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Ramon Verdes was my friend for two years, four months, and seventeen days.
I met him the first day I started going to outside classes at UCLA. He was sitting next to me wearing a t-shirt that said, “EVERYBODY LOVES A JEWISH BOY.”
“I’m Mexican,” he said, “And therein is the ironic humor.”
What I liked best about Ramon was that he never acknowledged the fact that I was a little kid that went to UCLA. Other people would call me things like “the dwarf”, “little man Tate”, or “Herve Villechaize”. But Ramon always talked to me like I was a real person and not a little kid.
“McKenna Learning Center,” Ramon once read off my red MLC messenger bag, “What’s that?”
“It’s this place I go to,” I said and uncomfortable to say it, “Where you go if they can’t put you in a regular school.”
Ramon snapped the gum in his mouth. “That’s, like, a school for kid prodigies, isn’t it?”
I nodded. “So what’s that like, being a genius?” he asked.
“It pretty much sucks,” I said.
“Huh,” he said, “That’s too bad.” Then he blew a bubble that popped and started talking about Star Trek: The Next Generation. And he never brought up MLC, me being a kid, or anything like that ever again.
Thursday afternoons Ramon and I would drink Nestle Quik, do our physics research projects, and play Halo 2. This was OK with Mom because she and Ramon’s mom were both professors at UCLA. They had also lived in the same yurt together one summer in Mongolia.
“There are millions of practical applications in the world for giant robots,” Ramon used to say. “Heavy lifting, tree pruning, grabbing stranded Frisbees off of rooftops, painting the top floors of houses, power line work, giraffe maintenance, replacing streetlight light bulbs, cherry picking -”
It was Ramon’s dream to design, build, and pilot a giant robot. This was why he was a material science and mechanical engineering double major.
“Plus it would be so awesome to have a giant robot, like, step on a car and smash it. Dude - that would be dope as hell.”
Ever since he was a kid he had spent hours drawing pictures of giant robots. And he still did. They covered the walls of his room.
Even though Ramon was 23 years old, his room still looked like a kid’s room. There was an Xbox, a Playstation 2, a Game Cube, a miniature pool table that sat on a coffee table, and an orange Alienware PC. He also had lots of anime figurines, but only the cool kinds and not the cheesy ones that only pussies collect.
And there were dozens and dozens of toy robots from all over the world, all arranged inside a glass case. I loved to look at them - it was like seeing a miniature exhibit in evolution.
Having Ramon as a friend was pretty much like having a kid your age as a friend, except he didn’t have to ask his mom for permission to do anything. We would switch off playing Counterstrike online against racist assholes, telling them to fuck off in Spanish every time we fragged them. Our screen name was “AyeDiosMio”.
When the McKenna Cafeteria served vegetable ratatouille, creamed spinach, or some other culinary abomination, Ramon would take me to get pizza with pepperocinis and Pepsi. He said that when a meal is alliterative it tastes better.
Also, sitting next to Ramon in physics classes made me feel like just another UCLA student. No one special, just a person. People even stopped calling me names.
And that was pretty cool.
It was an everyday Thursday afternoon when I rushed over to Ramon’s place after he told me over the phone, his voice quivering, that he had gotten his hands on an Xbox 360.
I pedaled my Schwinn over there as fast as I could. If you don’t know anything about videogames, Xbox 360 is much more powerful than the previous Xbox. Also, the controllers are wireless and you can even plug in your iPod if you want to listen to your music instead of the videogame’s music. It’s fucking awesome. Mom won’t let me have any videogames. Not even Nintendo. She says they lead to school shootings.
So I get there and he’s already playing Dead or Alive 4 and he says that it’s everything and a bag of chips when I noticed this weird smell coming from the kitchen.
“What the hell is that?” I asked, sniffing.
Ramon didn’t look away from the screen. “Oh, that’s Joyce,” he said, furiously tapping buttons.
Through the doorway I could see a lady cooking something at the stove. It smelled sour. She turned and smiled as she noticed me. She looked kind of Chinese and tan, and her long black hair was tied back in a ponytail.
“Hey kid,” she said, “You ever have Filipino food?”
“No,” I said.
“Then you’re in for a treat, my little midget.” Then she went back to cooking. Whatever it was, it started to smell burnt.
I plopped down on the couch next to Ramon. “Who the hell is Joyce?”
“She’s a World Arts and Cultures Major,” he said, and then yelled “DANG!” when his guy on the screen died.
“What’s she doing here?” I asked.
“She offered to make come over and make lunch,” Ramon said, “Smells good, right?”
When he saw me look at him funny he finally paused the game.
“She’s just a friend, okay?”
It was only a day later that I found out that this was bullshit.
During the course of 24 hours I gathered the following evidence that proved that Joyce was not just Ramon’s friend:
- Ramon’s cell phone rang to the tune of “You Are So Beautiful”, and when I asked him who called, he said “nobody” but I knew it was Joyce.
- I spotted Joyce wearing Ramon’s “EVERYBODY LOVES A JEWISH BOY” t-shirt.
- I spotted Joyce and Ramon making out by the fountain in front of Royce Hall.
And in the week that followed, Ramon didn’t return any of my calls. And when I did bug him enough to finally let me come over and play Xbox 360, he and Joyce hung out in his room the whole time and left me by myself.
Also, the kitchen totally smelled like burnt Filipino food.
“You know why he ditched you, right?” said Brian Yamagashi, “It’s ’cause she has a vagina.”
Brian Yamagashi’s violin chirped as he tuned it. “Yup,” he said, “He’s on a one-way road to poontown and he ain’t coming back.”
Brian Yamagashi was twelve and one of the smartest kids at McKenna. He could calculate the square root of a six digit number in fifty-nine seconds. He also got suspended last year for turning in an illustration of Grover Cleveland drawn from tiny, penciled permutations of the word “COCK”.
“What do I do?” I asked.
“There’s nothing you can do. ‘Hoes Before Bros’, as the saying goes. But cheer up — my mom says that if I finish memorizing the Bible she’ll get me a 360 for my birthday.”
“It’s not about the 360,” I said.
“Dude,” Brian Yamagashi said, “He’s not coming back. Move on.” Then he began to play the violin part of Eminem’s “Forgot about Dre”.
But the thing was, I couldn’t move on. Ramon and I had partnered up for a presentation for Physics 230B on Quantum Theory, and we were already two weeks behind schedule.
I chose the time that he was most likely home (on Thursday afternoon between his classes and his night shift at Cinnabon) and pounded on his front door.
It was Joyce that answered it.
“Hey midget. Ramon’s not here, but you can leave a message for him.”
“Mind if I wait for him?” I asked as I pushed past her and into his place. And that’s when I saw that her presence had begun to metastasize all over his apartment:
There were heart-framed pictures of the two of them at Disneyland. A Sex In The City boxed set sitting on the DVD player. A Degas dancing ballerina print on the wall. And then the clincher: A fat lavender candle on the coffee table, its flame spewing a potpourri stench from hell.
She asked if I was hungry, and I asked her when Ramon was coming back. “I don’t know,” she said, “But you’re welcome to play Xbox if you want.”
I put Halo 2 into the 360 and fired it up. She sat beside me and watched me play. Then the strangest thing happened — she pat me on the head like a little kid. My body recoiled in response.
“Don’t touch me,” I said, pretending to be engrossed in the game.
“What is this?” she asked, sitting right by the TV screen, “Is this Halo?”
“Yeah,” I said, “You’re this dude called the Master Chief fighting these aliens called the Covenant who have attacked the human race. In the first game they were after a huge ring-like construct called the Halo, but you destroyed it. In this second game there’s a second Halo and you have to find a way to disable it.”
The words vomited out, and it felt good saying them - like shouting out the answers to equations before anybody else gets the chance to.
“Interesting,” she said.
“Yeah, and the Master Chief is a cyborg robot super-soldier built by the military -”
“No, he’s not.” she said. My guy on the screen died.
“Yeah, he is.”
“No, he’s not.”
“I’m pretty sure I’m right,” I said.
“He’s not,” Joyce said, “He was once a human. He was a little kid like you named John. Then he got indoctrinated into the Spartan program by scientists and taken away from his parents to train to become a super-soldier. Yeah, he’s a cyborg, but he was originally human, chosen for his physical characteristics and then modified. Have you read the books?”
“I was going to,” I said quietly, “But not until this summer.”
“You should read them. Halo used to be my primary procrastination device before I finally buckled down and put a Bunsen burner under my ass.” Then she picked up a controller. “Want to play with me online? I’m pretty good.”
I dropped the controller and stood up. My stomach felt queasy. “I gotta go.”
I pushed past her toward the front door. “Are you OK?” she asked. “Yeah,” I said.
“I’ll tell Ramon you stopped by,” she said, but by then I was already out the door. And when I got to my bike I caught myself on it and dry-heaved into the air.
The next day Ramon wasn’t at class. The T.A., Donald Levinson, yelled at me for not turning in a rough draft on our project. It really sucks to be yelled at by a nerd. Especially if you’re the only one he’s yelling at.
Every time I called Ramon his voicemail picked up. And whenever he’d finally get around to calling me back, he’d put off meeting with me to work on our project. This was totally weak because he had all of our data on his hard disk.
For a whole week this went on. And then when I was on eBay looking for a Japanese toy robot to maybe bribe him with, I was shocked to find the following listing:
Ramon’s robot collection on Ebay.
“LOT OF 100’s OF TOY ROBOTS — VINTAGE TO 70s TO MODERN - TIN, SPACE HEROES, WIND-UP, BATTERY OPERATED - PRE-WAR, POST-WAR JAPANESE, AMERICAN, EUROPEAN - COLLECTED OVER A LIFETIME, A COLLECTION OF A LIFETIME!”
And there were photographs of Ramon’s toy robot collection, neatly lined up like a little army. I couldn’t believe it. I called Ramon and he miraculously picked up.
“What the fuck,” I said.
“I’m sorry dude,” Ramon said. He sounded tired, worn-out. “I should’ve told you myself.”
I demanded to know how he could do this. My voice cracked.
“I just… I finally realized that engineering isn’t for me.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t worry,” Ramon said, “I made arrangements with Professor Steckler and Donald The Nerd to find you a new partner for the physics project - ”
I said again, “WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?” as slowly and loudly as possible.
“I’m dropping Physics 230B. I’m switching majors.”
What about his dream? What about the giant robots? The giraffe maintenance, the Frisbees on roofs, the cars that he was supposed to crush with giant robot feet?
These were the things I wanted to ask him, but he started going off about how he was going to become an English major, that he had finally realized that he was always more interested in science fiction than science fact. A hurt started to flare in my stomach, and I barely got the words out:
“What about the toy robots?”
“I need the money for summer school,” he said, “I gotta make up for lost time… Put a Bunsen burner under my ass. Look, I gotta go. Joyce is helping me re-schedule my classes.”
He didn’t even wait for me to say goodbye. He just hung up.
And that’s when I knew, for the sake of everyone involved, that I had to do something.
So I went to war.
For the next two weeks, Brian Yamagashi and I went ahead and pulled the following pranks:
When Ramon finally called me, he didn’t even bother to say hello.
“WHAT WILL IT TAKE TO MAKE YOU STOP?!” he screamed.
I calmly asked him what happened to our physics project. And what happened to his robot dreams. What happened to me coming over and playing Xbox, to us eating pizza with Pepsi, to all that stuff that we used to do.
“What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“Just finish this physics project with me,” I said, “Finish the class. Or don’t do anything at all - I’ll do all the work for you. Just burn our data onto a CD and give it to me. Let’s just get back to normal.”
He began to speak. “Arnold, dude,” he said, but then he trailed off until I could only hear him breathing on the other end.
The next afternoon I got home from McKenna and Mom said that Ramon had been by and had left something for me in my room. I rushed upstairs, relieved that he had finally come to his senses.
But then I saw what it was.
Sitting on my bed was Ramon’s Xbox 360, packed neatly in a box with its controllers and power supply. Plus all of his games. A post-it note on it read, “FOR ARNOLD.”
And I tried to stop myself, but it was weird - I just couldn’t.
I started to cry.
I called Ramon but he wouldn’t pick up. I felt too sick to leave a voicemail so I didn’t.
I sent him an email that just said that I was sorry and we’d stop pranking Joyce, but he didn’t respond.
And so I re-collected the data for our Physics 230B presentation on my own. Donald The Nerd protested because he’s an asshole, but Professor Steckler gave me an extension because of extenuating circumstances.
I finally finished putting everything together, but my heart just wasn’t in it. Giving a PowerPoint presentation by yourself really sucks. Some crumby kids in the back of the room kept yelling, “LOUDER… LOUDER…” and snickering.
I didn’t eat much anymore at dinnertime. Mom and Dad thought I was getting sick again, but I really just wasn’t hungry. Even the thought of pizza made me kind of ill.
Then one day I opened my email box and there was an email from Ramon. I held my breath as I clicked on it.
Dear Arnold,
I wanted to tell u that I’m sorry for bailing on you. It was messed up of me to do. I shouldof been more tactful, but sometimes I forget that you’re just a little kid. I hope u understand.
- Ramon.
After that quarter I never saw Ramon again. UCLA is a pretty big place. It’s pretty easy for people to disappear.
I saw a couple of guys that I thought were Ramon, but they didn’t seem to recognize me even when I was looking straight at them. There was a part of me that didn’t want to see him anyway.
I did see Joyce again though. Mom took me to Robinsons May to buy new slacks, and while she was browsing the ladies’ shoes she gave me two dollars to buy Apple Dippers at McDonalds.
So I went to the food court and there was Joyce, pumping the lemonade churn at Hot Dog on a Stick.
I didn’t want to say anything to her, but she spotted me before I could walk away. She took off her Hot Dog on a Stick hat and hopped over the counter. At first I thought she was going to be pissed at me for Floaming her car, but she patted me on the head.
“Hey midget,” she said. “Hey,” I said. It was hard for me to look her in the eye, so I didn’t.
“I’m sorry I did all that stuff to you,” I said.
“Are you only saying that because you’re hoping it’ll get back to Ramon?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Well, for what it’s worth, I accept your apology. Do you want a Hot Dog on a Stick?”
“No,” I said, “I’m getting Apple Dippers.”
Then she hunched down so she was looking at me eye-to-eye.
“Arnold, I’m sorry I took your friend away from you,” she said, “You probably hate my guts, and that’s OK. But I promise… I promise you that someday you’ll understand.”
I turned away, this burning feeling beginning in my nasal passage. I was angry at myself for not being able to stop it. I didn’t want her to see the tears forming in my eyes.
“No,” I said, “I don’t think I ever will.”
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