Hutch has been going to school with me since kindergarten. He’s been a roly-poly1 since seventh grade due to a tragic case of acne, the cruelty of middle schoolers and a tendency to quote retro metal lyrics in place of making ordinary human conversation. He works for my dad as an assistant gardener, and somehow we’ve become friends.
Just from proximity, I guess.
And because everyone else at Tate Prep shuns us.
Anyway, Hutch is funny, once he starts talking. He doesn’t like his parents much, and they don’t seem to like him either, since they never come to any school events. He seems to think hanging out with my dad and eating raw food for dinner at our house is preferable to whatever he might be doing at home, so he’s around a fair amount. I’m taking his cinematic education in hand. We made our own documentary film festival that we named The Kirk Hammett Festival of Truth and Glory, Hammett being Hutch’s favorite guitar player and subject of the best movie in our whole series: Metallica: Some Kind of Monster, which is all about a dysfunctional metal band in group psychotherapy. We also saw this film about a guy who lived with grizzly bears (until they ate him) and another about all the incredible grossness of fast food.2
More from the Hutch interview in the greenhouse:Roo: What’s your definition of popularity?Hutch: I used to think people were popular because they were good-looking, or nice, or funny, or good at sports.Roo: Aren’t they?Hutch: I’d think, If I could just be those things, I’d—you know—have more friends than I do. But in seventh grade, when Jackson and those guys stopped hanging out with me, I tried as hard as I could to get them to like me again. But then … (shaking his head as if to clear it) I don’t really wanna talk about it.Roo: What happened?Hutch: They just did some ugly stuff to me is all. And really, it was for the best.Roo: Why?Hutch: Because I was cured. I realized the popular people weren’t nice or funny or great-looking. They just had power, and they actually got the power by teasing people or humiliating them—so people bonded to them out of fear.Roo: Oh.Hutch: I didn’t want to be a person who could act like that. I didn’t want to ever speak to any person who could act like that.Roo: Oh.Hutch: So then I wasn’t trying to be popular anymore.Roo: Weren’t you lonely?Hutch: I didn’t say it was fun. (He bites his thumbnail, bonsai dirt and all.) I said it was for the best.
After Grandma’s funeral, and after Hanson went home to crawl into whatever hole he lives in, Dad had to clear through Grandma’s things and field condolence notes from all her friends. One afternoon, he came home from walking Polka-dot with tears streaming down his face.
The next day I found him weeping into a pot of miniature roses. And from then on it was pretty typical to have him sobbing into his salad at dinner, or to find him lying on the couch in the morning, insomniac, staring at the ceiling fan with a quivering lip.
Mom got progressively impatient with him—she’d say things like “Kevin, if you have to sob, do it in the bedroom. I’m trying to write an e-mail here” and “Kevin, blow your nose like an adult human being, won’t you? There’s no reason there should be snotty tissues on the table while I’m trying to eat my kiwi.”
“He was always overly attached to her,” Mom said one day when she was driving me to my job at the Woodland Park Zoo. Polka was sticking his ginormous head out the back window of the Honda.
“She was his mother,” I said. “She died.”
“Yeah,” said Mom. “But Kevin has always been something of a mama’s boy. That’s why he’s such a wreck now that she’s gone. Overattachment.”
“Shouldn’t people be attached?” I asked. “Isn’t that the point of human relationships, to be attached?”
“Well, there’s such a thing as too much,” she said, pulling off the freeway. “Still”—she checked her eye makeup in the rearview mirror—“he’ll get better in a couple days, I bet. Don’t worry.”
“I’m not worried.”
“Yes, you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
But I was.
And Dad didn’t get better in a couple of days. He got a lot worse.
1 Roly-poly: A roly-poly is a bug, technically a woodlouse, that curls up in a hard little ball if you touch it. But what I mean is, Hutch is a social outcast.2 In case you care: Grizzly Man and Super Size Me. We watched a bunch of others, too, but those were the best.
Agony and Love Poems!
a video clip:
Noel sits before an outdoor table at the coffee shop down the road from Roo’s house. In front of him is a sesame bagel with cheddar cheese. His favorite.Noeclass="underline" Whenever you’re ready.Roo: (behind the camera) So. How do you define … friendship?Noeclass="underline" (bitterly) My dad says it’s something that gets in the way of a business deal.Roo: Ag.Noeclass="underline" Yeah. Well. That’s probably why he’s divorced.Roo: No kidding.Noeclass="underline" And my brother Claude says friendship is a method of castration that doesn’t use a sharp object.Roo: Huh?Noeclass="underline" Like, friendship is a word girls use when they want to turn down guys. As in, “Oh, I can’t go out with you because I’m afraid of what it will do to our friendship.”Roo: Oh.Noeclass="underline" Or in Claude’s case, guys use it to turn down guys.Roo: But how do you define it?Noeclass="underline" A lot of people see friends as something you have on Twitter or Facebook or wherever. If someone wants to read your updates and you want to read their updates, then you’re friends. You don’t ever have to see each other. But that seems like a stupid definition to me.Roo: Yeah.Noeclass="underline" Although on the other hand, rethink. Maybe a friend is someone who wants your updates. Even if they’re boring. Or sad. Or annoyingly cutesy. A friend says “Sign me up for your boring crap, yes indeed”—because he likes you anyway. He’ll tolerate your junk.Roo: You have a lot of friends.Noeclass="underline" No, I don’t.Roo: You do. You know everyone at school. You get invited to parties.Noeclass="underline" I get invited to parties, yeah. And I know people. But I don’t want their updates.Roo: Oh.Noeclass="underline" And I sincerely doubt they want mine.Roo: I want your updates.Noeclass="underline" I want your updates. (He looks down, bashfully.) I do. I want all your updates, Ruby.Roo: Trust me. You don’t want them all.Noeclass="underline" I do. Even the boring ones.Roo: It’s not the boring ones that are the problem. It’s the crazy ones.Noeclass="underline" (shakes his head disbelievingly)Roo: I have some very deeply mental updates, Noel. You don’t need to be around for those.Noeclass="underline" You’re not mental. You think you’re mental. That’s a different thing.Roo: Isn’t that mental?Noeclass="underline" Can I have the updates, please? I said I wanted all the updates.Roo: (laughing) Fine. Your funeral.