stitched above the meat cavity where a heart usually is.

I wore the black shirt twice in one week—I washed it in between, you Judgy Judies—once to a magazine launch party and then to a bar, and once party-hopping in Allston. It’s beyond cute and tres simplistic, but with a touch of early 2000s whimsy (very much my brand right now).

Paired with nondescript chino shorts (Old Navy and J.Crew respectively on the two different nights—yes, I own J.Crew. Intimidated?), Adidas Superstars (now perfectly beaten up, but not too beaten up) and a denim jacket (Amazon), the shirt was great for going out. Simple enough to work, dark enough to be appropriate for nighttime, and an injection of fun to keep it from being monotonous. I put as much thought into my outfits as I do my political coverage—scary.

I figured the black would be perfect because dark colors are generally more forgiving of excessive sweating. This is no secret, I’ve talked about it before, but I sweat more than the average human. I don’t know what dire climate and situation my body thinks I’m in, but there really is no physiological stimulus that requires such a response. I have a theory that because I work out (is it drafty in here from the door I opened to do that backdoor brag?) a lot, my body has assumed that any situation I’m in requires a waterfall to keep me cool. I appreciate that my body is looking out for me, but it’s also kind of ruining my life.

giphy

Source: Giphy

My sweating itself doesn’t bother me that much—it’s like, babe, we all do it—but anticipating the reaction from others about my sweating sends me into…a cold sweat. Then it becomes a vicious cycle until I pass out from dehydration. It began one day in church, when I shook hands to pass along “peace” to my sister, when she recoiled and hissed “Sweaty” in an accusation.

Whether it was the thinness (and breathability) of the cotton, or the particular shade of the black (a subtle charcoal), whether it was just a particular sweaty day for me, the individual reasons don’t matter. What matters was, on both occasions of me wearing the shirt, my body sweat began darkening the fabric, turning that charcoal-black into the black of the unforgivable void, of blackholes. Really sweaty people know that it’s not just the armpits you have to worry about, or the small of your back—that’s amateur hour. Real sweaters have the conspicuous dotting over your chest and stomach, where sweat rolls down slick skin and catches against your skin despite your best efforts to hunch your back and add negative space between your front and the shirt. To no avail.

Even after the sweatiness of Thursday, I wore the shirt Saturday because I’m optimistic and just a little bit stupid. I thought that I could scooch past my destiny, even when the omens had already appeared in my lap. And my back. And my chest. But, I’m being unfair to my own body. Sweating isn’t all bad.

But like I said, I actually don’t care about my sweating that much, besides the mild discomfort of it all. And after a few drinks and some vigorous jumping jacks, I can play it off quite nicely. Sweating? Who me? Oh I guess it’s because I just did some push-ups. You can always pass off sweat as a funky tie-dye pattern. It won’t work, but if sweating has taught me anything, it’s that you don’t quit.

 Sweating is also great for breaking the ice, and that’s not just because salt is corrosive to frozen water.

I’d like to think it’s my good looks, or my height, or my wit, but I’m intimidating to people. So being a sweaty betty is my version of a mole (a la Cindy Crawford) or eyebrows (a la Cara Delevingne) or gap tooth (a la idk various British models)—the slight imperfection that humanizes someone otherwise inhuman. When I crack jokes about being too sweaty, other (less attractive) people find that we have something in common and that I’m relatable. Sweating also keeps me humble, and if you pause at this point and say, “Hey, you’re actually not humble,” then imagine how bad I would be if I had inactive sweat glands. I would be a monster.

So that stupid Reptar shirt actually taught me a lot. It taught me that appearances don’t always matter, that illustrated depictions of prehistoric giant lizards are fraught with misrepresentations, and that charcoal black is not as forgiving as one might assume. It also saved me from embarrassing myself when the party I went to was revealed to have a (previously unknown) theme of “early 2000s”. Luckily I dress in early 2000s wherever I go. Thanks, Reptar!

Side bar: This post is going to be over 1000 words, which I was easily able to crank out about the topic of sweating, but took me several hours to reach when I was profiling a comedy website. Why am I like this?

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Essay, Humor

I LOOKED INTO THE VOID AND THE VOID LOOKED BACK: “Buffalo Exchange Amnesia”

A.k.a. I didn’t recognize somebody; Alternative titles included “I Don’t Know Her: The Danny McCarthy Story,” “Goodall for Nothing: Can’t Recognize Faces” and “Face It”.

I ran into a situation where I was greeted by someone whom I didn’t remember, and my level of unrecognition was so deep that I felt that not only had I never seen this face before, I had never seen any human face before.

Let me back up.

I was going into Allston—think Brooklyn with less gentrification and more rats—to meet up with a friend at Buffalo Exchange and get light-wash shorteralls (a decision that has garnered me much derision).

Buffalo Exchange is a slightly more-curated, one-tier-up version of Goodwill. Hipsters go there to get cheap clothing when they can’t hit the free shipping minimum for Urban Outfitters. So instead of buying some shorteralls online, and not knowing the fit or how much of a blue jean lima bean I would look like—

Side bar: If I ever make a country album, it’ll be called Blue Jean Lima Bean and I’ll have a wheat straw clenched in my teeth.

—I decided to be economically savvy. I would go to Buffalo Exchange and see if they had any shorteralls or overalls (or as I call them ‘pre-shorteralls’). I wanted a kind of folksy, “makes my own soap” Bushwick-Coachella-Rumspringa summer look. Essentially, I aspire to look as Amish as possible at all times.

And in Buffalo Exchange I had my Fifty First Dates-level of amnesia.

Buffalo was packed to the gills. A line of people looking to drop off clothing (for store credit or cash) snaked through the men’s section. After picking up several “Can’t Decide If They’re Ugly or Hip” button-downs, I shifted to the t-shirt rack. As I was figuring out if I hated myself to subject myself to this torture, someone tapped me on the shoulder, the one opposite to the line of people.

I turned towards an older man in a fedora and—I might be exaggerating but I don’t think so—a full three-piece suit. “Izeverthin here a dowla?” he asked.

I literally stared at him. “Um…”

“Izeverythin here a dowla?” he asked again, and I realized he was asking, “Is everything here a dollar?” in a thick Boston accent.

Being rude, I assumed that he didn’t get Buffalo Exchange like I got Buffalo Exchange, so with one hand—my other hand was holding several ugly button-downs—I thumbed the price tag out of the t-shirt he was looking at. “That’s the price–$9.40,” I smiled at him. But he was not satiated.

“No, the sign says a dowla,” he shook his head and pointed over his shoulder at a sign on the wall. I squinted at it: “Earth Day, Everything A Dollar.” But I still didn’t know what to say, so I made a silent “help me” plea to the line behind me of people waiting to drop off clothes.

“Everything in one section was a dollar before 3 p.m.,” a girl—dark hair, olive skin and startlingly light eyes lined in glittery eyeshadow—answered, pulling me out of my misery.

“And it’s,” I said, pulling out my phone, “3:40.”

“One dollar, that’s a good deal,” I remarked to her before turning back to the man. “Sorry.” He grumbled something about “a dowla” again before turning back into his own shopping. “Thanks,” I said to the girl.

“No problem,” she answered brightly before adding, “And by the way, nice to see you again!” and squeezing me genially on the shoulder.

“aHhH!” I squeaked at her open, friendly eyes—eyes that I had never, in my entire life, ever seen before. She smiled as I managed to croak out, “You too!!”

Now, I’m very good at faces. It probably comes from being an unathletic gay kid in a Catholic grammar school, but because I didn’t have a lot of friends, I spent a lot of time observing people. And because of that, I’m generally pretty good at remembering faces, even if I’m not that good at remembering names. I’m great at remembering bizarre details—I won’t know your name, but I’ll remember that you hate avocadoes.

The reason I’m bad at names but good at faces is because whenever you’re introducing yourself to me, my mind is going rapid-fire, “I hope my palms aren’t sweaty; don’t squeeze too hard; say your name, you idiot” on and on. But the entire time, I’m staring at your face.

So as I was staring into this black hole of her face—a face I was sure I had never seen before—my mind was frantically pinballing around my recent memory to no avail. Afraid she would try to continue the conversation, I shyly shifted away to another side of the t-shirt rack and studiously avoided her glance.

The reason I was so shaken is because not only was this a face I had no memory of, but clearly she had a very strong memory of me. And since I pride myself on good facial recognition, I suddenly felt as if I wouldn’t be able to recognize any faces ever. I furtively looked around, hoping that I didn’t run into anyone else that I didn’t remember. How deep does this go? I wondered. Who do I recognize?

As I stumbled around the store looking for my friend—Would I even know her when I saw her?—I felt as if I were in a TV show where the protagonists realizes that they haven’t been remembering anything. It was Jason Bourne meets Before I Go to Sleep with a dash of Jane Goodall to taste.

Eventually I found my friend—screaming someone’s name over and over in a small store with strangers is generally a good way of finding people—and told her what had happened. All the while I looked around to make sure that the girl wasn’t within earshot. Although, admittedly, there was no way for me to know if she was or not. And if I ever ran into that girl again, I probably wouldn’t remember her face because the last time I saw her face I was in a noiseless scream. The cycle is wont to happen again so I’ll probably never know this girl.

And at the end of the day, I guess the moral of the story is that I ended up buying a pair of ripped-up $20 Levis.

 

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Essay, LGBTQ

MY VOICE IS MY VOICE

A few weeks ago I was hosting my sister and her friends at my apartment. Cram five queens into a three-by-three-foot box, and it’s pretty hectic. But whatever, it was fun and they bought me Patron (the toilet Patron from “ONE-TWO-THREE”!) as a thank-you present. On Saturday, when they were heading out to da club and I was heading to a house party, one of my sister’s friends brought over a friend from the area.

He walked in and my high-school-heart beat a little bit faster. He was just like every frat boy-wannabe I went to high school with (an all-boys Catholic prep school)—non-psycho American Psycho hot face, slicked back long hair, Oxford shirt buttoned tightly over lacrosse muscles, canoe-like leather shoes and blue jeans. Yung Wall Street.

And when I introduced myself to him, it wasn’t me. It was a strong, firm handshake and a voice that was like mine, but several octaves lower and controlled. “Hey, I’m Danny,” he/me said.

It’s a voice I pulled out a lot that weekend as I met my sister and her friends’ straight guy friends. That afternoon, I was downtown and I got out of my car. “What’s on your sweatshirt?” said-shouted a straight guy on line outside the bar I was going to. I looked down. I had pulled on a cross country hoodie from my sophomore year of high school, underneath an olive-green bomber jacket.

I shifted my jacket and showed him. “Fuckboy Prep,” he said (name has been changed, because duh). “Yeah, do you know it?” I asked, my voice hitched in the bottom of my throat, my vowels pitching backward into my esophagus.

It’s difficult to describe the “straight” voice, but it’s like that: instead of projecting forward, the words make a boomerang: out from the bottom of my throat, below my Adam’s apple, jut forward and then careen back into my collarbone.

“No, but I went to Yung Money Prep in Maine,” he said. We nodded at each other. End of conversation.

It’s a voice that I unearthed from the deepest recesses of my early tweenhood. Monotone, soft, deep. A voice I had discarded when I came out at fifteen and, shaky in my gayness, hurtled towards the opposite end of the scale and went full “Agaytha Christie.” What a gay joke. Neither were my actual voice, which is decidedly average and can veer equally into deep monotone and higher-pitched modulation.

It’s something I do when I’m meeting straight guys for the first time. I drag my voice back into low-pitched “sups” and “yo.”

I do it for a few reasons: I want to be taken seriously by another man, and I want to survive.

“Survive” sounds so extra, but let me remind you—I went to an all-boys Catholic high school where I was already harassed enough. Lowering my voice into a monotone was at least one attempt on my end to make myself seem like less of a target.

I have one vivid memory of sitting at a lunch table at fourteen. I was saying something when across the table, a mean hot redhead said to me, in brusque masculine tones,

“Talk like a boy.”

This was before I came out, so I was vibrating with anxiety about being “found out.” I couldn’t respond to him, so I picked up my tray, shakily threw out my trash and hid in the library. In the moment, I was doused in ice-water dread. Later, I would feel a coiled mixture of revulsion and attraction to him. Revulsion that he could embarrass me with four words, and attraction to him and his masculinity.

Because that’s what it comes down. We as queer boys are taught to hate our femininity and strive towards masculine attributes. It might be why gay guys work out so hard at the gym, sculpting Adonis bodies and artfully manicured scruff. Why we put “masc for masc” on our Grindr profiles. We eschew femmes and shame bottoms because we never, ever want to be put in that vulnerable position again.

So instead of living our truth, we shut it off and hate it. We fight against it. We slit the throat of our femininity and let it drop to the floor, a sick survivalist instinct to protect ourselves in a masculine, heteronormative world.

But in that “passing” is a hidden desire uncomfortable to admit: that part of passing for straight is not just out of a survivalist instinct, but undeniable envy.

I would imagine that queer people have thought about it; some of us have the ability to pass as straight in a heteronormative society. To not appear different or othered. It’s a dangerous thing because it’s a temptation to step outside of your marginalized group.

In a day-to-day scenario, it’s easier being straight than it is gay. When I’m walking late at night, with a female friend and we come across a group of straight guys, I put my arm around her, or I move closer. We both tacitly understand that those guys won’t respect a woman not wanting to talk to them, but they will respect a boyfriend because there is the notion of women as property.

And as much as it is a protection against catcalling for her, it provides me with a dangerous taste of heteronormativity. It provides me a glimpse of the luxury, respect and authority that being a straight white male awards you. The ability to express physical affection without wondering if it could get you gay-bashed. The respect given to you by straight men who don’t see you as Othered or predatory or sissy.

In a lot of ways, when I lower my voice, I’m still that skinny little kid who wants to impress straight boys. Look how manly I can be! Hear how low my voice can go!

It’s a muscle-memory reaction, a hit of fight-or-flight adrenaline, and it’s something that complicates me even now. It complicates my relationship to my sexuality because for so long, I have been taught to hate it. And when that didn’t do anything, I moved on to hating myself. And others. And everyone.

It’s easy to forget, six years on, that I have been irreparably damaged by the strain, stress and assault of living in the closet for fifteen years. And it’s easy to forget that that strain and stress does not disappear when you come out. That the reason I dress more plainly and simply now is a way to avoid being labeled as flamboyant. That I keep my hair messy to not seem prissy. That the reason I like mean guys is because in the hidden depths of me, meanness is associated with masculinity, and thus, idolization.

There is damage in having been Othered. There is damage in hating a part of you because society has deemed that part to be malignant.

But there is power in reclaiming that damage. I started wearing nail polish recently. And even that small bit of femininity has eased me a little. Because I am a feminine person in some ways. And in just as many ways, I am also masculine. Everyone is masculine and feminine; labeling or coding one as negative only serves to incur further damage.

My voice rings up high when I’m excited. I talk fast. I use my hands a lot. I’m expressive. These are just descriptors. They’re not bad or good, they just exist. My voice is my voice.

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Essay, Life

“ONE—TWO—THREE!”

Neon-green teeth against deep, dark violet skin. A ceiling fan broken from too many hands flinging into the air. Too many bodies crammed into too little square footage, forcing the heat to climb upwards until your white shirt has turned filmy as it clings wetly to your skin.

We see the host, and I grab the drink out of his hand to take a sip of artificial margarita. We set up residence against one wall, some girl’s long strands of hair whipping against the small of my back as she dances with someone else.

Talking becomes a post-lingual experiment. The mouth forms words that will never reach someone else’s ears, instead swirling out and upward into the collective cacophony. You communicate by mouthing simple words, by pointing, by the arching of eyebrows.

That’s a college party. Sound so big it forces you into the corner, heat so high everyone loses water weight against their will, and a Babel tower of red Solo cups.

It’s the kind of thing that could only occur in college. Only occur when there’s an uneven distribution of wealth. Top-shelf liquors mixed with liters of lukewarm Sprite, the kind that our teachers brought in for class parties. J.Crew button-downs with beaten-down Converse splashed with various liquids. You bypass the club with their $10-covers and instead cram in with sixty of your Facebook friends-of-friends and sweat it out to Childish Gambino.

It’s the kind of thing that could only occur when you’re on the razor’s edge between childhood and adulthood.

Before, we stood in her bathroom, me balancing a water bottle of Patron and two shot glasses on the ceramic lid of the toilet tank. I poured the Patron into the glasses, alternately labeled in ridged letters “Don’t Mess with Texas” and “Malibu”. I took care to make sure they were level with each other before handing one off. In between her putting black eyeliner on, we licked the bony tops of our thumbs and dumped salt on the damp.

“One—two—three,” I said as we clicked the shots together.

Lick the salt. Suck down the Patron. Hold the two in your mouth for a second before gulping. We didn’t have limes so I grabbed a bottle of lemonade. The sickly-sweet-sour taste of the lemonade, from concentrate, cuts through the tequila as I made a hasty gulp before passing it on to her. We stagger the second round of shots so that we can have equal access to the chaser.

Lick. Suck. Gulp.

I perch behind her as she tries to balance out her eyeliner. I pull thick swathes of auburn hair into place. We preen, and something warms in the outline of my ribs.

Later it was a bottle of red wine that we passed back and forth. We had to clench our teeth to avoid consuming the coils of foil from the twist-top that had fallen to the bottom of the deep dark red. Afterward, we would have to comb our tongues free of the aluminum scraps.

We went to a birthday pre-game first, one we drastically overestimated the punctuality of its occupants. By the time we strolled in at 9:45, they were already platonically grinding to Top 40, and That One Girl was yelling at people to start requesting their Ubers.

“FIVE MINUTES PEOPLE, CALL YOUR UBERS,” she waded through the clusters of drunk people. “FIVE MINUTES.” This was not a Lyft crowd.

We had enough time to say hi to Birthday Girl & Co and mooch some Smirnoff Raspberry into thrown-together cocktails. But they were annoyingly punctual, and by 10 p.m. we were the last ones to swirl out of the apartment, shoving potato chips into our pockets for snacking on the sidewalk.

At the second party, the purple light burned through the window even as we were approaching from outside. Inside, sweat mixed with liquor mixed with burnt weed. Hawaiian shirts glowed hotly against dark violet skin. Synthetic leis lit up the undersides of chins and matched eerily with the neon whites of people’s eyes.

Inside, everyone is a stranger, even the people I know. The darkness coats everything, so that familiarity becomes a moot point until they’re in your face. I run into people from class, old half-forgotten acquaintances, and former besties. In a party, old frictions are limned over in the alcohol haze.

She and I stand by the bar counter, a square hole in the wall between the living room and the kitchen. Separated by a narrow line of strangers are friends from my collegiate nascence. Friends whom I knew when I hardly knew myself. That clogging nostalgia rises from my chest and coils behind my tongue. The sense is that identity is a series of rolling hills.

You climb one with some cluster of people, crest over the top and skid to the bottom. Then you begin again. And suddenly people begin to drop off. After one hill without them, they become a little blurred. After two and three, you have lost sight of them entirely. But they’re on their own hills, cresting and skidding endlessly over and over. Run up, hover, run down.

And eventually you realize that if you keep looking back, as the hummocks replicate, you’ll trip. So you force yourself to look forward, cresting with new people, ending at the bottom of the hill with new people.

Sucking the foil from my tongue, I lean down to say something to her and come face-to-face with a yelling landlord. Party’s over, he says. The purple light weakens as yellow-bulbed rooms are opened up, the crowd thins, but the music thumps on, as loud as before. It blankets over the scurrying people, grabbing coats, appearing from cracks in the walls and hidden spots like cockroaches.

As I wrestle our coats from the pile, she spills a cup of something over me, her and the floor. Margarita, probably, or Sprite. Something sticky and sweet that dots my jeans like rain.

As we leave the purple light party, our laughter trailing behind us at this long-ago failure of a night, we cut through back alleys to our familiar place. Two identical beers and nearly identical burgers—fries to split between two people.

Our hills have neatly aligned, I realize as we tuck into burgers, the kick of spicy secret sauce hitting the ridged roof of my mouth. Bite of burger, snap of fry, sip of beer. Sloppily sopping up that secret sauce, too drunk to care about appearing proper.

Balancing between childhood and adulthood is like that. It’s the razor’s edge, the series of hills. The ravenous eating of two dollar burgers after wine and tequila and beer. Patron in plastic and curls of foil on tongues. Too many metaphors because I haven’t learned yet that one will do. It’s the here now and the not there yet.

We stand at the bottom of the hill and I reach my hand out towards hers. She clasps it, sweat against sweat. Chipped baby-blue nail polish.

“One—two—three.”

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Essay, LGBTQ, Life

“WHAT KIND OF GAY ARE YOU? CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT!”

I took a “What Kind of Gay Are You?” quiz because, in a world that is rapidly changing and mutating, I needed at least one answer in my life.

That sounds dramatic, but that’s only because it is. So you’re astute. Congrats, hon.

It was a slushy snow day. We were huddled around a tall Starbucks table, damply drying off and cradling inappropriate iced coffees in between our hands. It might be winter outside, but my sweat glands knew no season.

I was taking a “What Kind of Gay Are You” quiz on my phone, because—frankly—I needed to know. After selecting one that seemed thorough—I didn’t want your run-of-the-mill quiz; I wanted a deep dive—I started checking boxes.

The problem, if it’s a problem even, and the reason for this erudite season is that my body exceeds gay boundaries. I’m tall and rangy—thirty pounds and three inches ago I might’ve been a twink. But as I stretched upward, the hours at the gym making me dense with muscle and bone, it became a lot more difficult.

I couldn’t find a physical category that seemed to fit. I’m not stocky enough to be a bear; not hairy enough to be an otter; neither hairy nor muscular enough to be a wolf; not effete enough to be a twink; too big to be a twunk; not geeky enough to be a gaymer. I could go on; I won’t.

Jock. Pup. Gym Bunny. Cub. Silver fox. (Just kidding; I went on).

Nope. Nope. No. Nope. No.

You might think that with as many categories as that, finding a niche would be easy—or at least possible. But instead my long, lean body—toned but not muscular, solid but not stocky—spills over any box, muddying the distinctions. I wanted some answer that might offer me a semblance of geace™ (gay peace).

So this outside, impartial source took in my body weight, my height, my musculature, my style, my activities, the timbre of my voice—average but deceptive because the pitch wildly vacillates based on whatever mood I’m in. But before I could get my answer, it produced the dreaded text:

Register an account to find out your answer!

“Fuck that,” I said, finding a small button at the bottom:

Proceed without account

I clicked it and the small circle at the top of the screen spun. The same screen popped up again. Clicked again. But every attempt to click the button led to a Sisyphean cycle of reloading that same page.

Eventually, I had to give up. I’m not made of steel—I rarely put energy into anything that isn’t writing, Real Housewives, or grilled cheese—and my phone battery can only withstand so much blunt trauma.

But I was disappointed—much more disappointed than I realized I would be, and more disappointed than I think anyone should be about any Internet quiz.

Would this one Internet quiz have changed my life? No. Would I be able to order a custom license plate with my assigned tribe and be inundated with romantic pursuits? Likely no but one can dream. It’s not like each category requires you to pay dues, or offers you any networking possibilities. There’s no “Bears In Media” except for Smokey. The only thing that’s likely is that I would’ve been disappointed with any answer.

But still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that it would’ve been nice to have at least one answer in a life that seems to hold very little for me right now. Days later, I was having a conversation with classmates about baby names. I really like the name Betty, spelled Bettie. One classmate offered up “Bette” as also being cute.

“But then people will always wonder what kind of gay I am,” I argued. “Am I a Bette Davis gay or a Bette Midler gay? ‘Cause that’ll affect how people try to pronounce her name.”

As I’ve been applying to more jobs, I’ve been in stasis, uncomfortably but evenly pulled between my Imposter Syndrome and my inescapable anxiety about being jobless.

The former tries to stop me from submitting my application, and the latter reminds me that if I don’t do this, my future remains as cloudy and voided as it currently is. So I remain largely in the middle, occasionally jolted into movement by a particularly strong wave from either end. My limbs—those rangy long limbs—are pulled to their full extension, tendons popping and bones straining at the joints.

I’m in a drawn-and-quartered life crisis.

Too tall to be a twink, too slim to be a jock. Too lively to be the reporter I’m training to be. Too timid to be an opinion writer. Too dumb to be a genius, too smart to be an idiot. Too cocky for my own good, too self-conscious for my own health. Too good in too many things, not good enough in one thing. Perfectly at the center of so many identities, sticky strands of confliction pulling at so many different parts of me.

Everything is up in the air. On social media, all I see are these static pictures of people in their things. The red-carpet one. The photographer one. The writer one. The engineer one. Steel. Silk. Definitive things. Not some thing, but this thing. Do I go for this or for that? Do I put all my energy into one path, or do I spread my eggs like it’s Easter Sunday?

I want answers to questions that haven’t even fully formed yet. For the first time in 21 years, my life is opaque. And the more people I talk to, the more common I realize that feeling is. So I might not be a thing one, but I’m not the only one.

I closed the tab of the “What Kind of Gay Are You?” quiz, quick darkness swallowing the cartoon drawing of a jock intertwined with a twink. I didn’t really feel like a twink or a jock. Or a bear or an otter or a silver fox or an otter.

I really only felt like myself.

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college, Essay, Politics

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: MY NIGHT WITH REPUBLICANS

Names have been changed, except the name of that nail polish. Originally submitted as a piece for my Columns & Editorials class.

Last night I went to my first College Republicans meeting. I’m working on a story about political engagement among college students post-election, and when researching political party groups on campus, I found out they were having a meeting that very night.

I don’t know what I thought I would be walking into, but it wasn’t what I assumed. Okay, I knew what I thought it would be—a Nazi circle-jerk, or an anti-Obama pile-on. I expected Make America Great Again hats and enough Vineyard Vines to clothe an entire village.

There was only one MAGA hat but, I assumed, they all had some in their closets. There were a lot more women than I expected, at least half but maybe more. Traitors to their gender, I thought. How can they side with someone who is so anti-women? And there were people of color. Stockholm Syndrome, I reasoned, or internalized xenophobia. The white, presumably straight, guy in a quarter-zip and Patriot’s baseball cap was soaked in so much privilege that anything he would say was bound to be offensive. But in what’s usually the case, per the principle of Occam’s Razor, the simplest answer is usually the truest. They weren’t brainwashed or spies or masochists. They were just Republicans.

The meeting began with typical housekeeping. In light of the new presidency, they hoped to up their meetings from once every three weeks to something more frequent, and then they bandied around ideas for speakers they could get for their semesterly big function. Bill O’Reilly, I learned, is a BU alum, and one girl thought he was worth reaching out to.

After, the conversation turned to discussion. The latest news: The inauguration, and who among the group had attended. The nomination for Supreme Court of Neil Gorsuch. They said it was a “Merrick Garland type of decision,” meaning a more centrist pick that both sides could agree on. The immigration ban, which a College Republicans executive board member, Rocky, said (a common response) was “executed very, very poorly.”

Marianne talked about the immigration ban, sharing that her boyfriend (a green card holder from a “non-white, non-Christian” country) was afraid that if he left America, he wouldn’t be let back in.

Getting visibly upset, she said, “No one should be afraid of that; that if he left for Engineering Without Borders to do work in Africa and came back on a connecting flight through Dubai…” She trailed off.

A lot of the conversation, the feelings of dealing with rabid liberals who operated purely on emotion and attacked without information, was uncomfortably familiar to me. The sense of defeat when having a conversation with someone on the far other side. Frustration with how polarized everything seems to be. Swap any of the names, and I could’ve easily been sitting in on a group of liberals talking about zealous Republicans.

“It’s hard being the elephant in the room, literally and figuratively,” said Robert, one of the club’s executive board members. That earned major laughs from the members, and even a surprised one from me. Who knew Republicans could have jokes? He was answering in response to Lydia, a Chicago native who was relieved to find a group of like-minded people in such a liberal city.

“So it’s nice to have, well I don’t wanna say the word “safe space” but…” said Robert, laughing again.

They were tired of being demonized, of being labeled as Nazis or homophobes or xenophobes or racists or misogynists, and the list goes on and on. To be fair, it’s a pretty long list. Tired of everything being labeled “the end of the world,” a sentiment, they pointed out, is always expressed by the opposing political side to the president. But the sense that I got from most of them was that their primary motivation for voting Trump was either loyalty to the Republican party or fiscal.

Robert told a story about his Republican parents and his upbringing in Michigan. His mother grew up in Detroit in the sixties and seventies, and was witness to the decline of the industrial community.

“When we heard “Make America Great Again,” that’s what we associated it with,” he said. Not the takeback of the country from diversity, but the bringing back of industrial jobs into areas that are starving without them.

When I asked the group if they felt a disconnect or conflict between being a millennial and being a Republican, their hands were raising before I even finished the question.

“I’m socially more liberal, but fiscally more conservative, so I identify myself as more of a moderate,” said Stacey. That sense, that as Republicans they were most caught up in fiscal matters, seemed to resonate amongst everybody. And when Stacey said the (I assumed) most-hated statement, “I voted for Hillary Clinton,” no one recoiled. No one threw anything at her. Her conflict, between Republican and millennial, was one with which they could all identify.

When people hear the name Republican, felt most of them, they assume white nationalists and xenophobes. But it’s “a wide tent,” said Max, and Republicans are much more diverse than people are willing to believe.

One of the last questions I posed to the group was “Is there something you wish you could tell the other side?”

“Ask questions,” said Rocky. Be able to have a conversation. Be open to having a conversation.

Stacey offered a story from her time interning for Governor Charlie Baker. “Many liberals are turning more moderate, to be able to work with a conservative government,” she said, “And that’s really good to see.”

“Thanks for being willing to listen,” said Louis, the communications chair, when I thanked them for their time.

At the end of the meeting, two girls gingerly approached me. “Um, can I ask you something?” one asked, a woman of color.

“Yeah!” I answered, trying to be friendly but predicting (even after all this) that it might be something rude or blunt or homophobic.

“I was staring at it all meeting; where is your nail polish from?”

I looked down at the minty blue color. “Isn’t it great? It’s called ‘Babe Blue.’ But I don’t know the brand. Sorry!”

She looked genuinely anguished, because it is such a cute color. “Oh, okay. Thanks!”

And when I got home and logged on to Twitter, I saw my liberal newsfeed through different eyes. How would the College Republicans see this? They would say probably that it’s catastrophizing everything. And they might be right.

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Essay, Inspirational

WHY POP CULTURE MATTERS

A large part of why I am often hesitant to label myself a “journalist” is due to the lack of representation that anything other than “hard news” gets in journalism classes. Professors act on the assumption that we all want to be helicoptering into Iraq, or walking the streets of a broken-down city to get a story of a struggling kid with a heart of gold. They act on the assumption that those kinds of stories, hard news and gritty, are the only of substance.

And while there is literally nothing wrong with that kind of reporting—we obviously need it—I’m tired of that being the primary. I was in a journalism class where the professor was discussing the skills we’ll need if we want to succeed. But those skills were only really marketable if I’m going to be pursuing a career as a Woodward and Bernstein “on the case” reporter. He demerited the importance of “first person narrative” and how it has no place as the first mode of storytelling.

But the kind of journalism I want to do—pop culture—relies on my voice and my narrative and the ability of an audience to trust me to be funny and knowledgeable and real. And I couldn’t maintain a straight face because, three years into it, I was tired. I was tired of feeling like I was dumb for wanting to talk about pop or that my career wouldn’t have as much value as if I was to follow a more traditional career path.

Not every journalist wants to write for the New York Times. Not every reporter wants to be going undercover, tailing a lead or spending hours into the night poring over ancient tomes. And that’s okay.

I love pop culture. I love dissecting it and discussing it and thinking about it. Because pop culture, of which celebrity culture and the “Stars: They’re Just Like Us” is only a very small part, is the representation of what people are thinking. And that’s as important as knowing what’s going on. I love people—from celebrity to politics to local news—and I love studying them. I love seeing what makes them passionate or angry or happy. I’m a pop cultural anthropologist.

And here’s why pop culture matters: because we can take individual celebrity instances and stretch them into a wider scope. Nicki Minaj calling out Miley Cyrus publicly at the 2015 VMAs pointed to the complex way that the media portrays black women. The world buys into the “Angry Black Woman” model and it plays out over and over, with Nicki, or with Amandla Stenberg. And the portrayal of Caitlyn Jenner as the leader of the trans community because of her white, priviledged, and cisnormative conventional beauty is a reflection of our desire to keep the status quo. Because trans people aren’t making her their leader. Cisgender people are looking to her because she is palatable.

Pop culture brings conversations of cultural appropriation, transgender politics, and gender equality into the public dialogue. And that’s important. And it’s important how we laud women like Jennifer Lawrence and Amy Schumer for being “real” while simultaneously shaming women by putting a size 10 model—below the national average for women’s sizing—on the forefront of the Calvin Klein “Plus Size Range.” And even the fact that we use language like “plus” to alienate woman and other them is mind-blowing.

Pop culture simultaneously shows how far we’ve come and how far we have still to go. It can be both serious and silly, stimulating and mindless. And that’s why it’s amazing. Because it is what we are talking about, what we think about. And if the day-to-day journalism of pop culture is as prevalent in our lives as hard-hitting news, why is it not represented in my journalism classes?

I just want to feel like my interest is valid. I want to be in a classroom where I can stand next to someone who wants to write about Middle Eastern conflict and I can say that I would rather discuss the career trajectory of Hollywood It-Girls or the media empire of the Kardashians. Like, wouldn’t that be so cool?

And on a large scale, wouldn’t it be so cool if we could all feel accepted and lauded for our career interests?

If you have an interest and a driving passion and it’s not hurting anybody and you want to pursue it, I want you to. I want to write about pop culture and write books about myself and review TV shows and live-tweet the red carpet of the Golden Globes. And that’s dope that I want to. Like, I’m not cooking cocaine in my kitchen. I just want to be weird and funny and make people laugh and think. I want to be someone’s “having a bad day so I’m gonna read this.” I want to be someone’s security blanket. I want to uplift and take our collective minds off the bad things and just, if even for a moment, laugh and cringe and be happy.

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And that’s as important and as valuable as being a New York Times reporter. Cue the Hailee Steinfeld “Love Myself” emotional collage.

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Essay, Humor, Life

I WANT THEM AND THEY WANT ME TO LEAVE THEM ALONE: RUSHING A FRAT

Alternately titled “But All of the Boys And All of the Girls Are Begging To…Get Me Off Their Property.”

I have bad luck with guys. I think, by now, that’s probably a well-established fact. There was the guy who never texted back. The guy I asked out three separate times. The guy who skipped a threesome for a date with me—and probably regretted it.

But even for me, there has only been one instance where I was collectively rejected by an entire group of men. I once rushed a fraternity.

It was the beginning of sophomore year of college and, in the midst of serious depression and anxiety, I attempted anything to distract me. I did multiple different newspapers; I became a hardcore Christian; I did backstage work for a play. But the most out of character for me was rushing a fraternity.

The idea sparked inside of me when the formal rushing season for males began in the early months of the semester. I had eschewed Greek life as vapid, shallow, and heavily hierarchical. I was both disappointed and relieved that it wasn’t anything like the show GREEK, which, if you’re looking into Greek life, is not a good indicator. But I saw myself as a Rusty Cartwright, but gay and hotter—a social outcast of the Greek world who would eventually rise up to the highest echelons of red-cup culture.

I was kind of desperate to break into an already established group of friends, and figured that I could fit the role of “funny, quirky out-of-the-norm frat bro” and maybe convince some of my brothers to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race with me.

With some friends, I went to the massive fair of all the frats and sororities. Decked out in J.Crew blazers and Lilly Pulitzer prints, everyone is somehow more coiffed and polished than I could ever hope to be. I had dressed as “heterosexually” as I knew how, so I was in a sweater and a beanie. Actually, that’s how I always dress. I’m breaking down stereotypes and defying your expectations.

There were the Delta Iota Kappas (DIKs), the macho, ‘roided out typical fratguys. There were the Gamma Epsilon Epsilon Kappas (GEEKs), where I was pretty sure I could get into because I was probably the coolest person they’ve ever known. There were the Douches, who I’m not even going to give a punny name to, who were the unofficial leaders of the Greek world and had the hottest trust-fund babies and future corrupt Senators.

I was too skinny for the DIKs, too social for the GEEKs, and was too recently emigrated—only four generations—to America to fit in with the blueblood Douches. Then, I stumbled upon the Sigma Mu Deltas, the SMDs.

They were smart but not too alienating; social without being fratty; and ambitious without being too “Congressionally Nepotistic.” The lead guy at the table was a hot redhead—one of my personal vices—and had already volunteered on a campaign. A cute ginger with political aspirations and—I’m assuming—a hefty inheritance? Sign me up/marry me right now.

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I have no idea what this is from but it is crucial I find out.

I signed up for their mixing events and quickly made acquaintances with the only other homosexual I had seen in the vicinity of the fair. We clung to each other and bolstered each other up. I was better at breaking the ice, but he was better at not having excessively sweaty palms. Together, we made one complete human.

The first rush event I went to was held at a local fast-food burger place—not McDonald’s, but I wish. Dressed in a non-confrontational plaid button-down, I walked into the meeting spot and immediately started sweating.

Unfortunately for my glands, rushing involves a lot of hand-shaking, and since this was a fraternity, handshaking is roughly the barometer for judging someone’s manhood. It’s the acceptable equivalent of a glorified pissing contest. I have a relatively strong, solid handshake, but combined with my genetic anxious pore-crying—sweating—the result for the recipient is getting a sensation similar to a lamprey. Not enticing unless you are a lamprey looking for a mate.

“So how long have you been involved with SMD?” I asked a senior.

“Actually, since it reformed a few years ago. It was disbanded but we brought it back to campus and I was one of the first in the new class.”

“Wow!” I say “Wow!” a lot when I don’t know what else to say. It’s meant to be disarming and meaningless. But even if I had given this guy a $20 bill, nothing would distract from the intense discomfort of what I would say next:

“So you’re like the Founding Fathers of your frat! Except, unlike the actual Founding Fathers, you probably didn’t also own slaves!”

He looked at me, head at an angle as if I hadn’t just cavalierly brought up one of the darkest memories of the collective American historical memory.

“Hahahahaha,” my rush-wingman loudly cackled, drawing attention away from me and onto more PC topics. From there, the event was more or less the way you would imagine. I spent ten minutes talking to a guy about “biology.” Trying to have conversations with these guys was like pulling teeth. Not just because they were big sports-fans and were really into “engineering”—unclear—but also because I thrive when there are no expectations put upon me and we have a common ground. Our common ground was the fact that I was desperately trying to bind us together in institutionalized brotherhood and they were very desperately trying to make that not happen.

When I’m forced to perform, I—like any other serious actor—freeze up completely. Instead of acting like myself, I get a starring role in Awkward: A Play, in the part of Unconvincing Totem Pole Dogs in Trench Coat Pretending To Be Human. I get awkward and weird and standoffish, (but I win a Golden Globe). And my quietness and razor-wit are mistaken for a misanthropic sarcasm and possible devil worship.

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Most people rush as freshmen, and I was one of the very few sophomores attempted to breach the club. These were fresh-off-the-boat former football heroes and lacrosse princes. You know how white racists say that other races all look like each other? White people, PSA, we all look alike. And these dudes all looked strikingly similar: square jaws, Patagonias, pert butts in khaki pants, and thick Senator-parted hair. I was slim, twiggy, in a slouchy cardigan and artfully styled auburn hair to hid the pimple on my forehead. I stuck out more than a minority on The Bachelor.

(Hey, that’s a problem with mainstream broadcasting.)

It was so clear that genetics had blessed these boys with fraternal acclimation abilities, whereas I was skittering across conversation topics with the grace of a deer on a frozen sidewalk.

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For the last hour of the burger boys’ night—not the name they chose for the event, but what a missed opportunity—I was talking to two SMD brothers who were sophomores too. I nudged into their circle and attempted to strengthen a connection. They weren’t bad, but one of them had a wispy, douchey mustache that immediately told his entire history and future. Private school, fraternity, business school, Wall Street, brunette wife, two sons. It’s disconcerting to see someone’s entire life wrapped around a vaguely pubescent piece of facial hair, but it was there and I saw it and I hated it.

Also he was kind of a homophobe, but it was the mustache that really made me alarmed.

I was glad when I was able to slip away from the forced friendship-making and began to walk home. I was replaying how I had acted, seeing me in my mind’s eye and watching Frat Danny—Franny—lose the colorful characteristics I had so lovingly cherished and become a bland, palatable fraternity lackey.

Despite the skeevies from Meat Meetup: The Boys of SMD Welcome You To Babble and Burgers—not the name, but come on people, I wish—I decided I would do another rush event. I mean, I skipped one of them because I was busy (read: lazy), but the next event (the last event) was at a Mexican restaurant. How could I pass up tortilla chips?

Dressed in my best Relaxed Business—the same cardigan and button-down from my previous two interactions with SMD—and black skinny pants instead of brown skinny pants (read: classy) I soon discovered that this was a more formal “informal get to know you” session, and that everyone else had apparently gotten the Brooks Brothers memo. I also learned that I would have to choose between eating and talking. Never, if you want me to be productive, force me to choose between food and people-interactions.

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Placed in a precarious position, I just held onto a plate of chips while making awkward conversation with a guy with superb eyebrows about his future career. I was learning that, for the SMD guys, you needed to know not only what you wanted to do after graduation but what path you would be taking to Congress and which seat you were taking. Safe to say that these guys weren’t grabbing Democrat seats. Is that how Congress works? Idk, clearly I’m not in SMD.

After failing at trying get Eyebrows to disclose his grooming regimen—not in the manscaping region, just his eyebrows, you pervs—I moved on to someone who talked to me. About sports. I know nothing about sports, except that the Mets are in New York and a guy was kicked out of a Dolphins game for wearing a speedo. I couldn’t even tell you what sport the Dolphins play.

He was boring and talked about a sports internship and I made witty comments about hockey—probably? Frankly, I blocked this out from my memory—but given the fact that I hadn’t had a chance to shine with any previous interactions, I was going to make this frat bro my frat babe. And by “frat babe” I mean “best friend” and I was going to ride his coattails into SMD.

I scrounged together my minimal knowledge of sports and cobbled together a conversation. It wasn’t hard; he loved talking about himself so essentially all I had to do was be his combination Hype/Yes man. It’s a very easy job; I think I could do it professionally. After literally an hour of nodding in a platonic, heterosexual manner, the mixer came to a close and it came time to say goodbye.

I had wiped my hand against my cardigan precisely for this moment and gave Sports a firm handshake, looking him in the eye and, in the style of Wiccans and followers of The Secret, said, “See you soon.”

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I didn’t see him soon. Spoiler alert, I had come across weird and yes-man-y and too interested in Eyebrow’s eyebrows to be a friendly frat bro. The next step in the process was to receive a personal invitation to be interviewed one-on-one by the brothers. I waited the obligatory week before getting my hopes sky-high and then waited another week before crushing my hopes beneath my heel.

A few weeks later, I saw the chief pledge, the Optimus Prime of Square-Jaw Football Senator boys, leading a merry gang of future Congressmen on some sort of soft fraternity hazing adventure. I had not made it into the exclusive club. I had been, frankly, stood up.

After the sting went away, I realized I was grateful that I had been rejected. It was one of the less painful rejections I had ever gone through, despite it being collectively from upwards of forty guys at once who decided that I was “a total grenade.” And I was glad that they had preemptively prevented me from quitting. Because, you better fucking believe, I would’ve quit when the euphoria had faded and I realized that I was knee-deep in straights watching football.

I know now that I was not made for a fraternity. I am made for small groups of people who look at me like an alpha. I am not made for interviewing, which means that I will be impossible to hire but impossible to fire, and I’ll eventually either become my own boss or die on the streets.

I like being weird and sweaty and wearing flannels and skinny jeans. I don’t like wearing blazers or talking about football. It makes me think I’m back in high school, and that deathtrap has seen the last of me.

But rushing SMD taught me a very valuable lesson. No amount of built-in support system is worth me not being myself. Or me paying dues, because frankly that money could be going towards flannels. Frats, and Greek life in general, are really excellent for a certain type of person. But I’m not that type of person. And once I had finished contorting myself into a palatable pretzel shape for the boys of SMD, I realized that it wasn’t worth it, and that my foot had fallen asleep. And I think if I had gotten into the frat, I would have realized that I would need to act like Franny—bland, amiable Franny—all the time, and that’s way too much. I only act unlike myself on two occasions: when I’m talking to a cute boy, and always.

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Essay, Life

FERRERO ROCHER

I’m a creepy person. I hope that by admitting that upfront, you will judge me less harshly. Also it’ll make me seem “self-aware” and “relatable,” which in turn makes you more likely to accept what creepiness I’m about to write about with more geniality.

One of my most cringe-worthy romance sagas involves someone who I don’t think reads these blogs, so I guess it’s okay to talk about him? Fuck it. He’ll have a pseudonym. I briefly considered switching the gender and writing about him as a “she” but I don’t think anyone would believe that.

It all started in a large lecture hall. I was late to class, so instead of sitting with my friends in our customary spot in the left wing of the auditorium, I just grabbed a seat towards the back.

My mind begins to wander and my eyes drift from my screen to the laptop of the person sitting in front of me. He’s doing a quiz about Legally Blonde. From the angle, he looks cute. He’s muttering with his seat companion, a girl who to this day scares the shit out of me. I don’t know why, but she looks like she could beat me up. It’s something to do with the way her mouth is.

When the class ends, I’m trying in vain to shove my laptop back into my backpack, and I see Legally Blonde’s face as he walks out with his friend.

Fuckin’ shitballs. He’s cute.

Legally Blonde pops up in my social periphery over the next few weeks, and I begin to watch for him in our class. No one I know knows him, so he takes on a host of nicknames. My friends start to notice him too, after I point him out, and we trade stories of seeing him like Yu-Gi-Oh cards. That’s not that creepy because we do it with everyone’s crushes. Legally Blonde isn’t the only one.

One day, I’m leaving the library when my friend texts me.

“LEGALLY BLONDE IS IN CVS. HE’S WANDERING THE AISLES.”

I don’t know what possesses me, but a gleeful claw grips my stomach and I’m suddenly running down the street, backpack swinging from one shoulder and legs churning as I dash across the street and tumble into CVS.

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I find my friend and we “casually” peruse the chip selection. Every other second, my heart gives a powerful throb, sending icy oxygen into my fingertips. I feel adrenaline in a very particular way: cold chest and fingers that are pumping and sending off sparks.

Suddenly he’s in the aisle that we’re in and we’re drifting towards each other with the slow momentum of planets caught in each other’s gravity. He’s grasping a box of Ferrero Rocher. I hate Ferrero Rocher. It’s too fancy, too chocolate-y.

I fix him with a highbeam smile, the kind I use when I’m being especially nice to bank tellers because I want them to like me. “Hey, you’re in my BLAHBLAH class, right? Tuesday mornings?”

He looks a little startled that I’m talking to him. “Yeah, I think so,” he says. His voice is slow, deep, soft.

“Cool,” I’m scrambling for words that are suddenly floating out of the open hatch in my head. “I’m Danny.”

“I’m Niall,” he answers, and the name is a lilt on his tongue.

“What’s your major?” I ask. He answers. “Oh, Ferrero Rocher, how fancy,” I say. He looks at the box in his hand.

“Yeah, I’m gonna eat the entire box.”

The conversation ends soon after that, but I feel electric.

Then, little pins start dropping in the map. As I make more friends, I notice the more mutual friends we have in common. I see him around more often. Then I find out that he and my roommate work together. I ask my roommate about him, and he says that Legally Blonde is straight. I’m crushed. But I don’t know if I fully believe him. He ends up being in the same club as me, which I find out when I finally end up going to a meeting for it and see him there.

I find out that he’s funnier than I am. Sardonic and cynical, but funnier. And smart. I find out that he’s quiet but quick.

The semester starts to wind down and the weather drops. It snows more. I’ve debated whether or not to say anything else to Legally Blonde—Niall—and his potential heterosexuality puts a wrench in my planning. Finally, we have our last class together.

I sit with my stomach in knots all class. All too soon, it’s over, and people start to dissipate. He’s walking out with Scary Mouth Girl. “What do I do?” I fret to my friends. “Go!” they say.

I start running through the swirling snow. “Hey!” I half-yell after him. He turns around. Scary Mouth turns around too.

“Um.”

He’s staring at me and I’m aware of everything, the snow catching on my hair and face, his dark eyebrows quirked upwards, the way my heart is forcing its way up my throat and lodging in my mouth.

Scary Mouth leaves us in the snow, going into the building we’re standing outside of, where their next class is.

“Um, do you want to hang out?” I ask around the heart in my mouth.

“Um, sure,” he answers, and some of the pressure in my chest leaks out.

“Cool. Cool. Do you like movies? Have you ever seen Sharknado?” WHY THE FUCK DID I JUST SAY THAT.

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“No, I haven’t.”

“Oh. Yeah. Me neither.” WHAT.

He pulls out his phone and I get his number. “Um, I’ll text you. Bye.” He says bye, and we separate. I walk, hood down, to my next class, the snow collecting in my hair. I don’t know if I just asked him out. I don’t know what just happened. But it happened.

We make a plan to see a popular children’s movie two days from now. Thursday. In a panic, I invite six other people and throw everything together to make it seem more casual.

My fingers are sparking as he walks over to me and my friends. We walk to the movie theater. The conversation is stilted, mostly me jabbering and him answering. When I’m nervous, I talk more, and when people don’t talk, I make up for it. In the movie, I nudge him at the especially funny parts.

After the movie, I offer to walk him back to his dorm. He says that’s not necessary. I passive-aggressively insist. He asks me more questions when it’s just the two of us, but he’s still soft and quiet. If he were a fabric he would be velvet, and I would be sandpaper. Finally, we get to the entrance of his dorm.

“Maybe, we could do this again,” I offer. My throat constricts. “Just the two of us?”

He nods, his eyes flicking to the side of me. My throat constricts even tighter, a fucking python ringing around me, resting in the hollows of my clavicles.

The moment is painful, and—wait for it—I offer up my fist. “Bye.” He fist bumps me.

“Wait, we forgot to explode out,” and I make him fist bump me again. After he goes inside, everything starts to unravel and the icy static my brain was under melts and suddenly I’m remembering every fucking dumbass thing I just did in the last two hours.

My anxiety clamps onto my head, making me relive every moment in excruciating detail, and I begin to dissect every small moment until I’ve desecrated the altar of our hangout.

This story doesn’t have a really happy ending. The semester ends, and I have one of the hardest years of my life, battling depression. When I get back in the spring semester, I feel so embarrassed by our “date”—in my anxiety-warped brain—that I don’t even make an attempt to talk to Niall.

I doubt he reads this, so I feel like I can actually be truthful and not bite my words. I really fucked up. I don’t have a lot of regrets in my life because I think it’s pointless to replay the past, but I regret how I handled things with Niall. I don’t know what could’ve been if I had been able to say something.

Other things happened after that, things that fell solely on my shoulders, and our rope became more frayed. I think every connection starts out strong as a rope, but negative outcomes mangle the rope more and more. I don’t know if we even have a rope anymore, or if I can handle having a rope with him.

I don’t know what it is about romance that makes me weak. I can talk to anyone about anything. But I can’t ever garner the courage to take the leap. So take that leap.

There’s an awesome quote by writer Augusten Burroughs. “Just say, “Hi.” They may ignore you. Or you may marry them. And that possibility is worth that one word.” I think that’s something we should all carry with us. I’m always frozen by embarrassment. And if I had burned through the embarrassment, maybe Legally Blonde and I could be friends by now. Maybe our rope wouldn’t be as frayed.

Everyone has a rope. Don’t fray.

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