Boy Talk

Boy Talk

We keep tally marks (with parenthetical comments) in my little black book. When we score, we call them glory points. We conceived the idea on a Friday night of meandering around coffee shops, discussing the book Catcher in the Rye. I convinced my friend Michael that Catcher in the Rye satires pathetically alienated teens and mocks the protagonist as much as anyone else - and thus bore our tradition. We score glory points by convincing the other that he is wrong; my little black book is the memo pad I use for keeping phone numbers, homework assignments, other assorted notes, and of course, glory points. At the moment, I am beating Michael five to four in the "glory game."

Michael actually gave me the book "Catcher in the Rye" to read somewhere near the end of my freshman year, at the time when I had very few friends because I had just changed schools. He, also being an alienated youth, began to talk to me about phonies and other Holden Caufieldesque things. To this day, he brags about how he drove me into a "three month depression." From the philosophy of Holden Caufield, we have since progressed to arguing philosophy and politics.

Prior to discussing phonies, Michael and I had never gotten far beyond the surface-levels of conversation. That kind of relationship wasn't unusual for me - virtually every relationship I had was as shallow as a kiddie pool. In fact, discussing phonies was a breakthrough for me, if only because we exchanged some semblance of ideas about personal psychology. Michael and I thoroughly agreed: "Everybody in the world is a phony - except me." (We never did figure our if the "everybody" included the other person.)

During the summer between my freshman and sophomore years, I began to miss people - no one person in particular, just those mystical creatures that I missed walking down the street while I spent three or four days inside reading and watching television. I made something of a commitment to myself to actually befriend more than the handful of people I talked to over that summer. I committed myself to making close friends whom I could talk to about personal problems. Friends, ironically, like Michael.

Michael and I moved to this topic near the end of that summer, at a time when he was in the process of switching to a private high school from our old, public high school.