How we got around to each others homes back then, I have no idea. Americans live so far apart from one another, much farther than it takes to call each other neighbors or even to be in the same town. Remembering being sixteen, most of my memories simply start at someone’s house, as if the memory is begotten. Or better yet, just a sliver of silver in the jelly of my life. I can’t remember the name of whose place it was, because all my attention was on you. My nostalgia has me emerge from the night’s void onto a typical drive way with thick rocks, pine trees giving this shadowy tunnel discerning eyebrows. Walking by mythical you and what’s her name set me to flutter, me undoubtedly spewing out all manner of bravado and bad jokes. How is a mostly formed brain, full of books and video games, supposed to sit still coming upon a night to be with two girls, one of which is you.

I had read books where great sacrifice is suffered for only a few, stolen moments with the one that is kept so dearly in the heart, but here I am only tasked to walk to the end of a rocky path and not say something too horrible. There are RPG’s where the protagonist’s angst keeps him from ever getting too close with anyone. My teenage mind is already ablaze wondering what sort of privacy we will have, as there isn’t a parent in sight even now on our approach. Oh, how we were fugitives in our aimless love. As sure as we were, we could certainly be made an exception. Two teenagers with excellent tastes who still read in the dawn of the internet? There should have been a parade. But instead of what we were due, we were scurried out of spaces public or private.

My first step on to this wooden porch has mushrooms sprouting, snails growing wings launched from great blades of grass and octopus scribes recording it all. I look down at my foot and up at you, the porch’s wide berth with a wooden bench swing and some easily cared for potted plants, and I swoon. I am a delicate orchid with unfortunate brown petals, I can’t move. For all intents and our purposes, I never really took a step past there, I just froze and knew I could savor this moment for eternity. Not that I knew what was to happen, but for the pure promise and interest. I will never understand what could come next, but I knew for just a moment that I was full of mirth just to have time with you. I took the second step.

Walking up to the house, you were silent. It was mostly me blabbing away with this other girl, and stealing all glances at you. I could feel your nervousness for not speaking from the bottom of your feet, through the pebbles and up my calves and back. I had no clue how to translate that feeling to words or to actions, but if it’s any consolation here I am ten years later writing it all down and I can’t remember the other girl’s name, or anything she said that entire night. In my memory, there is just you, arms at your side and lips pursed.

We do eventually get into the house, moments pass so slowly when you tumble heart first into everything. Opening the screen door, swinging outward first, I don’t remember if it hits you on its way towards you or if I just want it to so I can keep being annoying from the future. I was so enamored to be around someone else so immersed in thought that I couldn’t leave you alone. Poking and prodding. The linoleum anteroom welcomes us in lovely suburban fashion, a door on the left and a long thin kitchen to the right. Other girl gestures to this door and says sacred words that I do remember:

“We’ll be hanging out in the basement tonight.”

 

My throat and fingertips are tingling warm from your presence, I don’t know what to do but stand in the threshold and admire linoleum, dark brown cabinets and this tiny room full of “please take off yours shoes.” I don’t seem to be very present as I stare at you staring at nothing; the ricochet of attention that comes in a world full of action but no cues. I just want to reach out to you, across all this propriety but I know there’s a big crushing game to play.This tiny inflatable raft will deflate. But I can’t take the first easy steps down the stairs, to the basement, to somewhere away. To continue our ever reflecting time together, the intent is to play rock band, because only pretend will do, only flashing screens and high scores and immediate positive feedback will do. We will skip all the hard work, shared pain and fortitude gained from being in a real band. All in order to simulate the adoring audience and easy execution. Fast forwarding right to the point where any thoughtful musician will think, “what has this become? How can a few personal thoughts bloom into a following. These are real people choosing to sacrifice their precious time, ticking away fast, to listen to me right now.” At least that’s all I think while playing this facsimile. Because I have never been able to manage my time leveraged by my desires, I have, of course, played the guitar games and can play above the easy difficulty, but not any higher as to be a nerd. I take the first step of the stairs down, fingers tracing the wood panelling in the dark. This is a forgotten temple, this faux wood is real carved jade. Everything glimmers, this chute of darkness. Our tour guide is a chattering, gibbering local. A great promise of treasure and glory lures us travellers to our doom. I already know I’ll never have this moment back. Like any american home, this is a temple of couches surrounding the television altar. There is a great void to my right and this den is everywhere otherwise, you’re floating somewhere between in front, behind me and in my mind. My heart is still beating fast at being left alone with girls. I’m glad to have games be the central focus. Any gathering through my life, this has been the case. Better that than it be our inadequacies, our failings at self described success, our being pulled by only our most immediate feelings or the chasm that we feel between one another. Our friend is still talking but I’m only listening to your silence, drawn to you knowing that your ipod is full of the same music as mine and that I have still never seen anyone with your hair color. We start to pay our game because conversation has long been dead as a main attraction, orators be damned. We are immersed in how silly we all are; that I can’t even play a real guitar, that our friend is such a frontwoman but finds herself the drums and that quiet you decides to sing. There’s a mode where you all play a pre-determined setlist and go on tour, but we’re too cool to like a band like Foghat.We’re all laughing at hearing you warble and yell, having fun by the flashes of lights and numbers telling us that we are a success today, creative and spectacular. I hope we had snacks, pocky sticks or gushers or real fruit or any other infinite variety of nothing supplements. I never thought I could play video games with girls, certainly not unsupervised at that. We’re getting tired of all this music and you say:

 

“I want to pick the next song.”

 

I am all attention here, what could this best buy game have in its soundtrack that you could want to sing. We exit our world tour mode and go to a long list of songs. You scroll all the way down (with a plastic microphone) to “Maps” by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. I think I maybe only pretended to know then, and said “oh sweet, I love this song.” I tell myself now that there’s no way I knew it. You couldn’t have known it then as you eventually would. But you can surprise yourself; your heart can gush and bleed, fingers, down to the knuckles, can go numb, your bones can crack and you will know love. The descending crash sound that comes after selecting a song is the last moment I was how I once was. The song starts with Morgan, that’s her name, slamming on the drums like a cave girl. I had simple notes, so I could mostly listen. My heart still beats to this song’s rhythm, drum rolls and all.

 

I have a hard time getting this down, even now, several loves past, without being carried away like I was then. When you, as Karen O, sang the word “Wait,” just that one word, I realized that all the books hadn’t prepared me for the well of feelings I would be in life. God, you ripped me apart then and there. Your eyes were on this TV screen and rising and falling bars with words above them, sacred words, and I’m there dumbstruck with a plastic guitar.

 

“They don’t love you like I love you.”

 

I am a pulpy residue in your complete presence, it hurt so bad to be there in this regular house in this regular town being turned inside out by a karaoke rendition of a recording of a copy of a cover of some big city band. All that desperate love of those new york buildings got cold pressed into this electric song and lasered into a video game, cheese grating my little boy brain. Eat me, adolescent love. I had never let anybody else who cared about books and music like me.

 

“Maaa-aah-aah-Maaa-aah-aa-maaaaaps.”

 

What the hell was a maps but a password to make me self-destruct, no failsafe for my erratic construction.

 

Then a barrage pf this high school girl telling me through song that the other high school girls don’t love me like she loves me. Certainly right in that moment. I was a stupid little kid trying to stand up in the ten thousand year tall waterfall of love singing right to your core. I could imagine losing my grip on the game and making us fail, but I was a hopeless nerd and probably got a million points. Even today, we make light of all those dandies and frilly Versaille idiots, but they knew the simple, irrevocable power of listening to someone you love singing to you.

 

The rest of the session went along fast with me rolling around in the immediate memory of Maps. I was still glad that one person in your group of friends didn’t hate me, all those folks I had never even talked to deciding to dislike me just because I had this infinite crush on a girl with an identical ipod. They just set the tone forever, every action will be transmitted and interpreted ad nauseum. But maybe this little posh clique back fired and drew me even closer, what I do know is that it was, and always would be other people that would muddy up our river. We went on and on playing until a ripe old 12:30am, undoubtedly bed time. I was to stay on the couch of my choice in this temple. I had always wanted to sleep in a crater. That was fine, but where would you two go? The friend’s room of course, a hundred floors up, no boys allowed. I completely understand as our friend disappeared my teenage begging started and cycled. You had nothing to say but I held you back, you groaned and said you wouldn’t be comfortable down here anyway. You had no idea what intense effect you had on your surroundings. I could feel fate slipping away. What a glorious, desperate time in our life. I kissed you a few times but you got away, shambled up the stairs and into the rule-abiding void. This was okay, I had a memory to toss around. In a world of intraversible chasms, I would remember this bridge named Maps forever. I may never be serenaded by a lover again. My whims will carry me by the wing, I will be in strange places, sleeping on strange couches and worrying about odd things, but I will always know at one moment I was sung to by someone who loved me unlike how “they” loved me.

 

Me, asleep.

Do you exist out there still?

Yes.

Good.

 

After several lifetimes, a mass of thirds, you an amber white phantom slide into my senses. It is a secret time of night where nothing happens in a quantifiable way. You glide onto this narrow couch and widen it into a Califronia king. We are swimming in each other and I’m glad to be alive, I hope you were too. Nothing happens but you lay there with me for an eternity. Much like a black hole is only discernible by its void, you show me my sadness by your own. Two tiny mobius strips intertwined in this locket at the Lafferty’s.