Bike Boy

I met him on a walk, somewhere along the overgrown foliage that reigns in the suburban sprawl of our neighborhood. He rode past once, twice, three times before he pulled his bike into a sideways stop before me, wheels whining against the asphalt. I had never fielded a romantic advance from a stranger before. The whole experience was so strange that it launched me into a state of passive compliance. I watched myself give out my number with detached curiosity—it reminded me of losing my virginity.

Two days later, I had my date with Bike Boy. We were going on a walk. I hadn’t been on a walk-date since I fourteen, when my first ever boyfriend told me to close my eyes and count to ten while he ran and hid. At “nine” he pressed his lips against mine and I had my first kiss. For two twenty-year-olds to be entering a similar situation was downright ridiculous, but I was a little excited. Dates were what made life exciting, or so I’d heard.

I told Bike Boy about the bare facts of my existence while we skirted gopher holes in the dirt field behind the park. I had lived in the South Bay, then moved here to the East Bay, then gone to college in LA, and was now back for the summer. Bike Boy’s only comment was that LA was sick, in a plainly positive sense. I agreed, but really I didn’t think LA was very different from the Bay Area at all. The two poles of the state swapped residents so regularly that it didn’t really matter where I was. Every place was familiar, every moment a continual déjà vu for every moment before it.

Bike Boy’s life story took a long time to tell, though it was possibly even less exciting than mine. He still lived in his childhood home and hung out with his childhood friends. At first I tried to comment, but Bike Boy seemed unprepared for me to interject in his narrative. His responses to my questions were either stilted or meandering and always led him back to what he had already been saying. I decided to see how long I could go without speaking. 

We arrived outside a high school that was exactly the same as other schools in California. Classrooms arranged in long, low buildings like barracks, concrete stretching bare between them. Bike Boy said it was his old school and asked if I wanted to go inside. I nodded, pleased to be past the first trial of my vow of silence. 

Bike Boy led us through the halls, pointing out the many spots where he and his friends had hung out, his favorite classes, and his least favorite classes. I wondered if it was always his plan to come here to the cradle of his manhood and show me around. I guess love could be defined that way—taking someone on a tour through the halls of your life. I had never thought to do that before. Most people could probably look at me and understand right away who I was.

Bike Boy decided we had walked enough, so we sat on a bench facing a clutch of old, thick-trunked trees. He hung his head, his voice grew delicate, and he began to tell me about his childhood dreams. While he spoke, I tried to estimate the number of leaves on each tree. I counted leaves in groups of fifty, took note of how big an area fifty leaves filled, then pasted that small portion over the rest of the foliage in my mind. I kept losing count, forgetting how large the area was supposed to be, and seeing more leaves buried behind the ones I had already counted out to fifty, so that by the time the noise next to me stopped I still hadn’t reached a definitive estimation.

I was worried that Bike Boy expected me to say something about his shattered dreams. I tried piecing together what little I absorbed. There was something about sports… an injury… and so many leaves, too many to count. Luckily, Bike Boy was so lost in the depths of his own history that I was free to sit silently beside him, like a muted TV playing in the background.

By the time Bike Boy was ready to leave the campus, a cool, deep blue was spreading westward, draining the color from the clouds dotting the sky. Bike Boy held my hand as we walked. At the corner where we’d met, I waited for him to say which way he was going, then pointed in the opposite direction to indicate we had to part ways.

He told me I was incredible. He had never told anyone that stuff before, that stuff on the bench, and I was very very special. He leaned forward. I stayed still and quiet and closed my eyes, and though my mouth was shut as it had been for over an hour, he kissed me. I wondered if my friends would be jealous when I told them. Should I tell them? They might think it was wrong for me to lead Bike Boy on, let him fall in love his own reflection in the still pool of my existence. I should’ve given him a piece of my mind. I definitely shouldn’t have stood there with my eyes closed until he kissed me. But I didn’t know how else to live. How had Bike Boy managed to store so much hunger and disappointment and nostalgia and will inside himself during his short, unremarkable life? I wanted to go back home and stop thinking about this, but he was still kissing me, so I waited quietly for him to finish.