Now Is Not the Time to Panic

by Kevin Wilson

I knew there had to be a moment, some signal, that regular people could sense in order to go from being people who didn’t kiss to being people who kissed. What the hell was it?

Our teachers thought we were gifted because we could read and write at a slightly elevated level, because if we were gifted, then they weren’t wasting their lives teaching burnouts.

So we stepped out of my car, our backpacks slung over our shoulders, and we normally, so normally it doesn’t even need to be mentioned, walked over to the entrance of the insurance company.

And even then, sixteen years old, I knew that I would hate every person in my life who loved me, who took care of me, who helped me find a way to whatever life I would have, because I could never tell them who I was, what I’d done.

And then, after you make out, there’s a small window where you can tell someone about your culture-altering poster, and I missed that window because I still wasn’t thinking I will marry this doofus who wants to fix my teeth and was, like, kind of licking my teeth while we made out.

I had expected, with a name like Mazzy, that she was going to be some hipster girl from Brooklyn who was twenty, had graduated from Yale early, was somehow on staff at the New Yorker, and then I would find out that her grandfather was, I don’t know, Dave Thomas, the Wendy’s guy.