i go invisible

When I was twelve, I was hanging out with a group of about seven guys from my school. I grew up on an island near Miami—so we all lived within ten blocks of each other. One of them was my second cousin, who everyone considered a bit off, but I thought he was kind of cool.

We were in Mac’s bedroom and he had bunk beds. While we were talking, I climbed up on the top bunk, and I guess I didn’t say anything for a while, and the horrible wish came true.

In The Chronicles of Narnia, about the third or fourth book, either The Silver Chair or Prince Caspian, one of the children wishes she could see what her friends were doing at that moment. It turned out they were talking about her…


‘Where’s Erik?’ one of them said. They all looked around at the group sitting on the floor and saw that I was not there. If I had an ounce of sense, I would have said something. But I thought it was a fun trick and remained quiet, though my head hung over the edge of the bunk bed, peering down at them.

‘I guess he left without saying anything,’ Mac said.

‘That kid’s weird,’ someone said.

And so it started.


‘I don’t really like him much.’

‘I only hang out with him because he’s related to me.’

‘He goes to the gifted program with me,’ another one said, ‘but he goes to a special section for the people with problems. We call them the Mad Scientists.’

Someone told another story that confirmed my oddity.

I was so traumatized that I cannot even remember how I made it out of that room. I have a vague recollection of waiting until everyone left and then sneaking out, and I have a vague recollection of saying something and all of them pretending that they knew I was there and were only joking. I have no idea which one of the two is true.

Anyway, that was years ago, and I’m completely over it. And for the record, I only went to that special section because I had some weird speech problem, fuck-tard. I didn’t want to be in your Robot dance performance of ‘Kilroy Was Here’ anyway.

Part six of Nashville:

my love has gone