"Kyle Broflovski"

by Stan Marsh

The last time I saw Kyle Broflovski it was 2024. I was living in Ohio then, working at a place making blue jean fasteners. Wendy had a good job as a speech pathologist in Hamilton. We were renting a little green-painted cinderblock house outside town at the edge of a huge cornfield, and in the winter, when the pipes froze, I brought in cans of water from a neighbor's place so we could cook. I didn't think much about it at the time, but now it seems like a pretty good life.

Anyway, Kyle came through on his way north, driving to Alaska. We had known each other since we were kids and had roomed together at college, and I remember that during his freshman year his favorite artist was Johnny Horton and his favorite song was "North to Alaska." He had brought Johnny Horton's Greatest Hits to school with him. He sort of liked "Sink of the Bismarck," too, but not nearly as much as "North to Alaska." He listened to it a lot.

Then one day he had a new favorite. I had just bought The Beatles' White Album, and for some reason he got attached to "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da." I remember trying to figure out what it was about that one song that hit him so hard. I mean, there're a lot of great songs on that album. "Happiness is a Warm Gun," "I'm So Tired," "Why Don't We Do It in the Road," et cetera. To be honest, "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da" always sort of grated on me. Not as bad as "Rocky Racoon," but bad enough. Also—and I think this is a key point—if I buy an album I like, I try not to listen to it so it won't get old. I don't know, people are different that way I guess. Anyway, Kyle got totally hooked on "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da." He would listen to it over and over, dozens of times, until finally somebody would start banging on the wall or come stomping down the hall to tell him to put the freaking headphones on. But for me that usually only made it worse. Because before long Kyle would forget himself and start making this loud ugly noise as he sang along, oblivious. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and the ghost of that song would be playing somewhere in the headphones as Kyle lay across the room awake in the dark. After a while I would hear him pressing the back-skip button two times fast, going back to the start of that song.

For all that, though, Kyle was by far the hardest studying of any of us. He would put in four, five, six hours a day, sitting with a book open in front of him. And whatever book it was, he had this habit of squiggling indecipherably in the margins as he read. This special mark that he made over and over was like some sort of rune or hieroglyphic, two little loops joined together at top and bottom, like a pregnant woman carrying something on her back. You'd open one of his books, any of them, and see thousands of these cryptic squiggles everywhere, in every blank space. In fact everything was covered with them: his desk, his newspapers, even his hands, anyplace he could find to write. It had been that way since our last year in high school. And he was always studying. The rest of us would try to get him to go out and drink a beer. We'd found this pizza joint that had weekly pitcher specials, and a buddy of ours had a fake. We'd go out there, drink a couple of pitchers. Kyle would almost never go. He was trying to make good grades.

We went to college at U of Denver, which isn't so far from South Park, our little hometown, and back then Kyle and I used to go home on the weekends. We were considered locals, and were compared to our friends who came from all over, and I was much appreciated because I had a car, a 1995 Toyota Celica. On Sunday nights Kyle's family used to have me and sometimes three or four other guys over for dinner. It was a big deal. Kyle's mother loved me. She would always give me a job. "OK, Stanley," she would say to me. "You sit down there. At the foot of the table. You're in charge of the cornsticks." If someone wanted a cornstick, they had to go through me. Kyle had a job, too, and he always took it very seriously. He would place whatever dish he was in charge of right next to his elbow and keep strict tabs on who had had what. Everything on the table was kosher, but Kyle's family hadn't really been observant Jews for a long time. And anyway Kyle didn't care what he ate: kosher or not, you couldn't pry it away from him.

After our junior year at DU, Kyle and I drove that little Celica all the way to Mazatlán. Don't ask me how we got the idea. We were a full day out before I realized Kyle couldn't drive a stick. He would sit there on the passenger side for a while and then crawl into the backseat and go to sleep while I drove. Over 1000 miles and I drove every inch of the way. How many days it took, I can't remember. We came down through the Seirra Madres just at sunset, a long series of switchbacks with the valley floor black as could be below us and the peaks towering up in brilliant light. I tried to wake Kyle up but couldn't, not as long as the car was moving. When we hit the Mazatlán traffic he came climbing over into the front. The following week, on the return trip, I got so tired that I finally was forced to put Kyle behind the wheel. It was somewhere between Torreon and Saltillo, I think. Truth be told, he had been pestering me for his chance. So I found a long stretch of what looked on the map like uninhabited highway ahead, switched places with him and had him press in the clutch while I got him into fourth gear. Then I went off to sleep. I thought I might be good for an hour or two. I told Kyle to wake me up if he spotted anything up ahead: village, stoplight, livestock, roadwork, hazards of any kind. Otherwise, all he had to do was keep it in fourth and drive. When I woke up, we were somewhere out in the desert, it was getting dark, and we were just pulling up to a Mexican police checkpoint. With so much speed coming off—Kyle got the concept of the brake—and still in fourth, the car began to lurch spasmodically. I was screaming at him to put in the clutch. With every lurch he was laying rubber, this big grin on his face, and I remember how the Mexican policeman stepped decorously back inside the safety of his little booth to watch until the car jerked to a stop.

So anyway, Kyle came through Ohio in 2024 on his way to Alaska. He had everything he owned in the backseat of his '05 Rav4, including a tennis ball can filled with pot and a copy of Willie Nelson's Shotgun Willie. He had just finished law school and was in Texas then. I remember he'd had a job for a while working pro bono with the prison population, but he had given it up. Anyway, in he came with his one album that he wanted to play over and over and his can of dope. Wendy and I weren't that big into weed, but we weren't necessarily against it either, so we spent a week or so getting stoned with Kyle.

That whole week was a little strange, what with Wendy and me both having to get up early to go off to work, leaving Kyle alone there during the day. But he had his own routine. He would sleep late and be sitting around when I got home. We didn't ahve anything really to talk about, I guess. After I'd been home a while he'd look at me and say, "Wanna get stoned?" For a couple of days it was all right. We'd get stoned and drink some beer and listen to music. He would tolerate whatever I put on, but I'm sure that during the day, while I was gone, he listened to Willie nonstop. Whatever the case there was almost no talk between us. Because almost right away, as soon as he'd gotten stoned, Kyle would be ready to eat. He was ravenous. He had to eat. I know that this probably doesn't sound so unusual, but with Kyle it was just so visceral and direct. I don't know how else to put it. There just wasn't any gap. It was get stoned, eat, get re-stoned, eat again, and go to sleep.

I do remember one night when we all went downtown, though. There was a little carnival on the main square, and Kyle got on the piddlyass Ferris wheel. The thing looked dangerous to me, the baskets swaying up and down on their thin spokes and the mushroom base making a metallic groaning sound with the effort of lifting them up in the cold. Kyle and Wendy were both big amusement park freaks, though, the scarier the better, and so they got on. I still remember shivering at the bottom and watching Kyle go round and round on that Ferris wheel, his bright red Jew afro wiggling in the wind, this look of pure animal enjoyment on his face. It was the only thing I saw him do the whole week besides get stoned and eat that occupied him, that was truly inside him.

In the end, at some point, I had to talk to him. We were sitting on our little cinderblock front porch in the dark, stoned, listening to the radio, and I said to him, "Kyle, listen. You can't keep going on like this. You've got to find something to give a shit about. You know everybody's got to find some place to put themselves." That speech doesn't sound like much now and maybe it wasn't then either. I don't know, though, maybe it was. We just didn't talk to each other like that even though we'd known each other our whole lives.

Not long after that, he left to go to Alaska. I think he was going to forestry school. And that's the last time I saw him. He sort of dropped off the face of the earth for a while, once he got up there. If he ever got up there.

But here's the funny part. I've been in Austin for ten years now. I came here after the divorce, after Wendy decided to pursue her studied in Tantric Buddhism and move here with the kids. Where else but Austin? I haven't remarried, and I still keep in touch with Wendy on account of the kids. Now and again we have to touch base concerning business matters and such. Actually, we get along pretty damned well, considering all the water that's gone under the bridge. Anyway, the other night Wendy called me up. She said, "You're not going to believe who I saw this morning."

Now this may sound pretty strange, but right away, somehow, I knew. Don't ask me how. It was like I had been waiting all these years for somebody to make exactly that remark so I could have the answer waiting.

Still I said, "Who?"

"Kyle Broflovski!" she said. "Do you believe it?"

"You're kidding," I said.

"I was driving by the Posse East on my way to church this morning, and here was this guy sitting outside all by himself, reading the newspaper, drinking a pitcher of beer. And he just sort of looked familiar. I don't know what made me do it. I had Louis with me, but even so I made the block and parked and walked up to him. It was Kyle! Sitting out there all by himself, drinking a pitcher of beer, and reading the New York Times. I couldn't believe it!"

"Me neither," I said.

"Anyway," she said. "I asked him what he was doing in Austin. And do you know what he said? He said he'd been living here for ten years. Can you believe that? All this time. Anyway, I asked him what he was doing, he said driving a cab. I told him you were here, and he asked me if I thought you would remember him. Can you believe that?"

I said I couldn't, and I really can't.

I'm fifty-seven now. Kyle and I were kids when we knew each other. It seems like only yesterday. But that's not what I want to say. Everybody knows how time passes. You look up and your kids are grown. Suddenly music sucks, not to mention movies and television. Even sports. It's like you've been sitting in the same place all your life while everything else changes. Bit by bit it's all swept away. Still, you'd like to assume there's such a thing as growth. That you're moving toward some ultimate destination, a place you'll recognize when you get there. Wendy says that in Buddhism you learn that all things in the world are surface illusion, therefore there's no reason for desire or attachment. She says that even the self is an illusion. That if I would practice meditation I would see this for myself and achieve enlightenment. Now what I would have to say to her in return is that I'm pretty sure that this is bullshit. I'm pretty sure I'll never really be that placid old man at journey's end sitting contentedly in some sunny upstairs room listening to Sonny Rollins and reading Robert Stone, which is how I used to see myself. More than likely it'll be guesswork until the end and then something unexpected will happen and I'll wake up bareassed in a hospital gown. And that'll be it.

Anyway, Wendy went on to say that Kyle didn't have a phone. She's right—I looked in the book and called information and checked the Internet. I go by the Posse East now and again but haven't seen him yet. You would think that after ten years in the same town together, we would have run into each other somewhere, pulled up at a light next to each other. Something. I would have liked that, Kyle behind the wheel of a cab with his arm out the window in the Texican sun, his Jewfro shaking unsteadily on his old head. Whenever I take a cab in Austin, I always ask the driver if he knows Kyle Broflovski. So far no luck. Think of it: my old buddy in the same town as me all these years.

Kyle, if you read this, give me a call. We need to talk.