And I will always love Bryan

An unmarked bus took me to an unmarked warehouse to meet a man wearing a cloth bag over his head. Black holes were in place of his eyes and he had no mouth. We stared at one another silently and I waved. His arms didn't move.

His tweed jacket hung to his ankles and his pants fit him well. His attire told me he was a man who knew business. The geometric design of his pinky ring told me he was an admirer of Etruscan jewelry. His refusal to wave back told me he was not very friendly.

My mother once told me that I was friendly and I've since taken great pride in that. My high school was filled with social invalids but I did my best at pretending to be their friend. Bryan McMullon in particular, struck me as odd. Maybe it was because he never groomed his thin mustache, or maybe it was because he concocted an intricate baseball/handball hybrid professional sporting league in his head and played out all the games alone against a wall in a courtyard, but he always just struck me as odd.

To be fair, a boy of his frail physique, crumpled facial features, and often grotesque choices of wardrobe, never really had a shot. I, along with a few of my sympathetic friends, often asked him how his league was going before putting his face through a locker. Of course the interest was feigned, but the effort was there no less.

The man in the warehouse, still refusing to wave, left me alone at which point I began to masturbate.