Day Eleven: ‘Superbad’

The first R-rated film I saw in theaters
was Superbad. I went with three friends in August
2007, a month before our last
run as high-schoolers began. It leapt
off the screen, the richness and the dick
jokes speaking to me, validating
my entire 17 years up to that point.
Near the end, when Michael Cera’s Evan
enters the bedroom with his childhood crush
but doesn’t sleep with her despite her offers,
my two friends agreed: He was a pussy,
but they wouldn’t have been. They would’ve fucked her,
drunk or not. The third and I, romantics,
fought back: Would they really want it that way?
I shouldn’t remember this. It has no bearing
on how I live my life a decade later,
except when it does. The third and I still speak,
not enough of course, but the other two
have fallen to ghosts in me — not just because
their admissions at a juvenile sex comedy,
but life reasons. Geography. People grow
like branches splitting away from their source roots
to bud in different ways, to seed and to die,
but some sprout closer together, pals on the bark:
a pair of dumb-eyed buddies at a show.