Sleepwalk With Me_ And Other Painfully True Stories - Mike Birbiglia [18]
And I thought, Well, I haven’t even slept with my girlfriend, so that would be insane. And second of all, he’s a liar, so he must be lying. I remember I said to him, “Yeah, I know.”
But at this moment it dawns on me that Keith is her new second boyfriend. And I’m done. And it’s that horrible lonely feeling where you’re walking around someplace and there are people all around and there’s only one person you want to be with, no matter how mean that person has been to you. I just want to hear that “Only kiddin’!”
People are coming up to me and I can’t even hear them. I can’t even tell them what happened because even though I’m being dumped, the relationship itself is based on a secret.
And that spring I graduated.
Keith Robbins was expelled for making fake IDs in his dorm room. He had built an enormous driver’s license from Arkansas that people stuck their face in. And he would photograph them, and then laminate it. He later took a job at Goldman Sachs. That detail seems made up, but it’s actually true. Nice.
Amanda was expelled the next year for dealing Ritalin. I’m pretty sure she wasn’t framed.
At boarding school, you can’t go to the graduation if you’re expelled. It’s one of the shames of being expelled. And it’s very strict.
I found out later that Amanda actually did show up to the graduation. In a disguise. She wore a wig and sunglasses.
My friends laughed about this story when I told them finally, the way friends do to make you feel better when you’ve had your heart broken. But I could relate to her doing that. Because sometimes when you want to be in a place so badly, you’ll do anything.
GODDAMMIT
Being a dad has never appealed to me. It doesn’t seem like a job you’d apply for:
Screaming child seeks adult man to pay for his entire life. Warning: When the child is fourteen he will tell you he hates you and forget about everything you’ve ever done for him. Requirements: Must have sex with your wife or girlfriend without birth control at least once. Also, your wife or girlfriend will hate you through most of the pregnancy, for a few years afterward, and intermittently for the next twenty years. Pay: No pay. Education: Grade school or equivalent. Benefits: Your child may bear some likeness to you. Also, if you take your child on walks, other women will be more attracted to you than you’ve ever experienced in your life, but you can’t have sex with them unless you want your wife (and children) to hate you even more than they already hate you, which is intermittently or always.
Dads always seemed mysterious to me. Matthew Sullivan’s dad had an eighteen-foot motorboat in the backyard that never worked in the fifteen years I visited their house. We used to play hide and seek in it. Why was he keeping this boat that never worked?
Pat Salazar’s dad was a state cop; every time he spoke, it felt like you were being arrested. I’d be over for dinner and he’d say, “Patrick, how was the pancake breakfast at St. Mary’s?” Pat would answer with trepidation in his voice—as though there were a right or wrong answer, and he was hoping to feel out the right answer as he went along, watching his dad’s every facial expression for clues as to which way he wanted his son’s answer to go.
“It went . . . great?”
“Good.” His dad nodded, as if to say, “You’re free to go.”
I never saw Pat’s dad release the kind of fury that everyone anticipated, but it sure as hell seemed like someone had seen it.
If I were to shoot a movie called Dads, it would feel a lot like Jaws, where you rarely see the shark, but there’s always a sense that the shark is coming and when he does, you best get yourself to the shore.
My dad was no exception. But I was more afraid of my friends’ dads than of my own. Because when your dad starts going off, you know what he’s capable of. When your friend’s dad starts going off, you’re like, This guy’s a wild card. He just kicked the dog. What do you think