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We'll do this and we'll do it together. Peter in third grade: sits in the third row, fourth seat. Has a few dork friends and sits at the lunch table playing D&D with them. Knows if he didn't do that he'd be sitting alone. Has a crush on Carly Pontchartrain, who has long black hair and looks pretty from most angles, until you see her from straight on and realize she isn't. She's a little dumb and a little mean and will always be. You root for her to leave that shit behind, outgrow it, and she won't. He'll want her all through school and she'll torture him and use his pathetic attentions to feed her mean-girl groove. In 15 years they'll meet again at a party in someone's all-white mod college apartment and they'll have sex out in the backseat of her Bronco, which she drives to look tomboy and cool. He'll realize right then looking at her orgasming face in the yellow streetlight that she isn't pretty, and he'll also realize that she is mean and a surprisingly bad lay and wasn't worth any of it. But it will take our guy all the 15 years to get there. Too bad for Peter.

Now we're in eigth grade and we see the beginning of it. Peter figures out he's a little bit funny. He hones the sarcasm and gets in with the cooler kids. He's a survivor. Dorks over there, our guy over here. Gets high B's instead of A's on purpose. Becomes besties with all the girls, hugs them, listens to them, gives them footrubs, attends their sleepovers, never once crosses the line. Totally sluts himself up for them. Professional eunuch. They eat it up. Cool guys use him as a mule to make their contacts with cool girls, now he's got real social capital. Purpose, utility. Does he pay? Yes he does. He falls in love with all those girls, then serves them right up to all these guys who are assholes and makes himself want to puke, and die. Writes bad tortured heartbreak longing poetry that he submits to the school lit magazine under a female pseudonym. See? Still dork.

Still we're not too bad yet. Still garden-variety shit, high school survival shit. Boring shit. College is where we snap to a little more attention. Peter junior year, still doing the same old same old, knows how to help foil in highlights, huge emotional vocabulary, can do empathy in his sleep. Girls still fucking love it. Has gone to fat a little, hygiene a little poor, eunuched all the way. No threat here. Could wear a goddamn maxipad just about. Still funny, girls falling asleep in his lap with him giving headrubs the whole time, hides the boners with baggy I'm-your-brother pants. Total master of the craft.

But uh-oh. There she is. Hi there, Jenny McPhee. She does his whole act, but in reverse. You knew it, right? You've seen this movie. Not a cool girl, not a dork. Kinda pretty, kinda smart, not into the whole stupid thing. They're going to be friends, Jenny and our Peter. He's going to see her and she's going to see him. There's going to be a firestorm of unbelieveable mind-bending authentic interesting powerful energy between them. It is going to be all for real and not one bit stupid, trite, immature, misfired or drippy. She's going to be a little bit ahead of him and after a good year of solid citizen friendship with many ups and a few downs growingly and learningly and strengtheningly resolved he's going to get his chance with Jenny McPhee.

Its not going to be under a big oak tree on a picnic. Its not going to be late at night in her off-campus apartment with the opposite-gender roomies away and bossa nova playing. Its not going to be side-by-side looking at old bootleg Hendrix and Dylan and Guthrie recordings in the independet hard-core record store, and its not going to be on the footbridge having coffees in the chilly air of a completely sparkling golden morning in October after a hard rain the night before.

Its going to be a soft opening. She's going to do and say all the same things except there's going to be a little allowing going on, and he's going to feel it, and know it, and its going to be there inbetween them all the time. Its going to distract the fuck out of both of them. There's our boy, and that's the girl. Not the forever girl, my god, get over that right now. We're not talking about wedding-house-kids, this is not preschool story-time at the local library with Ms. Yvonne. Spit your binkie out and pay attention. This is our Jenny and an allowing and our Peter and if he can do it, if he can unlearn survival and figure out how to put his fucking heart on a stake, how to throw himself completely off the bridge and do the 18 months of rehab to be able to say complicated words like marshmallow again, if he can see that he's going to shed all this who-I-am in a year or two anyway when the larger world fucking schools him and if he can have the presence of mind and shred of courage to do it right fucking now, he's going to make the jump to warp speed and have the first geniune integrated moment of his life, and a fucking great map to follow for the 61 years he's got left to live.

You want to know how it all ends? Of course you do, you whore. He's going to kiss her. He's going to rise mid-way and that's as far as he's going to make it. He's going to bat a dribbling double that is only a double because its takes a hop off the infield and the second base guy can't get his glove up in time. Peter is going to kiss her on the front seat of the car as he's dropping her off and he's going to think that he's thrilling her and that he has time. He has no time. He's going to look a little into her eyes and give one stroke to her hair and announce his intentions: lets do this. He doesn't just do it. Acting on a stage, my friend. Our Jenny is going to feel a profound sadness and sense of loss and is also going to be pissed and let down and angry and hurt and she's going to let it go on for a couple of weeks and then she's going to dump his dumb inauthentic ass and move on completely to the grad student from Prague and have an incredible life. Peter is going to do just fine, but we don't want to read anymore about him either, do we? Girls mature faster than boys, don't you know that?

Oh I'm sorry. Are you disappointed? Want to pick the other ending? Is this not as much fun as you thought it would be? Do you wish you picked something else to read before you turned your light off and went to bed? Its not the best or the worst thing. Why do you always want to root for the poor underdog? Why is it always the evolving, the blooming, the becoming, the fucking personal growth? That's your shit. Your agenda. Go take care of the stink in your own house. Leave our guy alone.