Avery McDaniel #1757

Was a technical virgin, a talented actor, a good liar, mildly self-absorbed, over emotional to a fault, and highly imaginative. These latter two combined to create a truly terrible combination and leading Avery to an unintentional yet complete fabrication of strong emotion.
He would obstinately refuse to confront any situation that threatened to disturb his meticulously organized or often meticulously disorganized universe. This was, of course, despite his ironic love of Roosevelt’s quotation, “Do something every day that scares you.” He could have easily been compared to a turtle.
Yet he was a total communication whore, a collector of friends and acquaintances. He seemed to look at most of his life from the midst of some hilarious inside joke. Behind the jokes he hid an ache that he masochistically enjoyed prodding.
He was unnecessarily sentimental regarding superfluous objects. A hanger-on.
He was totally and completely in love with his own creativity. He forced it to surround him, willed it to become his life. In this way, he made pleasing others his life goal. Which suited a boy whose mother had died when he was young.
He was a breaker of hearts, which also suited a boy with a dead mother. He blamed a lack of nurturing for his phantom emotions, which were the death of every sexual exploit, every tentative venture into the land of white picket fences and 2.5 children.
The walls were high.
Even when I used a pick axe, I really didn’t even dent his firm resolve.

Bottom line: Avery liked me because I promised to nurture him. I liked Avery because he was a labyrinth of a boy. And then I got lost in the labyrinth.
To tell you the truth, it was like he was trying to lose me. And when he said that I didn’t understand, he was right. I didn’t understand why he would try to lose someone in that labyrinth he had up there. But it was surprisingly refreshing to climb out and feel the cool simplicity of a person who knows exactly what they want.

I haven’t fallen into any labyrinths since. They’re pretty overrated.