Requiem [COMPLETED]

Let's disappoint each other, all together now!

Both Sven and I were attending school fulltime and working about 40 hours a week. I didn't have time for much socializing outside of class or work, but somehow managed to form a couple of friendships which resulted in me growing up: I began to see people as they were, rather than as I hoped and assumed they would be.

Leif was one of those relationships; I'd made too many assumptions about him. I'd assumed that Sven had trusted him on some level, which meant I could automatically trust him without checking him out myself. Then Stan filled me in on the gossip my brother had neglected to tell me—probably since he was avoiding having to hear it by disappearing whenever one of Charlie's group of friends was in the vicinity. No wonder Sven was literally climbing out windows to avoid seeing Leif. If I didn't know better I would have thought that Sven seemed inordinately afraid of a guy he could take any day in a fight; now it made sense. Sven must be horrified, mortified. And Leif hadn't apologized or given excuses, just acted indignant. I stopped talking to him, which was easy since we weren't in any classes together that semester. He disappeared out of our lives as suddenly as he'd segued his way in. I didn't tell Sven I knew, realized it would only cause him more embarrassment, but I tried to be mindful of who I let in from then on, even if they were in Sven's circle of acquaintances. Clearly, my brother wasn't always the best judge, so I shouldn't take someone's presence as equivalent to a rubber-stamped approval.

I was slowly beginning to understand Sven's seemingly innate distrust of other people. His words kept coming back to me: "I can't see how you can be so continually optimistic; it's hard for me to look at somebody and go, 'Hey, maybe something nice will happen.' I know too much about people, how rotten they can be."

* * *

Another spring on campus. Love and lust were in the air. Sven was surrounded by Leif still lurking on the far periphery and a bevy of eligible Scandinavian women lithe of body and certainly peaked with willingness, though Sven seemed strangely lacking in motivation for once to show up other people. Since his reversal from courting popularity with Charlie's friends to avoiding their idle gossip, he spent his evenings hanging out with the straight majority at house parties. Usually, his stoic demeanor was seen as mysterious by the female population and he was pursued by many of the fair sex who thought he'd make a fine specimen of a boyfriend. His dark side, for me, abrogates any of his appeal. Maybe for other females who understood him less, it made him seem sexy and aloof.

By the end of the evening he'd generally be on a beaten up couch in a dark corner of a living room, making out with a girl he didn't know, squashed in by surrounding college students of varying levels of desperation who clung to the party. These last torch bearers of the college experience would sing along to the stereo or token guitar-playing wannabe, while Sven and said accomplice tried to pretend they were alone and that their interlude was more romantic than the odd dozen or so cheap beers that counted the length of their acquaintance. He never took a girl home with him though, despite their bedroom eyes and frank come-ons. His friends thought he was crazy—both the straight and the gay ones. He acted like someone who had something to prove—but only up to a point.

Chuck was dating a seriously brooding boy that seemed like nothing so much as a Sven stand-in. Charlie's friends Stan and Matt seemed to date or lust after a different boy every other month, going boy-crazy for whomever happened to show a reciprocal interest. I was single, working overtime, and taking 18 credits. No one seemed to have a burning motivation with regards to me. I was frustrated but didn't have the courage to do anything. Not that I'm sure I would have been ready.

What is it that's so great about sex? Of course, it should be clear that I could have no idea at the time. But I couldn't quite fathom how irresistible it was, why everyone seemed to be falling into bed and out of their clothes. Everyone but Sven and I.