I’ll do anything to prove I’m not ridiculous in front of the boys. I try to relax my shoulders, drop into my barber-shop voice, rip some darts, and offer some cutting observations that win me points. After all, I’m a boy too. I’m just not one of the boys, never have been.

We’re in some girl’s crowded kitchen and it’s stinking hot. The boys inside are the same as the boys outside. They’re hovering over me while I slump my back on the fridge, sweating. In the periphery, people flicker in and out.

One of them has my name–mine! It’s just more evidence that my parents had a certain kind of identity laid out for me–an aspirationally masculine kind of name, one that’s at home on a lacrosse team roster or a fraternity or a finance internship. It’s probably supposed to make me feel inadequate, but instead it makes me feel insulated, grandfathered into this world. I try not to be the stranger that I am, in it.

I appraise my name-twin, who’s tall and effortless like a tree, at home in the thick air of the party, in the mis-matched congregation of personalities, unmoved and unshakeable. I’d like to shake him, obviously muscled under that thrifted tee emblazoned with a band I’ve never heard of.

I wipe my bangs away. I look back at name-twin, who’s so close I can see his dotted, cleaned-out pores. He starts swiveling his head around, looking for others he might know, because we don’t know each other–not here, even though we know what it’s like to carry the same internal placard that is our name, and even though we really know each other the best in this house because of that. He returns to deep eye contact as if I won’t notice, asks me my major. I can tell he senses my flimsiness. He has a practiced, obliging tone, like he’s an adult talking to some child character. Good-natured, but apprehensive.

What’s wrong with me is that I don’t say “bro.” My shoulders must not be relaxed enough. In this ramshackle house, with its marked-up hardwood floors and bad wallpaper, I am a stranger and I am effectively nameless. I need to start saying “bro.”

I give him an out–I tell them I need more vodka, like I’m a freak for vodka. I go off to find some, smiling ear-to-ear, eyes enclosed in crescents. Craziness seems to amuse the boys. The implication that I’m an alcoholic who’s just crazy is something I’m willing to put out there. For the record, being crazy isn’t the same thing as being ridiculous. Daniel over there with his awful quiffed, too-high hair and woke attitude is ridiculous. Being funny, being a real “character” who supports the breadth and depth of the scene–it demands craziness, even drunkenness.

I come back to name-twin with renewed energy. I come back with interesting things to say. Maybe I’m hammered, maybe I’m not. I probably am.

Regardless, there’s a tiny room in the back of my drunk brain that houses a little person who’s still awake, lights still on. My secret consultant, this little operator, guides me through these conversations with the boys–being inflammatory without being offensive, being flirty without being creepy, being crazy without being ridiculous. While the rest of my mind gives way, this little person is alert and ready.

My cup might drop and my words might slur but this little person is always there, telling me what to say.

The little person tells me: I must act this way with the boys. I must live in this grey area. I must eat pizza without the napkins. I cannot say one incriminating word. Boys will be boys and I’ve never been good at being one–but I can try. The little person tells me: get drunker; get crazier; take your shirt off; take shots sloppily; spill them on your chin and hands; stuff the cigarettes in your mouth like you’re swallowing a panflute; light them.

When a painting of a lake somewhere off the coast knocks itself off the hook, the little person reminds me to pick it up. But when I go to pick it up, wet hands on each side of the canvas, all I can see is its glistening blue water, both permeable and impermeable, both true and so fake, a blue so deep and unreal I fall into it, headfirst.

I remove the pummeled frame from around my neck and tuck it behind a door, scavenge a Solo cup to fill with tap water.

I look around for name-twin, suddenly alert, because the party has just become alive with plot and suspense. And if I’m seen with someone now, no one will accuse me of ruining the painting.

He’s nowhere among the amalgamation of fabrics and elbows. But I really want to talk to him–need to. Don’t I? It’s needed for the plan. This is going to be such a funny story.

I want to say to him: I’m just like you; I’m just like you.

The little person tells me to stop looking, maybe just leave while you’re ahead. He tells me that the fool and the wise man are one and the same, that I can settle for this life that I’ve been living.

But what is it?

I descend on name-twin tucked into the corner of the kitchen, back where we started. My thumb presses on his exposed, tan collarbone, bluing it with the paint moistened on my palms.

“Look at my hands,” I say.

“You okay, bro?”  Name-twin bobs his torso away from my grasp.

I want to say no. I want to say yes. I want everything and nothing to happen at this moment. I want to tell him that I’m not crazy, that it was all an act. That I could’ve been just like him. Go on, incriminate yourself. The clock audibly ticks because the music’s in between songs and everyone’s suddenly jettisoning themselves away in Ubers.

He braces himself.