You should have seen his eyes light up when he talked about Elisabeth, her dark hair, her perfect skin and her wonderful smile. Adam loves poetry. He had exposed Elisabeth to Jack Kerouac a few weeks before and apparently had her hooked. They were going to go to Printer's Ink the next day. I have never seen a person as excited as Adam was that day. He bounded about like a puppy, his brown eyes darting and messy hair flailing. "My God, I'd burn for her," he said.

Now, we were typing and sending messages back and forth, black messages on a white background, similar to the poetry Elisabeth and he might have read the next day. "Yeah, he lives in Richmond," Adam moaned through his letters. "She started dating him back in August, right when I started to talk to her. She never mentioned him! Never!"

My mind crawled back to the memories of girls who had crushed my best friends by telling them they were losers. I remember Steve Urkel falling for Laura Winslow on Family Matters, and I could draw parallels endlessly until my imagination was dull. You have no idea how badly I wanted Laura to love Steve.

"Hey, wanna hang out tonight, man? I could really use the company."

There was no question about it: "Sure, no problem," I typed. "Wanna go to Books-A-Million in Christiansburg?"

"Cool," he typed. "I'll be at your place about 8. See ya then." He signed off.

Adam appeared at my door at exactly 8 p.m. We trudged out to the Dedmon parking lot to my car. With some Collective Soul in the CD player, our heads bobbed, and we rode in black silence across the bridge.

This was indeed the world we knew. What is so wrong about guys like Adam and me? Is it such a crime not to want sex all the time? Is it so terrible not to want a girl to be submissive? How bad can it be to have an addiction to beat poetry and alternative rock music? My hands gripped the steering wheel in pure anger at the society I live in.

They all claim to want nice guys. They date jerks. They all claim to want sensitive guys. They date brutes. Adam and I stand in a room filled with people, as if in an airport, waiting for our ladyloves to come running through the corridor into our throbbing arms. Those signs were collecting cobwebs, and the soles of our shoes were congealing to the carpet. No more.

We arrived at Books-A-Million, and Adam flew towards the poetry section like a dragonfly heading towards the swamps of heaven. He pulled out Kerouac and sighed. He held a copy of Subterraneans in his large, skinny fingers, and he gingerly  thumbed through the pages. He mumbled something, and he kept turning pages as if they were rose petals.

"Here it is," he whispered. "C'mere, Jeff, you have got to read this."

My heart palpitated as I ingested the words Kerouac had written decades ago, the words that rang true even now:

For now, I want Mardou-she just told me that six months ago a disease took root deeply in her soul, and forever now-doesn't this make her more beautiful?-But I want Mardou-because I see her standing, with her black velvet slacks, handsapockets, thin, slouched, cig hanging from lips, the smoke itself curling up, her little black back hairs of short haircut combed down fine and sleek, her lipstick, pale brown skin, dark eyes, the way shadows play on her cheekbones, the nose, the little soft shape of chin to neck, the little Adam's apple, so hip, so cool, so beautiful, so modern, so new, so unattainable to sad bagpants me in my shack in the middle of the woods

Though we never said it to each other, we declared ourselves disciples of our own thoughts and committed to staying the way we are, no matter how poorly it sits with the girls we meet. We couldn't love anyone else if we weren't being who we truly are. We were determined to stay sad bagpants us for the rest of our lives.