Nobodies Read online

  PROCEDURE: 1. Try to emulate the “sensitive poet” mystique: brood, weep, moan, etc.

  2. Write her a poem.

  RESULTS: After hitting Cindy in the back of the neck with a piece of eraser (to get her attention), I tossed my folded-up poem at the foot of her desk. She read it, smiled, and tucked it into her notebook.

  DIGRESSION:

  I borrowed my mother’s poetry anthology and scanned the table of contents for a poem with “Love” in the title. I found a “Love Song” and changed the title, so Cindy couldn’t trace the poem to its original source. I copied out the first few chunks, but I cut the silly line about a patient on a table.

  The bell rang. Cindy walked over to my desk.

  “Would you like to ask me something?”

  “Well . . .” I mumbled, “I thought we could . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “You like movies?”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “There are some good ones coming out this weekend, if you wanted to go . . .”

  “With you?”

  Adopt gorilla persona. “Got anything better to do?”

  “Uh, yeah, I’m—”

  “What?”

  “I’m . . .” She seemed baffled, caught off-guard. “When did you want to go?”

  Shift to poet persona. “Whenever.”

  “How about Friday?”

  “Sure,” I said, shrugging.

  “My dad can drive us.”

  I let my eyelids droop with indifference.

  She tore off a piece of paper and wrote something on it. “Give me a call,” she said, handing it to me. (My hand was shaking, but she didn’t seem to notice.) “See you later,” she added, waving as she walked away.

  ***

  I must have examined that piece of paper every five minutes until our date, half-expecting it to dissolve if I didn’t confirm its existence. Above her phone number, beside her pink bubble-lettered name, whose “y” wore a delightful swoop, she had drawn a tiny heart. It was a simple shape—two curved pink lines, linked symmetrically—that solved all of life’s mysteries.

  DIGRESSION:

  Months later, in a fit of rage, I threw Cindy’s pink heart out the window, only to run into the street and find it had blown away. For weeks afterwards, I examined any shred of discarded paper, hoping to recover the only thing Cindy had ever given me. I considered asking her to rewrite her name and number, but the heart would doubtless be absent. (And even if she did include a new one, it wouldn’t be the same as the first.) Eventually, I found a pink pen and tore off a few corners of paper—never getting the shape quite right—but I stopped writing Cindy’s name after the first three sloppy letters. I could never copy her adorable “y,” so I didn’t bother trying. Nor did I attempt to reproduce her pink heart.

  ***

  “So what?”

  “What do you mean ‘so what’?”

  “It’s just a heart.”

  “It’s not just a—”

  “It’s a heart, Jeff. You have to focus.”

  “It’s a signal.”

  “It’s a line on a paper.”

  “Technically, it’s two lines—”

  “She’s not in love with you.”

  “That’s your opinion.”

  “You’re going out in an hour. If you want to survive, listen up.”

  I swallowed my pride along with the half-dozen rebuttals I wanted to throw at him. “I’m all ears, Frank.You always know best.”

  ***

  EXPERIMENT 3: FIRST DATE

  PROBLEM 1: Cindy was supposed to pick me up five minutes ago.

  EXPLANATION: If she arrived on time, she would appear desperate and over-eager.

  CONCLUSION: Don’t be paranoid.

  PROBLEM 2: Cindy was supposed to pick me up fifteen minutes ago.

  EXPLANATIONS: Unlikely:

  a) Fatal accident.

  b) Fatal illness.

  c) Traffic.

  Likely:

  a) She had been mocking me in class and has no interest in dating me.

  b) She has forgotten our date completely.

  c) She is being deliberately coy/evasive.

  d) She is just plain rude and has no sense of common courtesy.

  e) She is too cowardly (or kind) to reject me in person and accepted the date with no intention of keeping it.

  f) She is clinically insane.

  RESPONSE: Call her and tell her she’s a self-absorbed sadist who will never be happy until she realizes that being beautiful does not give her carte blanche to be cruel.

  RESULTS: She would break out of her cocoon of narcissism and become a decent human being. She would owe her future happiness to my courageous confrontation and even come to love me for it. We would tell our grandchildren this story, and teach them life’s most valuable lesson: if you want something badly enough, you can always get it.

  CONCLUSION: I must confront this goddess, who (as I consider more carefully) is anything but divine. At best, she is a frail human being, like me, but more likely a demon sent by Satan to torture boys.

  I marched to the phone, and just as I finished dialing her number, the doorbell rang.

  Cindy’s father made sure I sat in the back seat alone, while his daughter rode in comfort and safety beside him. His gaze shifted in the rearview mirror from the traffic to me so often I wanted to remind him to watch the road. But I kept my mouth shut, as all good future sons-in-law should.

  Her father broke the silence. “So Cindy tells me you’re in her English class. How do you like it?”

  “I don’t.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I like science. Books are . . .”

  “Stupid?” Cindy suggested.

  “Exactly. Stupid.”

  Her father met my gaze in the rearview mirror. “I’m a librarian.”

  “Oh.”

  “Are you reading Shakespeare yet?”

  “No, thank God.”

  He frowned. Cindy laughed.

  DIGRESSION:

  I made her laugh! What were a man’s greatest attributes in the eyes of women, according to my father? Good looks, a soul, a brain, and a sense of humour—in that order. I was (and am) unremarkable in the looks department; my soul and brain were under construction—planned completion time: still unknown—but the existence of my levity-brevity organ had finally been confirmed, and by the only person whose opinion mattered.

  Her father did not like uncomfortable silences. “So aside from science, what are your interests?”

  “Uh, I’m not really sure . . .”

  “How do you like to spend your free time?”

  Masturbating, mostly. “Oh, you know. The usual ways.”

  “Such as?”

  “Just lying around . . . letting my mind wander.”

  “Until it finds something it likes.”

  Or until Mom asks why the door is locked.“Yeah. Something like that.”

  “Ah, the power of imagination. Fantasy. I suppose when you’re fifteen, that’s all you have.”

  Not anymore.

  “Separate or together?” the cashier asked.

  How did Frank not cover movie date etiquette?5

  “Together,” I croaked. Afraid to make eye contact with Cindy, I handed the cashier a quivering twenty dollar bill, which my parents had given me for the occasion.

  “You didn’t have to do that, you know.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, handing her a ticket. “You can get it next time.”

  Cindy quickened her pace, and I felt a vague tension nudge its way between us. Was she upset because I paid for her ticket or because we missed the previews?

  Say something to gauge her feelings.

  “Do you want any snacks?” I as
ked.

  It’s a shame when the first thing to enter your mind is the first thing to exit your mouth.

  QUESTIONS: 1. Who is paying?

  2. How much is she entitled to get?

  3. Does “snacks” necessarily include a beverage, or just food?

  4. Since I already paid for the tickets, is she now obligated to buy me food?

  5. Does she feel coerced, manipulated, deceived?

  “No, I’m all right,” she said, tucking an errant strand of blonde behind her ear.

  “I think I’m going to get something.”

  Slow learner.

  EXPERIMENT 4: MOVIE WATCHING ETIQUETTE

  PROBLEM 1: THE POPCORN

  OPTIONS: a) Hold the popcorn on my lap.

  b) Reach around the armrest and balance it on my knee, tilting it in her direction.

  c) Give it to her to hold.

  QUESTIONS: 1. Does she even want any popcorn?

  2. Am I obligated to share?

  3. Is sharing considered an insult somehow?

  4. If I give her the bag to hold, will she assume it’s for her and wonder why I bought her something that she explicitly said she didn’t want?

  5. If I keep it on my lap, will she assume I don’t want to share with her?

  I balanced the bag on my knee, hoping she would take the hint, but she didn’t even glance at it. After four minutes, my wrist became sore from holding the bag at an angle, so I returned it to my lap. Just when I’d given up, she reached over—without looking away from the screen—and pulled out a handful of popcorn.

  PROBLEM 2: THE COKE 6

  QUESTIONS: 1. Since I got her a straw of her own, does that imply that I like her enough to want her to share

  2. Does a single straw suggest that she isn’t welcome to share, or that I’m putting her in the awkward position of embracing my straw germs before she’s ready?

  RESULT: When I stuck the single, lonely straw through the top, she didn’t seem to notice.

  CONCLUSION: Add another variable: Insert the second straw.

  RESULT: Status quo.

  CONCLUSION: Draw her attention to the second straw: Tap her somewhere.

  OPTIONS: a) The shoulder? Too awkward in this position.

  b) The forearm? Too intimate.

  c) The hand? Way too intimate.

  d) The knee? Too odd.

  After a dozen deliberations and false-starts, I used more force than necessary and thrust my finger into her shoulder. I forced my lips into what I hoped resembled a smile and pointed to the second straw in the Coke. She glanced at it, unimpressed, then turned back to the screen. I looked around to ensure that no one else had witnessed my blunder, and to my delight everyone seemed as engrossed in the awful film as Cindy.

  Despite its ridiculous premise,7the film grabbed my attention when the protagonist kissed his love-interest for the first time. I looked to my fellow moviegoers for guidance. A nearby teenaged couple were entangled together, while the elderly pair in front of us appeared to be asleep. The middle-aged couple a few rows down were sitting straight in their seats, and, as far as I could tell, they hadn’t moved since we arrived.

  I glanced at a couple who’d been sitting in the last row but found only the man leaning back, arms spread across the adjacent seats, grinning. (His girlfriend must’ve gone to the bathroom.) Why did he look so happy? His eyes were closed, so he couldn’t have been smiling at the film. I didn’t fully understand why at the time, but I envied that man his bliss.

  ***

  “What’s your goal?” Frank asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you want to do with her?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Be careful, you’re still underage.”

  “It’s embarrassing . . .”

  “You want to kiss her.”

  “Well . . . Yeah.”

  “I don’t blame you. She’s cute.”

  “Yes, she is.”

  “Have you ever kissed a girl?”

  “What do you think?”

  “It’s no big deal.”

  “Not once you’ve done it.”

  “I promise, it’s not a big deal. Just wait for the right moment and go for it.”

  “How will I know when it’s the right moment?”

  “She’ll tell you.”

  “Really?”

  “No, not really.”

  ***

  In all the films I’d seen, the man put his arm around the woman and pulled her close. The rest took care of itself. But based on her reaction to my earlier nudge, my arm was the last thing Cindy wanted wrapped around her. In fact, she was now leaning away from me, resting her elbow on the unshared armrest.

  She’s playing hard-to-get, I told myself. This is a test of your courage. If you don’t do something soon, she won’t want to see you again.

  I inhaled deeply, turned to her, raised my arm slightly . . . then lowered it and faced the screen. I couldn’t do it.

  Her father was late again. We stood in front of the theatre, several feet apart, avoiding each other’s gaze.Our silence was drowned by happy couples streaming in and out of the theatre, laughing, holding hands, discussing the films they’d just seen or were about to see.

  QUESTIONS: 1. Did Cindy want me to make a move?

  2. If she did, and I kissed her, where would we be now? Happy. Laughing, probably. Talking, at least.

  3. If she didn’t want me to make a move, and I did anyway, where would we be?

  “He’s late,” Cindy mumbled. She looked at her watch and sighed.

  I asked her how she liked the movie.

  “S’okay.”

  “What was your favourite part?”

  “Uh . . .”

  “Favourite scene?”

  “I don’t know. What was yours?”

  “Uh, I’m not sure. I guess I kinda liked them all.”

  It’s never too soon to start lying to your soulmate.

  She looked away. “My father won’t let me date. He thinks I’m too young.”

  “Oh.”

  I wanted to say a hundred things at once, but I could only bring myself to stare at her pink shoes.

  Wait! But that meant her ambivalence had nothing to do with me. Her father was the problem. When I nudged her shoulder, her shock wasn’t fear but sober protest. Secretly, desperately, hopelessly, she wanted me to grab her and show her what it means to be a woman. It must have taken all her strength not to collapse to the floor when I gave her that poem, or weep when I offered her snacks and a straw of her own. Instead, she simply sighed or rolled her eyes, each gesture hinting at the despair that she so courageously tried to conceal.

  In the two and a half hours we spent together, she allowed herself one indulgence: she laughed at my joke in the car. She let herself embrace one moment of unrestrained happiness and hoped that it would be enough to sustain her in years to come, when all she would have are rose-tinted memories and a faded picture in a high-school yearbook.

  EXPERIMENT 5: HAPPILY EVER AFTER

  Plan A: Defeat the Insufferable Patriarch

  PROCEDURE: 1. On the drive home, batter away mundane questions like “How was the movie?” with a rhetorical jab like “Your daughter is fifteen years old. She can make her own decisions.”

  2. When inside her house, continue the conversation in the living room. (The kitchen contains too many sharp objects.)

  3. She will give a passionate defence of our love. Her father will grab her by the arms and try to shake sense into her, but I’ll jump between them, fists on hips, chest puffed out, very gorilla-like. I’ll say, “Stand aside, villain,” like in films about forbidden romance. (Or was it “stand down”? They always demand that the villain stand somewhere . . .)

  AMENDMENT: Maybe I a
m being unfair: her father is not exactly a villain. Despite his repressive parenting skills, he probably has good intentions. “Stand aside, old man!” might be more reasonable. Old people, especially old parents, have no understanding of love. Perhaps I should pity her father. He could never feel what I feel.

  VARIABLE: He still refuses to let me date Cindy.

  Plan B: Running Away Together

  PROCEDURE: 1. Find survival tools. 8

  2. Ask Frank for advice.

  3. Ask parents for money.

  4. Ask parents to relocate. 9

  Cindy and I climbed in the car, but as soon as the doors closed I forgot what I’d wanted to say.

  “How was the movie?” her father asked.

  “Okay,” Cindy replied. Her father looked at me in the mirror, smiling.

  Not the right time, I told myself. Keep quiet.

  He turned on the radio, and we spent the rest of the ride listening to songs about courage and heartbreak.

  We pulled into Cindy’s driveway. Her house was different than I’d imagined.

  The insufferable patriarch met my gaze in the mirror. “You’re just down the street, aren’t you, Jeff?”

  “Yeah, I am.”

  “Would you mind walking? The tank’s a bit low.”

  “No, that’s okay.”

  Her father rolled his eyes when I offered to walk his daughter to the door, but Cindy wore her usual mask of melancholy. She knew this was the end, at least until her knight-in-shining-armour could save her from her father. As we approached the house, side by side, I wanted to take her hand and whisper, as though she were fatally ill, “We’re going to get through this.”

  Her father opened the door and entered. He turned to his daughter. “Cindy? Are you coming in?” She took a step forward, and I grabbed her hand.

  “Just a second,” I said.

  Her father sighed and walked away. I peered into the foyer and caught a glimpse of the living room: my future battlefield.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Oh, nothing . . .” I reached behind her and pulled the door shut. (I hadn’t pictured it being open in my image of our first kiss.) Still holding her hand, I drew the other one away from her side and held them together.

  “I should really get going,” she said, clearly uncomfortable.