Chapter Two

“Thanks for tying my shoe; wish things went differently.”

Maxwell wrote this message on the right wall of a wooden library cubby his freshman year of college. It was a nice cubby, by a window, nothing next to it, deep in the stacks of the second floor, and its back faced the wall, ensuring maximum privacy for when he inevitably started doodling in the margins of one of his textbooks. He sat here often, and watched the graffiti grow and change form over the four years he was to spend here. Some of the markings were faded. There were shapes, hourglasses, cartoon characters drawn on the walls. Some people just wrote “f**k” with any variation of capitalization or punctuation. One said “Mom: Blood, sweat, tears” written inside a heart. Accounts of vague and vaguely satisfying sex. Phone numbers. Song lyrics. Some were radical political statements. And more than one person wrote lines of poetry, presumably original, that got pieces of commentary added to the side.

Maxwell’s own contribution was scribbled in a moment of overall helplessness, of the feeling that the universe in general had ceased to listen to him, had chosen to pass him by, and the deep belief that the only way to rectify this one-sided ignorance was to write something vague on a library cubby. And it itself had picked up a third-party comment, the likely sarcastic phrase “so esoteric.”

One person just wrote, in black pen with slanted handwriting, “we will all be dead.” Next to that, someone had written “What a bummer.”

The first time Maxwell got high, he went to a party. It was mid-October his freshman year of college, when everything was settling down role-wise, but still energized. He smoked at a hexagon-picnic table behind the freshman all-female dorm. It started sort of near his left temple, a warmness, that spread down, around and pulsating around his face, then his body, then everything else around him. When he stood up and began walking, guided by his companions who seemed to know where they were going, he felt as if he were some kind of robot. He took very deliberate, mechanical steps, feeling as if he warmed up the ground as he stepped upon it. They began walking off of campus and down some dimly lit street, with his shoes resounding in his ears as they hit the pavement. Others were on the street, too, but he couldn’t really make them out, just kind of there and not there. “Stay off the street,” he heard Mary say behind him, “stay off so we don’t attract the sheriff” but it was difficult because there were no sidewalks, and the grass was uneven, structurally, and her words didn’t really register and he didn’t really understand the meaning but he could understand the motivation, which was right there in the tone, very present and forward. He wasn’t sure how long they had been walking in what was quickly becoming a legitimate forest when they came upon a house with three men, smoking, in suits outside. One of them had an American flag tied around his neck. Maxwell became frozen in terror and reached out for the other two. “I don’t wanna go in there, this looks scary and weird and I don’t think I’m very comfortable here,” was the main idea, though he was speeding through his words he hoped they would get the motivation, which he tried to keep very present and forward but kept kind of falling out and into his lap before he caught it and tried to reinstall it, the tone, I mean. But they reassured him and put these disembodied hands on him and guided him, gripping, towards the door. He tried to walk very straight.

The first thought was that he had stumbled into some alternate universe, because this seemed like a place that would not have existed at Canyon to him. It was a frat house, like out of a movie, with a deer head and beer cans and identical men in identical navy blue suits and Maxwell felt like they were all looking at him. And he could hear some music, but very distant and far away and cut off and he couldn’t tell where it was until he was guided towards some door leading to the basement and, yes, here it was, the music, and he was brought down the stairs and he gripped the railing and everything was loud and sweaty and disorienting and just about as soon as he got dropped into the crowd he lost sight of everyone he had come here with.

“Hey, Maxwell,” a hand clapped on his shoulder, he turned and standing there was Brian, a man Maxwell previously had described as very, very straight, now had his hand on his shoulder and just kind of keeping it there, applying pressure, and he was laughing, “you look so uncomfortable, this is so not your scene.”

And Maxwell thought “White devil!” and he could feel his lips move but he wasn’t sure if he said it out loud and Brian just looked at him all confused like and then left him alone. Maxwell started looking for his friends but, staring into the crowd, he couldn’t tell who they were, not just not being able to tell where they were but legitimately not being able to tell who they were, because all of a sudden everything and everyone looked exactly the same to him. And, confused, he started to look around at everything else, taking in the surroundings for the first time. A small table set up for a game of beer pong was in a nook near the door, and another deer’s head was above some first place and there were beer cans perched on the antlers. And above the deer: another American flag, a smaller one, and a picture of Barack Obama in some vaguely African garb and a Don’t Tread on Me flag, all of this swirling and ruminating in Maxwell’s panicked mind into a singular response: I need to get out of here. And so he turned around and walked up the stairs, feeling as if he was moving very fast, and then sped through the lounge, ignored the three men outside the house, still standing in the same spots they were before, and began breaking into almost a run, now, shielding his face from a group of faceless people walking to where he had just come from, panicked, shaking, reeling, when he fell.

Maxwell imagined seeing someone he loved for the first time as an auditory explosion, trumpets blasting these fat, square, notes, or an angelic chorus, or “I Know There’s An Answer” by The Beach Boys suddenly starting on some strange internal turntable. It was actually the inverse -- total silence. Everything else, the chatter of the people around him, the wind, the crickets, disappeared, even the sound of Maxwell’s own mind just seemed to turn off, all starting when he felt his hand on his shoulder.

“You okay?”

Maxwell looked up at this figure on his left but couldn’t really see in the dark. “I’m fine, just kind of started, uh, rushing for a bit.”

The figure got down to his level. Maxwell could make out a general form: large hair, broad shoulder, and he was smiling at him. “This didn’t help.” He motioned downwards. “Your shoes are untied.”

It was silent for a while before Maxwell realized that he was waiting for some kind of response.

“Oh.”

“Here,” he said, and moved downward to tie them for him.

It was a scene that would have seemed rather bizarre and uncomfortable if Maxwell were viewing it from the outside: dark road, stranger, creepy frat house. But actually being in it and experiencing it made it feel much more acceptable.

“I’m Alex.”

“Maxwell.”

They didn’t go home together that night. They wouldn’t even see each other for three more weeks, upon which they stood, Maxwell in back, Alex in front, near each other in line to buy some coffee. Alex noticed Maxwell first, and Maxwell didn’t immediately remember who he was. And they sat and drank their coffees together, and Alex said, all nonchalant, slipped between two other lightweight topics, if Maxwell wanted to get dinner. Specifically, “Not to assume anything, but would you like to go the Inn with me next Friday?” And Maxwell, almost unaware of it himself, replied in the affirmative “Yeah, I would.” And they exchanged numbers then, and talked for a while more before each walking to their respective dorms, and Maxwell went the entire way without ever even seeing anyone else that walked past him, and thinking the entire time that his shoelaces were tied just a hair too tight.