This is the story of my getting my first and, so far, only girlfriend.
I keep hearing and reading bullshit about "high school life." High school athletics, cheerleaders, cafeteria meals, nerds being openly ridiculed and mistreated, cool cars, marijuana in some secluded spot that everybody except the administration knew about. Using fake i.d. to get into bars and clubs, or at least showing the i.d. to your friends and telling them it actually got you into a club. Teachers having sex with deluded students, and, above all, students having sex with each other.
Sure, all that stuff existed, except during Covid, when all life stopped.
But I can attest that you can go to high school, or Zoom to high school, for four years, and not go through
any
of those experiences.
In my school, the only kids calling anybody "nerds" were the nerds. "I'm a
Game of Thrones
nerd," "I'm a
Star Trek
geek (but only TOS or TOG)." "I'm a
World of Warcraft
nerd" (or whatever online game they were into). I wish I had ten bucks for every stunningly gorgeous talk-show guest these days who says, "I was such a nerd in school," or — even trendier now — "I
am
such a nerd," because they once read
Lord of the Rings
or they knew that Dumbledore's first name was Albus or they came in third at Trivial Pursuit at a friend's party.
I was what, in some high school movies, would have been called a nerd. Usually what that comes down to is you get very, very high grades and actually turn in projects which you did yourself, on time; or you don't have cool clothes because (a) your family doesn't have any money, or (b) you don't give a shit about what's cool.
I did my assignments on time because Mom calendared them all and went through the checklist with me every night. I got high grades because I paid attention in class and was never on my phone because I didn't have one. We didn't have any money, so if I had known which clothes were cool I couldn't have bought them anyway. And I didn't care which clothes were cool or notice who had cool clothes or give a shit about anybody who wasn't me.
Yeah. I ate lunch alone, a sandwich I made myself and brought in my backpack. I didn't gossip with anybody. The closest thing to a conversation I ever had was a scrawl by a teacher on a paper or exam saying, "Nice work," "Exceptional work," and my all-time favorite, "You should be teaching this class." But I didn't think I was friends with any of the teachers. They had their lives, I had mine, so even after getting a note like that, I just shuffled out of the room after class and never met the teacher's eye.
During Covid, my life didn't change
at all
except that my dad let me use his computer to sign on for Zoom classes during the day. (He wasn't using the computer much himself because he was laid off from his middle management job during most of Covid and spent his days doing contract work at a metal shop in town.)
I was reasonably healthy. I walked everywhere because it saved money, saved my parents a lot of hassle, and saved me having to sit next to anybody on a bus. Walking kept me lean and I could cover a lot of ground pretty quickly. I read that walking for twenty minutes used up the same calories as jogging for twenty minutes, and when I was walking I could think my own thoughts instead of thinking about traffic and trying to get to the corner while the light was still green, because whenever I got there would be soon enough.
Walking meant that even in winter, the same lightweight jacket kept out the wind, and walking kept me warm, so I never got a new jacket my last three years of high school. I also grew four inches during that time, bringing me to my current six-two-and-a-half, so the sleeves were pretty short and the bottom of the jacket was actually right at my waist, but the thing about not caring is, you don't actually care.
Mom would look at me and say, "We need to get you a new coat," and I'd say, "Tell you what. Donate this one to Goodwill, and then take me into their store and I'll buy this one back from them and call it new. It suits me fine." She grumbled, "Doesn't
fit
you fine," and I'd say, "I can still get my arms through the sleeves and zip it up across my belly."
"If only you actually
had
a belly," Dad would say, and the whole conversation dissolved in laughter because they knew I meant it, I didn't need or want a different jacket, and since they couldn't afford to buy me one, even at Goodwill, I didn't change my appearance at all those last three years, except for getting taller and skinnier so my clothes, while too short, fit loose.
See, I thought my life was fine. I didn't even think about whether I was happy, because I didn't know what that meant. I knew that if I ever became, like, a school shooter or something, everybody would go on camera and say, "He kept to himself," and, "He was a loner."
But I didn't think I was a loner. I got on great with my folks. I did my share of work around the house. As a family we laughed together a lot, sang around Nana's old piano while Dad played, and basically had a family life together.
I didn't care about movies, I didn't care about TV, so not going to movies and not having a working TV caused me no grief.
"Don't you have any friends?" Mom asked me more than once. My answer was always the same. "When I sit down on a bench or at a table to eat my lunch, the other people don't get up and move away." The answer never made her happy, but it ended the conversation.
In the middle of senior year, my dad and I were replacing the air filter on the car when he asked me, "Luke, what about girls?"
"I've seen 'em," I said.
"Don't you
like
girls?" he asked.
"Dad, I'm not gay. If I was going to get laid, I'd want it to be with a person who had a vagina and a pair of nice breasts."
"So you're fussy about the number," he said.
"Two is traditional for breasts," I said, "and I think I have to insist on exactly one vagina."
"Do you actually
know
anybody who fits that list?"
"They're all over school. They're in every class."
"Do you talk to any of them?"
"Sure," I said.
"When?"
"When the teacher makes us go into small-group discussions or assigns groups to do projects, I talk to the people in the group. Which usually includes girls. Though now at age 18 they're starting to call themselves and each other 'women.'"
"And you find them attractive?"
"Dad, I said I'm not gay."
"You find any of the girls
particularly
attractive?"
Where was this going? "Yes," I said.
"And what makes them more attractive to you?"
"Smooth complexion, never talking other people down, school smart, funny smart, clean and even teeth, though that's not always a requirement, because nobody can help how their teeth grow, unless they can afford orthodontia."
"I'm glad
you
have nice even teeth," said Dad.
"I brush them all the time like I'm supposed to," I said.
"Luke, have you ever actually
touched
a girl?"
"You mean, on purpose, not just bumping into them in the halls?"
He shook his head and suggested we go see if dinner was ready. Mom usually wouldn't let us in the kitchen when she was cooking.
I knew all about girls, of course, on a theoretical level. I knew the names of all the parts, the scientific names, the polite names, the crude names, the fighting-words names. I never had a reason to say any of those aloud, except when Dad asked me that time and I named some essential female parts. I knew the mechanics of sex, I had a reasonable number of erections per day, but seeing a girl at school did
not
trigger any such response, unless she was wearing a croptop.
I don't know why, but croptops make me pretty alert, especially when they don't have any kind of elastic or tie at the bottom. I once saw a girl with a croptop that had obviously been cut from an old faded tanktop with household scissors (or maybe pruning shears), and the bottom was ragged and fraying, so that from the lawn where I was sitting, when I looked up from my book as she walked by, I caught a couple of glimpses of underboob, and yes, at that time the sight gave me a champion hard-on.
Well, champion for me. I didn't see other guys' dicks, erect or limp. Also, that girl in the perfect faded frayed croptop, I could see her nipples through the fabric and, when she and her friend walked between me and the sun, I caught the silhouette of her right breast as if her croptop didn't exist.
That girl, who did not go to my school and was probably in college anyway, became a regular player in the nickelodeon that played in my head at night. She left more than one cold spot of spontaneous emission on my sheets. I had no reason to doubt my own interest in girls, or my ability to do my part in making babies, if such a time should come.
Look, I know, you're wondering if I'm going to tell an actual story here, because all I've told you so far is that during high school, I had
nothing
going on. Except good parents who liked me a lot better than I liked myself. And good health from all my walking. And I
know
you already reached the conclusion that if you had been a student in my high school, you would not have ever spoken to me or asked about me or remembered my name.
Here's my diagnosis, the one I reached about a week before spring break, when reading a book about introverts. I realized that I was more than an introvert. I was worse than shy. I was deeply, deeply depressed, and I always had been.
Not suicidal — never. But I was unhappy all the time and didn't even notice because I had never actually been happy. I saw confident people who put themselves out there, but I had always assumed that it was because they had something to say, which I never did. I thought of stuff, I just didn't have any impulse to say it — except with my parents.
That day, walking to school, was the first time that it ever occurred to me that there was something wrong with me that I could change. Being an introvert was a perfectly acceptable character trait, and I didn't have any hunger to alter myself. But being depressed was a psychological malady that could and should be addressed.
That was why, on that morning a week before spring break, I went to my guidance counselor and told her that I had figured out that I was probably depressed.
She looked at me in absolute surprise and said, "No shit, Sherlock."
That was not the response I had expected.
"You walk around the halls at school as if your favorite sister had just died," she said.
"I don't have a sister," I said.
"You give off gloom like a beacon of darkness," she said.
"Everybody
who sees you knows that you're depressed."
"Nobody ever said anything."
"Luke, you give off an air of annoyance whenever you make eye contact with anybody. It's been one of the real challenges of being your guidance counselor. You always seem to hate every second you're with me."
"Mrs. Powter, I have never been annoyed with you."
"Until now?"
"Not annoyed now, either."
