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To all the boys who’ve had to learn to play by different rules
ONE SUMMER NIGHT I FELL ASLEEP, HOPING THE WORLD would be different when I woke.
Hey, Buddy! The music’s over. For the music to be over so soon. For the music to be over when it had just begun. That was really sad.
“You have time,” she said. “There’s plenty of time.” The eternal optimist. “Well, you have to become a person first,” I said.
“Sure,” I said. I hated being volunteered. The problem with my life was that it was someone else’s idea.
It was a small idea. But at least the idea was mine.
I loved the different rules of summer. My mother endured them.
Mom, she got my sense of humor. I got hers. We were good that way. Not that she wasn’t something of a mystery. One thing that I completely got—I got why my father fell in love with her.
I wanted to ask her what happened to all that beauty.
As their voices faded, I started feeling sorry for myself. Feeling sorry for myself was an art. I think a part of me liked doing that.
Not my mom and dad, that was for sure. Not my sisters either. Maybe all that silence about my brother did something to me. I think it did. Not talking can make a guy pretty lonely.
Sometimes I think my father has all these scars. On his heart. In his head. All over. It’s not such an easy thing to be the son of a man who’s been to war. When I was eight, I overheard my mother talking to my Aunt Ophelia on the phone. “I don’t think that the war will ever be over for him.” Later I asked my Aunt Ophelia if that was true. “Yes,” she said, “it’s true.”
Sometimes I thought that being fifteen was the worst tragedy of all.
Maybe life was just a series of phases—one phase after another after another. Maybe, in a couple of years, I’d be going through the same phase as the eighteen-year-old lifeguards. Not that I really believed in my mom’s phase theory. It didn’t sound like an explanation—it sounded like an excuse. I don’t think my mom got the whole guy thing. I didn’t get the guy thing either. And I was a guy. I had a feeling there was something wrong with me. I guess I was a mystery even to myself. That sucked. I had serious problems.
“My name’s Dante,” he said. That made me laugh harder. “Sorry,” I said. “It’s okay. People laugh at my name.” “No, no,” I said. “See, it’s just that my name’s Aristotle.”
“I used to tell people my name was Dan. I mean, you know, I just dropped two letters. But I stopped doing that. It wasn’t honest. And anyway, I always got found out. And I felt like a liar and an idiot. I was ashamed of myself for being ashamed of myself. I didn’t like feeling like that.” He shrugged his shoulders.
He talked about swimming as if it were a way of life. He was fifteen years old. Who was this guy? He looked a little fragile—but he wasn’t. He was disciplined and tough and knowledgeable and he didn’t pretend to be stupid and ordinary. He was neither of those things.
He was funny and focused and fierce. I mean the guy could be fierce. And there wasn’t anything mean about him. I didn’t understand how you could live in a mean world and not have any of that meanness rub off on you. How could a guy live without some meanness?
Dante became one more mystery in a universe full of m...
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“Except,” I said, “it’s true. The world is a dark place. Conrad’s right about that.” “Maybe your world, Ari, but not mine.”
We weren’t alike, Dante and I. But we did have a few things in common.
That really made me smile. I’d never heard anyone say that about their parents. I mean, no one was crazy about their parents. Except Dante.
but I always kept my distance from the other boys. I never ever felt like I was a part of their world. Boys. I watched them. Studied them.
Sort of. I wasn’t wildly popular. How could I be? In order to be wildly popular you had to make people believe that you were fun and interesting. I just wasn’t that much of a con artist.
He seemed like a man who was in love with being alive.
That was interesting—that he had secrets.
I got to thinking that poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn’t get—and never would get.
When Dante read the word “bastard” he smiled. I knew he loved saying it because it was a word he was not allowed use, a word that was banned. But here in his room, he could read that word and make it his.
That afternoon, I learned two new words. “Inscrutable.” And “friend.” Words were different when they lived inside of you.
“Do you think it’s bad—to doubt?” “No. I think it’s smart.”
Dante. I really liked him. I really, really liked him.
Something happened inside me as I looked out into the vast universe. Through that telescope, the world was closer and larger than I’d ever imagined. And it was all so beautiful and overwhelming and—I don’t know—it made me aware that there was something inside of me that mattered.
As Dante was watching me search the sky through the lens of a telescope, he whispered, “Someday, I’m going to discover all the secrets of the universe.”
We didn’t talk much. We just lay there and looked up at the stars. “Too much light pollution,” he said. “Too much light pollution,” I answered.
Dante was staring at his feet. That made me smile. He wanted to know what I was smiling at. “I was just smiling,” I said. “Can’t a guy smile?” “You’re not telling me the truth,” he said. He
“I’ve never seen you that mad,” I said. “I’ve never seen you that mad, either.” We both knew that we were mad for different reasons.
And then we were quiet again. I hated the quiet. Finally I just asked a stupid question, “Why do birds exist, anyway?” He looked at me. “You don’t know?” “I guess I don’t.” “Birds exist to teach us things about the sky.” “You believe that?” “Yes.”
I wanted to tell him not to cry anymore, tell him that what those boys did to that bird didn’t matter. But I knew it did matter. It mattered to Dante. And, anyway, it didn’t do any good to tell him not to cry because he needed to cry. That’s the way he was.
Dante’s answer made sense to me. If we studied birds, maybe we could learn to be free. I think that’s what he was saying. I had a philosopher’s name. What was my answer? Why didn’t I have an answer?
And why was it that some guys had tears in them and some had no tears at all? Different boys lived by different rules.
And it seemed to me that Dante’s face was a map of the world. A world without any darkness. Wow, a world without darkness. How beautiful was that?
Birds were falling from the sky. Sparrows. Millions and millions of sparrows. They were falling like rain and they were hitting me as they fell and I had their blood all over me and I couldn’t find a place to protect myself. Their beaks were breaking my skin like arrows. And Buddy Holly’s plane was falling from the sky and I could hear Waylon Jennings singing “La Bamba.” I could hear Dante crying—and when I turned around to see where he was, I saw that he was holding Richie Valens’s limp body in his arms. And then the plane came falling down on us. All I saw was the shadow and the earth on
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I saw the look on my dad’s face and I knew he was worried. And I was sad that I had made him worry. I wondered if he had really held me and I wanted to tell him that I didn’t hate him, it was just that I didn’t understand him, didn’t understand who he was and I wanted to, I wanted so much to understand.
“In your dream. You were looking for me.” “I’m always looking for you,” I whispered.
“Mostly I think I’m trying to find me, Dad.” It was strange to talk to him about something real. But it scared me too. I wanted to keep talking, but I didn’t know exactly how to say what I was holding inside me.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry I’m so far away.” “It’s okay,” I said. “No,” he said. “No, it’s not.” I think he was going to say something else, but he changed his mind. He turned and walked out of the room.
“You know what I think?” I didn’t want to know what she thought. I didn’t. But I was going to hear it anyway. “Sure,” I said. She ignored the attitude. “I don’t think you know how loved you are.” “I do know.” She started to say something, but she changed her mind. “Ari, I just want you to be happy.”
“Don’t artists’ models get paid?” “Only the ones that are good-looking.” “So I’m not good-looking?” Dante smiled. “Don’t be an asshole.” He seemed embarrassed. But not as embarrassed as I was. I could feel myself turning red. Even guys with dark skin like me could blush. “So you’re really going to be an artist?” “Absolutely.” He looked right at me. “You don’t believe me?” “I need evidence.” He sat in my rocking chair. He studied me. “You still look sick.” “Thanks.”
And Dante’s eyes on me, well, I didn’t know if I liked that or didn’t like that. I just knew I felt naked. But there was something happening between Dante and his drawing pad that made me feel invisible. And that made me relax.
There was something sad and solitary about the sketch and I wondered if that’s the way he saw the world or if that’s the way he saw my world.
