DE WITTE, AUGUST T.

[august de witte]

AUGUSTUS THEOBALD DE WITTE . 24 NEWBURY, MA - NYC . STUDENT/WEB DEVELOPER _________________________________________________ Xavier De Witte most likely to discover the cure for cancer while volunteering in a third world country. Walcott De Witte most likely to be denied support by Shark Tank but gained a market from exposure and become a billionaire. Calvin De Witte most likely to remember all family birthdays and buy incredibly thoughtful gifts (family favourite) Abel De Witte most likely to make up the next new slang word and have it added to Webster's. August De Witte most likely to stay awake till 5am eating aerosol cheese and watching reruns of The X-Files. _________________________________________________ _________________________________________________ "As I stare at the pizzaboy and his half balding head, I am reminded of a flock of pigeons I once saw tearing open a bag of flamin hot cheetos that I can only assume gave that explosive gingery shits. I think, what a tragedy. Not the pigeons' burning assholes, but the pizzaboy and his bald head. I ballpark his age - only twenty-one, you can tell by his youthful freckles - like the sun has kissed his button nose. How unfortunate, I think, that it looks as though pigeons have attacked his luxurious quiff. I wonder what his love life is like? An erotic thought crossed my mind. Maybe he has a dog and he covers his genitals in peanut butter for both his pleasure and the dog's. I stare at him, is that sadness in his eyes that I catch? Oh, but atlas it is not. He repeats the amount owed and I hand him a twenty dollar tip so he can afford his peanut butter habit - I wonder if he takes it crunchy or smooth. Anyway, sweet Nicolas. Pizza is on the counter. Love, Augustus Theobald De Witte." _________________________________________________ "You know how often I would get told someone saw me doing dumb shit when I was a kid? And how often it was actually August? 100% of times it was August. August is the slow twin. Except he's not actually stupid, he's really fucking smart. So smart that he thinks he doesn't actually have to try at anything. Work ethic has always been his downfall. He'd rather spend five hours building a obstacle from the top floor of his apartment building to the bottom than writing a thesis. He'll write the thesis in a night and still come out with a 4.0 GPA. Bastard. We were close in the womb, and close for about three years of our childhood. I think he's always been sort of more close with his friends than any of us. Holidays are always awkward - he'll usually just go off on his own in the basement. He usually has nothing to offer in conversations except for sarcastic comments. We're always asked if we get twinepathy. Twinepathy isn't a thing. It's not a thing. August has always been this irritating impersonator. I mean this both literally and figuratively. He's asked girls out on my behalf, gone on dates on my behalf and pretended to just be me on multiple occasions. It was funny after the fact a handful of times. Before he started over doing the joke and it just got old. The ultimate scammer. We're all pretty different, the five of us. But August is just on another level. If he didn't look so much like me then I'd question if we were even related." _________________________________________________ BEST FRIENDS . "I've got this theory that you don't really know anyone until you know them at 4am. 4am isn't a party hour, it's the dregs of a party at best. It's the last few people at a party maybe, the host wanting everyone to fuck off, the guy so inebriated he's passed out across the keg, the last few thirsty people hoping to partner off and find someplace to fuck. That's not a real connection. Nor is getting coked off your face and chatting away to someone until 4am, when even then the stash runs out or you realize you're talking total shit. No, real kinship is having a serious, sober conversation at 4am, and I know that because I have one every night. A lot of people claim to have insomnia and they mean that it takes them a few hours to nod off. Don't get me wrong, that's rough. My brother was always the type to fall asleep anywhere, any time, asleep practically before his head hit the pillow. Of all the things I admired about my big bro, that had to be the biggest one, my only source of real envy. Real sleeplessness, actual, clinical insomnia, is a different beast. After a few weeks of it it's like you're living underwater. There's this gulf between you and reality that comes in ebbs and flows, sometimes things are sharp and so, so loud, then other times they're in such soft focus you can only just make out what they are. People talk and it sounds like gibberish. Colours are so vivid you feel like you need sunglasses. Fuck man, when I get a full nights sleep I feel like a different human being. It was also lonely. 4am was the loneliest time in the world. By 4 you've given up on the idea of sleeping, you've fucked it off as a foreign concept. Instead you're left with your thoughts and an echo chamber of how big and empty the world is when everyone else is sleeping. I can't explain how disconnected from everyone you feel, how anxiety and depression can take hold of you so easily in those small hours of the morning. I prefer the zombie-esque stages of trying to get through the day, feeling like your brain's jello and it's melting out of your ears. The point of all this, and I've really pulled a classic Khan move here, making it all about me and my tragedy, what I'm really trying to get at here is that August is my buddy at 4am, and that's a cast iron foundation for a friendship. Looking at us you'd never guess we're best friends. I guess we weren't such a mismatch when we were kids, back when I was scrawnier and we practically shared wardrobes. I forgot what was mine and what was his back in those days. We used to claim we were twins and that Abel was a skrull imposter.... We read a lot of comic books. I guess it would have been possible for us to drift apart, 'cause when you're a teenager your differences seem huge, don't they? I liked football, August didn't. That's the kinds of things kids fall out about. For a while we drifted, I was going through some stuff with my brother and I wasn't really myself, but it didn't last. Because even when we were teenagers, we would hang out at 4am, when everyone else had faded to black. Don't get me wrong, he can be a cunt. He's a shit stirrer and a provocateur, not so much Make America Great Again as Make America Interesting Again. With all due respect it's easy for the wealthy white boy to play devil's advocate... I rise to it every time, then get pissed that I took the bait and I'm forced to laugh. We need that. I'm the first person to admit I take myself too seriously, I get ripped on for being a pretentious try-hard all the time. August has a knack for keeping me grounded but also keeping me interesting, he can't abide tediousness. I honestly think he'd rather be waterboarded than be bored for a minute. It's a balancing act, I like to think I make him more digestible for other people. We really do make each other into the best versions of ourselves, and at 4am, when it's just the two of us, we're indistinguishable. My man." "I've always had a type, at least, until I moved to Newbury and people had trouble fitting into the typecasts I'd made for them to be in. August was the last one of them I met, and even the first time we spoke I thought he was Abel (mostly because that was who we was pretending to be). I remember thinking Abel must have been drinking, or snorting coke, the last time I saw him, for their faces are different and Abel's puppy fat was what I mistook for the absence of bloat on August. It was hard to be mad, because it was a bit ingenious, really. Abel was my aforementioned type. In New York and in Newbury, my type might translate differently -- leather loafers instead of letterman jackets, but it's ultimately all the same. Rich, cocky boys could dick me down any day. Needless to say, it doesn't ever work out well. But August stuck, like Nick stuck and like Corinne stuck. When I moved from New York with my mother out of obligation and less out of actually wanting to, I thought I'd known everything there was about the world because I'd seen most of it from my father's corner office. Turns out, I didn't know the first thing about anything, and definitely not about friendship. I fumbled around here and there, and they gave me a few chances for god only knows why, I hadn't grown up with them so they could've easily phased me out but they didn't. August in particular seemed to forgive me the easiest, because he's easy that way and although he's the King of Potstirring, and of badly timed jokes, he seemed to understand enough about me to know that I'd die for them all. Truth be told, August and I are the most opposite. His rejection of all the things I once love gives me hope that I can make it without my father's plan and more importantly, without his money. He calls me Dora instead of Teddi, and it gets annoying when he acts like he's above this political crap. I can't turn that off like he can. I can't just let it roll off my back. It's all I think about day in and day out. I disowned my family over it. So when he turns a blind eye or makes it into a joke, I go off. I try not to have such a temper, but shit like that brings it out in me. Do I have a crush on him? No way. Nick though. Nick is another story..."

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