What I’m about to tell you notwithstanding, I am not a stalker. Or a boyfriend-stealer. I ended up in Donovan’s closet entirely by accident.
We’d been flirting for a while. He used to be in a band with my friend Jason, who was now in this band Diatribe. I was never really much into the music scene before that (I love music, but the whole indie music scene eluded me – something to do with a degree of coolness I found intimidating – Jason once said “you could weave a tapestry from the mutton chops alone”) but I started going to all Jason’s shows, to show my support, and so did Donovan. It was easy to see why they were friends – they both had that brainy rock star thing going on, which on Jason equaled a non-haircut $50 haircut, Levi’s, and the occasional designer jacket (courtesy of his day gig at the jingle house) and on Donovan, the 29-year-old prematurely balding shaved head, black-rimmed glasses (nerd cool) and lab coat. He’s getting a degree in chemistry. He’s a chemist. He’s a chemist who plays in a band. (His band is called U.) You have to admit that’s pretty cool. He plays drums. Possibly you already know that there are all kinds of drummer jokes (I didn’t), that the drummer is typically seen as the slacker of the band, but I love drums, and the chemist-drummer combo was a total indie rock do as far as I was concerned. (I know thing zero about chemistry, which in some weird way made him even more appealing. I felt like his understanding of chemistry, even if I was unable to ever converse with him on the subject, just put him on this other level of intelligence. I felt like only grown-ups knew about chemistry. I didn’t even know anyone who’d taken it in high school.) Plus, Donovan! Who doesn’t need a boyfriend named Donovan?
Jason and I initially became friends primarily on the basis of our mutual love of shopping. (It was some time later that I found out he’s actually kind of brilliant and a crazy overachiever who paints and writes novels in his spare time.) You have to appreciate a straight guy who loves to shop but avoids whatever that whole tucked-in, primpy, hair gel look is that there’s a serious infestation of over at those bars over on Rush Street. Jason can wear a thousand-dollar jacket in such a way that you notice Jason before you notice the jacket. (Which we agree to be one of the prime fashion directives: 1) If someone says you look great and then an hour goes by before they say anything about the jacket, you have made a successful purchase. If that same jacket can go entirely unnoticed at the hipster bars, then you have a gift. 2) The right pair of boots can make many things possible. 3) Labels go on the inside.) I’m fairly certain he goes shopping more than I do. We’ve gotten into a thing where we call each other from our cell regarding new purchases. (Or regarding perfect future spouses spotted while shopping, like the woman he followed into Agnes B. or the cute but bitter hipster I saw picking through flat-fronts at Village Thrift who eavesdropped on the very conversation I was having about him in which I referred to him as “my new boyfriend” and assumed I was talking about someone else when he heard the word “skinny” and wouldn’t hear it when I insisted it was him [he was like, “I’m not your boyfriend”] and when I pointed out that he was eavesdropping he only started in on the whole issue of cellphones as prophecy of doom at which time my attempt at humor in noting that we were having our first fight resulted in him telling me to go back to the mall, which hurt. Naturally, we ended up dating for several months). Anyway Jason introduced me to Donovan at one of their shows although I can’t say I was immediately rocketed into a fourth dimension of attraction. (Most of the people I’ve been wildly attracted to [e.g. Cute Bitter Hipster] have turned out to be men of lesser ambition. To whom the oft-cited mantra “selling out” expands to include concepts like paying rent, having car insurance and sometimes even having a phone. All of which, when spoken aloud, must be heavily italicized. Guys who have a certain studied cynicism. And you know, there’s a certain cynicism inherent in being from New York, which I am, but a) this is Chicago and b) after a while it’s just boring. I prided myself on my ironic detachment too, when I was seventeen. I’m thirty now. There are some things to be happy about.) But Donovan was obviously really funny and really smart, and, entirely unsolicited, mentioned that he loved two of my favorite authors and after just a few minutes of gabbing I was sure that he really was going to be my new boyfriend. Sometimes you can just tell. And every time I saw him it was the same thing, we’d just gab and it would be obvious that we could keep gabbing but then he’d never ask me out. I consulted my Magic 8 Ball key ring, which I only used in emergencies for two reasons: because there was always a chance I wouldn’t get the answer I wanted (it had an uncanny rate of accuracy; I know, but whatever) and because nine times out of ten it landed on the line between two answers, and you could never get it to stick on one or the other before it picked another two – my solution to this was always to choose whichever one my eye landed on first, but sometimes the mind plays tricks this way (always in my favor). In this instance, when I asked if Donovan was going to be my new boyfriend it landed on one very nebulous answer: Can’t Tell. For the moment I decided it was best to leave that alone.
Excerpt from “Donovan’s Closet,” which originally appeared in You Must Be This Happy To Enter (Punk Planet Books/Akashic Books). Full story available for download at Featherproof.com. Reprinted with permission of author.
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LOVE this- thanks for sharing Betsy.