The Folly in Letting Go

Chapter 1

"I'm proud of you, Tweek," I said comfortingly, one hand on the wheel and one being held hostage between Tweek's crippling fingers in his lap. I wondered why he was nervous, but I guessed he was just being Tweek.

He shook and squeezed my hand impossibly tighter for a second. "You are? What for?"

I scoffed and stopped at a red light. I turned to face him, drinking in his wide eyes and timid expression. "You're brilliant. And you're doing great, you only have one semester left." I kissed him. "You can do it."

Tweek smiled and nodded. I brushed my boyfriend's blonde hair out of his pale face and admired his deep green eyes.

"Craig! The light's green!" he suddenly cried.

I snapped back to reality and slammed on the gas. The car lurched forward and Tweek let out a squeak. I laughed and soothed him, telling him to relax. Tweek muttered something about my horrible driving getting us killed, but I chuckled it off.

I was still worried about the party waiting at the end of this car ride. Would it be too much for him? I'd never thrown a surprise party for anyone, let alone Tweek, a shaking, fresh-off-the-wagon ball of pulsating anxiety ready to burst. A surprise party might give him a heart attack.

Hating myself for spoiling our hard work planning the party, I cautioned him before getting out of the elevator on the eighth floor to enter our shared apartment together for the first time in three weeks. "Tweek, I better warn you, we set up a surprise party. Sorry to spoil it, but –"

"A surprise party?! Oh, God, like right now? Oh, no, it's too much pressure!" he screeched, his skinny, fragile frame jerking in sudden terror.

I put my hands on his arms and his eyes locked to mine. "Relax. It's just a few people, nothing you can't handle." I took his bag from him as we entered the apartment, Tweek looking like someone had just sentenced him to walk the plank.

"Surprise!" five voices called enthusiastically. Tweek breathed slowly and managed not to freak out as he got handshakes, hugs and comforting words from Stan, Kyle, Kenny, Wendy and Butters –er, Marjorine, I supposed she was today, going by her miniskirt and makeup.

Kyle, Tweek's closest friend besides me, came over and patted him on the shoulder. "Did you do any writing while you were away?" Tweek tried not to make a face. I knew how much he hated people beating around the bush, saying he was "away" or "off sick" – only I seemed to say "in rehab."

But, he had done a lot of writing "while he was away," so he ignored Kyle's choice of words and told him about an essay he was writing for his philosophy of science class, something I'm sure Kyle would bring better conversation to than I ever could. Tweek had tried to explain countless of advanced concepts to me, but I could never quite grasp them and contribute to a real conversation about philosophy.

I watched Tweek and Kyle exchange words I'd never heard before like "empirical" and "metaphysical" and "Aristotle." Who would've ever thought back in high school that Tweek would turn out to be a philosophy genius? Obviously I'm biased, but I'm not exaggerating. He was a senior at Denver campus and he was at the top of all his classes. He was graduating in a few months – hopefully – and going on to grad school – hopefully part 2.

And I laughed to myself, a simple pizza delivery guy. I didn't mind, of course, a simpler life. I grew up in South Park for fuck sake, doesn't get much simpler. But as Kyle and Tweek continued speaking in foreign tongues about higher learning, I wondered, was I good enough for him? Kyle had always had a thing for Tweek even though we've been together going on five years now, and he was definitely more like Tweek than I was.

But luckily, he fell for me and not Kyle in high school. He says he doesn't mind that I'm not an intellectual type. "Smart people aren't stable, so they need someone who's not at smart to be stable for them," he said once. "Hey," I'd said, "so you're saying I'm stupid?" Tweek had turned bright red and scrambled to defend himself before I said I was only kidding.

And I am stable – compared to him, at least. This was his second stint in rehab since he'd started his bachelor's degree. I felt bad for enabling his drug use for a long time before convincing him to seek help, but Tweek said he didn't blame me. But then, three weeks ago, he had to go back, albeit for a shorter amount of time. He had just signed out an hour ago, and I wondered if in another six months he would return to smoking speed "just to get through this class" or "just to crank out a good term paper" which would quickly turn into "everyday, all the time." I hated seeing him in that state. That's the state he'd been in three weeks ago when first semester ended and Tweek was so depressed and high at the same time that he never got out of bed.

But I smiled at the man I loved standing a few feet away, looking better than I'd ever seen him. I stared at his short, feminine figure standing next to the fridge, talking to Marjorine. His thin arms folded sheepishly against his chest, his signature green button-up shirt sleeves pushed up to his elbows. He was wearing my favourite pair of jeans which also happened to be his favourite pair of jeans, but they looked better on him. On me, they were skinny jeans, on him they were loose and rolled-up at the bottom. His crooked nose upheld his large, circular horn-rimmed glasses that suited his face perfectly.

"Hey, cheeseball," Stan said into my ear, snapping me out of my trance. "Quit daydreaming," he said, handing me a beer. I realized I had been staring at Tweek and ignoring all my friends for a good five minutes. "So is he good this time, you think?"

I sighed. "I really hope so. He's only got one semester left, I just hope he doesn't relapse again."

Stan nodded and took a sip of his own beer. "I dunno if I'd be able to do it, man."

I raised an eyebrow. "Do what?"

Stan straightened out his dress shirt and said, "You know, stay with someone so self-destructive."

That had never occurred to me. If anything, I worried I wasn't enough for Tweek, not that he was too much for me. "I love him," I said rather stiffly, the nasally twang I tried to control creeping out of my vocal cords. Stan put up his hands defensively, but said nothing more.

After a few half-hearted games of beer pong, everyone started getting ready to go, most citing school or work the next day as their reason to leave before midnight.

"Hey, Craig, you mind if I say goodnight to Stripey before I go?" Marjorine asked shyly as Kenny started getting his shoes on. I chuckled and agreed, showing her to my bedroom where she could spend ages playing with Stripe the guinea pig. I stayed in the kitchen to reluctantly chat with Kenny.

"You coming to the showing of my film next week, Craig?" he asked, leaning against the wall. His glasses and hipstery messenger bag reminded me that second semester was starting soon for Kenny too, as well as Kyle and Tweek. I was so glad I had never tried to do college. I would've lost my mind.

Not that Kenny wasn't insane. Rumour had it he had a split personality, but I didn't think that was true. He was just a weird guy, I figured. Kenny filled the silence with nonsense about the film he'd been working tirelessly at for weeks – nonsense I'd heard a hundred times already. But I liked watching people be passionate about things, something I never got to experience. So I let him tell me all about what the weather symbolizes and why it's shot half in black-and-white.

When he finally stopped talking, I felt relief settle in my stomach. It didn't have much time there, though. After a second, Kenny said out of the clear blue sky, "Remember when we kissed last year?"

I stammered, "Y-yeah, why?"

He shrugged, pretending to be nonchalant about the conversation. "No reason, just, y'know."

"No, I don't. What –" I was cut off when Kenny suddenly grabbed my hat from my head. "Hey, cut it out!" I growled, reaching for my stolen blue toque. As I was reaching above our heads for it (damn Kenny for being the one person taller than me on the whole planet!) he kissed me.

"Fuck off, Kenny," I said, pushing him away and grabbing my hat in the process. "You're such a slut."

The blonde scoffed. "Monogamy is the opium of the masses, Craig, don't tell me you buy into that bullshit the media feeds us."

I didn't have a chance to retort that his misquoting-poser-hippie lifestyle wasn't for me because Marjorine had just returned from my room, covered in Stripe's brown fur. All I could do was tell them goodbye and go find Tweek. I figured there wasn't any reason to bother stressing him out (about the kiss or the gross misuse of Nietzsche), so I simply sat down next to his exhausted form on the couch, finished my beer and said, "Let's go to bed."

So Tweek and I went to bed, deciding to leave cleaning up till the morning. I had been fully expecting Tweek to be too overwhelmed from the party to consider staying up another minute, but he sat at his desk writing and smoking cigarettes for almost an hour before coming to lay down next to me. "Still awake?" he whispered into my right ear.

"Of course," I whispered back into the darkness. Before I knew what was happening, I felt his skinny arms wrap around my torso. He kissed me deeply, a powerful, meaningful kiss that said, "I'm sorry I write obsessively at one in the morning." I didn't mind. It was a part of him.

As we made out, I thought briefly back an hour to when Kenny had kissed me. It wasn't my fault, right? I shouldn't feel bad. But I was still thinking about it. I was thinking about him while kissing Tweek. I shook it off and started unbuttoning Tweek's green shirt.

I was already down to my underwear, so Tweek wasted no time stroking my hardening package through my boxers. I broke away from him and said with a faux smirk, "it's only been three weeks, you missed me that much?"

Tweek nodded and pulled me in for another desperate kiss. I cupped him through my/his jeans and swallowed his eager moans.

We made love for the first time in almost a month, and an hour later we lay panting, spent and exhausted on the bed. I held him close, one arm around his thin waist while I kissed him. He continued to catch his breath. "I love you, Craig," he said sexily, curling up against me. "Thanks for not giving up on me."

I kissed his head. "I'll never give up on you." But as soon as it was out of my mouth, I doubted whether it was really true, whether I could make a promise like that.

The next morning, Tweek slept in till noon. I got up at ten and had a coffee before it occurred to me to see what Tweek had been writing last night. Probably nothing I could make sense of, probably just snippets of essays and famous quotations dissected and picked apart.

"The Folly of Letting Go." I read aloud, picking up a few pages of prose. "As I emerge from rehab for the second time in my life," it began, "I can only regard the thoughts I had held to be true, the thoughts commanding me to give up, to be nonsensical folly in the face of love." God damn, he was a genius.

I went back to the bedroom where he was laying naked on his stomach. Soon, he would get up and return to school, return to his life as a genius philosopher. And I was a pizza delivery guy.

When he woke up, I shared my worries with him over toasted waffles even though it was noon: "Don't you think you're ever gonna get sick of me?"

He perked up from his plate and said, "What? Of course not! Don't be stupid." Of course not, don't be stupid, Craig.

I spent the rest of the day trying to figure out what Tweek's enigmatic writings meant and wishing I was smart enough to have figured him out by now.