My Kyzer Sweetheart

It started when I was boarding the bus, Route 33 Northbound, and I sat down a couple seats away from the perfect specimen of adorable. He was the perfect combination of Pete Wentz and Patrick Stump. He had perfect hair and perfect skin and I perfectly wanted to fit him inside my pocket and keep him on a shelf, forever to reach up and twiddle his silken hair. The whole bus ride was spent, on my part, holding my breath. I was awestricken. And then I had to get off the bus, and I thought that I would never see him again.

The second time I saw him, I was on the TRAX with Mercedes. A whole bunch of Beast HollowFood kids would all board en masse at a certain stop, Petrick [as I had christened him] included. It was like a movie. I spied his visage from across a crowded train, his dreadlocks sticking angles out of a rasta hat and framing his china-doll face. I half-heartedly prayed that he would be taking the 33 alongside me. I wanted to see him again, awkwardly shoved against the window for no apparent reason. This sounds disgustingly creepy, but I loved how he was borderline chubby. It was endearing the way his body fit like a normal person's into his shirt. I watched, downtrodden, as he departed the train at the Fashion Place stop. My fingers twitched. I turned my head and went on pretending not to see the three scene girls pointing directly at my sunglassed face.

They say the third time is the charm, and the third time I saw Kyler, I was stomping over to the 33 bus stop at Sandy Civic. I saw from the train that there was somebody inhabiting the bench already, meaning I'd have to sit on the ground or sit next to them. Much to my surprise, that someone was Petrick. I dropped down on the other half of the bench and bit my tongue. It was cold. The sun was setting, and when I looked over, he was alternately chewing gum and puffing away on a cigarette. I now presume that cig was stolen from the pointy scene girls. Kyler was everything I wanted in a boy, and everything I wanted to be as an artist. He was smoking a cigarette and he wasn't coughing. And he had dreadlocks, real dreadlocks that I could have reached out and touched. And have I ever mentioned to you that he was listening to talking? Perhaps not talk radio, perhaps not spoken word gospel, but indeed, it was talking.

I looked away for about fifteen minutes, my head consciously glued to the other side of the parking lot. My exact thoughts were "Don't look at him, don't let him see that you are looking at him, don't let him see that you wish you could bury your head in his jacket and stay there for eternity. Don't fucking move." So I didn't, until the bus came, and our driver being the idiot cuntsuck that he is, drove past. He drove past and parked the bus elsewhere. And then he went to the bathroom. As the bus was driving past, I stood up, held my TRAX pass aloft, and shouted "COCKSUCKER!" I heard Petrick laughing good-naturedly below my lofted arm. I sat back down, and this dialogue, this memorable dialogue, elapsed:

"Fucking Christ, doesn't he know how cold it is?" [said I]

"Seriously."

"I wonder what he does in there for twenty goddamn minutes."

"Probably smokes crack." [we both laugh]

"Oh, yes, he just goes in there and does a few lines!"

"He pays for it in bus fare."

"It's good to know that my life is in the hands of a cokefiend manwhore, paying for his stuff in quarters and tokens."

I'm paraphrasing there, but can you not see how fucking amazing this kid is? Can you not see? Over the next few months, there was a bit of a dry spell in Petrick sightings. I'd see him here, catch him there, never daring to say those words I wanted to so badly: "Be my boyfriend?" He once boarded the bus at Fashion Place, a stop I'd learned to also take in order to catch Scrubs, and I watched him surreptitiously as he drifted in and out of slumber.

[disclaimer: I know how creepy that sounds, like I was staring at him sleeping, but it wasn't like that. I was glancing back and forth in my nervous manner and noticed he was sleeping like a young Mary Tyler Moore, and still I wanted him to be my Coin Operated Boy.]

The last time I ever saw Kyler, officially, was a day I was taking the bus home with Dobbl. She and I were having a spew of conversations, carefully choosing which topics to say louder than others. Kyler had his iPod in [hopefully listening to talk radio] and occasionally, his thumb would meander over to the pause button to linger there and hear in on what we were loudly bringing up. He talked to us for a bit. Mostly, he was talking to Dobbl, and mostly, I was staring at him. He mentioned Beast Hollowfood's decline since the early days of strictly film students. He said that now was a time of kids who were only at Beast Hollowfood to slack off and call themselves artists. I knew what it was like, SLAA experienced the same thing, but still I wanted to be in his class. I wanted to be in his class and in his heart. I vowed that day to transfer to Beast Hollowfood under all costs, if not to meet him, then at least to fill the void of skill-deficient students.

Many moons ago, on the night of the Road Rally, our good friend Anthony confirmed our beliefs that Kyler was truly a nice kid. From then on, Dobbl searched her school for signs of our beloved Petrick and his beloved dreads, but could find not hide nor hair of that boy. Until today. She said to me that she saw a boy with Petrick's face. She saw a boy with Petrick's face and no dreadlocks, and gangster style. My soul cried. I was glad she found him, but I didn't want him to be a gangster. Not him, not the porcelain Petrick. Dobbl had also found his MySpace.

She sent him a message concerning all things, wondering if he was who he was and if he knew who we were, but that wasn't enough for me. I added him as a friend to get a better look at his pictures, and then, then it truly was evident. This was Petrick. And I didn't know what the Hell I was going to do. I opened the box to start a new message. I had to tell him something about me, about this girl he'd just approved as a prospective friend, in case he didn't recognize me. Or worse, in case he'd forgotten. It covered the basics, Hello do you remember me we made fun of the bus driver, and so forth. I wanted to scream IT'S YOU, I LOVE YOU, I LOVE YOU MORE THAN ALL THINGS! I LOVE YOU! at him, but marked against it. I settled with a demure statement about how I'd wished I weren't so shy. I'd wished that I had the courage to tell him that I loved his hair and his style.

And now, Kyler thinks I'm crazy. I'm not entirely sure that he does. In my mind, there are these possible situations:

1. Kyler accepts my friend request because he remembers me and also came up with a cute nickname for me, since he didn't know my real one. He and I tell each other just how long we've wanted to ask the other one out, and then we have a rollicking good time on some sort of G-rated outing that ends up with harmless coffee-drinking and park-inhabiting. I transfer to Beast Hollyfood, we ride the bus or take his car home, and we watch crappy 70's horror movies together with a healthy supply of Diet Cokes and gummi bears.

2. Kyler accepts my friend request blindly because he assumed I was just another kid from school. He now thinks that I'm crazy and will soon be removing me from his friends list, if not immediately.

3. Kyler accepts my friend request blindly, visits my profile, and soon learns that I was that girl, the one who'd always stare at him on TRAX, the one with disgusting hair and a pug nose. The one who smelled a little bit like Mexican food even though she never really seemed to be eating anything Latin. He can't decide between removing me or taking me for a loop of trickery when he is called away from the computer, and I send him the message. He reads it and finds that I'm mentally unstable and a total loser. He promptly deletes me.

Kyler, if you're reading this, I'd totally watch Evil Dead [or Rambo, I'm always down for Rambo] with you if you wanted. You know, if you wanted.