My Imaginary Friend

When I was a child I had an imaginary friend. The thing that perturbed me more than anything was that everyone could see him but me. They called him by name. I had to take it on collective authority that he even existed.

His name was Nick, or so they all said. He was a railroad-hopping hobo. He regaled my relations and schoolyard chums with endless stories about hobo-ism, american culture, and recipes for beans (a dish which, according to him, could be prepared in 47 different basic variations, the derivatives of which were endless).

My mother cooked for his tastes- even though father and I both tried to get her to serve more upper-class meals. "If it's good enough for Nick it's good enough for us all," said mother. "He is, after all, the everyman."

And so it went. Nick Interfered with my mother and father's marital relations, my school companions, and eventually my love life.

He was a very opinionated invisible friend, or so I have been lead to believe. He had a way of making me feel very small and insignificant, albeit indirectly. When I was a small child, the other kids from around the neighborhood would all come to my door every saturday morning and ask if Nick could come out and play. When we played Baseball, I was one of the last picked for a team. Invariably, Nick was one of the first. I tried to be a good sport about all this and kept my feelings about the matter pretty much to myself.

When I was twelve years old my parents divorced. "It's not your fault," my father was sure to let me know. "It's that damned friend of yours."

"Who?" I asked, tears welling up in my eyes.

"Nick, as if you didn't know," my father growled. "He is an albatross around the neck of this family and I curse the day you brought him into this domicile."

My protests were for naught. For the umpteenth time I swore I knew no one named Nick, and that everyone was creeping me out with the constant references to this person of dubious origin and existence.

The story, as it goes, is that my father came home early one day, as was his occasional practice, and found Nick in bed with my mother. My mother, for her part, tried several explanations but all fell on deaf ears. My father had seen what he had seen, and that was all there was to it.

After father moved out our relationship deteriorated until we were cold and distant. By the time I was thirteen I referred to him simply as "Mr. Phillips." My mother became distant as well, throwing herself into various hobbies; like dancing by herself in the kitchen to music that only she could hear. I tried my best to ignore the growing peculiarities that set me apart from others my age. I guess you could rightly say that this was my first period of great denial.

I have always felt that I was somehow being held to blame. By the time I entered puberty I was lonely, anxious, and beginning to suspect my eyesight, if not my sanity. After all, if everyone else saw Nick, must he not necessarily exist?

He was like the plague; he never went away and yet could never be seen. He came and went as he pleased and had catastrophic effects on the social system.

Throughout school I was a strait "C" student. It wasn't due to a lack of intelligence, as you can see my IQ is quite high, it's just that whenever I did well it was always brought under strict scrutiny. I would score extremely high on the standardized tests of the day but afterward face questioning about my honesty and integrity. "We have reason to believe that you may not have earned this score," they would say. "Why do you always pick on me?" I would ask. "Because the other students don't bring raggedy hobos to school with them in order to feed them the answers," was always the stern reply.

I was lost.

Shouting, crying, protests- nothing helped the situation. I was ultimately sent to the school psychologist. I always dreaded these frequent visits as they always came in the middle of different classes, ensuring that the entire student body was made aware not only of my problems with Nick, but the fact that the system was bringing into question my very sanity.

As for my schoolmates, it seemed that Nick was very popular. He was invited to every party. Whenever I was with one of my schoolmates I was resigned to my fate as the odd man out. I ask you, how can a kid compete with stories of hopping freight trains?

If I was interested in a girl, it was not long before I found that she had an eye for Nick. Given that he was usually described to me as 5' 3", unshaven, dirty, in early middle age, and possessing of a very gravelly voice, I never understood this attraction that he held to the opposite sex. All my female teachers and classmates were in love with him. Most of my male teachers and classmates idolized him.

I looked forward to college like no one else I knew. It was a time of great hope for me. It was a chance for a new beginning. I thought that by choosing a far away college I could shake my parents, my beginnings, and most of all- Nick. I chose Idaho State, thinking that a hobo with a love for beans would have little interest in the potato state. I was foolish to think that I could get away. Nick was the hit of the campus. Everyone loved him. He became editor of the student paper; a rag that was now, as far as I could tell, filled with many blank columns and vast empty white patches. People all over campus were going on and on about the witty things that Nick was writing about and the depth of his poetry that was apparently showcased daily for all but me to read. I was again relegated to the shadows.

I spent a lot of time in my dorm room, sulking. I studied alone. I ate alone. I walked to class alone. I shunned most everyone, thinking it better to just earn my degree and not bother trying to make a social life for myself. For the first time in my life I got above average, even excellent, grades. I kept all human contact and conversation down to a minimum. I even took to counting the number of words I used in a day and totaling them up in the evening. Every time I had spoken less than a dozen words in a day- most often mumbled under my breath, I rewarded myself with an extra hour of sleep. Nick may have been with me, but as long as we were the only two there I never knew the difference.

In my junior year, I made my tragic mistake. I had not heard a comment about Nick in nearly two years. I had almost forgotten my pain. To top it off, people really were looking at me with interest. I was the strangest student on campus. The others saw me as moody and interesting. I was a mystery to them, as I was to myself. One day I was invited to a party and I decided to go.

When I got there people were all really friendly. I had a little to drink and that loosened me up and I started socializing. I was shocked to find myself having a good time. I felt free for the first time in my life.

After a while, I met this girl named Ellen. She was very attractive and had a sexy voice. She laughed at all my jokes, the ones that I had been saving up with no one to tell them to these many years. Her laugh lit up the night and made my heart sing. After the party we went back to my place. I opened the door and we practically rolled into the room: kissing fondling, removing clothes.

A few minutes into it, I noticed that there were no longer two participants in the nights main event. Ellen was just laying there, transfixed.

She was looking off to my left. "Who's you enigmatic friend? He's dreamy," she whispered, a wicked little pixie smile on her face. I was no longer the objet de désir. I crept to the closet and spent the night there unnoticed. I plugged my ears with my fingers but that couldn't shut out all the noise. I cried myself to sleep.

The next day I failed an Anthropology test. I couldn't get my mind off the indignity of the night before. To top it off, the night in the closet had strained my neck to the degree that I was suffering from a violent migraine and could hardly focus.

After deliberating over the matter for a few days I decided that the matter was simple- Nick must die. I was resolute. The only problem was how. That would take years to resolve.

Return to Vision? Nary!