I never knew Rob Turner. I shared four years of my youth walking the same halls, shared the same friends, the same conversations. I even shared a stage with him once. Though all of this I never shared a look with him, a smile, a laugh. I never shared a youthful moment of over-importance and melodrama that somehow leaves you shattered yet somehow unchanged. I knew of him about him, around him, but I never knew him specifically.

High school showed me a lot of friends I never expected to have; a group of hardcore chess players, a bull-headed anarchist, a nickel philosopher whose two cents could possibly appreciate over time, a small waif of a girl with a poet's soul; an engineer's mind and a strong roman nose, a freshman with a car, an overly perky girl with overly blue eyes. A couple of drug addicts and, ironically enough, no booze hounds. I became friends with them by chance and circumstance, which is the only way the story can be told. The moral is I didn't seek them out.

Rob, on the other hand, I should have sought out. I was such a goddamned elitist hiding behind what I considered a divine-like right to judge; using for my criteria some vague and obtuse ideas about excellence and art. Rob, by firm and objective terms, was excellent. He was a good looking youth, from what I saw and he played the saxophone well, from what I heard. He sung well enough to make the girls swoon, which always means a lot to someone choking on the bitter taste of teenage rejection. His surname was Turner and where I come from that meant something. What, exactly, I don't know, and I'd be willing to bet neither does he.

I can still recall my first encounter with Rob Turner during my freshman year. In those days I hated people, all people, for no real reason, with a passion. Of course I had friends, never mind that I could count all of them on one hand, but I didn't count them as people (in general) since they had some appreciation of "excellence" and "art" and "bullshit." I was young and angstful about it; not because I was curing my inexperience but rather because I had already learned everything I needed to know in life and was pissed that no one else had realized that. What's the point of being enlightened if it doesn't get you any chicks?

Rob had come up to me and asked me about this necklace I had on. This necklace, of course, being the height of premature masculinity. Not only was the chain much too large for my scrawny neck and the point of the charm, which was a three inch pewter sword, nearly poked me in the navel as I walked. He was trying to be nice and friendly-like. As far as I know he actually is that way. I took one look, only a glance really, and saw his crisp, bright blue jeans, unsoiled shoes, conservative haircut, tucked in button down shirt and immediately dismissed him as a person. In my mind it was impossible for someone to dress like that and be worth talking to. I didn't know it at the moment, but fate, with a full since of irony, would have me looking and dressing surprisingly like him four years later as I walked those halls with the pompous self-importance of a senior.

I had decided, full of false enlightenment, that it didn't matter how someone looked. That looks were unimportant and part of a consumer-driven culture causing us only to buy buy buy. I had also decided, completely oblivious of my hypocrisy, that anyone, like Rob, who tried, actually tried, to look good had to be a loser.

If I had glanced in a mirror that day, or any other day that entire year, I think I might have tried to comb my hair, at least just once. I also would have seen a beat up t-shirt advertising some stupid video game or equally stupid TV show falling loosely over faded and ripped jeans. Over that would have been an equally if not more faded blue flannel print that was brushed at the shoulders by my extremely masculine, if somewhat unbrushed hair. Of course the sword necklace. I looked disheveled and unkempt, the way people my age were supposed to. And I was an individual, goddamn it, just like everyone else.

In response to Rob's query about my necklace I told him some story that would have suited my fancy at the time. Something involving knights and dragons and damsels in distress. Full of valor and honor and chivalry. I still do, after a fashion, but this world hasn't shown me a checkerboard black and white world but somewhere in between where heroes can be overcome by chance in an instant and love can move the world but it cannot make it stand still. I had not yet discovered the overwhelming magic of poetry, the beautiful magic of the stage or the subtle magic in a kiss. I preferred and struggled to believe in the myths of Merlyn and the legends of Tolkien. I tried very had to make Rob believe this as well.

I failed. I grinned smugly as Rob's eyes grew wide, as he nodded slightly, as he turned to walk away. I chuckled to myself thinking I had turned away another close minded conformist who could never hope to understand the majesty of my thought. He couldn't understand excellence or bullshit like I could. There I sat thinking that perfection was static and beauty lasted more than a moment.

Four years passed. They passed like a waltz, slow, slow, quick quick. Passed like a dream. "What dreams may come when we have shuffled off this moral coil." In that time I never heard or saw much of Rob's personal life. It is quite possible that in that time I had become humble enough to actually speak to him and actually listen but we had become so secure in our social cliques that we feared associating outside of them. That perhaps being the greatest tragedy of high school, of my life even. Everyone is so close to these people, all day, everyday. These people so impossibly young and so impossibly alive. People on the verge of their lives with the whole world by the tail. The greatest cross-section of the future that we would ever experience, just one desk down, and no one actually talks to them. In other countries, in other cultures we'd be fighting for every class we could find, fighting the system with our mind and our guns. Standing in front of tanks. Tearing down walls. But instead we argued about which movie was better, Coyote Ugly or Gone in 60 Seconds.

I saw Rob a lot my senior year, mostly on the stage. I was one of those people that fancied the theatre and wanted to be an actor but lacked either the charisma or stage presence or diction or memory or empathy or any of the thousand other things that one needs inherently to be worth watching. Rob, though effortlessly brought characters to life. Even at auditions I could feel it. The high school theatre director worshiped him, or at least his name, and with my limited exposure to the stage her word was like gold, or maybe something gold plated.

He would get the lead. Every time. Any why? Because he could do it better than anyone else. Because the whole world, especially the theatre, was full of justice and only the best man for the job. I truly believed that. I truly wish I still could. He would come early and he would stay late. He would never miss a cue, never make a false step, never lose focus. His instincts were right on. He preformed with passion, with integrity, like everything he did.

I would imagine Rob Turner never walked sluggishly out to his car after late rehearsals, tired and worn out to flop down on his bed. No, not Rob Turner. Rob would all but skip out to his car, full of energy singing an upbeat song to himself. Most likely a show tune. He'd go home and practice his sax or complete the math homework he didn't finish in class. Or even write his first theological book proving that, despite my doubts, God really did exist and really did love all of us. He would never forget to kiss his mother before going to bed at night. The same saintly mouth that never ate junk food and never said a naughty word.

Or maybe he didn't. Doubt, like a dark cloud, has followed me thought most of the discoveries in my life and prevented me from writing word one of my theological treaties. Maybe his parents were pressuring him onto the stage simply because it would look good on his college applications. It could be that he cursed our director's name under his breath every time she said go back and do it again and never, ever wanted the leads. Maybe he didn't know if God existed, didn't care, and the cross he wore was just a simple ruse. Maybe he didn't even kiss his mother goodnight. He could have hated school; he could have hated everything.

I never wanted to believe that, though. It's amazing how someone looks on stage, under the lights, in costume and makeup. They look just how they're supposed to; larger than life. Just how I always thought life was supposed to be, epic and legendary with invisible people laughing at all the jokes. That was how I always saw Rob. He was larger than life, some untouchable superhuman that always did everything right, because it was rehearsed.

When I saw Rob offstage he never looked quite right to me. He still wore his shirt tucked into crisp jeans and his hair perfectly in place but he looked so pale, as if sick with a fever and so unbearably ordinary. He had the look of a high school student with too much homework who was worrying about rising gas prices and felt the weight of the dogma hanging around his neck.

No one else saw it though. They saw Rob in real life the way I saw him on stage. To them Rob really was the amazing person he seemed to be on stage, like he was always performing. I'd hear how gorgeous he looked and how amazing he could play the saxophone. Oh, and he was funny too. All of his teachers loved him, right? How could they not, with his straight As for four years running. I'd watch him walk down the hallway with the air of a man who knew people would move out of his way, and they did. It was at those times in life that I couldn't help but notice even my girlfriend didn't think I was gorgeous and even a freshman wouldn't move out of my way.

Rob and I shared a stage when we graduate from high school. He went his way and I went mine, and I doubt if I'll ever see him again, unless it's on a stage. That seems incredibly right to me. I don't think I could stand it if I saw Rob Turner walking down the street in a pair of ripped and stained jeans and a day old beard. I wouldn't be surprised to see Chicken Little running by shouting, "The sky is falling, the sky is falling!" I would be even less surprised to feel little pieces of the sky falling down on my head. He would seem too simple, too plain, too ordinary. It was only on stage, when it was practiced and perfect, that Rob seemed real to me.

Sometimes I would lie awake at night, looking at my ceiling that seemed infinite in the dark and think on the paper I had due in the morning. Then sometimes I'd wonder about Rob Turner and if he had such menial problems as English papers. I would bet if he did he would rehearse them enough to get it right. It was then that I'd wish Shakespeare was right, that all the world was a stage and all the men and women on it merely players, having their entrances and exits, strutting and fretting their hours. It was a such a wonderful thought, even being a poor player, a fool "prithee nuncle," to consider playing for some celestial audience. To believe one has a chance to rehearse. To have a grand curtain call at the end of life rather than gasping for breath, weathered and broken, on some forgotten hospital bed. "Give us your hands if we be friends." Then God claps for you. Stands and claps for you.

That could have been the thing, the invisible, impenetrable wall that came between us and never allowed us to get too close. There is certainly a difference between a performance and a rehearsal, for as real as it feels in the back of your mind you know you'll have a chance to fix it. The only person you have laughing in the dark is the director, in that bitter and jaded way of someone who has heard the joke a hundred times before, not the contagious, unabashed laugher of an opening night audience. This could easily be Rob's performance, having the memories hidden somewhere of rehearsals without end, finally ready to perform. As for me, having mistakes piled on mistakes, missed timing and not being fully emotionally committed, this is just a rehearsal. Tomorrow night, when God is watching, I'll get it right.