Adam Levin - The Instructions

What’s wrong? I asked him.

“I forgot,” he said. Then he did the foot thing again.

“He’s nervous,” Vincie said, “cause his parents aren’t coming.”

That true, Scott? I said.

Main Man wouldn’t look at me.

“His little brother Jimmy called me last night to tell me,” said Vincie. “I never even knew there was a little brother Jimmy. What a nice little brother. You got a nice little brother, Scott. Jimmy called and told me their parents had to go to some long-weekend Christian retreat thing in Wisconsin today, and Scott forgot all about it til they reminded him last night during dinner when he told them he was psyched for them to see him perform. But I say: So what? I say: So fucken what? I say: Better no parents, especially real Christian ones, since how many girls are gonna be in that audience, and girls are the ones that give hickies, not parents. So no parents isn’t something to be nervous about, right? So he shouldn’t be nervous about that, Gurion, should he?”

No, I said. You shouldn’t, Scott.

“If he’s gonna be nervous, he should be nervous cause he’s about to get famous, right?”

Right, I said.

“Why he should be nervous is cause, starting second period, every Jenny and Ashley at Aptakisic’s gonna chase him through the hallways Hard Day’s Night —style for the rest of his life just to touch his fucken shirt, right?”

Exactly, I said.

“‘Scott Mookus! Oh my God! It’s Scott fucken Mookus! I want to touch his shirt! That’s a shirt he once sweated in! I want to touch his shirt and then suck on my hand and make him a part of me!’”

Vincie put his fist out, but Main Man wouldn’t bang it.

Main Man, I said, Vincie’s telling you—

“Am I still singing today?” he said. “Do I still get to sing?”

Yeah, I said. Of course, I said. I said, Don’t worry. What’re you worried about?

He handed me a letter in an unmarked envelope. I didn’t need to open it to know from who.

11/16&17/06

Gurion,

For the past few hours, I’ve been thinking I’d call you as soon as I figured out what to say, but I haven’t been able to figure that out, and it’s almost ten, and I hate the phone anyway, so instead I’ve decided to write you this letter. I still can’t figure out what to say, though. I can’t figure out the right way to start. I know THIS isn’t it, but I’m thinking: Well, at least it’s honest so far. At least you can be honest. Try and stay honest.

We’ve had about forty imaginary conversations since sundown, and none of them have gone the way I wanted them to. You call me one name then I call you the same name and then we start yelling, or I deliver some high-flown speech that explains pretty much everything but for what it’s supposed to. One’s about the meaning of love. Another’s about the trappings of loyalty. A third’s about friendship, a fourth about enmity. You get the idea. Anyway, after each speech, you call me out. You say, “That’s all just great, Benji. You’re a really smart guy, what a talent for discourse, what a way you have with words, but why the fuck did you stand there in the two-hill field, crying like a fucken baby instead of helping me?” And I tell you, “I thought I just explained that, man.” And you tell me I didn’t, and I see that you’re right, and then I launch into some other irrelevant soliloquy.

I’d like to tell you, “I froze,” but that sounds like I’m saying I didn’t have a choice. I did have a choice, I know I had a choice, and what’s more is I knew I had a choice at the time. I chose at the time to stand there and watch. And I could say, “I wish I hadn’t made that choice,” but that doesn’t really hit the mark either. It’s more like I wish that I hadn’t been me, a person who’d have made that same choice every time. I might as well be wishing we lived on the sun.

So. What.

You ever know a kid who says he’s in love, and then a little time passes, maybe even a lot of time, and he tells you he’s fallen out of love? Instead of just saying, “Look, I thought I was in love, but it turns out I was wrong,” this kid twists the whole thing around. Because you can’t fall out of love, right? You fall in love forever. Any kid who says otherwise — he’s either a fool or a snake. He’s misunderstanding the meaning of the word, or twisting the meaning deliberately. I think usually the latter, he’s usually a snake. Either way, his word is worthless. And I don’t want to be that kid. I don’t want to be anything like that kid. You don’t either. I know you that well, at least. We’re alike in that way.

With loyalty, it’s different, though. You and I, I mean. We’re different on that. Loyalty’s as permanent as being in love for me. Not so for you, which is probably one reason why none of my imaginary speeches to imaginary Gurions were able to get across what needed getting across.

This morning, in C-hall, I asked you what would happen if a friend of yours got into a fight with someone you had given your loyalty but not your friendship. Your answer came fast and easy. You said you’d side with your friend.

I don’t get that, though. For me, if you give your loyalty to someone once, you’ve given it forever. For me, in order to be truly loyal, you have to be loyal despite preference and hardship — even despite betrayal by the person you’ve given your loyalty to. Which means you can’t let your heart govern your loyalties, right? Your heart’s the first thing you have to lock down. Because your heart’s what bucks the hardest against the loyalties that are hardest to maintain; and those loyalties — the ones that are the hardest to maintain — their maintenance is the only real measure of your loyalty.

So then how do I decide, right? How do I decide, if a friend of mine gets into a fight with someone who has my loyalty but not my friendship — how do I decide who to side with? I can answer just as quickly and easily as you. I decide by duration — by the loyalties’ ages. That’s the only way. It’s a heartless way, but that’s why it’s reliable; that’s why it’s consistent. I solved the whole problem when I was nine years old and I had to choose who to live with. I liked my father better. He was a sober marine who taught me to curse and to swim, but I chose my mom, who was always screaming and falling down. I didn’t want to choose, because to choose was to betray one of them, but I had to choose so I chose her because she’d carried me, and that’s what I told the both of them. I’d been with her longer and that was that. This solution’s a good one, because it’s so simple. You can’t really fuck with it. You side with the one you’ve been loyal to longer because time is an absolute. Time isn’t subject to the whims of your heart. It can’t be interpreted, and therefore it can’t be misinterpreted, willfully or un-. Can you see where this is going yet? Probably you can, so before I get there, I need to go somewhere else.

What happened in Nurse Clyde’s during Lunch today had no part in the choice I made once we were in the two-hill field, but I know you’ve got your hypotheses, Gurion, you always have your hypotheses, and I don’t want you to think I was in possession of motives unknown to me, so here:

Yes, Slokum and I were best friends until he betrayed me for a blood loyalty — everyone knows that. And yes, lately you’ve been my best friend, and — in Nurse Clyde’s office — I found out you’d betrayed me for a tribal loyalty. And yes, despite your betrayal being far smaller than Slokum’s, it gave me flashes of Slokum’s, and I thought of Jelly, and I thought of what you’d said to me in the library on Tuesday about conversion and Israelites, and I worried you and I would soon become enemies. But no, that was not a lasting worry at all. I pulled the fire alarm, the moments proceeded slowly, as my most anguished moments always do, and by the time everyone got outside, I was over it. “Gurion’s not Slokum,” I thought. I thought: “His Israelites aren’t Geoff Claymore… He isn’t ditching me… He just has to get his loyalties straight…” Etcetera. I saw I didn’t have to get fucked up just because you were. I’m not the one in love with a girl his own people won’t accept — you are. I’m not the one whose own people fear and shun him. That guy is you. And I don’t see why anyone — let alone anyone you’ve never actually met — should have your loyalty just because they share some distant ancestry with you. Maybe that’s because I don’t really have people, just a couple friends and a mom, but either way, when it comes to Jelly: I love her, and I don’t care so much what you or anyone else think about that, as long as you don’t try to interfere. And you hadn’t and haven’t tried to interfere, and you haven’t given any sign that you would. And by the time we were out in the field, I was all sorted out.