“That’s really sad. You didn’t have, like, rowdy little neighborhood dudes to break stuff with? Or little bitch friends who invited you to sleepovers to make fun of you?”
“No. Didn’t even qualify for that.”
“I did,” Mel says. “Her name was Nancy. She invited me to her tenth birthday party and then told the class I was a lesbian.” She gives me jazz hands. Sings, “She knew!”
“So what’d you do?”
“Peed in her closet.”
“I’ve told you about Faulkner,” I say. “What it was like there. Kids like me didn’t really have friends.” I shrug, uncomfortable, rubbing the back of my neck. “I don’t know. Maybe I just repel people.”
Mel rolls her eyes, shakes her head. “It wasn’t you,” she says. “So you didn’t have friends. So what. What’d you do to pass the time?”
—
I loved TV. I spent more time with TV than anyone. TV was my personal practice, my prayer, my companion—as much as I could get from after-school Hanna-Barbera reruns to The Late Show and all that followed. I was made crazy by the idea that I would miss something important: even the pauses, the snow-outed channels, the storm-time screen-skipping. I fell asleep in front of TV and gleaned from it the same intimacy I one day would from sleeping next to someone—the gurgles and clenches of their stomachs, their leg jerks and mutters. I was convinced that, despite all its noise, it would miss me.
But: I had one solitary friend during this time. His name was Teddy Caudill. Treasured, because he was my only one. And though I wouldn’t know it for years, he was my first love.
It was a love that did not occur to us physically. It had a body in the way children handle each other when they do not yet know intimacy—closeness without electrical current. In the summers, his arms and legs tanned, the hairs turning to red gold. He smelled like sand, and sweat. Once, when we were pretending to be cats, I licked his face. Only later did I remember to be embarrassed: Wait. That was not a thing to do.
It was, in this way, unspoiled.
Teddy and his dad were our next-door neighbors. Teddy was a little strange himself, which was probably why we were friends—our force fields complemented one another. We spent whole summers crossing each other’s yards, tracking kittens through the rotting woodpile, going to the creek to see how fast it took the water to turn our feet orange. Our family had just purchased a VCR, a Quasar, and I made Teddy watch tapes and tapes of all the TV I recorded: a cartoon showcase I adored called Liquid Television. Count Duckula. My favorite music video from MTV, an eerie stop-motion Claymation spot by a band called Tool that both frightened and excited me. “But wait,” I kept saying, rewinding, pressing play. “Let’s watch it again.”
And he would. Teddy was patient, a weird enough quality on its own. He would listen to me jabber for an hour entire about Looney Tunes or Harriet the Spy or how much I hated my sister and say maybe two sentences throughout. But he clearly paid attention, his eyes on me, soft, bright intelligence behind them. He was the only person in my life who actually listened to me. Once, when I skinned my knee, Teddy slowly and carefully drew out the bits of gravel caught within using my mother’s tweezers. I cried, and it hurt, but I trusted him.
—
“I loved that video.” Mel shifts in her chair, ashing her cigarette. “One of mom’s boyfriends, this guy Kurt, really liked me because I liked Tool. He gave me a Tool tape for my birthday. He would have made a cool stepdad.”
I marvel silently. This isn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. In all my anxiety, I somehow forgot that it was Mel to whom I would be talking. Mel who would have questions, who would smoke and down Diet Cokes and tell me about peeing in some girl’s closet. “What happened?” I say.
“Pretty sure Mom stole from him. Big shock. So, Teddy was like you. He was a weird kid.”
“Well, he wasn’t weird so much as just—” I get a mental image. Teddy, eating lunch one day that summer at my house. PBJ and Doritos. His skinny shoulders pulled slightly back, concentrating on his sandwich. When my mother had given it to him, he whispered a thank you before polishing it off like it was the world’s most savory T-bone.
“I don’t know,” I say.
Mel turned her body toward me, cupping her chin in her hand, looking slightly away. “I’m glad you had someone,” she says. “Thinking of you back then. With no one. It’s sad.”
This makes me laugh.
I can see her smiling. “Are you laughing at my empathy pains? Fuck you, Sharon.”
“No no. That’s really nice. You’re a retroactive pal.”
Mel shifts, sighs, lifts her eyebrows. “So.” She flicks her Camel hard pack open, chooses a cigarette. “Tell me. When does it all hit the fan?”