TBT #88: Boys Just Leave

I try to keep in touch with people after they’re gone. I should be better at it than I am. I write all the time. You’d think that would lend itself to correspondence. But I find it one of the more difficult kinds of writing, so much so that when I should be writing a nice catch-up letter to someone I have not seen in years, instead I find myself writing some long and involved short story about two soldiers sending coded messages back and forth, disguised as sappy love notes. It is hard, and it gets harder as time goes on, to cling to people that are no longer in your life. And maybe that’s just because I’m young. Maybe when I’m older and have more free time and don’t really give a shit about anything in my day-to-day life beyond catching Wheel of Fortune at 7, I’ll feel more enthusiastic about keeping in touch with people from my past.

But, for now, it’s hard, and I suck at it.

Most people know this already. When I was 17 I started working at Oakville Today, a community newspaper serving 25,000 people in Northern Oakville. I started as a Co-op student, running photocopies and doing copy editing, but it was not long before I was promoted to Sports Editor. For almost a full year I ran the sports department at this newspaper, and I cannot, for the life of me, explain how it happened. I think it was because of a combination of some weird voodoo magic and the fact that the publisher really liked the idea of having a sports editor he did not have to pay very well. But in any case, I had the job, and it still stands as one of the most important things I have ever done.

It all ended badly, of course, as things tend to do when you’re 17 and 18. I got bitter and left. Though, now, I honestly do not remember why. I remember walking into the office one day and talking to someone, and having them tell me they felt I was billing too many hours in my last invoice. They wanted to pay me less. And I said okay and smiled and everything seemed fine. But then I left the office, and got into my car. And I knew, driving home, that I probably did not really want to be a journalist ever again.

I got in touch with my editor at that paper this Christmas. I had not talked to her for almost five years, but felt it was important to let her know just how much of an impact she had on my life. I sent her a nice letter, and she sent me a very nice response. It was much less tense than I worried it would be. She told me what she had been doing since I last saw her (the paper, actually, folded less than a year after I left — I like to think it could not survive without me) and commented on some of the things I told her I was doing. It was all very standard and not at all significant to write about here, save for this one line, that sticks with me to this day.

“I expected you to just walk away,” she wrote. “You were a boy, after all. Girls go away with soppy cards and hugs and tears in their eyes - usually. Boys just walk away.”

I’ve thought about this a lot since she sent me that e-mail. Usually as I wander around town, trying to avoid social interaction for whatever reason. It crystallizes in my head like this: boys just leave. It’s such a simple phrase, elegant in its obviousness, perhaps the hallmark of a woman whose been divorced twice. It’s not that I don’t believe it’s true in general, but it bothers me that it might be true for me. Doesn’t that make us callous, unfeeling, empty, that we love without soppy cards and hugs and tears in our eyes?

It should not be so easy to walk away from something that means so much.

University is over now. I finished today, writing on the floor of a hockey arena two essays about Rome. The desk wobbled and the person behind me was very good at sneezing quietly. I listened to her do it, over and over again, sneezing quietly, almost internally, drawing all of the force of the sneeze inside of her save for a little ‘choo’ at the end. When I finished, I left the arena, like I had a dozen times before. And I walked home and bought bread so I could make a sandwich — my first act as a university graduate.

Where do I go from here, I wondered through it all. Walking down streets I know by heart, I thought again about how boys just leave. Because it is impossible now to ignore the feeling, even surrounded by people I really like and comfortable things I know I’ll miss, to deny that I want to go.

And what does that say about me?

Universally

I knew she was behind me but I didn’t know what to do. It was dark walking across the university quad. I had slept until 6 p.m., as I was known to do in first year, only to wake up and find I had no food to eat, and dining hall was closed. And so I carried groceries across campus to my room, knowing, for the last part of the trip, that she was behind me.

I knew her then, but not as well as I know her now. Not well enough to have an easy conversation. Not well enough to stop and make jokes. And so I kept walking, the groceries heavy in my hand, knowing she was right behind me, probably thinking the same sort of things about me, but also suffixing them with “Oh god, he’s so weird.”

When I reached the door to my dorm, she yelled to me. “Hey Matt,” she said. “Hey,” I replied, because I was not as witty then. “Got some groceries, do you?” she asked, rhetorically but enthusiastically. “Sure do!” I said, and then left.

When I put the stuff I had bought into my dorm room fridge, all I could think was angsty, apologetic things. Mostly they were capped off by the familiar refrain, wishing I had a new fresh start again. Wishing I had learned what everyone else seemed to have learned years ago.

I think I bought bread, processed cheese and margarine. I really lived on grilled cheese in first year.

First and Only

The outside world spun into being. Going through that door felt like going through a vortex. I burst outside with all the enthusiasm of a puppy whose just discovered his tail. I don’t remember much after that, save for commenting extensively about how much I hated stairs, and laying on my bed in an empty daze.

I swore silently at my TV that night. It was left on from when we played video games before the party. And I wanted nothing more than for it to be off. I remember mentally willing it, in between the times I held my face in the trash can, hoping it would just go off. Instead it just glowered at me, a bright blue signal-less screen, making no noise, producing no image. I called it useless and stupid. It called me shameful. Neither one of us really understood what the other was staying. He because I was drunk, and me because inanimate objects like televisions can’t talk.

Various friends poked their heads into my room that night, making sure I was okay. Every time they did, I hoped they would fix my TV problem. They didn’t, though, and I cursed them too. But mostly I cursed the blue screen.

A different her

We always walked together in the worst weather. Whenever it would drizzle or outright rain, she’d e-mail me, or slip handwritten letters under the door, detailing all sorts of things, but mostly just asking me if I’d go on a walk with her, later, in the middle of the night.

She told me once, as we crossed the same Quad, that she felt like her life was a song sung by a class in elementary school. One where she didn’t know the actions or the words. And was just doing her best to follow along with everyone else. I laughed and told her that was great, because it was, and we walked some more. Down to the water, I think, where we sat on a rock and laughed about ourselves.

I don’t talk to her anymore. But I still like the image she gave me of life as an elementary school song with actions and words. To this day, it’s one of the few things she gave me that I believe in.

Sun Set

Ari ran down the stairs to my room all excited. “Matt,” he said, “I need your camera.” I asked him why as I handed it to him, but he gave me no explanation as he ran upstairs again. Confused, but not confused enough to climb a bunch of stairs, I shrugged and went on with whatever it was I was doing.

Later, when he returned the camera, he told me that there was a gorgeous sunset outside, and he really wanted to make sure he captured it on film.

Strange Conditions

I leaned into the table in the cafeteria, surrounded by people I knew but not very well. Struck with something I had never really felt before, I said “Hey guys, help me remember the Family Matters theme song. And we did remember it — all of it — sitting at that table, surrounded by portraits of old men and a bunch of buffet carts.

The Fog

It fogged for a while, when everything became the same. “I’m in a rut,” I’d declare, drinking pints of beer with friends. It wasn’t said solemnly or sadly or even wistfully. It was just a statement of fact, almost said as a challenge to everyone else at the table: go ahead, prove me wrong.

But For Her

We’re sitting in a restaurant talking about her parents, I think, but all I can do is watch as she re-arranges the coins on the table, making symmetrical patterns for no real reason. I love this, I think, watching her go. This is everything I want. The coins end up parallel to the table’s edge, arranged in an arrow-shaped pattern, pointing at the bar. She seems satisfied.

Earlier, when we weren’t this good, I used to walk home so late at night it would be early in the morning. The street would smell dank and the traffic lights would blink red. My head would be filled with stupid questions about confusing things, all of them pounding the insides of my head, making it harder than it should have been to find my way home.

But now she sits across from me, done with her change, making silly faces. Because I’m making silly faces. I don’t know which of us started doing that first. We tell lots of jokes, pretending to be people we’re not, thinking ourselves way more hilarious than we probably are. She sighs heavy before she says anything serious, looking always at the ground.

And moving on

So this is it, I guess. I look at these memories that I can hold in my hand and smile about and still think that, yes, it is time to go. And what is that, I wonder, if not simply the fact that Boys Just Leave. And that drives me crazy, because it’s too simple, too perfect, too packaged in cynicism and doubt. I’m not above admit that males are, by and large, a really simple and easily-understood lot of people, but we don’t just leave, do we?

I am not really sure yet how to say goodbye to this.

Matt