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and it was dark by the time we pulled up to the small duplex
Aaron shared with his mother (another thing we had in common:
I lived in close quarters with a single mom, too). Mrs.
Smith was a mystery shopper, Aaron told me as he unlocked
the door, and wouldn't be back for a while.
The living room was dark, with low ceilings and wall-towall
bookshelves. A futon, covered in lint and too small for
someone Aaron's height, was left open in the middle of the
room. The frame dug into my pant legs when I sat down.
Aaron never took a seat, preferring instead to pace. These
are my books, he told me, fingering their spines and pulling
out a few, one at a time. Most were scifi novels, and he recounted
their plots in painful detail. You'd like this one, he
said. He said it about every book he showed me, indiscriminately,
even though he knew I didn't care for the genre. This
went on for a couple hours.
I waited and waited for something more to happen, but
nothing ever did, not even when I got him, walked over to
him, stood close and tried to will my friend out of his shell. I
didn't just want to hook up; I would've taken emotional closeness,
too, even the platonic kind that grows from discussing
shared life experiences. I tried taking the lead again — what
kind of music do you like? what do you want to do after college?
— but Aaron would deflect my questions with one-word
answers and go back to talking about the books. He didn't listen
to music, he said. But this one, this book, it's really great,
he said. When was he going to stop talking about the books?
even a bookseller at a bookshop would've at least asked what
brought me into the store that day.
The more Aaron talked, the more I was broken down by
self-doubt: I'm not this guy's intellectual equal, after all. I'm
not pretty enough. I spend too much time online, and now
I've lost the art of interacting with live human beings. I left,
crestfallen, when he was holding Of Men and Monsters in his
hands and telling me about a society where the humans had
turned into vermin living in the walls of monster's houses.
I'm an average-looking girl, maybe a little above-average,
but certainly not some goddess who can get any guy she wants.
My night with Aaron wasn't a disaster because we didn't hook
up — that would've been normal and oK. It was a disaster be-
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