Real Live Boyfriends

It still felt like a happy ending. It did.

Until eight weeks later.

1 Scamming mate: You fool around, but you don’t hang out. Ever.2 Friend with benefits: You fool around, and you do hang out, but you are not going out.3 Kind-of, sort-of, it’s-all-very-confusing boyfriend: Self-explanatory.4 Polka-dot is a harlequin Great Dane, spotted like a dalmatian. He is not a reasonable dog to have living with me, my mom and my dad in a tiny houseboat.

    But then, nothing about my life is reasonable.5 Greg is my dad’s friend who has panic attacks so bad he never leaves his home. Which is completely what will happen to me if I don’t get a handle on the panic badness that happens to me ever since the debacles of sophomore year. If you want to see Greg, you have to go over to his garbage-y, plant-filled apartment and bring him Chinese food. It is deeply pitiful.6 “Keep On Loving You”: Retro power ballad by REO Speedwagon. Dad is obsessed with retro metal. I think it makes him feel like he’s still seventeen. Though why anyone would want to feel like they’re seventeen I have no idea.7 You can’t have an ending. It’s impossible. Because unlike in the movies, life goes on. You’re never at the end until you die.

Panic Attacks and Rabbit Fever!

an unedited video clip:

Blurry images. Green stuff. Flowers. The focus locks on a very small greenhouse filled with rare blooms grown in containers.

Outside the glass walls, a warm July drizzle over the lake.

Inside, Roo and Noel sit together on a wooden crate too small to hold both their butts.

Roo wears her new rhinestone-studded glasses and a T-shirt of Noel’s that reads DEATH: OUR NATION’S NUMBER ONE KILLER. The gap between her two front teeth keeps showing because she’s smiling so much. Noel’s hair has too much gel in it and his arms look scrawny. His eyes are laughing.Roo: The inauguration of my digital video camera.Noel: (doesn’t say anything; looks at his hands) Roo: I bought it this morning with money I made mucking out stalls at the zoo and selling Birkenstocks to people with disgusting feet.Noel: (stares like a deer at the camera) Roo: (turning) Are you going to say something?Noel: I feel dumb. The camera makes everything seem fake, suddenly.Roo: I feel dumb too. But let’s shoot some footage so I can practice editing.Noel: Okay.Roo: Just get past the dumb.Noel: You got it.Roo: Today is July eighteenth, I think. We’re sitting in my dad’s greenhouse and …Noel: (starts kissing Roo on the neck)Roo: (laughing) What are you doing?Noel: You said ignore the dumb.Roo: Yeah, but—Noel: And you said you wanted to practice editing.Roo: So?Noel: (still kissing) So I’m ignoring the dumb and giving you something to edit out.

I spent a lot of time at Noel’s place that summer. He lived with his mom and stepdad in a Victorian-style house in Madrona. He had two little half sisters and his folks were always around, cooking or scolding or complaining about the clutter. It was a nice place to be. Mrs. DuBoise told me flat out I could stay for dinner any night I wanted.

Noel didn’t have a summer job¹, but he was expected to take charge of his little sisters two days a week. He’d bring them to the zoo while I was working for the landscape gardener there. They would bring spearmint jelly candies and feed them to me ’cause my hands would be covered in soil. Then when I got off work I’d take them to the Family Farm area and lift the little girls up to pet the llamas and feed the goats.

One day, when Noel went off to buy juice for us all, I helped the girls write notes on zoo stationery to Robespierre, my favorite pygmy goat. We stuck our letters in the bright blue box marked WRITE TO OUR FARM ANIMALS.Dear Robespierre,You are a nice goat. I did not know goats were so hairy as you. I thought you would have more like fur.

Love, SydonieDear Robespierre,Why am I not allowed to feed you my apple? I want to feed you my apple and see you eat it up.

From, MarieDear Robespierre,That was my real live boyfriend, Noel!Did you see him? Did you?Don’t be jealous. You are a pygmy goat and I am a human. It could never have progressed beyond ear scratching, you and me. Besides, you have Imelda and Mata Hari, both of whom obviously prefer you to that scraggly little pretender of a goat, Kaczynski.When you write back, please tell me: Do you think it’s all going to come crashing down? Do you think this is real life? Can I be this happy?

Love, Ruby

After my shift ended, Noel would usually drive me back to his place. I’d take a shower there and change into normal clothes.

Like I belonged in his house.

With him.

And it was just right.

I was in love.

In love. Yes.

It wasn’t anything we said to each other, but it was how I felt.

And how I thought he felt.

I even told my shrink.

Just in case you haven’t familiarized yourself with the painful chronicles of my high school career, I have a shrink because sophomore year—after Jackson broke my heart and Kim and all my other friends ditched me—I nearly went insane. I have managed to reach my senior year alive only because it turns out you can’t actually die from embarrassment and misery. You just start having these awful, can’t-