We sat in silence for a moment. Oscar seemed to be drifting, forgetting what he was talking about. “So, you and Rory?” I prompted in my gentlest first responder voice.

“Rory. Right,” Oscar said, still hesitating, like he didn’t want to spill this story after all.

But then he took a breath and plowed forward. “At the beginning it was good, I think. But we updated all the time and it became about what the viewers wanted. We forgot about what we wanted. Our entire relationship played out in online. In public. Now I don’t even know if it was real!” He looked at me questioning.

I shrugged and let him continue. I had no idea.

“We didn’t know either. We did things for videos. I didn’t know if we were doing them because we wanted to do them and were just recording them to take people along, or were we doing them for the video, and not because we wanted to do them.” He said this all in one breath, one long sentence, like he was trying to get it all out.

“That sounds really confusing,” I said.

“It was. It was also exhausting. I felt…turned inside out. Like my innermost self had turned into an outer persona, just to please viewers. And I wasn’t even making the kinds of videos I wanted to make when I started, so I had that crisis going on too.”

Being a fireman sounded really great compared to this. I kept that thought to myself. Oscar was so…sparkly. He had so much inside him. I could see why viewers loved him. I could see why they wanted to see him every day. If he’s this intriguing when he is not himself, what was he like when he was happy?

“What kind of videos did you want to do?” I resolved not to look him up online. I wanted to know the real Oscar, and only the real in-person Oscar. If he wanted to show me videos, he could show them to me. I was already a smitten fan. I didn’t need to make myself part of his problems by confusing his real self with his video self too.

“Argh, that’s the thing.” Oscar rocked back and forth, still holding his knees. “When I started I had all these ideas, and…I don’t know. I mean, I was just a kid, so I had some stupid ideals that didn’t fit with how the real world works. Just because I think something is a good idea doesn’t mean the viewers want to see it. If I wanted views, I needed to do something they wanted to see.

“So that meant I ended up making videos like, answering tags and following video trends as certain memes went around. Or I would make a video of me playing video games like The Sims.”

With this he turned back to me, leaning his head on his knee. “Think about that. I was playing a video game that literally is a reproduction of real life. Then I videotaped this, so people could watch me. The viewers watched a video of me playing a game that mimicked life.”

“So everyone was sitting in front of a screen, watching someone else live their life, but no one was actually doing any living?” I wasn’t a video game guy, so I might have had that wrong.

Oscar laughed out loud. “Exactly! I was on my ass playing a game where my character read books and went to work and gardened. And sometimes he played video games! And then people watched a video of me doing this! It makes my brain hurt to think about it.”

“Hey, whatever entertains people. The fact that someone finds you interesting enough they would want to watch a video of you playing a video game shows how good you must have been at your job. Right?”

“I guess.” Oscar buried his face in his arms.

“Okay so then what happened?”

Oscar sighed. “I didn’t mean to do anything stupid. The anxiety just got the best of me. One night I was three quarters of the way through a bottle of wine, stupidly reading social media, and watching Rory’s new YouTube videos he’d done without me.”

“Without you?”

“Yeah, I couldn’t do it anymore. One day after yet another big fight, I just refused to go on camera, I couldn’t make myself do it. I couldn’t make myself pretend anymore, and I didn’t want to play out our breakup online. So he started making them without me.

Oscar rubbed his face back and forth on his folded arms and continued. “I mean, I get it why he did that. What else was he supposed to do? I left him high and dry, pretty much.”

“I don’t know a lot about breakups, but I think when you break up you aren’t obligated to keep doing things with the other person.”

“I guess,” Oscar said, frowning as he thought about it. “It just got really messy.”

“Okay, so you were drinking wine and watching YouTube,” I reminded him, trying not to think about messy relationships. Couldn’t some be okay? And why was I even thinking that?

“Yeah, and it just got so bad I felt like I was going to have a heart attack or climb out of my skin. Then I remembered I had some anti-anxiety medication.”  With this Oscar peeked at me, to gauge my reaction.

“It’s okay,” I rubbed his shoulders. “I’m a first responder, remember?”

“God I don’t know if that makes this better or worse,” Oscar moaned.

“I just mean it’s hard to shock me,” I said gently. Poor guy.

“Okay,” Oscar said, studying my face. He turned and faced forward, probably so he could finish his story without eye contact. “I didn’t have a lot of meds. Just a few. I never took them, but they seemed like the perfect solution to my anxiety that night. I didn’t want anything bad to happen, I just didn’t want to feel anxious anymore!”

“I understand,” I said. “It happens.”

“Apparently, I took them all and finished the bottle of wine too. I don’t remember. Thank god my parents got a tip from Sarah that I might not be doing well and decided to check in on me that night. It was stupid and I didn’t mean to do anything besides lower my anxiety. But it definitely freaked out my family, and my mother wanted me to move in with them.”

“And that would be a bad thing, right?”

“God, yes. My parents are really formal. They know I’m gay and everything, and that’s no big deal. They just are not the warm and fuzzy type.”

“Not the nurturing environment you probably needed after a breakup, a career crisis and a hospital stay,” I said, trying to summarize what he’d just told me.

“Exactly! Sarah convinced them that she would stay close to me here. She’s wanted me to move here for a while, and had even been telling me about this place before all this happened.”

“So you guys are pretty close?”

“Yeah, we’re cousins and her parents are…kind of like mine. They are kind of society types and neither of us fit the mold, so we stuck together.”

“Sarah seems pretty cool,” I said. “Tiger sure likes her.”  I remembered how he warmed right up to her at the vet and smiled.

“Yeah, she’s great. I’m glad you met her,” Oscar said, his voice softening on the topic of his favorite cousin.

We sat in silence for a while. Then I said, “I’m confused though. If you don’t want to do it anymore, then…don’t?”

Oscar sat back up and looked at the ceiling. “Ah, that’s just the thing. YouTube is my only source of income. It’s how I bought this house, it’s how I’ve supported myself for the last several years. I quit making videos and, my views started dropping.”

Oh.

“At first the drama was enough to keep people combing through and re-watching things so they could find new issues and evidence and whatever else they wanted to look for and discuss, but even that died down. Thus, so did my views.”

“You need money,” I said. “That’s why you rented out the guest house.”

“Bingo. That helps, but I got a notification tonight that my residuals are going to be even lower than anticipated. I have bills to pay. I have this mortgage.”

“At the risk of you hating me, can I ask why you don’t just make another video then?”

“Ugh!” Oscar threw up his hands. “I’m so sick of it. I’m burned out. I’m angry. Like, even if I could force myself to want to, which is debatable, my attitude would ruin any chances of salvaging my brand later. It’s better I stay off screen until I don’t do anything that would alienate viewers.”

I clamped my teeth together. Surely making videos for dollars wasn’t the worst job in the universe. I grabbed my water bottle and rehydrated.

“You can say it,” Oscar said. “I know you’re thinking it.”

“Thinking what? I don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“I can tell you have Opinions. I want to know what they are.”

“I don’t think you do. Plus now you’re my landlord. And…maybe my friend? Friends are rare. I don’t want to fuck that up.” This is why I didn’t have friends. I don’t know how to do it. Or I wanted to be friends with people who didn’t let me do it the only way I knew how.

“What if I said, if you’re my friend you would tell me what you really think?” Oscar pushed.

Uncontrollable laughing bubbled up from inside my chest. Maybe Oscar had as good of friendship skills as I did. We were like Dumb and Dumber, except in terms of How to Win Friends and Influence People.

“I learned a long time ago not to tell people what I really thought, if I even knew what that was.”

“Talking in circles is a good skill, but you can’t hustle a hustler. I want to hear the bald honest horrible truth from you. And I know you have comments,” Oscar pressed.

“Okay, what do you think my comments will be?” I gave Oscar my most distracting smile. I didn’t survive seven years of foster care without leaning some misdirection skills. Now seemed the perfect time to use them.

Oscar sighed. “Oh, I don’t know. Let’s see. You don’t see why making a video is that big of a deal. Like make a video in ten minutes, do whatever I want for the rest of the day, collect profit.” He studied my face as he spoke. “No? Hm…Maybe you think I could just go get a different job. Leave this one behind, quit whining, the end.” He checked my face again. “No?”

“You’re kind of bad at this,” I teased.

“Shut up!” he said. “Then just fucking tell me already. You don’t think my guesses were harsh enough?”

“Harsh isn’t the yardstick to measure truth,” I said. “It’s not like the more true something is, the harsher it is.”

“Huh,” Oscar said. “Why did I think it was?”

“I dunno. Strict parents?”

“Bingo, again! Oh, I know. You want to know why I don’t just go home and get money from my parents?”

This made me laugh out loud, like full guffaw. “You are really bad at guessing! You didn’t do psychic videos, right?”

Oscar punched me on the shoulder. “Don’t make fun of me,” he said. “Not everyone sees through everything.”

“Is that what you think of me?” I rubbed my arm and wondered out loud.

“Isn’t it true?” he glared at me.

“I dunno, but if you are going to keep hitting me on the shoulder, pick a different spot each time? Even a soft punch, exactly applied in the same place over and over starts to hurt like a motherfucker.”

“Oh, sorry.” His chagrin seemed genuine. “Just tell me, please? I respect your opinion and I promise not to punch you.”

“Thank you,” I said, trying to sound stiff and mollified. It did hurt, but the whole concept of this skinny kid punching me was also funny as hell. I turned that arm away from him, and covered the spot with my other hand. It gave me something to do with my hands while I ruined our friendship, and protected what was probably already bruised.

“Do you really want to know what I think?” I stalled.

“Yes, god, yes!” His voice rose, almost demanding.

I closed my eyes and allowed myself to think of some of the people I’d known in my life in order for this to come out correctly. “Okay, the thing is. This world is full of people who are starving. And I don’t mean on another continent. I mean…here in our country. People go to work at jobs where they are doing eight, ten, even twelve or more hours of manual labor. They work themselves to death, like…literally. They get paid almost nothing, if they are fairly paid at all. ”

Oscars eyes were huge.

“They don’t like their job either. But they do it, because that’s what you do.”

“I agree with that,” Oscar said. “I understand your point. But the problem is, when your job is to actually muster up enthusiasm and you can’t muster up enthusiasm, it doesn’t work.”

“That leads me to my next point. You lost excitement for making videos you didn’t want to make. What if you made videos you did want to make? What if you did things that were more…you?”

“What if they don’t make any money?” Oscar countered.

“Is making zero videos making money? The difference between an amateur and a professional is that a professional can deliver whether they feel like it or not. The trick is to figure out how to make yourself feel it, at least enough to deliver.”

“How do you know all this?” Oscar said.

“My mom — Norma. She’s a writer. She’s published seventeen novels.”

Oscar blinked. “Really? Like…published published?”

“All publishing venues are valid but yes, she has published both independently and with traditional publishers.”

“I thought you were going to tell me I was a spoiled brat who didn’t know how the world worked,” Oscar said. “That is what my parents told me.”

“That’s sweet,” I said, laughing. “Though isn’t that what my first comment was?”

“Maybe, but at least you were nice about it,” he leaned against me. “Even if you did try to distract me with the sexy.”

“I’m sexy?” My voice dropped to an almost-whisper.

“Is this news?” Oscar said. He turned his face to mine, and tilted his head, studying my face.

I couldn’t resist. I don’t want to resist. He was so close. He smelled like soap and trees and testosterone and youth and even in his sadness…optimism. I slid my fingers under his chin. His eyes widened, his lips parted, and he glanced at my mouth.

Before I could get any closer, he blurted, “This can’t mean anything.”

“Of course not,” I said, and closed the gap between us. I pressed my lips against his and pulled him close. He was even more delicious than I imagined.

Regardless of what he just said, I didn’t just kiss him. He kissed me back.

His lips parted for mine, and the flame between us roared into a fire. My mouth searched his. I wanted to taste him, have him, own him. Show him how beautiful he was. Show him what it could be like, even though I was just discovering it for myself.

He twined his arms around my neck and pulled himself even closer to me. I’d never had a kiss like this, not in my whole life. Not even in my imagination.

His mouth opened more, and his tongue sought mine. The contact pushed us into some kind of ecstasy. We weren’t just kissing. We weren’t just embracing. The connection between us flew open and the energy shot between us like a fireball, finally unleashed.

This didn’t mean anything, he’d said.

Not true. It meant everything.