jordan's diary -- shooting to kill

2001-01-10 :: 05:31:11
This Boy

Soundtrack: The Smashing Pumpkins, Siamese Dream; Blur, The Best Of (Limited) [Discs 1 & 2]
T h i s��B o y .
one.
It's hard to choose, but if you put a gun to my head and asked me the problem with Kate Sever, I'd say her nose. In retrospect, that's where my problems start; her problems are probably worse than that -- I'm saying, it's a lovely nose -- but it's all ultra-hazy speculation at this point. Kate Sever had the upturned model nose, a buttoned-on ski jump that sent you out from her aquamarine eyes and over her pronounced -- but in my everduring opinion, beautiful -- chin. If you asked me what her worst problem was now, I'd venture her not being in college, maybe a drug habit, but I can't really be sure. Straight, full, warm golden brown hair the color of my favorite belt, the one I wear almost every day, fell down her head to dust off at the shoulders of a rugby shirt she feminized with ease, with aplomb. An unruly wisp of it breaks into the frame of her face. She will not give the middle school photographer's camera much of a smile. In seventh grade, the very furthest corners of her lips seem to be poised to raise, but resolutely refuse to give more than a hint; in eighth grade, the dimples are successfully puckered, highlighting her cheekbones, but there is scarcely more than a sliver of white revealed between her shapely lips.¹ My problems, these are the reasons why I couldn't stay away.
When I first saw Kate, it was in the very beginning of seventh grade, the first week or two, the time when you're busy looking around for whom you're supposed to fall in love with for the rest of all eternity. I was in the cafeteria about a table away. She was sitting with other pretty girls doing the things pretty girls do, mostly being pretty and making boys stare for embarrassingly long periods of time. In the next few days, using the brains of the lunch crowd around me and awkward, faux-ignorant questions about everyone at Kate's table (one can't be too obvious now), I managed to find out my obsession's first name. I didn't do much about Kate that year, turning my heart instead towards Emily.² Nevertheless, Donny and Dan sniffed out my feelings in Home Ec while we were waiting for our current lab to cook up in the oven. We were discussing our respective crushes in vague terms, and I refused to give mine's name, mortified that releasing the single syllable "Kate" from my lips into the atmosphere around us would result in some horrifically embarrassing phenomenon and shatter any remote chance of Being With Her. As overly dramatic as my sensibilities were, it wasn't too far from what would happen. Deciding to give some tidbit so as not to seem like an asexual prude, I told my main interrogator, Donny, that my crush looked like Kathy Ireland. When he returned next day he told me he had consulted with several people and the only girl who looked like Kathy Ireland was Kate Sever. He'd done his homework. So Donny said, "Do you like Kate Sever?"
"Oh no," I said, "there's another girl who looks like Kathy Ireland too, but I'm not saying." He pushed a bit more but I remained very defiant, and eventually Donny bought it. Dan seemed to just find it amusing, and probably snickered a fair bit.³
two.
My problems with Kate Sever weren't really so bad until eighth grade, where I decided I would go for broke. The seed having been planted and reluctantly lying dormant for a year, it finally began to grow, blossoming steadily throughout the year, building in waves of listening to Meet The Beatles!, or more specifically, listening to "This Boy" and then rewinding to play it again. I would sometimes fail to time the rewinding right and then, frustrated, sit through the end of "I Saw Her Standing There." As "It Won't Be Long" was my general favorite song on the album and it sat right next to "This Boy," I sometimes let it play as well, and the lyrics seemed fairly appropriate. But I knew the secret to Kate's heart lay in "This Boy," in Paul's revelation to Kate that I would be happy just to love her, that I wouldn't mind the pain, would always feel the same, etc.
To go along with the religious mantras provided by my trusty Beatles, I would invoke the power of the approximately one square inch photograph in the yearbook, the seventh grade one, her face sitting in the upper right corner of page 47. Mostly this would involve a lot of staring at the picture, as if by the unbridled force of my will it would turn into a portal, and the real Kate Sever would step out into my bedroom, where I would unquestionably have no idea what to do with her radiance besides propose marriage or something equally foolish and extravagant.
As this never presented itself as an option (which I cannot say was for lack of trying), I had to take the foolish extravagance to Kate. And what better day for that purpose but one fast approaching: February 14^th, Valentine's Day 1993.
three.
The first thing I had to do was plan The Gift. My first thoughts turned immediately to the omnipresent flowers, but the thought of bringing a bouquet to school on a bus with middle-schoolers ready to ask too many painful, squirm-inducing questions quickly nixed that. There was no easy way to smuggle them in without crushing them, and besides, everyone gives flowers.
And then it came to me. I remembered Megan's⁴ boisterous exuberance when she reported opening her locker to reveal a large Russell Stover truffle-filled heart, which she proudly displayed on the bus ride home. If there was one thing my parents had taught me, it was better chocolate than Russell Stover, which was looked down upon with tremendous disdain in my household. Chocolate would fit into my backpack easily; I could keep my hazardous materials a secret until The Gift was ready to be revealed to Kate.
But what sort of statement was I to make? As for the brand, I immediately settled on Godiva, a chocolate pedigree that met and/or exceeded the strict standards to which I was accustomed. The size was a different matter, and a more difficult variable to calculate. Surely not a large box, which, while being a more fitting metaphor for the boundless scope of my overeager nature, would doubtless scare Kate off, crushing her like an anvil of love. What I needed instead was to shave a reasonable chunk of emotion off the total sum of my feelings and represent it in chocolate form, using it to entice Kate into donning a diving bell and plumbing the true depths of my devotion. With this logic in mind, I settled on the staid, modest -- but direct -- statement of a four-chocolate sampler with a seasonal (viz., Valentine's) ribbon.⁵
Deciding on The Gift, however, was nowhere near the terrifying experience of preparing The Card. The contents of the card had to bear my thoughts, crystallize the blood beating through my heart into words of romance that would woo Kate and, more importantly, blind her to the unbelievably vast popularity chasm between us. And with all of that pressure I still had to beware the love anvil, Kate's fragile soul would not be able to bear a full onslaught of my desires; she had to gradually work up to it, training like a marathon runner. Still, the chocolates would be a hollow gesture unless a sincere, well-written token of my affections adorned them. The only way to do this, I knew, would be a poem. But what experience did I have writing poems -- or more to the point, good poems? None! It was hopeless. The perfect gift would be crippled by its accompanying card. I had to enlist help.
Enter my grandmother, a former English teacher and possessor of a full, unabridged Oxford English Dictionary.⁶ I explained to Grandma that I wanted an acrostic using "KATE" and perhaps also "SEVER," and then I asked for her help. She called me back a little bit later with an acrostic for "KATE" that said something about hoping her eyes would never lose their youthful beauty or some other unbelievably formal and Romantic message. I wish I had a copy of it handy, but to be honest, I sincerely believe the poem is lost to time, or at the very best, buried in a dresser drawer of Kate's. If you continued to hold the gun to my head that you had at the beginning of the story, and you asked me if I used this poem, I'd say "I think so, but I think I tweaked a word or two." My parents thought it sweet but not too sweet, and their authority seemed to be good enough for me, a man-child unskilled in the ways of poetry (let alone love poetry), and though I felt awkward penning a red-ink copy of the poem on one of the several Godiva cards that I had ready,⁷ worried that Kate would turn up her already upturned nose at it, I'm fairly certain that my grandmother's verse is what made it to Kate in the end. I signed the card with a heart, the popular noncommittal symbolic substitute for the actual word "love," and labeled the envelope. For the final touch, my dad assisted me in lettering "Kate" on a pink paper lunch bag with a red felt-tip marker in an elegant font. The bag was really quite pretty, and I lowered its precious cocoa-based cargo in. Tomorrow was the big day.
four.
On the bus ride to school, the nerves were building. I kept checking to make sure the paper bag hadn't suddenly vaporized inside of my backpack, and upon finding it present and accounted for, checked and rechecked to ensure that the bag wasn't suffering any unwanted creases while in surreptitious transit. Finally, finally the old yellow sausage pulled in to the bus circle and spat us out onto the sidewalk, catching the first glimpses of harsh morning sunlight. Unable to find or divine Kate's locker combination, nor knowing any friend of hers who would be of any assistance in that matter, I had resolved to begin a stake out and personally deliver The Gift. The additional stress that this added was countered with the knowledge that a personal delivery was the most complete romantic gesture, an open giving of my carefully prepared metaphor, truly going for broke. It's not terribly hard to stay in one place in a hallway in middle school since everyone else is milling about and therefore isn't really looking to see what you're up to, but I forced myself to take regular drinks from the nearby water fountain and look as if I wasn't really, you know, waiting for someone. The only person I distinctly remember passing me by was Chad.⁸ The clock was inching towards homeroom bell, and though homeroom was literally 20 feet away for me, it wasn't a very good omen for my increasingly twittery gastrointestinal system.
Mr. Read, my bookish, prematurely grayed homeroom teacher, poked his head out to indicate that perhaps I should join the rest of the disciples inside. I gave him a pleading look -- just a few more minutes, she hasn't arrived yet! -- and somehow, he just smiled, understanding, and with a quick nod, ducked back inside the door. Saved. But where was Kate? The big hand ticked past the 6 with a thick ca-chunk sound, the way all the synchronized clocks moved without any gradation of seconds, minute to minute. And then it went further, inching towards the 7, indicating that she was now unquestionably tardy, because my bus was luckily one of the earliest arrivals, and I'd been waiting for nearly half an hour now. Still, I couldn't help but worry that my plan was foiled, maybe she wouldn't go by her locker this particular morning to make up for her tardiness. I would have to regroup and attack by skipping out of a class and waiting during her lunch, or maybe at the end of the day --
There she was.
She was ascending the steps, laughing and chatting with Leslie⁹ -- wait, no, I hadn't planned on someone else accompanying her, this was supposed to be between her and me, what was this infiltrator doing? Get out, Leslie! I prayed that they'd split up at Kate's locker, but it was not to be. They began to walk off, and I stood there, dumbfounded, my guts burning. It was now or never. "Kate," I called. She paused, then turned around. So did Leslie, but it didn't really matter now, I was committed. There is something that binds up the first syllable within the gullet, but after the silence is broken and the first bit is exposed to the air, it frees you to let its cousins out. Holding the bag out, I said, "This is for you," and I'd like to think I added a "Happy Valentine's Day" after that. Kate accepted my oblation gracefully, thanked me, and continued on her way without opening it, which I wasn't sure was either good or bad. My bomb dropped, I doubled back and returned to homeroom, happy and flush with the deed being done, the wheels set in motion, satisfied with knowing that whatever came of it was now, more or less, out of my hands.
Ted was in Kate's homeroom and reported that he had repeatedly seen her jaw moving in a manner that could almost certainly be taken as mastication. Was he certain? No, but he had seen the chocolate box nearby. He thought. The information wasn't concrete, but it would have to do. My offering had been accepted. I was, to say the least, overjoyed.
five.
I knew going in that the news would travel fast, accelerated by Leslie's presence. I was not, however, prepared for the deluge of questions that Sarah¹⁰ would pepper me with in homeroom the next day.
"So, Jordan... did you give chocolates to Kate Sever?"
"Uh, yeah."
"So, do you like Kate?"
"Well, I think that should be obvious, Sarah."
"Do you think she likes you?"
"How should I know, Sarah?"
It went on, Sarah was like an interminable gattling gun, she kept firing away in the presence of Arzu (also popular) and Emily (yes, that Emily), not to mention the rest of the homeroom, but I took the heat. I had declared my love, undaunted by the popularity inequality, I couldn't back away now. After an eternity of standing before Sarah's one-woman tribunal, I took my seat, knowing that the match had hit the gasoline. It was clear that everyone would soon know, but I really didn't care.
My one lucky break was the fact that P.E., which I had with Kate, was now in the archery unit. For reasons unknown to me, the singular athletic ability of my marionette-like body was to shoot a bow and arrow much better than just about anyone in our class, led by Mr. U. Mr. U wore Abercrombie & Fitch before it became trendy in the youth market, back when it was still an old man's store. He was very big on bows and arrows: he was a skilled hunter and demonstrated the use of a compound hunting bow for us. He drew back the bow with a P.E. arrow, the pulleys clicked into place, and he showed us how the incredible tensile forces that exist at the beginning due to the pulleys are for the benefit of being able to hold the arrow back with virtually no effort once the draw has been completed. He said he could sit like that for hours, very still, waiting for a deer. Then he aimed through the sight and released. His shot tore right through the target, ripping the plastic feathers off the arrow. We were duly impressed. He shot a few of his hunting arrows completely through the target, which was even more impressive, particularly when he described the various different tips that could be used on them (poison, explosive, etc.).
Our bows were the dinky plastic kind, but still plenty of work to draw and hold for the gangly members of the class. Balloons festooned the bullseyes. We would line up in our assigned columns (from opening exercises) and sit behind the shooting line, where eight ratty plumes of arrows sprouted from traffic cones, around each cone two bows, a smaller and a larger. You can see a picture of the conic set up on page 75 of the seventh grade yearbook, some girls out of focus in the background. Five arrows per shooter would be launched; when all shooters were done, arrows were retrieved during a safety-ensuring no-shooting period. My archery prowess became evident, I was piercing the balloon rather often, and with many members of the class hitting the safety net rather than the target, Mr. U began to use me as the example archer.
The class' attention would be directed to me and he would say, "Okay Jordan, draw the bow," and I would, praying not to trip, have my fingers slip off the string, and put someone's eye out. "Look how Jordan draws back the bow, his elbow bent in the proper form, you need to do it like that." Like what? What kind of paradigm was I? I had little idea what I was doing, chalking it up to my malformed (so I believed) joints making good on their existence for once in my physically uneducated life. All I knew was, Mr. U was consistently bathing me in the nervewracking but endlessly exciting spotlight, which meant everyone was watching me, and that meant that Kate was watching me, she was seeing me display some skill in P.E. That could not be anything but stellar. Every time I caused a balloon to pop, I had to resist the extraordinary temptation to check and see if Kate had seen my accomplishment.
Anna,¹¹ one of Kate Sever's best friends, was also in our P.E. class. If you added up the face time that each member of Kate's coterie had with her, Anna and her copper hair would be floating among the cream. Anna was also someone who didn't seem to immediately ice up if I said hello to her, and since there was no direct reply from Kate's camp regarding my valentine, I decided to channel Kate through Anna. We were both up to shoot.
"Hey, Anna."
"Hey."
Twang. Twang.
"Anna, can I ask you something?"
"Sure."
Twang.
"What does, uh, what does Kate, you know, think?"
"You mean about --"
Twang.
"Yeah."
Twang.
"I don't know, do you want me to ask her for you?"
"Yeah, sure."
Twang. Twang.
Kate was, naturally, in Anna's column and Anna quickly convened with her. Whisper, whisper, whisper, I watched them discuss my romantic possibilities, but I tried as hard as possible to avert my suspicious gaze. And then, just as Anna and I came up to shoot again, a verdict was reached.
"Jordan."
Twang.
"Yeah?"
"She says she likes you back."
Twang. Cupid had a direct hit.
"Are you serious?"
"Yeah, serious."
Twang. Twang.
"Wow. Okay."
And that was that. We went back to our places in line, and Anna rejoined Kate, and they chattered back up again. It seemed impossible, but it had happened, my offering had opened her eyes. Nothing else mattered; I rode the bus home with all of my logic circuits scrambled. Kate Sever had looked beyond the braces, the popularity discrepancy, the lack of an earring, and she liked me back.
six.
The celebratory phone calls to friends long since complete, days passed by and I would spend too much time looking over from my table to Kate's at lunch (I had somehow managed to finagle a seat closeby this year as well, securing a head spot at the popular boys' table, oddly enough). Anna once had to inform me that I was unnerving Kate with my staring, and would I please stop looking over quite so much. That was enough to make me want to put my eyes out, but I doubt it really curbed my passive-obsessive behavior. My ability to not act on the newfound information was stunning. Kate liked me, but what was I doing about it?
I was going to the sock hop to dance with her. Of course, Kate wasn't aware that we were going to dance, but I figured that was the natural next step in our budding romance. She was going to be there, she had to, everybody went to the sock hops. Our parents dropped us off, cars herding in to take the place of the usual yellow paddy wagons in the bus circle. My assumption regarding her presence was correct, and I had barely arrived before I got my proof. We crossed paths in the hallway, our eyes met, she fixed the stray lock of hair that always peeked into her face behind her ear, I smile-nodded, she smiled the partial smile of her eighth grade picture, only giving me a sliver of teeth -- and then our backs were to one another, the gap between us increasing again. I frittered time away in the game room (a converted gymnasium), pretending to care about a game of pool, a game of foosball, all the while planning when I would duck into the dance to find Kate and sweep her off her feet. I seemed to be conveniently missing every slow song, a lost soul wandering to the dance floor (also known as the cafeteria with the lights off) and back again to the games I didn't care about at all. I would see bits and pieces of Kate, stray glimpses of her friends, but there was never The Right Moment. My guts were back at it, knotting up, chickening out.
And then, right in front of me, there was Anna in her powder blue dress.
"Jordan?"
"Yeah?"
"Kate's really sorry, but... she doesn't like you."
"...Oh."
And there it was. The horrible tragic truth I'd known all along, that everybody knew, it had been spoken, was now dancing around my head, laughing down at me. There was no escape now, save for the bathroom. So in I went, and there I broke down in front of the ill-placed mirror, hiding myself behind the partition it hung on.
I was doubled over¹² when Greg¹³ came in, trying not to stain my clothes with tears. It was the kind of heaving gut-crying that sucks the air out of your lungs so that they seem to be coated with a viscous oil, stifling the alveoli, as if they no longer properly respond to oxygen.
"Dude, Jordan, what's wrong? Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm... fine." I was quite obviously far from fine, but it's traditional to deny any state of not being fine, so I did.
"Dude, here, calm down. Do you need a tissue, man?" I collected myself a little. "Yo, what happened man, what's going on? Are you all right? What happened?" Someone was about to come in to use the facilities, but Greg shooed him off before he could see what was going on. I was bowled over, incredulous. He seemed to actually care, so I told him what happened, about liking Kate (which he knew anyway), and thinking she liked me, having double-checked Anna for seriousness, then finding out just now that Kate did not, in fact, like me, and how unfair it was, and here I was now, crying in front of him in the bathroom. The story was sprinkled with spasmic sobs and bursts, but Greg listened, bent over, hands on quadraceps, meeting me at my level. It was pretty astonishing, and rather comforting. When I was done, Greg said, "Hang on, I'll be back," and walked out. I was still quite a mess, and I flushed my face with cold water, trying to avoid soaking my clothes, trying to disappear when someone came in to piss.
A little bit later, Greg reappeared. "Anna's outside, she wants to see you," he said.
"Okay," I said weakly, and Greg left. Stepping out towards the florescent hallway, I could see Anna waiting in the doorway, her face kind, sympathetic.
"Come with me," she said. "Kate wants to say something to you." I paused. "Here," she said, and took my arm in hers, like we were about to go walk down the aisle together.
That's when I saw Kate down the hallway, surrounded by popular kids, a royal court around a queen. In my mind's eye they fan out, some lying at her feet, no one taller than her. I could not believe what was happening. Was this for real? Anna led me gently, step by step, closer to their Hera, to Kate, to The Kate. Kate Sever. I was trying to control my crying, but clearly to no avail; I was a wreck. Everyone can see this, will bear witness to this ultimate disgrace, it's going to be horrible, Anna, please let go of my arm --
And then, we were face to face, her nose turned up at me, turned up at the world.
"I'm sorry," Kate said.
"Yeah, well, it's not your fault." Of course it was her fault, or maybe Anna's, but what was I going to say? Tears were falling, I couldn't make them stay inside. We stared at each other for a moment, and then I said, "Well, I guess I'll go home now." There wasn't much else for me to do. I went and got my coat from the shelf in the cafeteria where it was waiting and set off for the front doors. The court's faces turned around. As I neared the exit, I turned around to face them.
"Bye," I called, giving a small wave.
"Bye," said Kate, returning the wave.
"Hey, man, take some Tylenol, okay?" said Greg, smiling.
"Okay, Greg," I snorted through my snot-clogged nose.
It didn't take long to find my parents and their heartfelt but unhelpful condolences. How the hell could it be Kate's loss if I was the one crying? Kate had really done my logic in, and they were not helping bring it back. We drove to Friendly's and I got an enormous coffee Fribble, soothing my insides as best I could with a freezing drink.
seven.
In the coming days, much to my amazement, I never suffered any kind of humiliation for what had transpired at the sock hop. Time went on, and though I knew it a dead end, I still couldn't set my heart on anyone but Kate. As eighth grade raced towards oblivion, terminating in late June, the yearly Dinner Dance was fast approaching. The Dinner Dance consists of all eighth graders (or at least, those who buy tickets) and all their parents (the ticket-buying ones) eating a large-scale dinner together, kids with kids, parents with parents. The gymnasium is decked out in some theme (ours was nautical: Cruise Ship). Then the kids go off and have a mini-prom dance in the converted cafeteria, and although limousines and prom dresses/tuxedos are discouraged, they occasionally make appearances. Charlie had snapped Kate up as his date, which made sense since he was more on par with her social stature, and besides, I had long since resigned myself to going stag and meeting up with a few equally stag male friends there. On the day of the soir�e, Kate brought her dress to school and kept it in her locker to show her friends. I caught a glimpse of black as I went by, and later heard Charlie discussing just how ridiculously short it was. Kate was going to look hot, he squealed.
I arrived with both of my parents and tried to shirk them as quickly as possible, which they understood. With my parents mingling elsewhere, I found Mike, Ted, and Dan, and we ate dinner together among a few other guys. I picked up the souvenir modeling clay life-preserver necklace off the table and stuffed it into my pocket. It was white, with blue accents at the Cardinal directions, and it hung from black thread. Dinner came to a close and it was time for the dance, but I had no one to dance with, and my guts were getting to me again. I had seen Kate, and the dress was a delightfully scandalous black nothing.¹⁴ Charlie was right -- but where was he? Why wasn't he dancing with Kate? I sat down in a plastic chair by the payphones, my insides writhing, and my parents asked what was wrong. What was I going to say?
"Nothing," I sulked, scuffing a loafer on the ground. They knew what was wrong, but there was no fixing that.
The photographer's area was off to my upper-right, just next to the front doors, behind a curtain. Charlie and Kate walked up to get their portrait taken, arcing through my field of vision, then disappeared behind the sheet, and I burned with envy. That boy didn't deserve Kate. I deserved Kate. This seething miasma of repressed emotion curdled, remaining hidden while I sat in the chair, worrying if my socks were too short (exposing some of my ever-hairier legs), or fretting if they were perhaps the wrong color. I went to the dance floor now and again, but I never saw Charlie and Kate together. She floated free, standing there, an unused trophy. The DJ poured song after song into the speakers. The clock on the wall was counting down, minute by minute, the moments we had left together under the cafeteria ceiling. And then: "This is the last dance, so make it special," the DJ instructed.
"Stand By Me" began to sweep across the floor, and somehow there I was again, so close to Kate, so unbelievably close. The rented disco ball spun overhead, smashing the blinking colored lights into a million neon fragments that dappled the soon-graduating class, in the last throes of its last hurrah. The first verse was over, and Charlie was nowhere to be seen. Now was the time. I made my way to her.
"Kate?"
She turned to me, and I just wordlessly gestured to the floor.
And then there we were, dancing.
Kate Sever and I were together for last moment of the eighth grade Dinner Dance, practically in the middle of the floor. She was right up next to me, my jacket and trousers were actually touching her dress, the life-preserver buried in my pocket, it was so perfect, perfect except for my clubfeet smashing down on top of her toes, but she magnanimously ignored my missteps (which was even more perfect). We circled around with me leading clumsily, trying to comprehend what was actually occurring, what I was participating in. Now people were noticing, they were bearing witness -- they were cheering. Bryan¹⁵ yelled, "Go Jordy!" and pumped his fist at me, and I couldn't hold back a smile. Charlie was nowhere to be found.
Ben E. King sang out the last calls to stand by him, and then it was over. We parted, and I could see her face in focus now, smiling at me. It was enough. It was time to go. Kate and I said our goodbyes, and I found my parents. We left, and I got another large coffee Fribble, this time toasting the opposite end of the emotional spectrum.¹⁶
eight.
P.E. was over now, our gym shorts retired, the year itself all but over, which meant it was time to sign yearbooks and imprint ourselves on each other's memories. Mr. U was demonstrating his one-handed free throw technique for the basketball-inclined, and he still shot with amazing accuracy. "Never leave on a miss," he advised us.
With the success of the Dinner Dance behind me, I was emboldened, ready to try Kate for a signature. It took me a little time to work it up, but I waited for her to finish signing her current book and then said, "Kate? Would you sign?"
"Oh, sure," Kate said, smiling, taking custody of my yearbook and my Scripto black ballpoint (the pen her hands touched now buried in my desk or just plain lost).
Kate Sever's eighth grade yearbook signature:
Jordan-
This years (sic) been cool and I'm
really glad I met you.
You showed me how to
express my feelings towards
others. Your (sic) a really good
friend and it sucks that
your (sic) not going to Woodson.
Hope to see [ "you" missing ] sometime (like at
the mall). Love ya Kate
That's line break for line break, unlike the rest of the signatures I've shared with you. It's written in that bubble writing that a lot of girls seem to adopt around middle school. The only other signature on the page is Erin's (Megan's height-mismatched friend), recalling her funny nickname for me. It kind of pissed me off at the time that someone had signed on Kate's Page, but I made my peace with it; Erin was a pretty good person and I hadn't told her not to, after all. About the actual text, the truth is, if I added up the total sum of words I spoke to Kate in my entire existence, I doubt it would top out above a few hundred. I was no friend of any traditional sort to Kate, but it was nice of her to say what she said. Her last remark is an inside joke of sorts,¹⁷ and therefore I considered it indicative of a certain level of thoughtfulness among a sea of wishes for me to "Have a nice summer."
nine.
As Kate's signature indicates, our educational paths diverged after middle school. (I went to a high school no one else in this story attended, none of the major characters or yearbook signers, anyway.) The torch I carried faded out, new high school crushes were rushing to the forefront of my testosterone fits. I indulged my middle school memories a few times,¹⁸ but eventually Kate Sever came to mind on rarer and rarer occasions, no longer a topic of genuine ache, now an anecdote ripe for the telling. Once I thought I saw her in Chesapeake Bagel Bakery -- I even doubled back to get a second glance -- but I'm pretty sure it wasn't she. In the mornings, I happened to wait at her high school for the shuttle to mine, but I never saw her once. I heard things, things about her doing drugs and partying hard, but never seeing any of it, it was all just so many words to me, more fuel for the fantasy.
The way I ended up seeing Kate Sever again, years later, was by attending one of my sister's choir concerts. These are the sorts of things that happen, events you train, rehearse, prepare forever for, but draw blanks when they actually are in the process of becoming your reality. I was sitting in a chair close to the aisle, and it so happened that Kate was part of the high school choir -- a fact I was not aware of. The singers began to file in, clad in their formal uniforms. My eyes lazily skimmed over their ranks for familiar faces.
And there she was, right next to me, in the aisle.
"Kate!" I whispered too loudly, my voice beyond my control.
Kate turned her head, and gave me a blank look of non-recognition, but I couldn't be too sure since she was being pushed forward by the choir's inexorable procession. For the seemingly unending duration of the concert, horrible poetry flew through my head, and some of it immortalized itself on a concert program with my mom's ever-ready purple pen, but I'm not about to try to find it (its immortality was a fraud, or so I hope). The majority of the themes consisted of how gorgeous Kate was, how ridiculous it was that I was being reduced to Jell-o again by a girl who could barely put a name to my face, a girl who'd set a steel-toed boot to my immature heart quite enough, thank you -- and how, maybe, I might just have another shot with her. It was sickeningly obvious that I really hadn't had enough of having very little of Kate Sever.
All I did during the concert was wait for her choir to come on, and then scan the group until I could make her face out. She was always next to a friend, Kristen,¹⁹ and they'd be joking around before the singing started, her face scrunching into the smile the yearbooks don't have. How could this face suddenly return me to the clingy emotional wasteland I thought I had left behind in middle school? All that time spent burning her photographs into my brain and listening to Meet The Beatles! (the selected tracks, at least) had succeeded in bringing Kate into my life, but not the way I had intended.
When the concert was over, I waited outside with my parents to meet up with my sister, but I'd never deny that subconsciously I was looking around for Kate as well. It was just my luck that she turned up right as my sister did -- suddenly my family was walking side by side with Kate, her mother, and what I vaguely remember assuming was her mother's boyfriend (but for all I know it was Kate's current love interest, or no one special at all). The amount of controlled substances that I imagined Kate had ingested in her long absence was on hippie-goddess levels. The rampant sex she'd been having with boys who shaved the sides of their heads was better than any pornographic video could present. Kate Sever had smoked so much pot, dropped so much LSD, packed so much cocaine into her nose, and made so much incredible love that surely my middle school antics were long since forgotten in her vast hedonism.
But here she was, right next to me for the first time in years -- how could I let this opportunity get away? There was only so much hallway to tread, so I broke the silence.
"Hey Kate, nice job."
"Thanks."
"I'm Jordan... I, ah, I was in middle school, with you... uh, at --"
"I know."
She knew! All the drugs, all the other men, all the things that must have occurred since last I'd seen her hadn't erased me from her brain. This was news! The rest of whatever we said was so vanilla I can't even recall it, but that isn't the point. The point is, she knew who I was. Maybe it was the chocolates, or the acrostic my grandmother ghostwrote, or the bruises I left on her toes, or my signature in her yearbook (if it is there), or her own life-preserver necklace locked away somewhere -- whatever the cause, I was in Kate's memory.
The hallway divided, her party headed north, mine east. It was the last time I ever saw Kate Sever.
ten.
It was not, however, the last time I'd hear her voice. Kate had unintentionally infected my teenage libido again. I was older, wiser, living in a new house, maybe even a smidge cooler, but one thing that was the same was the fact that I was still a drooling idiot when it came to Kate Sever. A few days after the concert, I decided to use my favorite suicide machine and picked up the telephone. My middle school directories were still around, and her number was easily located. Dialing a phone is like the freeing of the first syllable -- as soon as you punch the number in, the rest is forced into motion. My index finger took on a mind of its own and did its job.
"Hello?"
"Hello, is Kate there?"
"Hold on."
There was a long pause, a lot of noise in the background.
"Hi?"
"Hi Kate, this is Jordan, I ran into you at the choir thing a few days ago --"
"Yeah."
The noise in the background was really apparent.
"Is this a bad time to be calling?"
"Well, no, but -- well, I was just about to go out, actually."
Oh.
"Well, okay. Let me give you my number, just give me a ring when you're in."
We said goodbye, and that was that. As I dreaded but expected, she never called back. I made up a bunch of excuses -- maybe she lost the number! -- but I'd bent down before her altar enough. Some morsel of dignity had to be retained.
eleven.
I went to plenty of my sister's future concerts, but Kate was never there. She wasn't in my sister's freshman yearbook either, which is where the whole supposition about her not graduating comes in. She should have been among the senior pictures that year. Kate Sever really was fading away.
I took the life-preserver out of the bag of sentimental junk in my closet to make sure I correctly remembered the precise appearance when describing it earlier; it turned out my memory was exactly right. The charm used to hang from a lump of reusable adhesive on my room's door back in my old house, next to some postcards (a cheesecake photo of a moderately attractive -- but more than moderately endowed -- bikini model with the message "Florida ... It's Great!" and another with a surfer riding a wave in Virginia Beach). It would rap against the door, tap-tapping to the world my comings and goings. Fortunes²⁰ from cookies long since digested and tickets from movies and concerts covered the rest of the space, along with a few small posters. When we moved, it all got packed away. The only thing on my wall now is a signed Foo Fighters poster. The band's smiling faces looked down on me, sitting on my bed, when I made that first and last phone call to Kate Sever. Kate Sever, one of the earliest cases in an epidemic of buttoned-on ski jump noses and other assorted problems.
When I looked the miniature floatation device over (which would surely sink if placed in water), upon close inspection I saw that the modeling clay had given way to time's unforgiving hand. Two fractures threaten to break the whole piece apart.
I will have to take good care of it to ensure it holds together.

¹��I used to favor the seventh grade picture for its arguably more flattering overall image, but now the more womanly appearance of the eighth grade shot, however poor a representation I felt it was at the time, seems the better of the two.
²��Not that this rearrangement of the heart in the name of "being more realistic" was either 1) accurately grounded in reality or 2) effective. Emily would extract my rearranged heart, set it ablaze, and feed it to me at a sock hop at the end of a year of pining for her, a year of sitting directly across from her in U.S. History, a year of being about four lockers to the left of her. It was prime emo song material, but it paled in the wake of Kate Sever's work.
Emily's seventh grade yearbook signature:
Jordan,
Have a nice sumer. (sic)
C U [ two arrows in a circle, indicating the word "around" ]
This was written (with clear haste) a little while after the sock hop fiasco, during a movie being shown to kill time at the end of the year in History. It's an embarrassing fact that after I had taken her signature back to my seat to enjoy, upon reading it, I got up again and handed my yearbook back to her, asking her to add her last name to her signature because "There might be other Emilys signing." She humored the request. I find it wonderfully fitting that she cared enough to misspell "summer."
³��If you're really keeping score, Dan would later date Emily in eighth grade. I've vague recollections of them breaking up before high school, but they may very well have dated right through it. I never saw either of them again.
Dan's seventh grade yearbook signature:
Do something wild & crazy this summer you chicky monkey.
I thought that was good advice, but I doubt that I seriously took it. I guarantee it, in fact.
Dan's eighth grade yearbook signature:
I got to know you better this year and I realized that your (sic) not as smart as I thought. Just kidding. Have a great summer.
⁴��That's who I assign the memory to, anyway. But I am positive it was Megan who once told me about how she would slap her adopted mother -- a room mother to us in elementary school -- when she was angry with her. The girls on the bus were all sharing stories about this type of thing, calling their moms "bitch," and so on. When I heard Megan reveal this, I immediately recalled a private conversation I'd had with Megan's mom at some point (the recollection being the act of having it, not the content), and had great difficulty contrasting this peaceful image with an infuriated Megan slapping away at her mother's face and getting away with it -- or at the very least, talking rather nonchalantly about it. The idea was, and still is, quite alien to me.
If I'm going to tell you the whole truth about Megan, I also remember a few other bits that are, in general, nicer, though that is admittedly not saying very much. A lot of guys really liked her for as long as I can remember, but I never had much of a crush on her. I was the guy who passed notes between her and her hilariously taller friend Erin (their omnipresent closing, "Best Friends Forever!" or the abbreviated "BFF!" was a bit of an overstatement, it turns out); in exchange for my services, I would read their transmissions in between passings. Secretly, it would have been nice to see a message about how cute and nice I was, but I wanted to see that more for a reassurance rather than a reciprocation. One of these guys wasting away for Megan was a friend of mine, Wade-Hahn. I imagine that he pined for her much the way I did for Kate (and in a lesser sense, for Emily, who still nomadically roamed my desires on occasion). Wade-Hahn would end up playing the lead role in our sixth grade production of Hamlet, and Megan would, ironically enough, play Ophelia. (I played Laertes, who was and still is my favorite character in the play.)
Once, on the bus, Megan gave me a complement about my eyes being nice and large, and a pleasing shade of brown. I obviously cared enough about the remarks to remember them nearly eight years later. I heard that she was voted Biggest Flirt at her high school; her memory is toe-tagged with the word "slut" (it seemed to ceaselessly follow her around in the years after middle school), and I remember seeing much harder, colder makeup on her once or twice while I was waiting for a bus at her high school.
Megan's eighth grade yearbook signature:
Hey Jordan,
Yes, I'll never see you again T.J. boy! I'll miss your annoying little smartass remarks. Anywell have a cool summer!
See ya
[heart]
The handwriting is messy, an almost boyish scratch, but it may well have been the results of her attempting to sign on the bus. Most of the other bus occupants have similar difficulty in composing their messages without obvious effects from the bounces emanating throughout the shock-prone rearmost -- and therefore coolest -- seats.
⁵��I had a serious inner debate about which ribbon I should go with, the seasonal or the regular. My mom, I'm nearly certain, had procured the chocolates for me since I was probably plagued with some detested variety of homework, and I was ill prepared for this non-standard adornment. Mom was exasperated but ready to go back and exchange it. In the end, I let her off the hook.
⁶��The dictionary was an anniversary gift from my late grandfather to my grandmother -- which should indicate what some people in my family interpret as romantic -- and it took up a narrow bookshelf from floor to ceiling. With my grandmother now in an apartment and her old house sold, my mother has taken custody of the massive tomes.
⁷��Lest I be caught unprepared and forced into giving a card with crossed-out errors on it due to lack of suitable replacements.
⁸��Chad was a pugfaced boy with red hair and a sour expression. On my abysmally bad basketball team (where I, due to my height, was forced to play center despite a complete lack of athletic ability), Chad's modicum of popularity (i.e., you wouldn't mock him right off the bat but he wasn't worshipped) and his correspondingly middle-of-the-road level of basketball talent made him the go-to guy, but it was never enough to save us from what I recall as a miserable, winless season. We wore red shirts.
After one of our typically mediocre practices, on a trip to the water fountains, Chad told me about an upcoming party where it was rumored that Ian and Jee would be -- was I ready for this? -- having sex, consummating their relationship, one of the greatest romances our school had ever known. In elementary school, this was big, big news, and solidified Ian as infinitely more masculine than just about anyone else there. When I look back at the yearbook pictures, almost all the popular people seem older, as if they had somehow inherited a coolness gene that squared the cool boys' jaws faster than the rest of ours, placed earrings in their ears, and made them shave the sides of their heads into the standard cool boy haircut of the time; cool girls not only dropped their baby fat faster, but received an informed fashion sense, more manageable hair, and superior makeup skills. Ian came from what most people would regard as cool stock: his dad was a professional juggler who taught us to juggle scarves and pins at some school retreat. And, hand in hand with the coolness, I heard his dad was also a pretty irresponsible father later on (drugs).
With all of this in mind, it was no real shock to find a Wanted poster for Ian years later in high school. He was wanted for selling drugs, and perhaps some other additional offenses; he hid out at friends' houses until finally turning himself in. I remember seeing him a few times, once after the arrest, each time with a new and very beautiful girlfriend. I heard that Jee and he didn't have sex at that party but I'm sure eventually the relationship followed that path (given how long it was), and I've wondered if, for all of the new women on Ian's arm, he ever got over Jee, or if she ever got over him.
⁹��Oddly enough, Leslie is absent from the eighth grade yearbook. There isn't even a "Not Pictured" credit for her. It's almost as if my wish for her to disappear was fulfilled in a useless and history-distorting way. She was actually a really nice, fairly popular person; I'd name a lot of better choices for erasure than her. I was always infinitely grateful that she didn't make the gift-giving any more awkward than it already was and never gave me any grief about it.
Leslie's seventh grade yearbook signature:
Jordan,
Hey What'z [ arrow indicating the word "up" ]?
This year is finally over! Have a cool summer & an awesome year next year!
See
Ya'
around! [ happy face with tongue extruded ]
¹⁰��It was perhaps divine retribution that Sarah turned into a strung-out waste of a "disciplinary problem" in high school.
¹¹��Anna's eighth grade year book signature:
Jordan,
G Gym was really fun and maybe we will have gym together next year! See ya!
[ heart ] Anna
P.S. Anne will to (sic) do it!
I didn't bother to inform her that it was absolutely impossible for us to share a gymnasium again. Her last remark is about another of Kate's friends, Anne, who sat to my left in Art. She was extremely insecure about her weight (which I never thought was a big deal at all) and her rather healthy cleavage (which was of more interest). I enjoyed talking to her, harboring something of a small crush on her, too.
Anne's eighth grade yearbook signature:
Jordan,
Hey your (sic) a really cool guy, and you have taught me alot (sic) about myself. How to be myself. Thanks [ heart ] always
The signature also features her graffiti "tag" ("Bandaid") and a picture of a joint with the words "never do it!" pointing at it, in reference to one of my many anti-drug tirades. Anne didn't want to follow her junkie brother's footsteps, but from what little I know of Anne's later years, Anna's words were unfortunately prescient. I saw her walking down the road by my home late on a July 4^th, and our paths crossed once after that, which let me confirm that it had been she. It was sad to see that Anne had lost a lot of the softness that had once been so endearing.
¹²��I don't really have it in me to cry like that anymore -- that, or I've been lucky enough not to have anything happen that's made me double over in recent memory.
¹³��How I knew Greg was our having Latin together and him asking me for a lot of answers. I, in turn, asked Shandon for a lot of answers. Greg told me one of his multiple ear piercings was self-done, no sterilization, so it ended up getting really infected, and I couldn't believe he had the pain threshold to deal with that. But he was cool, really surfing the top echelons of the cool crowd, so it was believable. Greg had the aforementioned cool boy haircut, short-to-regular length all around on top (with gel if long, which Greg's never was), shaved off around the sides and back. Between the accompanying drugs and blatant disregard for authority, he too ended up being a terror for administrators in high school, though as best I understand it, not quite to the level of his friends Matt and Kevin, who seemed to be violently well-backed by their parents, no matter what their offense.
Greg's eighth grade yearbook signature:
Jordan
I wish I could say see you next year but I can't so have a good life and good luck
I (sic) sure you will become very rich
STOP BY AND SHARE YOUR $
¹⁴��I pointed Kate out to my parents so they could see, in person, just who this heartbreaker was. My mom thought her hem was too high. But, my father added, she did have the body for it.
¹⁵��Bryan was built like a rectangle, the kind of guy you'd call husky. He coasted along in the student government until his high school presidency was suspended due to a cheating scandal.
Bryan's eighth grade yearbook signature:
Jordan,
Whats (sic) up man
You finnaly (sic) got to dance w/ Kate. Jordy [ a different Jordan and friend of mine ] and I my team are doing O.K. we're 6-3 2nd Place. Have a cool life at T.J.
Peace [ peace symbol for "O" ]ut
He wrote in small caps, so the transcription is approximate.
¹⁶��As I waited for my order to be filled outside the takeout window, someone leapt out of a pickup truck and announced that, according to the man on the radio, O.J. Simpson was on the freeway with a gun to his head.
¹⁷��When I realized I had no good pants to wear to the Dinner Dance, my mom took me to the mall to get a pair of khakis and a new belt (the braided leather kind, which was all the rage, purchased several sizes too large so that one could fold it through on itself and have a strip hang down vertically over the pant leg). The belt mission was a failure, but we eventually found one at a Marshall's or a TJ Maxx. On the plus side, we did locate a suitable pair of pants at Lord and Taylor's (Dockers), and so we called it a successful trip.
Little did I know that Kate Sever was at the mall at the same time as I was. In fact, she saw me from above, gazing down on me and my mom as we left on the lower level with my new trousers in tow, the trousers that would one day press against her little black nothing. It's an image that, although I never saw it with my own eyes, I really can see forever, with Kate cruising above, and us trudging below.
She later asked if I'd been at the mall that day, found out I had, and told the story to me, and I explained about the pants, and that's what the joke was. I never did run into Kate Sever at the mall again, not that I ever really had the first time.
¹⁸��I lied when I said the torch faded out, these sorts of things never fade out. This story is just the result of embers still glowing a faint red. And in my omniscience and control of the narration, I've left out a few unpleasant details. Quickly ripping off the Band-Aid, I'll relate them here in list form:
Kate's father died sometime during high school.
In her grieving, Kate's mother abandoned whatever shred of parental responsibility she previously had.
With her newfound freedom, and with a healthy dollop of Freudian thought, Kate's grief and lack of a stable male figure led her to the obvious remedies: drugs (hallucinogens were mentioned specifically, but I see that problematic ski jump vacuuming white powder), and partying (which should be read as a hackneyed euphemism for "sex").
Kate didn't finish high school, to the best of my knowledge.
Okay, that's everything. You know everything now.
¹⁹��It's rather tenuous as to whether or not the friend in question was really Kristen, but the story with her is that she got engaged to her high school sweetheart, Grant, whose father married his high school sweetheart. And yes, his father divorced that high school sweetheart, so Grant seems to have an excellent blueprint to guide his journey. Grant is one of the few people I've been able to find in a cursory search of the Internet. An old athletic recruiting web page reveals his high school GPA to be 2.8, which, coincidentally, is the same as Ian's.
²⁰��"You have yearning for perfection." "Your lover will never wish to leave you." "With patience, you can accomplish the most difficult task."