I saw that I had missed a late-night 2 AM text from Robbie saying that he couldn’t stop listening to the album. The guy was always razzing me. I replied with rolling eyes but the text wasn’t going through. Their Wi-Fi must be out again. Other than that, my phone was pretty dry, so I decided to go on a run. Of course, when I stepped outside, it was muggy as hell; maybe not Dante’s hell, but that particular hell only found in southeastern United States summers. Satan must enjoy vacationing in Boca Raton. I knew it would only get worse outside, so it was now or never.
Briefs. Small shorts and a big tee. Baseball cap. Shoes on. Laces tied. Earbuds in. Out the door.
I listened to some of Toni's old downloaded music as I swam the block. It helped get the bad taste out of my mouth, at least somewhat. Old Man Franklin, our landlord, sat motionless upon his lawn mower. His beady eyes tracked me Mona-Lisa style as I jogged on by. I threw up a half-hearted wave and a quarter-hearted closed smile. Neither were returned in kind so I kept my face forward and picked up the pace. The morning was quiet.
When I got back from my loop I went straight for a shower. Seemed Mom wasn’t up yet. In another attempt to acclimate myself to Trashy against all better judgment, I flicked the record player on, twisted the sound up, and let it blast while hot water poured over me. My shower was a bit rushed in an attempt to quickly turn the record player back off as anxiety slowly crept into my soul that the neighbors might think a cat was being murdered. My phone chimed and, still dripping wet, I went over and saw I had a text from Allie. She asked if I was going to Jorge’s party tonight. Sometimes she thought people invited me to more things than they actually did. I started to reply, but her dots manifested and she followed up with, "I’ll pick you up at eight." I guess I’m going to Jorge’s party tonight. Nothing else to say but “Ok, Allie” and a laughing emoji.
My text to Robbie must have finally gone through but all he did was laugh at my message and ask me what I had going on today. “Apparently Jorge’s party,” I texted.
He replied, “Ah, Allie already got to you I see. OK I think we’re all carpooling” then “C u 2nite cutie” with a winky kissy emoji and finally “Can’t believe you’re leaving me in a week. What a choch move” steam nostrils and eye roll.
Don’t remind me.
I replied “Can’t believe you’re not relocating your entire life to come with me. Kinda rude ngl” with a shrug.
He laughed at it.
Robbie and I met back in sixth grade. He had just moved to the state and we quickly became friends when I saw him wearing a Mech Suit Ultra shirt, at the time my favorite card game and later our favorite TV show. It was actually fairly popular at our school. There was an entire culture around it. At one point we started using our entire biweekly library periods to run tournaments. The teachers were just glad we weren’t smoking weed in the bathroom, so they mostly left alone; though, a lot of quarters and dollar bills exchanged hands under the table that year. We were both still into it after we graduated from eighth grade, Robbie even more than me, but as we started high school many of our peers began to trade the awesome parts of our youth for sports, drama, and sex. Robbie and I kept playing, but only secretly at each other’s houses. That’s probably when our friendship really took off. We participated in our peers’ passions casually (minus the sex) but got way more into video games, TTRPGs, animes, strategy board games, mangas, and camping. We did get a bit obsessed with volleyball for a hot minute because there was this super sick anime that inspired us, but our school didn’t have a men’s team, so we never got to shine. Every now and then we would still pick up a game of Mech Suit Ultra, but puberty was relentless and by the time we hit eleventh grade Venus had her way and we leaned less into hobbies and more into our greatest fixation:
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Girls.
Cue Beastie Boys.
It’s a well-known fact that the female gender is the most common weakness of straight high school males. Whether said straight males are cool or uncool, handsome or ugly, athletic or scrawny, smart or stupid, rich or poor, we all find common ground in our afflections. That being said, that common ground was a breeding ground for conflict and more often than not No Man’s Land as we vied for the attention of those who caught our eyes.
Robbie and I were neither cool nor uncool, handsome nor ugly, athletic nor scrawny, rich nor poor (okay, maybe a little poor); but we sure as hell weren’t stupid, so we took a different approach to the world of frivolous infatuation, inexperienced kissing, and intrepid adventures to Bert’s Mini Golf Prix.
Starting in eleventh grade we started a tutoring service geared toward our female peers. It was the perfect target market because many of them were starting to look toward college. We didn’t gatekeep it at all and within a few months, word of mouth gained us a fairly large client base. We ended up having to recruit several other tutors, which we did gatekeep, always careful to not hire anyone more attractive than us. Was it completely superficial? Absolutely. And it worked wonders. We couldn’t exactly accomplish a cheerleader effect because we weren’t that close with the smarter attractive crowd at the school, so we settled for a combination of contrast and halo effects. We called it conttractiveness. No one complained because everyone got hours of one-on-one time with girls who’d otherwise never look at them twice. Between our scheme and Allie, completing our trifecta, we were on a first-name basis with 50% of the underachieving girls in our class halfway through the year. That led to dates. Dates led to kisses. One or two. Maybe three.
Robbie and I still weren’t exactly cool by any means, but we did our own thing and people typically respected that. It felt like the ending scenes of Breakfast Club. We got our sweaty hand holding in without undergoing the weight of popularity. A weight I wasn’t meant to bear. I had the self-esteem of a rabbit. I don’t know how people like Allie did it, but damn did she do it. It was a good year, at least until Charliegate happened which propelled us right back down the social ladder, but that’s a story for another time.