I’m three days away from turning forty, and I’m standing in a multipurpose athletic field in a flat beige suburb of Kyle, Texas. It’s a hundred degrees, and I’m in line for my t-shirt, everyone gets one, everyone named Kyle, that is, and off to my left, there’s a guy on a stage, he’s directing a crowd, forming them into rows. He’s playing music…okay, he’s a DJ, and the crowd starts dancing—line dancing.

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Behind me is a large industrial power generator, droning in a way where I can’t hear the song, but every once in a while there is a call and response with the DJ and the crowd, so at certain intervals, bursting through the mechanical grinding, what I hear is, “Hey hey hey! Kyle Shuffle! Hey hey hey!” The person in line behind me, another Kyle presumably, is wearing a t-shirt that says I PAUSED MY VIDEO GAME TO BE HERE. He’s smiling at me, saying something I can’t hear over the generator and the music. I ask him to repeat it, which he does, which I still can’t hear, so I ask him to repeat it again and all of sudden the music cuts off, the generator stops, the crowd stops dancing—it’s dead quiet—and the Kyle behind me in line, teeth the color of butter beneath the ghost of a mustache, screams the question I’ve been asking myself all weekend, “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”

*

The short answer is I’ve come to be counted. For the second year in a row, an online community of Kyles has organized an attempt to break the world record of people with the same first name gathered in the same place. The result is a state fair-sized event dubbed Kyle Fest held in Kyle, Texas where this year they are hoping for upwards of two thousand Kyles.

The Kyles that will come will be looking for what I’m looking for, and it sounds stupid to write down or say out loud because it’s such a simple thing, but it’s loneliness, we’re lonely.

The long answer is I am entering middle age with very little to show for it—or anyway, that’s the toxic mantra that’s been on a constant scroll inside my skull for the past few months. It bothers me how typical and uninteresting my ennui is, especially considering my inability to will it away and it enforces the dawning realization that I am not very special, that I’ve contributed almost nothing of value in my adult life. Not the seven years I spent in the Navy, not my corporate career in the tech sector, not the short stories I toss into the void of the internet, not the novels no one wants to publish, not my deeply imperfect love for my wife.

Out of these anxieties springs the belief that there’s something to be learned in observing this event, this gathering of Kyles—something magic, actually. Something I won’t even admit to myself that I want, which is, of course, something that will transform my unhappiness into happiness, some epiphanic bliss as a result of communion with my people, these Kyles. Because the Kyles that will come will be looking for what I’m looking for, and it sounds stupid to write down or say out loud because it’s such a simple thing, but it’s loneliness, we’re lonely—which is to say that I’m lonely—and I used to know what to do about it but now I don’t.

*

I am standing in another line, this one more of a corral—a taped off section really—and I’ve received my Kyle t-shirt, I’ve proven my Kyle credentials, and I’ve pinned my Kyle number to my Kyle chest. The other Kyles are filling in around us, and one Kyle somewhere has a bugle. Every so often, he lets loose a blast of notes that feel vaguely royal. I can’t see this Kyle, but I can imagine him: back arched, lips pursed, eyes closed, jugular throbbing. The man from the record book is on stage now. He’s in a three-piece suit—a color you’d have to call dusky rose—and there are spreading dark patches of sweat growing from his armpits, neckline, and crotch.

All the Kyles around me realize we don’t need to stand in line so much anymore, so we form a little circle and introduce ourselves, which is kind of funny because we’re all named Kyle, of course, so it sounds like this: Kyle, Kyle, Kyle, Kyle, Kyle, Kyle, Kyle. I ask everyone where they’re from and it sounds like this: Houston, Houston, Corpus, El Paso, Austin, Austin, Dallas. I think, Oh shit, they’re all from Texas, every single one of them, and then one guy says, “I’m from Chicago,” and I think, Thank christ, but then he says he goes to San Antonio State for college, and I think, Goddamnit, they’re children. Of course they’re all children.

Oh great, I’m the freak from California that flew here like a giant weirdo. So when another Kyle asks where I traveled from, I hesitate before I say Santa Barbara, but it’s fine of course—no one gives a shit really. A Kyle from another corral shouts, “Let’s go Kyles!” and a thunderous chorus cheers in response. The exuberant mood surges onward. The Kyle nearest to me asks how I like Texas, and I say it’s so hot it feels like I’m in hell, and everyone around us laughs like it’s the greatest joke in the history of the world.

*

We don’t get it. The record, I mean. We aren’t even close. Just barely seven hundred Kyles showed up. There were more Kyles last year, apparently. There is no music anymore except for the Kyle with the bugle who is now playing taps. I follow the exodus of Kyles out of the fenced off area and find my wife in the shade of a scrawny mesquite sapling. I tell her the bad news, but she’s already gleaned what happened from the stormy mood of the exiting Kyles.

Kyle Fest goes into the afternoon and evening, but not many people are sticking around. There’s a general funneling of Kyles to the parking lot. My wife and I wander around looking for the beer vendors and fall into line behind a Kyle who has changed into his commemorative Kyle shirt. He has signatures all over it in gold marker. All Kyles of course. My wife nudges me and I poke him in the shoulder and ask him if he wants me to sign his shirt too. I can see my reflection in his mirrored sunglasses as he thinks it over. “Nah, bro,” he says. “I’m good.”

*

My wife asks me for the third time when I want to leave and I’m about to tell her I’m ready to go when from behind a row of food trucks comes a loud crash, then cheers, then a piercing bugle blast. We follow the commotion to a group of Kyles who are taking turns wearing a motocross helmet to run headfirst into pieces of ragged drywall. The bugle Kyle looks exactly like I imagined him except he’s seven feet tall and his bugle is cherry red.

Some Kyles are sun drunk and other Kyles are regular drunk, but either way, it’s impossible to deny the sense of dark glee among my remaining namesakes. It’s infectious. Even my wife feels it. She goes in search of another beer while I stand in line for the drywall smashing. The Kyle ahead of me turns around. He has some gray streaks in his beard and says his name is Kyle Jenkins.

“You know where Deatsville is?” he says.

“No,” I say.

“No one does. All right, well. We’re in central Alabama.” He points to someone crouched in the grass. “My wife and his wife, they’re cousins. And him? He’s not even really a Kyle. He’s Joseph Kyle, that’s his name. So he couldn’t be counted. Cuz middle names don’t, you know, count. That’s what they said anyway.”

“Yeah,” I say. “They did say that.”

We take a step forward in line.

“Hey, you get any fajitas?” Kyle Jenkins asks me. “There was some guy around here saying they got fajitas and ribs somewhere. Like a contest or something. You seen that? Last night they had margaritas, some guy said, but we walked around and couldn’t find it.”

“I, uh,” I say. “I didn’t see that.”

“Hey, you drive here?” Kyle Jenkins says. “My dumb ass drove here. And it’s like, you feel me on this? I got a F-150, a 2007, hundred and eight-one miles on that bitch. That’s my detail rig. My mobile detail rig, right? I had a ‘91 Toyota pickup before that. Two hundred ninety-eight miles. Manual. Two door. Stick shift. No radio, tape deck, nothing. Then I got another one. An Expedition. Almost three hundo on her too. Transmission went out on me day before my wedding. You like that? I’m sitting there detailing a’57 Chevy pickup for our honeymoon. Like to drive away in? White top. Blue body. Frickin sick. Anyway, I needed a part or something and I drove the Expedition to the autoparts store and PSHHHHHHHHT. Exploded on me. Sniff sniff. That’s transmission fluids. Oh fuck, I’m fucked, right?”

“Jeez,” I say.

“Hey man, I don’t mind, really. I mean I’ve never bought a new vehicle. Newest vehicle we got? That Jeep Grand Cherokee? It’s a 2017.”

Somewhere off in the middle distance a Kyle tries to do a flip and lands flat on his back. A few Kyles laugh at him and help him up.

“That’s a good car,” I say.

“Our AC just went out,” Kyle Jenkins says.

“What, in the car?”

“Nah, the house, I mean. But hey, you’re gonna laugh at this. Talk about old. That unit was from ‘93. We replaced a coil or two, I guess along the way. But damn, right? It heats up without the AC in Deatsville, believe that. And then my wife, what she’s on about, she keeps on like how if we had any kids, it’d be too hot for them. And so I say, it’s good we don’t got any at the moment. So now she’s upset.”

We take another step forward in line.

“Hey, you got kids?” Kyle Jenkins asks me. “Yeah, we been trying. Going through the process, I’ll say. Ovulation, you know. It sucks you have to do it around that. Screwin and stuff. Cuz sometimes, I’m fuckin tired, man. And everyone wants you to go go go. Doctors and everyone. You’re gonna burn out like that.”

I didn’t get any smarter and I didn’t change either, but what I did do was run my head through a dirty piece of drywall and tumble on top of a pile of sweaty people who all had the same name as me.

“Definitely,” I say.

“I wanted to do it natural. She don’t like getting the shots and everything. Cuz then you get these babies. Ten, fifteen-pound babies. I’m talking newborns. And that’s not natural. Were you a c-section? Me and my brother were c-sections. Identical twins. We come out three pounds each. Like little baby dogs. Butt naked baby rats. They got cream now too. For the scar, I mean. It’s itty bitty anyway. My dad had a mass, a tumor or something. Had to get it removed. And I thought it was gonna be this giant thing. It wasn’t, though. It was little. Doc took less than five minutes. Holy crap, the technology. It’s wild.” The Kyle ahead of Kyle Jenkins hands him the motocross helmet. We’ve arrived at the front of the line. “Hey man,” Kyle Jenkins says, fastening the chin strap and pulling down the visor. “Get ready, bitch.”

He runs in great clomping steps like a long jumper and launches himself forward through the drywall and into the arms of the sunburnt Kyles. They stand him up again and Kyle Jenkins brushes off the plaster dust from his jeans and jogs back to where I’m standing. He hands me the helmet. It smells like a locker room. Another piece of sheetrock is put into place. Kyle Jenkins punches me in my shoulder and rushes to join the crew who will catch me.

“C’mon now, brother!” he shouts at me. “I got your ass!”

*

Everyone I showed this to said I couldn’t end it there. I wanted to but they said it sucked ass as an ending. They said I had to make sense of what happened that day in Kyle, Texas. They wanted a scene with my wife at the airport or maybe a reflection upon arriving home. They said I had to learn something from the experience or else who gives a shit? They said I couldn’t use a phrase like “epiphanic bliss” and not deliver.

But I didn’t learn anything. Not really. I didn’t get any smarter and I didn’t change either, but what I did do was run my head through a dirty piece of drywall and tumble on top of a pile of sweaty people who all had the same name as me. I did do that. And somewhere beneath the bugle blast, the beer bloat, the crush of bodies, I was part of something. Maybe that’s corny. I don’t care. It only lasted for a second, but it was real and it was enough. It was worth it.

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Hey You Assholes by Kyle Seibel is available from Clash Books. Featured image: Travis K. Witt, used under CC BY SA 4.0