Second Character Analysis: Nolan

Nolan Mortimer Charles, despite previous claims in this book, was indeed a camper. Mostly. The 21-year-old lived with his Presbyterian Sunday-School mother and father in their two-bedroom, two bath block of suburban real-estate – also known as squatting in their basement to avoid contact with his family members – and other times he curled his body into the limited space of a reclining chair in his best friend’s one-room apartment above a black beauty salon. He liked this much more. Parents were wonderful and a good source of income, but 21 years with any two people under one roof is far too long a time. So roughly weekly he picked up his small wardrobe and set up camp somewhere else.

Nolan was a pro at packing up and camping out. He could carry all of his belongings with him in an old backpack and a guitar case. He was the master roustabout, the stay-at-home drifter with the borrowed wallet (complete with borrowed money) and the wanderlust of a westerner with a spike in his shoe and a book of matches at his heel. He wanted to run like a Kenyan to all corners of the world. He wanted to know how to pitch a tent solo and blow smoke rings and pick his own fresh salads right off the street. (Siobhan picked a salad once. She called it urban scavenging. It was complete with dandelions and wild onions, an apple which overhung from a yard they passed while walking, and mustard greens from the park.)

Nolan liked walking through the woods with a Canon EOS Rebel XSi and capturing the dust to which he would one day return, as promised. As a kid watching the Lion King, he had taken to heart Mufasa’s preachings: “When we die we become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass, and so we are connected in the great Circle of Life.” How could a lion become grass? Would he, too, one day retire and expire under the naked branches of a dying tree, and shed his useless mortal shell, an offering of meat which could no more contain his wandering soul than his parents’ basement? In that case, what more was flesh and bone but a rented flat for a soul in transition from nativity to enlightenment – or heaven – or wherever? If Buddha had the right idea, and Nolan was simply apartment-hopping from body to body based on Karma the way 20-somethings do based on income, what held him back from choosing to move out now? Who was the landlord? He wanted to have a chat. Unless… if he objected to Karma, would Karma send him to a cardboard box instead of a penthouse? Maybe he had been going about this all wrong. Maybe if he sucked up to Karma it would do the right thing. Actually, maybe it was all just a Disney movie.

Currently, Nolan had camp set up in Siobhan’s house. He had it all to himself. While she was stuck with her prudish mother and judgmental Phoebe and whorish Luna, shoveling their way up a steep slope just to get in the door of the cabin and throwing logs into a wood stove and freezing their asses off, her father was stuck in Buffalo with his touring band with a week’s worth of delayed flights. Nolan had called and begged, and Siobhan had given him trouble, and he had promised to get Noah out of his apartment so they could have some privacy when she got home, and she had complained about the beauty salon, and he had talked a little dirty, and then he had talked a lot dirty, and she had told him that Mags wanted to know why she was turning pink, and he had told her just say yes, and she had said of course, just get out before we’re back and no smoking inside except in the attic with a window open, and he had said thank you I love you, and she had said no you don’t, silly.

Silly. Was he really silly? They had been having sex for months now, and friends for plenty longer, and she had let him bestow upon her gifts and adorations and declarations of her beauty (although the latter she always denied), and she had admitted she was happy when she was with him! He was happy with her. He was happy with her body next to his, with her skin on his skin, with her lips on his lips. He was happy with her funny foreign cigarettes, and with her quirky ideas about religion and marriage and literature, and with her ten slender fingers, curved into divine arches which cascaded from the edges of her palms and onto the black and white keys of any piano in her reach. He was happy with her mind, which was vast and endless, and her soul, which was not so easily swayed to change, and her trust, which he supposed now was in part with him.

The problem with the “friends-with-benefits” deal was deceit. Isn’t that all it was? They could be getting to know each other and falling into something real and serene and mutually happy (love?) when they were busy deceiving themselves and each other and everyone around them. Every day going out into the world and declaring their mere friendship to everyone around them (except coy Luna and disapproving Phoebe and Noah and, he supposed, Paul. Luna and Phoebe both had some strong opinions about what they were doing, and consistently were badgering Siobhan about their concern. Noah thought it was awesome that Nolan was getting as much ass as he was without commitment. Frankly, Nolan didn’t give a rat’s ass about what Paul thought.) and keeping a respectful distance, then casting away pretense at night when they could. Telling themselves that there was nothing special between them; merely physical pleasure and a silly secret. He wanted to love her. He wanted to show her to the world and say “she is mine,” and lace their fingers like shoelaces, binding their hands tightly in a polite embrace that foiled and redeemed their nocturnal, tantric indulgences. He wanted to kiss her lightly on the lips without tongue, and watch her beautiful mouth curl into a smile as the moons in her eyes ignited and shined their glowing beams on his face. He wanted, for once, for her to stay with him after they had sex and fall asleep in his arms instead of leaving him with a kiss lingering on his lips and running home or to Phoebe’s or somewhere else that was not at his side. He wanted her love in return. He wanted to feel it in his gut, where now he only felt a rumbling hungry emptiness; the same nausea that occurs when one drinks tea without first having food in their system; the need to vomit but nothing inside to expel.