When I was twelve, I found out that I could take things out of proportion in my head and make imaginary people to fall in love with.
The first time it was with Scarlett Peters, who was a real person.
Scarlett was cool and popular, she was pretty and good at soccer and everybody talked about how much fun her Bat Mitzvah had been. She had this shoulder length dark brown hair that made her look like Lucy van Pelt and I thought she was cute and everybody liked her so I picked her as the girl I wanted. My parents taught me that it was really important what everybody thought of you and it was really important to be in the in-crowd.
At that time, texting hadn’t quite taken off yet but all the kids had Gmail, and Gchat was what it was all about. You could customize your screenpage, and mine had a graffiti wall as the background image. There were all these names with either red or green circles next to them on the left side. The circles let you know when someone was on Gchat or not. I’d sit in front of that screen for hours in my free time to wait and see who was online.
Mostly girls. That’s how I started talking to Scarlett Peters.
Her light turned green.
And I sent her a message, heyy wats up.
And she sent back, hey.
watchin tv.
wats up.
We kept talking everyday about mundane things and sometimes about nothing at all—just long exchanges of lingo. Empty, meaningless conversations that meant everything to me. Because as much as we were talking about nothing, it was our lives that we talked about. She was like this pen pal and we’d share little things I’d never think to tell anybody else about, like the amazing feeling when the tv is turned up loud and nobody in the house could hear what you’re doing, or hating the smell of dish soap or the feel of raisins on your fingers, or stuff parents did that pissed you off. You get a lot from something like
brb gotta talk to my dad.
back sry.
parents suck lol.
Or,
hold on.
best pt of dragonball ep.
Or,
Omg prnts trnd off the tv & hrd me listening 2 Flo Rida
SO embarrassing.
In some ways it felt like we talked about everything. And it felt good to know that Scarlett Peters wanted to message me. It’s the first time I can remember feeling the seratonin hit of seeing a notification with my favorite name next to it. I felt it right in the middle of my tummy, and it made me feel warm and happy and good.
Scarlett and I had different lunches so we hardly ever saw each other at school. When we did I was too nervous to talk to her, but I would go home and send her a message, wats up ?! saw you at the buses.
I was weird and didn’t know how to talk to girls. That was a big part of it. But I also didn’t really want to see her in person. Because she was so much more beautiful in my head. She didn’t look right in person and sometimes she didn’t act right either. All I needed was her name and her words on the screen and I had this vivid infinite girlfriend.
Obviously, nothing ever happened. Because I never talked to her. And eventually we chatted on Gmail after school less and less, and then not at all. Which was okay with me actually. Because there was this one day when for some reason things got switched around and we had the same lunch together. The sun was out and all the cool kids were sitting on the hill above the kick ball field eating. So I was there too, like a barnacle on a rock. People were kind of messing around with each other and running around, which was normal, and a bit annoying I thought. What was so terrible, though, was that I had to see Scarlett doing it too. I watched her knee this kid with glasses called Dabney in the ass and shout “CORNDOG.” I was crestfallen. The illusion went to flames before my eyes. My Scarlett never would have behaved so foolishly.
Everyone has their own tastes, but, for me, corndogging and table-topping were among the most hateful of pranks.
To my horror, I realized that my Scarlett did not exist, that this was she, a vicious corndogger, in her truest form. This was the girl who had been talking to me all along. A bully. This was the girl who I thought I loved.
Scarlett Peters was the girl I loved but the thing was that the girl I loved was also somebody different.
. . .
I went on chatting with girls after school—plotting digital affairs.
One day I messaged Chloe Moore, who I had recently become friends with. She was cool and blonde and pretty. I liked Chloe. And she didn’t have a boyfriend at the moment.
I said, heyy.
And she said, hi.
wat r u doin.
And I said, nothin bored.
you.
To which she replied, bored too.
This gave me the opportunity I had been waiting for, praying for. I took it.
we should date.
Then waited in fucking agony until I finally saw her typing a reponse.
sure.
And just like that I had done it. Confetti cannon. Fireworks. I had a girlfriend. And she was cool and cute.
Sometimes we sat next to each other on the bus ride home from school in mostly silence, and shared a pair of headphones, and listened to Fall Out Boy or the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus or some twelve year old emo shit like that. But usually I just sat with my friends on the bus and I would talk to Chloe on Gchat afterwards. And I was afraid to see her at lunch too. Because I was afraid I wouldn’t act right or say the right thing. I would see her from across the lunchroom and feel like somebody had punched me in the stomach. So I would turn and go the other way.
After three weeks she told me it was awkward and she wanted it to be like it was before when we were friends.
I was crushed.
I’d never even kissed her.
Chloe was much more painful for me than Scarlett. I went to hide in the garage and cried when she sent me the message.
It wasn’t heartbreak that I felt though, it was humiliation. On account of how I hadn’t known how to act right. There was this space between the me in real life and the me that sent messages on my computer at night. This wide and unbridgeable gap between two incompatible versions of myself. I didn’t know how to bring them both together.
There was the way it was in my head, which came to life on the screen in messages, and there was the way things really were. I didn’t know why they were different. They just were.