Five Second Rule

 I’ve already told this story through many poems. But sometimes poetry is a form of cowardice, a means of avoiding the vulnerability of the unembellished truth. And so it’s about time I summoned the courage to tell this bittersweet tale in raw prose, even if my omnipresent insecurities and projections are painted more graphically than they’ve ever been painted before. 

Sweets were the first and most harmless addiction I developed as a kid and never quite got over. Just like Hobbits made it a habit of having a second breakfast, I made it a habit of having a second dessert (or third or fourth sometimes). A cookie was only as good as the one that followed, an ice cream was only as good as the chocolate malt ball at the bottom of the waffle cone. And so on that fateful January morning on my way to my job as a Warner Brothers tour guide, I could not be satisfied with a chocolate croissant alone; I required a donut to fully satiate my insatiable sweet tooth. 

Trejo’s Donuts had long been on my list of places in LA to try. After leaving Sasquatch Coffee with a sweettooth-failing chocolate croissant in hand, I decided to stop by there for a maple donut. Soon I was face-to-face with a kind-eyed, Covid-masked girl whose name I did not yet have the honor of knowing but would soon discover quicker than I usually learned strangers’ names. There was something marvelously sincere about her, even when she was utilizing typically insincere responses like “How are you” and “Have a nice day.” Somehow within the span of two minutes, I learned her name (Noelle), her passion for digital art, and our mutual love of the Pixar movie Up. 

Was she flirting with me? In retrospect, not at all, but at the time, I interpreted every little kindness from a girl as potential flirtation. Loneliness wounds one’s vision more than any other misfortune, and I was looking at life and people through very delusional eyes.

Anyhow, I of course skipped the rest of the way to my job at Warner Brothers thinking I might have met my soulmate. I probably had “I’ve Got a Golden Ticket” from Willy Wonka stuck in my head, which I usually did after meeting a projection-worthy girl. It was always innocent, but also unfair both to me and to the girl I was projecting romantic hopes upon.  

I knew I had to go back and talk to Noelle some more, maybe even the next day. Perhaps use the less-stressful language of business and ask if she wanted to “exchange contact info” or “collaborate on some art” in the near future. But one step at a time. For now, I needed to enjoy the laser light show of projections for a little bit, needed to bask in the fleeting ecstasy of endless opportunity. As long as something (or someone) remained an opportunity, I couldn’t be hurt. I also couldn’t have real joy – only hope – but sometimes hope felt better than joy.  

However, even my delusional 24-year-old self didn’t want to solely bask in hope, so a couple days later, I did go back to see Noelle and miraculously ended up putting my number in her phone (at her suggestion!). I then immediately grew insecure and wanted to make sure I had her number in hopes of maintaining the upper hand, so I subsequently found “Sam” in her contacts and sent a text before handing her back her phone. Then I smiled and went on my merry way. 

Except upon checking my phone, there was no message. Had the text not gone through? The insecurities I had been attempting to avoid came crashing down, and I reluctantly admitted I’d have to go back and see Noelle again the next day to fully quash them. The thought hadn’t crossed my mind that I might creep her out by going back to see her so much, but now I wish it had; I cringe at so many of the unintentionally stalkerish things my younger self did in the name of human connection. Perhaps I shouldn’t be so hard on myself; I’m at least grateful to have learned from these cringeworthy mistakes, even if the gradual dissolution of my delusions has rendered me a more cynical and depressed person. 

Anyhow, I did go back to Trejo’s the next day to see Noelle, but I should have checked my phone before walking into the store, as I received a message from her literally the moment of my arrival saying that I had, in fact, texted the wrong Sam in her contacts (hence the reason I never received a message on my end). Karma for my insecurities, I suppose. She gave me a funny look when I walked into the store – perhaps I had already creeped her out – then proceeded to tell me about the missent text, which made me feel embarrassed but also grateful that she had taken the time to inform me. The awkwardness was somewhat resolved, and I walked out thrilled that a cellular thread between us had finally been opened. 

Initially when exchanging contact info, I had suggested the possibility of us hiking together sometime, which Noelle seemed unexpectedly open to (perhaps I hadn’t creeped her out so much after all). Following up on this expression of interest, I texted her asking if she wanted to hike to the Wisdom Tree, a lovely little spot near the top of the Hollywood Sign. To my genuine surprise, she seemed interested in the idea and suggested we go at the crack of dawn before one of her donut shop shifts. Hiking at sunrise with a girl I’ve just met?! It almost seemed too good to be true. Maybe it was. 

I had been entertaining a baking hobby over the past few years, and I asked if I could bake some bread for the sunrise journey, and whether she had any allergies. “Just a mushroom allergy,” she assured me. Thankfully I hadn’t been planning on putting any mushrooms in the bread. She asked if she could bring hot chocolate – this really was too good to be true – and of course I said yes. So we were all set for our sunrise date or hang-out or whatever the hell it was.

I remember watching When Harry Met Sally the night before as a means of manifestation, even though I didn’t believe in manifestation. In fact, it was hard for me to sleep, I was so excited. I hadn’t felt this way since I was a kid waiting to leap out of bed on Christmas morning to see what Santa Claus put under the tree, or to hop in the car and go to Six Flags. Human connection was the new Christmas, the new Six Flags. It was really the most potent drug in the world, but it was also so profoundly rare to find on the shelf, which meant withdrawal symptoms could be extra painful. 

5:30 AM came even sooner than I expected it to. I leaped out of bed with Christmas morning excitement that equalled the Christmas Eve excitement I went to sleep with. Technically there was a bus or two I could take that would get me pretty close to the Wisdom Tree Trail, but timing was a gamble, so I decided to call an Uber. There was of course a slight fear at the back of my mind that Noelle would flake out – this was Los Angeles, after all – but sure enough, she arrived only a couple minutes after I did with the hot chocolate she promised, and we began our official get-to-know-you journey. 

In our text exchange the day before, I had told her that I had just seen the Japanese film Drive My Car and had been absolutely floored by it. She then asked me to elaborate on why I liked it so much. I forget what I said precisely, but in retrospect, I know 100 percent why I liked it, and why it was perfect for our conversation that January morning: it told a story about the inherent fragility involved when two people try to connect. We then shifted into a wide array of other topics, from favorite TV shows to childhood trauma to the dreams we held onto despite our ever-growing cynicism. She asked to stop walking midway up the hill and explained that she had asthma, which admittedly flattered me a great deal. Damn, this practical stranger has asthma, and she still agreed to go on a steep sunrise hike with me?! Certainly wasn’t helping my romantic projections. 

We finally reached the haunting tree for which the trail was named and took a seat under its mystical shade. Ever the mischievous older brother, I revealed the bread I had baked for our little picnic…….hamburger buns topped with mushrooms. JUST KIDDING! 

Thankfully, Noelle laughed. “That was a good bit,” she said. Then I revealed the actual bread I made for the occasion, featuring a hint of lime juice since she had previously mentioned loving lime-flavored donuts at Trejo’s. She picked up a piece and then accidentally dropped it to the ground. “Five second rule!” she exclaimed before stuffing it in her mouth and claiming how much she enjoyed it. God, this girl was cool! But it was also a moment of mystical foreshadowing; she would prove to be a person who struggled to commit to any sort of friendship once it had been fully exposed to germs, germs that took the form of candid confessions and admissions of frailty that destroyed illusions of inner perfection. 

I asked her more about her digital art, and she showed me some pictures of what she’d created. Apparently she had a fascination with centipedes and loved depicting them in her work. There was something about their capacity for regrowth that really inspired her, and that inspired me vicariously. We all want to regrow, don’t we? We all want to believe in second chances. But what need did Noelle have of second chances? She seemed like such a sweet person. Then again, so did I, and I had made more blunders than I cared to count, particularly in the friendship department.  

As Noelle continued to open up about her personal life and past struggles, I realized she might be gay. There was a certain “she” she kept on mentioning with a wistful look in her eyes, and I couldn’t deny that she was speaking of another woman whom she had loved deeply. Not

that there was anything wrong with that, of course; it was simply threatening my initial romantic projections, which was really a healthy thing in retrospect. No human being should ever be reduced to the sexual value they have to us (or lack thereof). There is no such thing as “just friends;” a genuine friendship is genuinely beautiful and bears no banner of inferiority. Yet I can’t deny I was a little disappointed; so much for When Harry Met Sally. 

Although Noelle’s ambiguous sexuality was not the only red flag for my romantic projections. She talked about her shrine of crystals in her bedroom and her experiments with witchcraft, and even though I was gradually becoming somewhat of a lapsed Catholic, I just couldn’t quite empathize with these “new age” spiritual practices. Or at least I knew my mom wouldn’t approve of them, and you can’t date someone your mom doesn’t approve of, right? Still, in the mind of a hopeless romantic, delusions are more powerful than logic, so I figured the red flags could become yellow flags, or maybe even quasi-green flags somewhere down the road. A little ephemeral kindness makes up for an eternity of ethereal spirituality. 

We continued to cover a wide variety of nuanced topics in a relatively short period of time. Noelle began to open up about her struggles with mental health and her uneven relationships with her parents, particularly her father, whom she was not on speaking terms with. She also hinted at suicidal ideations and a sense of futility surrounding the harsh truth that no matter how much we try to show someone we love them, they may never realize nor accept it. Seeds can be planted, but will flowers ever bloom? We both concluded that this may not be something meant for us to know; we must have faith that the seeds of love we plant do grow, even if we never see their fruit. 

Of course, there was a clock ticking on our lovely morning together – Noelle had to get to her 9 AM shift at Trejo’s – so we slowly stood up and began our descent down the Wisdom Tree Trail. I knew deep down that I didn’t have as much in common with her as I pretended to – hopeless romanticism makes a man a liar even faster than cowardice does – but I was still excited by the sheer concept of the morning that we’d shared, the proof that it was possible to meet a stranger and quickly become friends with them. Forget Tinder and church groups and school and all the standardized ways of meeting people; arbitrariness was the most magical method of human connection. When we made it to the bottom of the trail and parted ways, I almost immediately wrote a poem about the experience. It was called “Of Centipedes and Aliens” and was an all-but-romantic, overly idealistic encapsulation of the hour-and-a-half we had just spent together. However, I did privately acknowledge that my When Harry Met Sally-coded dreams were entirely misplaced, and Noelle and I would be “just friends,” as much as I despised that phrase. 

Still I got too excited too damn fast about this new bond, and I started brainstorming opportunities for us to meet again. We could go for another hike, go out to lunch, have more deep conversations. Discouraged by Noelle’s lack of responses and forgetting my resolution not to seem creepy anymore, I soon showed up at the donut shop with a couple handwritten poems she’d inspired and hoped we could reconnect. She received them gratefully and apologized for not responding – she hadn’t been in the best headspace as of late – and she suggested we should hike again later in the week, which put my heart at ease. 

But then came a text that confirmed what I had been suspecting/fearing over the last week: namely, that my overeagerness had rendered Noelle afraid of leading me on because there was obviously no romantic component to our quasi-strangers, quasi-friends relationship. She outlined this as the real reason why she had been slow to respond, emphasizing that she simply didn’t want to hurt me because I seemed like such a beautiful soul. I received this text with grace – after all, I knew it to be true even during the times I denied it – and I responded as such, thanking her for her honesty and reconfirming our mutual desire to hike again the following week, which we subsequently made official plans to do. 

I hate the Griffith Observatory. Just kidding. I love it so much that I hate it. I’ve made too many sweet memories there with individuals whom I no longer talk to, and whenever I return to it, I feel the need to overwrite these memories somehow. Nevertheless, I wasn’t quite at this stage of sentimentality yet (I had only been in LA two years), so I asked Noelle if she wanted to hike to the Observatory. Seemingly desiring to one-up the homemade mushroom bread, er, regular bread from the morning before, she offered to bring homemade omelettes, which would have definitely led me on had she not already made it clear that she was not leading me on (I could still be led on nonetheless). My excitement the night before didn’t quite reach Christmas Eve levels this time around – my delusions had been somewhat tempered – but I was still really looking forward to it. I thrived on deep conversations, and Noelle was really good at initiating them, even if they were a bit one-sided in retrospect. 

I remember the specific picnic table we sat at before ascending to the Observatory. She brought her homemade omelettes – which were delicious of course – and we continued to have nuanced conversations about our respective childhoods and mottos of life. I seemed to take more extensive interest in her than she did in me – she tended to just mirror whatever I asked her – but thankfully I liked listening. Perhaps it satisfied a savior complex I had and still have to a certain degree, a desire to be of use to someone else and make them feel seen/loved. But I also just find people fascinating, whether or not I can actually “save” them with my kindness or not. As we finished breakfast and began our ascent towards the Observatory, I completely surrendered my romantic projections and began to cherish what seemed like the beginning of a beautiful friendship. 

Suicidal ideations had played a dark and prominent role in her childhood, and she painted a vivid picture of the suicide watch hospital rooms she spent some time in. Too much time. She recalled the unexpected deliciousness of the egg rolls they would serve her for dinner, and how she would order two cookies and a side of ice cream so that she could make an ice cream sandwich. There was a whimsical, darkly humorous nature to her storytelling, perhaps as a way of coping with how heavily these experiences still weighed upon her heart. 

One thing she talked a lot about was a particular condition I had never heard of before: borderline personality disorder. While I still don’t fully understand the intricate nuances of this struggle, my interpretation based on Noelle’s testimony is that it can be summarized as a perpetual state of detachment in relationships, primarily caused by the fear of abandonment. Someone with BPD abandons before they are abandoned, attaches to people momentarily before immediately detaching. Just like in her raw text message a few days prior, Noelle was warning me that she was in no position to be a steadfast friend, so now was my time to run away before I got hurt. The bread had been on the ground longer than five seconds; I was still free to eat it, but she would not. 

Except I had never been good at running away, especially when I had grown to care about someone. Still in a state of delusional disbelief, I thought Noelle’s willingness to open up to me so quickly was a sign that she would indeed remain a friend; perhaps BPD was simply a matter of trust, but I had already earned her trust. Right? Oh, in such simple terms doth a compassionate man think. But it was not so simple; in fact, this was the third to last time I would ever see Noelle.

As aforementioned, Noelle wasn’t very good at asking me questions, but that was alright; I remained addicted to listening. One beautiful moment I remember on both hikes is how she would look out at the hauntingly hilly landscape of Hollywood and the smoggily blue skies above and just say, “Wow.” She was not yet so jaded that she could not be impressed by the splendor of nature, as fractured as it was by human interference. People might abandon her – and she might abandon people – but the natural world never would. 

We gradually made our way down the trail and towards the bus stop. The bus ride back towards West Hollywood is a blur to me – I can’t even remember exactly what we talked about – but I do remember an acute sense of being rushed, as if Noelle had shared all she wanted to share for the day and was ready to part ways with me as soon as possible. This was certainly understandable – it had to have been exhausting to relay her whole mental health history to a practical stranger – but I couldn’t help but want to hear more. We hugged upon parting ways, and I was too naive at the time to sense the finality of the embrace. Yes, she suggested beforehand that we make our hike a weekly thing, but she was taking a number from me and being idealistic; she did not have the emotional stamina for that. 

When it became clear from Noelle’s lack of responses the following week that she would not be confirming plans for a third hike, I popped over to Trejo’s to visit her. She was about to take her lunch break, so she suggested we take a walk together, which we proceeded to do around the block. She apologized for not responding to my texts – she had reached yet another emotional slump caused by her estranged father’s incessant attempts to get in touch with her – although she also did not suggest a fresh day to hike, and I finally started to accept that the friendship was phasing out. When we said goodbye this time around, I sensed its potential finality even though I didn’t want to believe it

More texts were sent the following week without responses, and I had to embrace the fact that she was telling the truth about her borderline personality disorder and its side effects; the special moments of human connection we had were moments and moments alone, not material for a long-term bond. I eventually went back to the shop and talked to her one more time, during which she unnecessarily apologized again (I should have been empathetic at this point) and said she thought she was ready for another hike, which I carelessly believed. But that was the last I would ever talk to her; my phone inbox is filled with an embarrassing number of one-sided texts, each one emblematic of a hope that maybe, just maybe, she would respond saying that she was simply going through a rough time and genuinely appreciated the seeds of brotherly love I was trying to sow. 

I mourn those two lovely mornings we spent together in the hills of Hollywood; I really do. No one had been so rawly honest with me before (and so quickly), and no one has been since. I’ll always love Noelle and hope against hope that she is happy amidst all her omnipresent struggles. And not as a man loves a woman, nor even as a brother loves a sister, but rather as a stranger loves a stranger for daring to share a moment of unfiltered confidance. 

Like the centipedes you’re so fascinated by, keep on regrowing, Noelle, wherever you are.