Day Eight: High School

MISFITS


In sophomore English
I sat next to a boy
named Kevin Dick,
an unfortunate moniker
for an unfortunate lad.
His head was misshapen,
as if it had begun the process
of melting and toppling from his body
like ice cream from a cone,
and his hair sprouted in irregular patches
revealing shadowy bald spots
from where he had pulled it out
during fits of nervous self-deprecation.
Kevin had plans to own a mansion
when he grew up,
and have Bach piped in through speakers
while he worked on his masterpiece--
masterpiece of what, he never explained.
He had a tittering laugh,
manic and high,
like the call of a sandpiper.
Most people avoided him, but I
was in love with his mind,
so I talked with him whenever possible
during breaks in class,
about books and writing,
life after death, which both of us doubted,
our deeply rooted disgust with everything
and our mutual desire
to escape from downstate Illinois
as soon as we graduated.
Once the teacher changed the seating chart,
moved everyone away from their friends
except for us, whom she inexplicably
placed directly beside each other again.
We were astonished, and overjoyed,
and she told us she had done this
because she loved listening to us talk.
I thought this should be enough incentive
for Kevin to love me,
so one night
on a school bus returning from a play
I said to him, “Kevin, I really like you,
do you like me?”
and he replied that we were parallel lines
in the universe, drawn to each other,
but we would never cross.
That was the end of Kevin,
until years later,
I was passing through downstate Illinois,
and I heard his heart had exploded--
he had died slowly and quite painfully
from taking too many pills,
that he was gay
and had never stopped living with his parents,
and soon after he died,
their house burned down.
I was always a such poor judge
of whom I should love.