Boys with Feelings Kaitlyn Andrews-Rice
Stop me if you've heard this one: two boys walk into a coffee shop, with
their backpacks and their duct tape-covered Bibles, their laptops and their
sensible button downs, curly hair untainted by gel or sun or time, and sit
next to a woman (me) pretending to use her laptop, pretending to nurture her
passions, whatever those are, but what I'm really doing is reading about
melting glaciers and eavesdropping as they discuss love (a treasure they
hope to secure), and then one is getting a call from his wife (Speak of the
dev... err angel, he says catching himself), and the other is staying behind to
thumb his Bible, check his email, his social feeds, friends still blessed,
wearing sunnies, completing missions in sunbaked third-world nations,
married at eighteen to their best friend, who else, and I wonder if he feels
sad, waiting for the right woman to waltz by, modest and demure, or maybe he
is discouraged watching his friends live exemplary lives full of service
knowing it might be only for show, those posed selfies with the poor, soon
to be uplifted by evangelical generosity, though he says nothing, does
nothing, waits patiently for the friend to return so they can discuss
failures and this specific season of learning to love the Lord in times of
strife, and I think of them ordering their coffees, how they didn't notice
the moms in mom leggings, didn't see their lives as I did, mornings spent
slick with sweat, just finishing Booty Barre, ordering skinny lattes,
delaying the boredom known as the time between drop-off and pick-up, no,
they simply smiled and shook hands and sat down, said prayers, opened their
Bibles, their laptops, talking openly, earnestly about hopes and dreams,
refusing to drown in that technology-lit void, their voids likely filled by
God, toggling between Psalms and Proverbs, and suddenly I feel my own void
expanding, mutating into a newly swollen adult depression and rage that
appears regularly, without warning, like a long-lost uncle looking for the
pull-out, overstaying his welcome, leaving bowls of half-eaten tuna salad in
the sink, and I'm fighting a primal urge to punch these boys in the face,
can you imagine (Tonight at 10, local woman assaults two evangelicals!),
wouldn't that make the PTA moms pee their mom leggings, which actually makes
me happy, so happy I expand this daydream, me getting high on weed gummies
at 10 a.m., looking for a reason to get dressed, looking for my sex drive
(Is it in the bins with the wedding china? Where is the wedding china?),
daydreaming so hard that when the boy without a wife asks me for a pen, I
jump and yell, What? and he says, A pen? May I borrow a pen? and I say,
Sure, if I have one, I usually don't have one, haha! though I do, I actually
have a pen, hiding between the tampons and the Pull-Ups and the glittery lip
plumper I saw on a reality TV star's vlog, and he says, What does this say
about our culture? No one having a pen? and I say, Right? a bit
sarcastically, quickly minimizing my own social feeds, former high school
friends leaning into motherhood the way I lean into wine, and watch as the
boy turns and says, I'm writing it down, Steve. What you said about
loneliness, to which Steve says, Doesn't it make you feel better about the
whole thing? All of it? and I want to say, All of what, Steve?! but I don't,
I sit there, staring at the wall, at my computer, waiting, hoping Steve says
it again.
Kaitlyn Andrews-Rice is the Editor-in-Chief of Split Lip Magazine. She has work in or coming from
Indiana Review, Paper Darts, Copper Nickel, Booth and others.
Read her postcard.
Detail of photo on main page courtesy
of Debs.
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