Not Quite Famous Friends by Will Musgrove

This happened when cell phones were gray and flipped. If you wanted to film something, you needed a portable camera like the one my buddy Dave had. Drunk, sitting inside Perkins at 3 a.m., half of us stuck in our analog youth, the other half being dragged to our ever-present digital adulthood, Dave filmed himself unwrapping the bottom of his drink straw, bringing it to his lips, and blowing the wrapper at my face.

The paper bullet ricocheted off my cheek and fell into my Diet Coke. He’d performed this maneuver for years. I never swatted the wrapper away for old times’ sake. What are friends for? Letting things happen for old times’ sake.

“We’re going to be famous,” Dave said, watching the night play back on the little screen jutting out of the side of his camera.

He’d trapped our friendship inside a memory card. Why? For views. YouTube was becoming popular. Any Joe Shmoes could put their lives online for other Joe Shmoes to gawk at, and we were the Shmoe-est of the Joes.

I’d known Dave forever. He moved in next door to me when I was seven. His family owned a trampoline, so we became quick friends. We’d take turns trying to launch the other onto his roof. You know, the double bounce, where one bouncer bounces right as another bouncer lands. When we failed to get high enough, we switched to items found around Dave’s house: his dad’s bowling ball, his mom’s suitcases. We got close, but nada.

I was fine with nada. If we really wanted to go on the roof, we could climb out of Dave’s second-story bedroom window and shimmy around the ledge. We’d go up there sometimes and just be on the roof. We’d walk around. We’d look down. Dave’s roof was a pocket dimension where all you had to do was exist.

Dave couldn’t just exist.

At night, I’d sometimes catch him jumping on his trampoline alone. Arms raised, he’d go up and down, his fingers wiggling a few feet from the gutters. A few feet isn’t a whole lot. What’s a few feet in life?

“Dude, this is gold,” Dave said, rotating the little screen toward me.

There we were singing karaoke at some dive bar. Behind that, though, I swore I saw us jumping, not quite getting high enough. The waiter brought us our food, and Dave closed his camera. We ate, paid the bill, and left. Standing in the Perkins parking lot, a half-eaten order of breakfast potatoes gripped in my hand, we said our goodbyes.

On my walk home, I spotted a trampoline in an unfamiliar backyard. I hopped the fence and started jumping for old times’ sake. At first, I wasn’t getting much altitude. Then I stopped worrying about height, stopped worrying altogether.

Shingle tops.

Clouds.

Stars.

I’m still up here. I can see Dave on the ground. I’m reaching for him. If only he’d look up and take my hand.

Will Musgrove is a writer and journalist from Northwest Iowa. He received an MFA from Minnesota State University, Mankato. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Timber, X-R-A-Y, Sundog Lit, Tampa Review, and elsewhere. Connect on Twitter at @Will_Musgrove or at williammusgrove.com.