Beating Around the Bush

	He would watch them eagerly, earnestly, talking. Words upon words, words that had no meaning, words that would spill out over lips and fill the air. No one was listening of course, but the words. He loved them. Sex, Love, Books, TV, all of them would give the impression of meaning, like little dots on a painting. And so he was caught up in the words. Caught up in the act, the play, the show. It was a good show indeed, a show brought online, a show brought into public, cultural phenomena now, presidential elections, politics. People telling them what they really thought. It was all nice and well, because they didn't mean anything, they were just words, Conservative, Republican, Democrat, Communist, Liberal- all words. Except they didn't even masquerade as meaning anymore, they were out in the open as abstractness, as these ideals that seemed to morph second by second. And so he was confused after months of this. Months of hellos and good byes, months of how are you, months of jokes, months of culture talked to death until a new television show, a new video game, a new escape, a new reality, reality…
	Reality was what? Somewhere along the way he had lost it. He was in school, he was a high schooler, he was a student in the eleventh grade, that was certain. Here was his school, in concrete glory, a towering monument to the ability of adults to create pens for children to feel and to play as best as the adults thought feel and play meant. He decided he didn't know reality, he didn't know that force was mass multiplied by acceleration, he knew feelings, and he knew them well, but he didn't like the ones that he had, not one bit.
	It was cold. Not on the outside, but the inside, on the abstraction, on the abstraction that he knew. Like the mirrors knowing about the acne he couldn't quite fix, the jawline that was actually half-decent, the eyes that weren't half-bad, and the stereotypical Asian, hunched, bleakly expressionless demeanor unless he forced it away with a smile, or a laugh, or the sarcasm of an eleventh-grade joke. Like the careful observer, the abstract one, that would notice how his hands were shaking every time he talked to a woman, the cause being the abstract mental blocks, the breasts, the shapely legs, the perfume clogging his nose, he never smelt that nice. He couldn't see them as women, so he dressed them up as abstractions, as rejections, as feeling scrawled onto these hormonal, seventeen year old women.
	And friends, friends were another abstraction. He hadn't been over to anyone's house in months, carousing being an activity of the past now that his generations had such lucky inventions as phones. What were friends? What was a connection? Now that he thought about it, all he could recall from a friend was discussions over more abstractions: the TV shows played by actors, the videogames, the myriad escapes, sometimes even drugs and porn, sex, the physical copulation, the pleasure of the participants of the smut an abstraction, the actors themselves unsure of it.
	He looked around, and it was lunch period. Here was an Asian boy, who would passively aggressively avoid his family, who would passively accept the fate that was his invisibility among the crowd, the laughing mass. The abstraction among abstractions, putting on a face, a face that would last until the end of the day, until he was along, day after day after day after day. He wondered what anyone was like with that skin peeled off, but he could never know. He had never known.
	And there was that spiral, that spiral into depths of abstraction, because the abstraction was all he ever really had, isolate, among the other abstractions. Until he could no longer look away, he had to feel, and he could feel nothing but a vague space, inexperience, depression. He felt unwanted, for lack of a better word, but it was a shared unwantedness, the unwantedness of every shy child, the unwantedness of an ugly woman or an effeminate yet straight man. The shape that would not fit, and he had searched for the holes, the women, the camaraderie, and it was there, but always at arm's length, always behind the layers of convention, of the abstraction. He wanted to scream, but he couldn't, that was stupid.
	He had never kissed a woman, he had never held a hand. The last time he had a friend was in the fifth grade, before he had moved here. He was scared of women. He was scared of other people. But most of all, he was scared of his feelings, because if he took the time to speak bluntly, he would say that he hated himself for being so useless to other people that he couldn't find any sense of friendship among them.
	Tears welled up in those big brown eyes of his, but there wasn't time to dwell on it. He had Trig next period. He got up from his table, laughed at a joke, and headed into a crowd, into the abstraction.
	He would watch them eagerly, earnestly, talking. Words upon words, words that had no meaning, words that would spill out over lips and fill the air. No one was listening of course, but the words. He loved them. Sex, Love, Books, TV, all of them would give the impression of meaning, like little dots on a painting. And so he was caught up in the words. Caught up in the act, the play, the show. It was a good show indeed, a show brought online, a show brought into public, cultural phenomena now, presidential elections, politics. People telling them what they really thought. It was all nice and well, because they didn't mean anything, they were just words, Conservative, Republican, Democrat, Communist, Liberal- all words. Except they didn't even masquerade as meaning anymore, they were out in the open as abstractness, as these ideals that seemed to morph second by second. And so he was confused after months of this. Months of hellos and good byes, months of how are you, months of jokes, months of culture talked to death until a new television show, a new video game, a new escape, a new reality, reality…
	Reality was what? Somewhere along the way he had lost it. He was in school, he was a high schooler, he was a student in the eleventh grade, that was certain. Here was his school, in concrete glory, a towering monument to the ability of adults to create pens for children to feel and to play as best as the adults thought feel and play meant. He decided he didn't know reality, he didn't know that force was mass multiplied by acceleration, he knew feelings, and he knew them well, but he didn't like the ones that he had, not one bit.
	It was cold. Not on the outside, but the inside, on the abstraction, on the abstraction that he knew. Like the mirrors knowing about the acne he couldn't quite fix, the jawline that was actually half-decent, the eyes that weren't half-bad, and the stereotypical Asian, hunched, bleakly expressionless demeanor unless he forced it away with a smile, or a laugh, or the sarcasm of an eleventh-grade joke. Like the careful observer, the abstract one, that would notice how his hands were shaking every time he talked to a woman, the cause being the abstract mental blocks, the breasts, the shapely legs, the perfume clogging his nose, he never smelt that nice. He couldn't see them as women, so he dressed them up as abstractions, as rejections, as feeling scrawled onto these hormonal, seventeen year old women.
	And friends, friends were another abstraction. He hadn't been over to anyone's house in months, carousing being an activity of the past now that his generations had such lucky inventions as phones. What were friends? What was a connection? Now that he thought about it, all he could recall from a friend was discussions over more abstractions: the TV shows played by actors, the videogames, the myriad escapes, sometimes even drugs and porn, sex, the physical copulation, the pleasure of the participants of the smut an abstraction, the actors themselves unsure of it.
	He looked around, and it was lunch period. Here was an Asian boy, who would passively aggressively avoid his family, who would passively accept the fate that was his invisibility among the crowd, the laughing mass. The abstraction among abstractions, putting on a face, a face that would last until the end of the day, until he was along, day after day after day after day. He wondered what anyone was like with that skin peeled off, but he could never know. He had never known.
	And there was that spiral, that spiral into depths of abstraction, because the abstraction was all he ever really had, isolate, among the other abstractions. Until he could no longer look away, he had to feel, and he could feel nothing but a vague space, inexperience, depression. He felt unwanted, for lack of a better word, but it was a shared unwantedness, the unwantedness of every shy child, the unwantedness of an ugly woman or an effeminate yet straight man. The shape that would not fit, and he had searched for the holes, the women, the camaraderie, and it was there, but always at arm's length, always behind the layers of convention, of the abstraction. He wanted to scream, but he couldn't, that was stupid.
	He had never kissed a woman, he had never held a hand. The last time he had a friend was in the fifth grade, before he had moved here. He was scared of women. He was scared of other people. But most of all, he was scared of his feelings, because if he took the time to speak bluntly, he would say that he hated himself for being so useless to other people that he couldn't find any sense of friendship among them.
	Tears welled up in those big brown eyes of his, but there wasn't time to dwell on it. He had Trig next period. He got up from his table, laughed at a joke, and headed into a crowd, into the abstraction.