During a visit to Akron for the Fourth of July weekend, I studied the evolution of one man’s first impression of me, which began with “my old friend Argut’s new boyfriend” to that of “fledgling serial killer.”

In what follows, I will discuss those assumed personality traits within the mind of a 27-year-old Emergency Medical Technician (hereon known as EMT), along with those formative moments.

I should note these are wholly inaccurate representations of myself; but, to him, I am all these things and likely much more. (Perhaps I will burn my future victims?)

Pyromaniac: Realizing quite early on that I had intruded on a sacred weekend between old friends, I offered up my $34 bag of fireworks as tribute. Soon, with the bottle rockets spent, I suggested we fashion the lesser fireworks — smoke bombs and sparklers — into larger explosives to get the most damage out of them.

After a homemade flare gave us a taste of what makeshift explosives could do, I showed EMT a $6 kaleidoscope-looking firework I was hoarding. I did not know what it did, only that it was barely one-eighths full.

“Let’s fill this sparkler thing up with gas and set it on fire,” I said, grinning wildly. “That should do something cool. Do you have any gas around? Or-or Zippo fluid?”

He rolled an unlit cigarette between his fingers for a long, long moment before turning to the TV. (I settled on tossing in a lighter which, curiously, launched into the neighbors yard with only a thud.)

Pretentious: Initially a positive one. After 20 minutes of EMT-directed book chatter — mostly pop fiction I read many years ago — he asked me about Chuck Palahniuk. I said I liked everything up to Lullaby, finding his books after that “kinda lazy.” He scoffed, “You must have really bad taste then.”

Fledgling Serial Killer: The next night we all went to a bar that I noticed had an arcade game called Trophy Hunter, where one uses an orange plastic rifle to shoot forest critters in the heart. I gave EMT a few quarters to play along.

A bear popped out on our third round and I yipped “GETITGETITGETITGETITGETIT! Aw man! You see that? I shot it twice in the face and it still didn’t die. Everything dies when you shoot it twice in the face.”

He turned down my offer of another free round

Upper-class Money Flaunter: On our way out of the bar, I complimented a crack head on his brand-new Schwinn bicycle. He offered it to me for $15. I said $10. Seconds later EMT asked, “Why’d you even buy that?” I said, “Look at it! Beautiful! You can’t pass on a $10 Schwinn.”

It failed to fit in the trunk, so I rode it into the dumpster and sprinted back to the car, mouth hanging open. EMT sighed an exasperated sigh.

Flatulent: In the morning, my stomach started to swell up painfully, so I asked EMT, “You being a medical professional, would eating six or 10 acid reducer tablets kill me?” To which he responded, “Why don’t you find out?”

Five-Year-Old: On Sunday, everybody loafed around the TV for five hours. I grew bored and remembered the swing set out back.

“Argut, do you want to go on the swing set?”

“No, not really.”

“Aw, c’mon. Let’s go swing.”

“I don’t want to. I want to sit here and talk to my friends.”

“You’re boring. Who doesn’t want to swing?”

I decided to pout in the massage chair. I noted an odd look from EMT — a kind of formative look.

Homophobe:   Degrassi, the Next Generation came on. A bully shoved a gay student into a locker and called him an expletive. An intense scene. A few minutes later, the student began to cry, sparking me to say in a poor imitation of the bully’s voice, “Aw, little baby [omitted]’s gonna cry now, wah wah.”

The whole room went silent.

“No, no, that made sense in context,” I explained. “I was joking. Some bully called him that a few minutes ago, so it’s okay.” The massage chair hummed beneath me. “Am I the only one here paying attention to Degrassi?”

Therefore, upon first impression, the EMT believes me to have the potential of being the serial killer in American Psycho if he had a love of explosions and fire, read only classical literature, had severe stomach problems and liked the occasional swing.

Justin Noga is a senior English major. Send him an e-mail at jn108203@ohiou.edu.