I am a young, active boy. I am tall and skinny and always smiling. I’ve got a funny accent, a mix of my mother’s Spanish and my father’s French. Eighteen years a daydreamer and self-diagnosed slacker. My teachers say I talk too much. My parents say I talk too little. I say they should shut the fuck up and really listen every once in a while.

I burn easily in the sun, and I’m always cold. Whenever I complain about the winter weather my father will inexplicably start going on about that one Christmas when I was four years old, when I ran away from home, distraught after coming to the realization that Santa Claus wasn’t a real person but a fat man in a cheap synthetic costume made somewhere in Taiwan. Apparently it was horribly cold and snowy, and they found me three days later a couple blocks away hiding in a neighbor’s backyard shed, nearly frozen to death, crying hysterically - but not due to the chill.

I was still broken up about the whole Santa thing.

I have no recollection of this ever happening, and my mother says it never did. It’s a stupid story, really, that papa made up on a whim because he realized there are no cute, funny stories from my childhood. And it’s not even funny, is it? A little sad, a little pathetic. But his eyes shine whenever he tells it to company or the postman or the woman ahead of him in line. He seems happy for a moment, so I let him believe it.

I don’t have a favorite color, a favorite book, a favorite film. Most people let those sorts of things define themselves and others. Like if a girl at school proclaims her love for, I don’t know, Kenny Rogers, we should all think less of her because, well,

“What dip shit piece of crap motherfucker listens to Kenny Rogers?”

And then you’ll see her in that horrible lunchroom sitting all by her lonesome at an empty table, picking at string beans and Salisbury steak, sipping her orange juice but not really sipping it because she’s just staring at the rest of the world getting on with their lovely lives. Not tasting anything, not feeling anything, just watching.

Who I really am is the charming young man who walks over to her table and sits beside her. I’ll eat my lunch with her and share a cigarette and we’ll talk about her day. I’ll pretend to like Kenny Rogers, too. I’ll make her feel better, and she’ll make me feel better. And I won’t laugh at her when she tells me her favorite color or favorite novel or favorite film because, really, I won’t give a fuck.

Those sorts of things don’t interest me half as much as pretty lips, big brown eyes, gorgeous breasts, and a nice round ass.