"This is on a bus back from camp. I’m thirteen and so are
you. Before I left for camp I imagined it would be me and three or four other
dudes I hadn’t met yet, running around all summer, getting into trouble. It
turned out it would be me and just one girl. That’s you. And we’re still at
camp as long as we’re on the bus and not at the pickup point where our parents
would be waiting for us. We’re still wearing our orange camp t-shirts. We still
smell like pineneedles. I like you and you like me and I more-than-like you,
but I don’t know if you do or don’t more-than-like me. You’ve never said, so I
haven’t been saying anything all summer, content to enjoy the small miracle of
a girl choosing to talk to me and choosing to do so again the next day and so
on. A girl who’s smart and funny and who, if I say something dumb for a laugh,
is willing to say something two or three times as dumb to make me laugh, but
who also gets weird and wise sometimes in a way I could never be. A girl who
reads books that no one’s assigned to her, whose curly brown hair has a line
running through it from where she put a tie to hold it up while it was still
wet
Back in the real world we don’t go to the same school, and
unless one of our families moves to a dramatically different neighborhood, we
won’t go to the same high school. So, this is kind of it for us. Unless I say
something. And it might especially be it for us if I actually do say something.
The sun’s gone down and the bus is quiet. A lot of kids are asleep. We’re
talking in whispers about a tree we saw at a rest stop that looks like a kid we
know. And then I’m like, “Can I tell you something?” And all of a sudden I’m
telling you. And I keep telling you and it all comes out of me and it keeps
coming and your face is there and gone and there and gone as we pass underneath
the orange lamps that line the sides of the highway. And there’s no expression
on it. And I think just after a point I’m just talking to lengthen the time
where we live in a world where you haven’t said “yes” or “no” yet. And
regrettably I end up using the word “destiny.” I don’t remember in what
context. Doesn’t really matter. Before long I’m out of stuff to say and you
smile and say, “okay.” I don’t know exactly what you mean by it, but it seems
vaguely positive and I would leave in order not to spoil the moment, but
there’s nowhere to go because we’re are on a bus. So I pretend like I’m asleep
and before long, I really am
I wake up, the bus isn’t moving anymore. The domed lights
that line the center aisle are all on. I turn and you’re not there. Then again
a lot of kids aren’t in their seats anymore. We’re parked at the pick-up point,
which is in the parking lot of a Methodist church. The bus is half empty. You
might be in your dad’s car by now, your bags and things piled high in the
trunk. The girls in the back of the bus are shrieking and laughing and taking
their sweet time disembarking as I swing my legs out into the aisle to get up
off the bus, just as one of them reaches my row. It used to be our row, on our
way off. It’s Michelle, a girl who got suspended from third grade for a week
after throwing rocks at my head. Adolescence is doing her a ton of favors
body-wise. She stops and looks down at me. And her head is blasted from behind
by the dome light, so I can’t really see her face, but I can see her smile. And
she says one word: “destiny.” Then her and the girls clogging the aisles behind
her all laugh and then she turns and leads them off the bus. I didn’t know you
were friends with them
I find my dad in the parking lot. He drives me back to our
house and camp is over. So is summer, even though there’s two weeks until
school starts. This isn’t a story about how girls are evil or how love is bad,
this is a story about how I learned something and I’m not saying this thing is
true or not, I’m just saying it’s what I learned. I told you something. It was
just for you and you told everybody. So I learned cut out the middle man, make
it all for everybody, always. Everybody can’t turn around and tell everybody,
everybody already knows, I told them. But this means there isn’t a place in my
life for you or someone like you. Is it sad? Sure. But it’s a sadness I chose.
I wish I could say this was a story about how I got on the bus a boy and got
off a man more cynical, hardened, and mature and shit. But that’s not true. The
truth is I got on the bus a boy. And I never got off the bus. I still haven’t..."
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The main reason why I'm a huge fan of Childish Gambino is because I can relate to him. Maybe not on the same level, but I can understand what he's going through.
