What Love Isn't

“Go away!” Kurt yelled from the other side of the bedroom door. “I told you to leave me the fuck alone!”

Fitz knocked harder. “Dude, open this door before I fucking knock it down. You’ve been avoiding my calls all week. It’s getting past the point of ridiculous.”

“I said go away!” Kurt replied.

“C’mon, man…you’re acting like a girl on the rag,” said Fitz. Kurt threw a heavy shoe at the door. The unexpected bang echoed loudly through the dark hallway and made Fitz jump.

“Alright, I warned you, asshole!” Fitz shouted. “I’m kicking this door in and it’s your fault. Your parents are going to fucking kill you on account of this door.” Fitz listened for any sounds of movement on the other side. Hearing nothing, he began kicking it forcefully. It buckled at the corners with each thump, but held fast.

The closeness of the wall behind Fitz hindered his effort to bust the door down, but it didn’t matter because it was suddenly flung wide open as he surged forward with a powerhouse kick that never landed on anything solid. Off-balance, he fell into the room and collapsed on the hardwood floor all over the legs of his dazed friend, who balled up a fist and punched him in the back of the head.

“Get off me, faggot,” groaned Kurt. He kicked Fitz in the side and got to his feet, hoisting his sagging cargo shorts further up on his waist as he examined the hinges of the door. “Great. You knocked the hinges loose, you fucking idiot. What the hell am I going to tell my dad?”

“Tell him the truth,” Fitz said, lifting himself off the floor, sweeping dust and crumbs and dog hair off his t-shirt. “Tell him you broke the stupid thing in a fit of rage, just like he does when he’s pissed. He’ll probably feel so guilty for screwing up your childhood that he’ll just fix the door, no further questions asked.” He fingered the throbbing knot on the back of his head and said, “Dude, you hit like a girl on the rag.”

“Fucking idiot,” Kurt said again, shaking his head as he looked at the hinges. He closed the door, sighed loudly, and lay down on his bed, facing toward the window away from Fitz. The window’s blinds were shut and the room was very dark except for the glow of the computer's monitor on the desk.

At sixteen, Kurt was only slightly smaller and blonder than his friend, who was three years older. They'd been longtime chums. It was the middle of summer and they hadn’t surfed in a week.

“It’s the middle of summer and we haven’t surfed in a week,” remarked Fitz. “I was down by the pier this morning at peak tide and the curls were totally Richt, man—sickest tubes I’ve seen all year.” He chewed at a hangnail on his middle finger. “I been trying to call but you don’t answer. What’s the matter with you?”

Kurt was silent.

Fitz looked the place over and said, “This place looks like flipped shit, man. Never seen so many candy wrappers in my life. Did you eat all these?”

Kurt was silent.

“You look like flipped shit, too,” Fitz said, “like you were born in this room or something.” He made his way to the desk and picked up a stack of magazines and candy wrappers and dirty clothes from the chair, looked around for an empty spot, and finally threw it all at one of the colossal piles in the corner. “Got any more of them Snickers bars?” he asked.

“I ate them all,” said Kurt.

“Bastard,” Fitz said, rubbing the back of his head. “You and this room look like you’re about to burst into flames. It smells like decroated toxic death in here. What’s wrong with you?” He sat down at the desk and eyed the monitor. “What the hell is this you're listening to?”

“Enya.”

“Enya? What the fuck is Enya? Classical or something?”

“I don’t know, man. She does that Celtic, new-agey shit. I don’t know what kind of music it is. It’s something Chris copied for me.”

Fitz straddled the chair, backwards, and listened, narrow-eyed, to Sail Away for a few minutes. “It sucks bull balls,” he concluded. “How’s Chris doing, anyway?”

“She dumped me and she’s dating Eric,” Kurt said.

Fitz sat up straight. “Whoa, man. Whoa, whoa, whoa,” he said. “That’s outrageous, dude. Are you serious?”

Kurt nodded.

“Bummer, man. Major fucking wipeout. What happened?”

“I have no idea,” replied Kurt. “Two weeks ago we were in this very room making out to this very music and I told her I loved her. First girl I ever said that to.” He stared at the closed blinds. “First girl I ever say that to, and she disappears.”

“You haven’t talked to her?”

“Not a word. Not a phone call or email. Nothing. She doesn't answer my calls. Total silence.”

“Bummer, man. I knew something had to be up with you. That why you haven’t been answering your phone?”

“I didn’t feel like talking to anybody,” Kurt said.

“And you didn’t feel like surfing?”

“Not even that.”

“Shit, man.” Fitz folded his arms across the top of the chair and rested his chin on them. He stared at the same closed window his friend was fixated on. After a few minutes, he stood up and twisted the rod that opened the blinds. Lines of midday sun streaked over Kurt’s dark form on the bed, and into his eyes.

“What the fuck you doing?” Kurt shrieked, “trying to blind me? Close that shit.”

“No,” said Fitz. “You need to get up. You need to surf.”

“Don’t tell me what the fuck I need!” Kurt yelled as he bolted upright on the bed. “Didn’t you hear what I said? The only girl I ever fucking cared about fucking left me when I told her I fucking loved her! What the fuck do you know about any of it?”

Fitz looked out on the green lawns below, ran his fingers through the stubble of his blond goatee and said, “I know all I need to know, man. Your girlfriend dumped you two weeks ago and I had to break the door down to see you. And when I do see you, you’re in a dark, foul-smelling room subsisting on cheese and chips and chocolate, probably smoking dope like a greasy fiend. Just take a look at yourself in the mirror over there. You’ve gained ten pounds—I swear to God—and you haven’t shaved or changed your clothes or washed your hair all week, have you? You look like a goddamn Frenchman or Robin Williams or something.”

Kurt shaded his eyes from the sunlight, and said nothing.

“You’ve never even been in love, man,” Fitz said softly. “You don’t even know what you’re talking about. People don’t fall in love with other people. They fall in love with themselves.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What I said. Will you turn that Enya shit off? It’s driving me crazy. Thank you. I just mean you didn’t fall in love with Chris. And Chris didn’t fall in love with Eric. You both fell in love with a romantic vision—a fantasy—a snapshot from your own mind. That’s what everyone does when they fall in love. They don’t know the person they think they’re in love with—not really. They find out later, and then suddenly they’re not ‘in love’ anymore.”

Fitz bit at his hangnail, then said, “I don’t know what Chris’s image was, but you must have shattered it when you told her you loved her. She’s probably one of those chicks who wants a guy to beat the living shit out of her and choke her during sex and stuff like that.”

“I could do that,” said Kurt.

Fitz grinned. “You want to know what love really is, man?”

“Yeah, what?”

“I don’t know yet. I only know what it’s not.”

“Fuck it," said Kurt. "Let’s just go surfing."

“If you showered I think I’d be in love with you,” said Fitz.

“Fuck you, too,” replied Kurt.