Untitled existentialism-humor story (2007)

"You can't be an existentialist; you cried at The Notebook." Tom stated, as if he knew.

"That was a long time ago," I argued, which meant it was two years ago, when we were sixteen.

"You still cried."

"So did you."

"I'm not claiming to be an existentialist."

Tom bit his apple and leaned against the oak tree, looking self-satisfied. I shook my head mournfully, wishing he understood. "Existentialists can cry, you idiot. That's the whole point. You can do whatever you want because none of it means anything."

Tom threw his apple into a bush. "Whatever, I don't feel like talking about that anymore. Now put down that stupid Camus novel and lets go inside; my mom will buy us Taco Bell."

"I'm not hungry."

Later on, in the kitchen over Crunchwrap Supremes, I brought it up again. "I just don't see what one thing has to do with the other," I said, opening up a packet of hot sauce. "Why The Notebook of all things? If I cried at something more artsy, would that be okay?"

"Are you still on about that?" asked Tom absentmindedly, sucking the last bits of soda out of his cup.

"Yes."

"Drop it."

"No. I really want to know, Tom. How does crying at a movie make me not an existentialist? I'm interested. I want to hear your theories."

Tom sighed, tilting his face up towards the wooden cupboards with their faded floral insides, yellow and lazy in the sun. His wavy blonde hair made him look younger than eighteen, I decided, and kind of stupid too. He looked like someone who might surf if we lived somewhere where people did such things; like someone who would sit there and look handsome and not have much intelligent to say. Finally he spoke:

"All I'm saying," he began, "is that that particular movie is everything that… in theory… as an existentialist, you don't believe in. Its way too romantic, you know? Too idealist. And the fact that you'd shed tears at something like that shows that at least in some capacity, you believe in it. And that's what prevents you from existentialism, at least in the true sense."

The problem with Tom though, was, he did. Have things to say, that is. The jury was still out however, as far as I was concerned, as to weather they were actually intelligent or not.

"That doesn't even make sense," I said, feeling kind of embarrassed because I wondered if maybe he was right. "You don't even know what it means."

"What's so great about being one, anyway?" he asked, taking a drinking glass from the cupboard above him and filling it with water from the fridge. "Existentialists don't seem to be very happy people. They're all like, bummed out all of the time."

"Yeah, because they're right. About the world, I mean."

"They're still bummed out. I'd rather be wrong and happy."

"See that's the difference between you and me. I'm not afraid to face reality. You'd rather live a lie."

"Man whatever, you don't have any idea what you're talking about, and besides I only ever cried at that stupid movie to impress the girl I was with. I wanted her to think that I was sensitive. I can turn it on and off like a faucet and it doesn't mean a thing."

"Well so can I. How do you know that's not what I did too?"

"I really don't care, Marcus, one way or the other, that's why. You're the one who keeps bringing it up all the time."

That night I slept over on the trundle bed in the living room. In the morning when the August sun came in bright with a vengeance through the patio door to make us too hot we laughed and whispered the way we used to in middle school, Tom and me, the tacky orange-and-cream floral bedspreads tangled about us before either of us were really awake enough to get up. I could hear his mother making coffee from the kitchen, smell the English muffins and eggs that I knew would await us when we finally made the effort to rise from our fort of secrets and old jokes and saunter in.

"Are you still going to see Jenny when fall comes?" Tom asked, his hair a mess of curls upon the dotted pillowcase, his slim body a shapeless lump under a bad 70s print with one worn-out sock sticking out the other end.

I scratched my head, my back already starting to feel like a hot skillet with cooking spray on it. "Why wouldn't I?"

"Well I don't know, wasn't she going to go to school in New England or something?"

"I don't think she is now. She hasn't said anything about it for almost a month."

"Oh. Maybe she didn't get accepted."

"I don't know."

I rolled over until Tom hit me with a pillow and proceeded to knee me in the back. "Ow," I muttered, rubbing my sore spine.

"Get up."

"I'm coming. Good God." But I took an extra minute or so just lying there, thinking of the girl who danced with me on porches when no one was looking and snuck into bible camps at night to go skinny dipping and always ate a little extra in the spring so that she'd be nice and fattened-up for her bathing suit and summer.

But I spoke to her later on that morning on the telephone, hiding in Tom's attic just to get a bit of privacy from him and his overly-talkative parents and his redundant little brother who was ten. Her voice was crackly and distant, full of broken plans and bad reception. "I'm sorry," she said, "I thought you knew."

"When are you leaving?"

"Before the end of summer."

"Are you coming back?"

"Maybe. For Christmas I'm sure. But not to live, no, at least not for a while."

I stared forward at a magazine rack covered with dust. The title written on the yellow spine of each volume was the same. Time. Time. Time. "I've got to go." I said.

Tom was already in his swimming trunks, awaiting our walk down to the lake just minutes from his house, but when I got outside I just walked fast ahead of him, past the thicket where we used to pick blackberries, past the tool shed where we used to smoke pot. How strange it suddenly seemed to me, the afternoons and mornings of this summer spent straddling that fine line, that ever-deadly picket fence between childhood and adulthood, the place where doing childish things is still accepted, but not ever talked about, and just barely.

When we got to the deserted lakeshore he caught up to me in hot pursuit, sitting down beside me just inches from a sticker bush and looking annoyed. "Why did you run like that? I'm all out of breath now thanks to you."

"I wasn't running."

"Whatever. What happened to you?"

I threw my hands up in the air, the lovely weather seeming now like some ironic joke. Tom cocked his head to one side, his hair reflecting the same light that just soaks into my bangs, straight and dark. Its always been like this with us, it seems, things just bouncing buoyant off of him and then seeping into me like a kitchen sponge, like a brand new flesh wound that everything hurts. "She's going away after all," I said. "She's leaving."

"Who, Jenny?"

"No, Tom, the fucking queen of England."

"Sorry, I didn't know."

"Yeah, well I didn't either" I muttered, putting my face down onto my drawn-up knees. I didn't close my eyes then, just kept them open and staring down at the green and yellow grass but not seeing it, really.

My favorite singer is an existentialist, I think. He hasn't said so, but I can tell. My favorite album of his is all about how something so terrible happened to him, something so lovely and wonderful ended so tragically that he can't even eat or sleep once it is gone, just lay in his bed in that big empty house full of mirrors and be haunted by this horrible dark thing until eventually, in the last song, it kills him. Except that's not even how it really happened, and once you listen to it a few times through you realize that its just about him getting dumped by some girl when he was like, eighteen , and being all depressed about it. And he didn't die at all, he's still alive and over it and probably really happy, and I think that the girl has a band of her own and they're friends now and they laugh about it. Its all just one big joke. Somehow this is even more depressing, to me anyway, than the original concept. At least if he had died, pale and fever-stricken in that shower, she could have come by and put flowers on his grave and it would mean something. It doesn't mean anything at all the way that it is. It might be funny, but it doesn't mean anything.

"Its not that big of a deal, Marcus" Tom said, "you'll be alright."

"No I'm not going to be alright" I said, ignoring the fact that I was practically crying now. "And it is a big deal. I'm not like you with things like this. I don't just rush out and find new ones all the time."

"Yeah, but it really doesn't mean much, does it, in the end? I mean really, nothing means anything, right?"

"That's not true," I said through my hands, "something means everything. This means everything! I'll never be okay again from this." Even as I said the words, I know that they weren't true, but they felt important just then, and besides no one had to know that but me.

"Ah, I think you will" Tom said, reaching over to pat me gently on the back. How awkward. I wanted him to stop, but he just kept at it, his hand up and down again in a way that you should be fine with your best friend touching you were this a movie, but in real life it just feels weird. I sniffled and felt sorry.

And Tom, he just kept doing it, patting my back like he was fucking obligated, and here I am having a breakdown.

"You know this proves you're totally not an existentialist, right?" he said, somewhere in between my ridiculous sobs and his horrible, creepy back patting.

"Shut up, Tom."

"Sorry."