He knows he's going to have several homes when he's older, and when he says this what he means is that he's planning on being filthy rich, preparing for the life of the multi-billionaire. We are seated on the steps of a brownstone in the middle of Harvard Yard that hovers over the string-lined grass where students, despite the makeshift fencing to keep them out, are playing Frisbee. Unlike him I don't attend Harvard; I don't have legitimate geniuses to rely on as resources, no H-bomb to drop on others as a form of networking. He's talking about making a business plan now, something about an internet startup that's beyond my line of understanding; he's reciting the plan to me and it sounds real enough, pithy enough to be taken seriously, whatever it will be.
The older I get, the less I understand what smart means, and the less I'm able to accurately deduce it on others or myself. I took an online IQ test the other day and was floored by how hard it was; without pen or paper I was supposed to intuit mathematical rotations and patterns and I came out with an ego-shattering 120. Surely I'm smarter than that. Afterall, talk to me for 15 minutes and I'll tell you what I know, and probably I'll be able to gauge what you know too. I'm well-read, well-informed, well-adjusted. I understand literature and art and I create both in my small ways. But IQ is not meant for this kind of intelligence; its meant for the math whizzes, the people who understand and can solve problems like if Bobby is of average height and is standing next to his friend Jim who is taller than Bobby and their neighbor Mark is 5'2" and 6 inches shorter than Jim, how tall will Bobby be when he's full-grown? My brain shuts off when reading problems like that. It literally creates a jam-like glaze and coats itself in it, unable to continue processing information. Suddenly my thoughts are on colors.
But he is not like this. He is not only mathematically inclined, a born problem solver, but a natural talker as well. Communication flows out of him like champagne at a wedding reception. Like so many adept communicators, I want to believe he's a bullshit artist, able to get by on sounding good alone. This would help, this would ease the issue of him being potentially better than me. We walk the few blocks to his apartment where he will show me the rest of the work he is doing, and it stands on the street corner that could be any street corner, in a Cambridge duplex that could be any duplex, vinyl-siding melting off in the heat, the tiny plot of grass in front turning yellow. He gives me the quick tour: kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, bedroom, living room. It is clean but uninviting. There's the white-striped sofa set from Rent-A-Center, a table with its legs hacked off that holds up an extremely large television, and various knick-knacks, all shining under the dismal glow of fluorescence. In his bedroom there are the dowdy prerequisites: futon with mismatched cushions that sink down obscenely low when sat on, the halogen floor lamp, the computer taking center stage. To the right of the door is a bookshelf with all of five books on it, all business manuals, mixed with various toiletries and a flower vase full of various branded condoms. I suddenly picture him wooing girls into his lair, pulling out the Durex wrapper before sliding onto the sloppily-made bed with forest green sheets (why do men always pick such dark bed sheets?) with all the intended lure of a jungle animal. This room has roughly about as much romance as a jail cell, perhaps less. It dawns on me that people don't know anything about mood or how to incite it. They buy a Glade scented candle and think they're done. That's romance. But in this room, like so many I find myself walking into with all the excitement of walking into a spider web by surprise, is eerily sterile and devoid of anything remotely resembling passion. Jungle animal need not apply.
He has tried his hand at artsiness I see, to no good end. The walls are lined with tacked-up and yellowing articles clipped from newspapers, with headings like "Why Your Scissors, Knives, and Cuticle Clippers are Passing Through Airport Security" with parts highlighted and noted in ballpoint pen saying "Good point, good point". As I'm trying to make sense of the articles and why they were found inspirational enough to be hung up around his bedroom, I notice the black yarn that has been tied pointedly between ceiling light, wall, and bedpost like laser beams in The Matrix. "What do you think of my home?" he asks cheerfully. A bad question to ask an interior designer. Instantly I'm picturing ways to help this sad little space he's pathetically referring to as home, and its not my wish to insult but its also not in anyone's interest to lie, and so I divert the conversation to the gardening gloves masking-taped to the wall: the only interesting object in the room based sheerly on curiosity, albeit a frightening curiosity, as the mere sight of them outstretched like two menacing hands gives me visions of strangulation.
Sprinkled around the room like potpourri are notebook sheets with handwriting on them, little bits of his thoughts, all work-related, forming tiny piles here and there like shed dog hair. His handwriting is small and squashed, black ink, looping letters that feel slightly childlike. Words are misspelled, typos are flooding the pages, god this is so depressing; I wanted to believe that a Harvard student would have it all over me in every way. More organized, more sophisticated, better speller. So far nothing is what is seems, nothing is as it should be, and the notion alone of the Ivy League world and the wealth and prestige that go along with it, happily hand in hand, pinky fingers flexed upwards, is fading fast. These kids have the world laid out in front of them like a six course meal served on silver, they're groomed from checkbooks and trust funds into the world of Academia, and yet they live no different than any other twenty something in Cambridge. The money goes to recreational coke habits and iPod Nanos and the occasional pair of Diesel jeans. The brains, I don't know where they go. Tuned like an old radio, picking up signals and dropping others at whim.
