Identity

The day Samantha Shaughnessy came to school with a buzzcut, I knew I was dead. Samantha Shaughnessy was my god. I felt about her the way I used to feel about Jesus Christ. The way I had felt when I first saw his bony, wooden body nailed to the cross above the altar. I'm not ashamed to admit that I have--on three separate occasions--bought Samantha Shaughnessy's bathwater, that I have anointed myself with this water as I imagine David was anointed by Samuel.

I love this girl. I love everything about her. I love her name. I love how self-conscious she is about B.O. I love how she pronounces hard consonants. I love how she dismounts her bike every morning, one leg on the pedal, sliding right into position. I watch these things. I obssess over her daily. I've never spoken to her. She doesn't know who I am beyond a profile picture and a username. Yet I know in my heart that I exist because of her. She created me. She did. I wasn't always this way.

Everyone knows she's a slut. A basic bitch. But they don't know her like I know her. They don't know about the diary she keeps in a text file on her brand new twelve-hundred dollar macbook. They haven't read her diary. They don't know that she writes, "Dear diary, today he was so rough with me that I think he tore something inside. It wasn't like the first time--the blood--but it still felt very good. And I hate how he can still make me feel very good. And I hate that look she gives me, like she's angry at me for doing it--like it's my fault, like I feel good on purpose. I don't. I hate it. I want to die, diary. I know about the guns. I know that's what she's afraid of most and why she stays and lets it all happen. But I'm not afraid of him. I'm not afraid of anything."

I don't want her to die. I've never felt that way about anyone, not even my own mom. Not even Jesus. Not even myself. I'd die for her, I'd lay down in traffic for her, I'd do all those things they only talk about doing in love songs. It's the only way I could ever be a part of her. I know she'll never love me.

I'm a disappointment to my dad. He left before I was born, and I know you're not supposed to blame yourself, but honestly, I think it showed a lot of foresight on his part. He cut his losses. I wish I could cut my losses. Before I left, I would tell my mom not to be such a whore all the time, to clean up her act a little. But I'm afraid of her guy friends. One time, one of them threatened to hit my mom. A suave italian man who smelled of aftershave and sharp cologne. He'd raised the back of his hand, his voice, his thin, straight eyebrows at my mom. But I didn't come to her defense. I was so scared and ashamed I missed a week of school, locked in my room. I think my dad was right to abandon me.

The day I connected the dots, the day I saw her walking in the school hallway, rendered from an image into flesh, fat and blood, walking along hugging her books, her skirt showing the rim of her white stockings squeezing her upper thighs, my mouth went dry. I know I will never be that happy again. That day on, I stopped masturbating. I stopped watching porn. It felt like cheating, it felt like what I imagine faith is supposed to feel like, what the good Samaritan must have felt when he helped that wounded traveler on the road to Jericho, and what it must feel like to love somebody with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind. To love them despite the possibility of personal risk or the certainty of heartbreak. I don't think I was even human before that day. I know now that I am something more than human. I am capable of anything.

I have waking dreams in the classes I share with Samantha Shaughnessy. In our Politics and Government class, Mr. Richter tells us about the model of education proposed by Plato in his Republic. Mr. Richter says that Plato believes children should be raised by the state and not their own parents. He pauses dramatically, looking down at us over his half-moon spectacles. Looking at Samantha Shaughnessy, who, when called upon, cannot answer. I'm thinking about how I'd kill her dad, how I'd do it. Like her, I'm not afraid of his guns but I'm afraid of her reaction because she's written--in other places--how much she loves him, how much she loves the little notes and poems and gifts he leaves for her. I'm not much of a poet and I can't buy her jewelry but I see myself pulling away the spare key taped to the inside of their mailbox where I know they keep it. It's late at night and I have an axe.

Now one of the students is debating the issue of Nature vs. Nurture and I accidentally lock eyes with Mr. Richter and he calls on me and I say, "Well, aren't our parents both? The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. So I guess it makes sense. Plato just wants to be sure the right people are raising the kids, so that when the kids grow up they'll be the right people. And the cycle can continue." And Mr. Richter tells me to elaborate so I say, "So, take school shooters for example," and everybody is listening, even Samantha Shaughnessy, "If you think about it, it's really the parents fault. Like the Columbine massacre, or Sandy Hook. I know those kids were disturbed, mentally, but if you look at their home life it makes perfect sense. I mean, frankly, I don't think those kids should've been born. I mean those parents shouldn't have had kids in the first place. A lot of mental illness is genetic right? So I think that's part of what Plato is saying too, like if the state decided who had kids and who raised them, we'd probably have a lot less school shootings." Laughter. But another kid says something about how studies have shown that the love of a biological parent is fundamentally different from that of an adopted parent. I'm looking at Samantha Shaughnessy, who was not adopted, who I love more than anything else in this world, more than myself, and I'm wondering, can I kill her dad?

On the stream that night she mentions me, not me directly, she doesn't remember who I am, but she remembers what I said. She's very serious that night, talking about the tragic consequences of parental negligence. School shootings. And someone writes in how it's actually all to do with testosterone, male aggression, men chimping out. And then Samantha Shaughnessy's rebutting them by pulling up wikipedia pages on murderers that were female. But she can't find a female school shooter.

I wouldn't give up this love for anything. I am not putting pussy on a pedastal. If I try to think about that in relation to her, if I try to imagine myself or anyone doing that, I can only see it as an act of violence, something bestial. And because of this and because I can imagine no one else and because I have been transformed, I know my love is perfect and pure.

I nurse no illusions. I see exactly what I am. I know that if I were to approach her tomorrow morning, nothing I say would convince her, I would be gently rejected and nothing would change except that both of us would have experienced an unbearable discomfort. But I also know that I'm a coward, I'm afraid of losing what little I have. I know my time is running out. Her father is getting to her, wearing her down to a nub. She talks about Oscar Wilde, she writes, "Dear diary, sex is about power. I know the power I have over him and I want to stop doing this. I see what it's doing to him and I hate it. I hate this body. The only thing I'm afraid of is if he won't love me anymore, like the way she doesn't love me anymore. But he doesn't really love me either, does he diary? Nobody loves me, they only love this body, this hair, this pussy. I can't wait for him to get tired of me anymore, diary, I'm going to try something." I almost spill the beans then, over chat, how much and how unconditionally I love her--but I can't do it, because it wouldn't amount anything. A thousand people say they love her everyday and nothing will convince her that it is not her body. Not if its anonymous.

The next day on the stream, she's changed her clothes and her pronouns, and I hear the death knell. I'm all confused, my love is confused, and that's worse than heartbreak because that's an attack on my purity. At school, she's the same. If her real life friends know about it they don't bother her. In the stream, she's called out for insensitivity. It's not that easy they tell her. She's just too pretty, it'll never be convincing. She cancels the stream. She doesn't write in her journal for a week. I'm beside myself with worry and it's distasteful to me because I start to wonder if I've also fallen in love with an image, a body. And I try to convince myself that no, that my love is not that base, it's something greater than that, but now I'm not so sure.

And then finally the day of, the 2nd floor cafeteria, with all her golden locks shorn, wearing her daddy's combat boots and all her power over me gone instantly and down come the holy temple pillars. She's killed me even before she draws her father's pistols and fires into the crowd. I can't take it, I can't go back to a life in which my purpose is ill-defined, I can't go back to searching for meaning on porn sites, to numb myself. If it was lust all along, impure, like everyone else, like her father--I'd rather die.

Everyone else is screaming for their life, running for cover. I'm walking slowly toward her. I lock eyes and I raise my arms; she levels her gun at my chest, at my heart. I swallow. I realize I feel no fear and I realize that I was wrong, that this is the happiest I will ever be, because I know, at this very moment, exactly what I am and what my life has meant, and by extension what she is and what love is. And because of this certainty, I know exactly what to say to her and I'm not afraid to say it anymore, come what may. So I take a deep breath and I yell, "I love you, Samantha--"