Prom Fever

I end up sleeping over at Gerard’s place that night. He tells me that he’s worried about me; that he doesn’t want to leave me alone for too long. I only half buy into it, and not because I don’t believe him, but because I don’t hear him. I nod somberly, all of my senses and cognition numb from the day’s events.
I feel downright nauseous, completely sick to my stomach. Do you know what the worst part is? The information has yet to fully sink in. As I said, my thinking processes are slowed almost to the point of a halt, and I remain in a hazy, disoriented fog for the remainder of my day.
We get to Gerard’s house and my head’s starting to spin a little bit. I take the first opportunity I see to take a seat, and that’s when Gerard leads me down to his room in the basement.
Gerard’s room is as cluttered as his head; a beautiful disaster that only makes sense to him, or people similar enough to him. I suspect he keeps it this way on purpose. After all, he always says how a clean room and a made bed is a tidy person that’s emotionally dead.
Gerard chuckles when he sees me laid out spread eagle in his desk chair. What he doesn’t understand is that at the moment, I am terribly lightheaded.
We don’t do much. We just hang out, which mostly consists of me on my phone, and Gerard drawing while the same Brand New album plays on repeat. Occasionally I’ll show Gerard something funny off my phone, and he’ll tear away from his drawing just long enough to watch, but as soon as the two sentence joke is read or the seven second video is watched, he’s moved on, I’ve moved on, and we’re both totally over it. It’s awful, the disposability of things we think we care about.
We’ve become an old married couple; fallen victim to patterns. We used to be so spontaneous, so original. We’d entertain each other for hours on end, and each moment was the buildup, climax, or downslide of an adventure. It kept us guessing and that made us happy.
Now we just sit there. We sit in the same spots and in the same positions and play the same pop punk album and just let the hours roll. The friendship between Gerard and I has become as static as the ground we walk on. Nothing changes and nothing thrives and its making me contemplate if we’re really that good of friends; if we ever were in the first place. We met by chance, a total fluke. Our high school is big enough so that if I hadn’t met him that day of preschool, it’s quite possible I never would’ve known more than his name. I wonder if that’d be better. To have never met Gerard, to have gone about my daily labors without him by my side. The question isn’t whether I’d live; I’d find a way to manage, but whether I’d have any friends or not. Would I have the ability to branch out and make friends with kids I didn’t like? Could I sit there and listen to the guys talk about who fucked Sara Hanson under the bleachers of the football field and which hard liquor they preferred? I picture myself in a varsity letterman jacket and involuntarily cringe.
Gerard must feel me shudder; he asks, “Frank? Are you okay?”
“Wh- y-yeah,” I mumble. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
“Good,” Gerard replies. He lets out a sigh, and not like one of those tired ones, and not like a forced one, but just this melancholy, prolonged sigh that pries the hairs from the back of my neck.
“Something wrong?” I question, and I feel an awful lot like a wife consulting her husband after a hard day at work.
Gerard shakes his head, answering, “I’m just thinking a lot.”
“What about?” This is a question I’ve asked Gerard about 8 thousand times over the span of our friendship, and I don’t think I’ve gotten a straight forward answer once. I’m expecting the usual; some long pause followed by a bullshit statement or nothing at all.
But this time, Gerard responds almost instantly. “People. I’m thinking about people.”
“Broad subject,” I chuckle. “Care to elaborate?”
“They surprise you, don’t they?” Gerard says. He grins sort of stupidly, and some roses cluster in his cheeks.
“Why are you blushing?” I scoff. “Are you warm?”
Gerard’s face only grows hotter, and instead of answering my question, he just rolls over, putting his back to me.
“Gerard?” I ask.
“Goodnight, Frank,” Gerard dismisses.
He doesn’t sound mad. I know he’s at least a little irritated; I probably should’ve backed him up about how great it was Lyn-Z asked him out rather than demand an explanation for his body’s involuntary processes. I really suck at this whole ‘being supportive of your little girlfriend’ thing, and not because I’m a bad person to talk to in general. In fact, I’ve had a lot of girls cry on my shoulder and tell me that I don’t just hear, but I listen. Girls like to gossip with me or confess things because they assume I’m gay. They assume I’m gay because of what the football players say, and the football players think I’m gay because they’re football players and I’m not. While my sexuality is not of importance at the moment, the circumstances of my current situation are. I’m a great listener, most of the time. If Lyn-Z broke Gerard’s heart and he came to me for help, I’d be a little more willing to oblige. But if I knew he was just going to crawl from my arms back into hers, well, I may not be such a good Samaritan.
And it’s selfish, to not be there for him. To not share the excitement of his first prom date is a petty thing to do, and I’m fully aware of this fact, but I just can’t stop it.
The heart wants what it wants, and this heart wants nothing to do with the name Lyn-Z.

Notes

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