He was one of those suburban princes, the kind who looked seventeen until the ripe old age of twenty-seven, always too boyish and cute for their someone outside of the clean sanitaric middle-American landscape where he roamed.
He was all blue jeans and shirts from Dillards and JCrew catalog, shoes from Father and Son. He didn't smoke, drink, or have wild sex.
He had a Colgate with flouride smile and the endearing habit of not meeting your eyes just when you need it the most. He was usually James or Jimmy, Robert or Bobby. The middle child more often than not.
Studious and thoughtful, he dreamed of becoming someone wild and free, of riding a Harley with some daring hairstyle, or of dying it purple or green and getting tattoos. Dreams to fuel him during early classes at the community college when he was supposed to be listening to lectures. Dreams he'd never taste before settling in the sprawling medical profession or an accountant's comfortable chair.
And, twenty years after he's gone, retiring back to his sunny suburbia where you could never hope to belong, after you spurned him for some bad boy your parents hated, Bobby from suburbia is the one you remember most clearly--the one you wished you were with right now. But, of course suburbia has reclaimed it's prince, swallowing any memory or residue of you in his brain.