The last thing we need, said the professor of literature at the head of the seminar table, is another novel about teenage angst. Then, the scintillating English concentrator huddled amongst his comrades in 302 Sever Hall: Yes, Ben agreed, the refusal to breach any significant moral quandary in favor of what could pass only as tired Aristotelian archetypes epitomized by the sexy, aloof protagonist whose “exceptional,” “Olympian” altitudes of vision and “Herculean” strength allow him insight (it’s always a him) into a solution that had been provided centuries before by better (or at least more capable) parents. Indeed, I offered (I’d used the word “indeed,” the language of our kind), teenagers are the most difficult to fool, but show some post-adolescent dude in whining over his moral struggle or a hot girl just barely filling out her armor and wielding a sword that commanded her more than she commanded it, and, like, they’re riveted (riveted; we say riveted, too). To what, I’d like to know! My comrades wanted to know this, too—knowing this is important to us.

But upon reflection over my tomato soup, I couldn’t quite get our bold literary exegesis and the inherent bullshit of the professor’s statement to coalesce. So, after dinner that evening, I told them I was gone. You’re not leaving, Ben says. Where are you going? We like to talk in contradictions. What do you mean you’re leaving? You can’t leave. Exactly where or what are you leaving? Adam’s House! You lot! This fucking dining hall! Our professors! The English department! Harvard! Why? But I drank my soup; even I knew not to answer that question because whatever the answer, it would reek of twenty-something arrogance. So I walked. Walked through Johnston Gate and headed for the Pit, for the escalator, for the Red Line, Inbound, for South Station. Because from South Station you can go anywhere. But I had no intentions of going anywhere; it was, even for me, too weak a province—weak, unable to forge a direction or authenticate itself as a proper noun—that it existed only in the mind incapable of dreaming. Somewhere was the shell of the dream. Somewhere required friction, motion because it offered temporal existence for something. Skin in the game. You could take it or leave it, but whatever your decision, at least you knew where you stood—unlike anywhere, which amounted to giving up with justification. (Above all others was my fear of becoming fatuous, of becoming a player, however insignificant, in the Theater of the Absurd. My province of Somewhere would never tolerate such Theater.)

From the moment I tumbled out of Liz’s womb and into Liz’s and Joe’s life, from the moment I had my first pull of breast milk, the conspiracy against me began. Before that, I was an “easy pregnancy,” then an “easy delivery.” But I was a crier. I kept people awake. (I’m told I’m still a crier and that I still keep people awake.) They were good people, Liz and Joe, and they would have been good parents, I guess, if they’d had a different son. A “normal” son. A son who was just a little dumber than his parents. It is important to be dumber than one’s parents; they don’t like a smart-ass. No one likes a smart-ass. Indeed. I knew this from a very young age, and I was the smartest ass going. I’d get into fights, I’d shoplift, I’d even run away for a week when I was sixteen to what I thought would be “my home” and “my people”: Disney World. About a week before I ran, I stole Joe’s ATM card and withdrew a total of three grand. But he was rich. He’d made his money in the dot-com era and was smart enough to keep it. He had other cards, some of which were gold. They’d bought me a used Honda Civic in my sophomore year of high school because I wasn’t allowed to take the bus (a wonderful place to beat up and get beaten up), and that morning, the Civic and I took off for Disney World. I’d like to get a room, please. How old are you? Old enough. You need a credit card. I don’t have a credit card. Then you don’t have a room. Motherfuckers! Hustled out the door by two goons in suits. Fuck you very much! So I slept in the Civic the first night in a Walmart parking lot and then with David for the next two weeks—ironically, in the same hotel; apparently the rules didn’t apply to the hangers-on of the rich. David was much older than me. At first, he was patient. And then, he was slow. Come on, get up, get up! GET THE FUCK UP! Me jumping on the bed in my underwear like a lunatic after opening the shades and letting in the morning light. Disney World, Dave! I called him Dave; he’d told me that he never let anyone call him Dave. Let’s go, man! It calls me! Can’t you hear it calling me? He smiled up at me with his perfect teeth and dazzling blue eyes. Then, with a loud smile, he grabbed me, pulled me down, and kissed me. We went to Disney World that day, but spent the next week in bed together. I loved him. I wouldn’t ever leave him. But you’ve got Harvard waiting for you, and Lisa. I don’t care. I don’t care about any of that, including Lisa. They only want me because I’m smart—it sure as shit isn’t because I’m a model citizen. And Lisa likes my dick. That’s about it for me, Dave. Thrilling life. I can’t leave you, Dave. I love you. Don’t you love me, Dave? I waggled my eyebrows at him, tweaked his nipple. I think you do…. Of course I do. And that’s why you have to go. I’d cried hard that night, I threw up. He’d called my parents, told them where I was and that he was flying me home in his company jet. At first, they didn’t believe him. Liz was crying; Joe was threatening him with a lawsuit. Dave told them he’d have my car shipped back and to pick me up at Logan that night.

I was lucky. I knew how lucky I was even then. It could have gone very differently for me. I’d come back anew. Dave had taught me about patience, about love, how to love, how to experience true pain and how to heal without blame. Yes, I was lucky. The English professor, however, was no Dave. He was not slow. He was not patient.

Ben grabs me by the shirt. The clear turnstile doors try swinging shut, but because of me, they can’t. It sounds an alarm. A “T” official yells at us. Ben tells him to relax. Ben tells him that I’m in crisis. Can’t you see he’s in crisis? He can be in crisis up top, outa the station! We were on the escalator. We were going up top. We were going outa the station. Caramelized nuts wafted everywhere, mingling with the smell of electricity. On the landing before the second set of escalators, a young man was selling fruit. Ben rushed us by him, hooked a right, and we were going up once again. Up top. Outa the station.

The Pit was directly in front of us. Boys and girls with multicolored Mohawks and dressed in different variations of black looked at us. I was crying. What’s wrong, Ben asks. You need to tell me what’s wrong with you. I can help you, but you need to tell me. Here? In public? He looks around and smirks at me. A Ben Smirk. Okay, maybe not here, in public. During our walk back to Adams House, Ben pulls off his denim jacket and puts it over my shoulders. I shrug into it. I thank him. I’m starting to get some perspective. He’s going to ask me why I ran, and I’ll tell him. Later, though. In the note I will leave, marked private, especially for him, for his eyes only. A Ben Note. We get inside his bedroom, his suite-mates looking at the two of us then at each other. I know what they’re saying: he’s not worth it, Ben; don’t let him take up any more of your life than he has already. He closes the door, and I say to him, You pulled me out yet again. Yeah, but from what is what I’d like to know. You’re such a pain in the ass, he says to me and sits down on his desk chair, facing me on his bed. I tell him how fucked up my life is. I tell him about Dave. He asks me if I’m gay, then answers his own question with, You can’t be gay; you’ve got a girlfriend! Gay people don’t have partners of the opposite sex, he informs me, it’s just not natural for them. I shrug, thinking about how I’ll do it, though already knowing. He looks at me and smiles. A Ben Smile. Come on, just talk to me. So what if you’re fucking McKellen, Ben tells me. He fucks anyone who’ll let him, the perv. That still doesn’t make you gay. No? What does it make me, then. He waves in my face as if to wake me up. A Ben Wave. A slut is what it makes you. We laugh. I laugh too hard and tears start rolling. My body is full to capacity of feeling shitty. But I keep on laughing. You know, Ben says, you are so full of shit. You love this. I love what? This? Yes, he replies. This! This very thing. The drama. You love to externalize your life, make it into a pastiche so that you can tear it apart. That’s what you do, you know. I know. Well, if you know, then you really need to stop doing it. So what if you had a fling with this David. Dave! Dave! Whatever! Look, we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but don’t make everything you did into some kind of epic. Because if you do that, it’ll become unreachable. And if it’s unreachable, you’ll never really deal with it.

Perhaps that’s why I made my life into an epic. Because, once dealt with, epics end.