Men have it worse than women. We’re expected to be the ones who make magic happen. Naturally,… Men have it worse than women. We’re expected to be the ones who make magic happen. Naturally, we have no idea how to do this. Whom do I blame for this injustice? Hollywood.

How can I deem myself worthy of any girl when I know I can never match up the mysterious aura of pre-millennium Leonardo DiCaprio? I wasn’t immune myself, having wished countless times that the girl of my dreams would just fall into my arms out of the blue sky a la “Life is Beautiful.” Is this yearning for unattainable perfection just a reminder of how we’ll never be good enough?

My roommate and I had nicknamed a friend down the hall “Sun Kid” on our first day of school. A brief elevator conversation with the then-complete stranger led to him explaining how our room was good real estate because it’s on the side of Lothrop where the sun doesn’t rise in the morning, thus not waking us.

He was a ballsy kid, striking up conversation with everyone he encountered, until he was on a first-name basis with half the student body. His penchant for warming up to strangers had paid off when he met a girl on a train, while headed home for break, who was everything all those movies so cruelly made us desire. Beautiful, smart, French. It all sounded very “Before Sunrise” to me. He had only been with her for the duration of a 20-minute trip.

“Where is she?” my roommate asked. She was due to visit that night.

“She’s not coming,” he replied. He couldn’t exactly give us a reason. Something about how she felt they were just too different, too far away.

“That sucks,” my roommate yawned. “What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to tell her I love her,” Sun Kid replied.

“On the phone?”

“I’m going to go there on my bike tonight.”

What I’ve failed to mention is that this goddess attends Penn State Altoona, a good 90 miles away. Sun Kid is in pretty good shape, assuring us that the trip would be no big deal. After all, he’d ridden his bike 60 miles before. “I figure I should make it by 4 or 5 a.m.,” he said.

Fifteen minutes later, he was on his way, in my roommate’s car, of course. That may have been the plan all along. My roommate is the only kid on the floor with a car. Sun Kid probably just figured it’d be a good story to tell us to make us feel sorry enough to chauffeur his ass up to Altoona. Maybe he would have just gone to bed had we said, “Wear a helmet.”

But something in his voice made me believe that he would have actually gone out and braved the 20-degree weather. As we made our way through the mountain blizzards, it became evident that Sun Kid’s plan could have only ended in death.

We weren’t sure what was going to happen when we got there. She had no idea that he was coming. What exactly would he say to her? Would she care? What were we supposed to do, stand around gawking while an intimate scene unfolded? Yet we were caught up in the magic of it all.

We were on our first college road trip, braving the elements, not a soul aware of where we were. I felt like I was going to get to see what happened after the ending of “Good Will Hunting,” life finally becoming the movie it should be. Maybe my roommate and I were merely Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, supporting characters in someone else’s epic, but I liked the role. It meant that I wasn’t the one whose heart was on the line.

Reality set in as we entered campus. I’d like to tell you that what happened next was an emotional scene, with Sun Kid kissing his dream girl to a standing ovation from a crowd, a la “Never Been Kissed.” Alas, he went to her room to talk, while my roommate and I were left to make awkward conversation with two of her friends about just how psychotic our friend was. After all, who would ride his bike 90 miles to tell a girl he met for 20 minutes, “I love you”?

As I nodded my head in agreement, I noticed some of the DVDs lining the girls’ shelves: “Serendipity,” “When Harry Met Sally,” movies where the lead goes great distances to profess his feelings. These girls had undoubtedly watched them, hankie in hand, dozens of times, wishing their flesh-and-blood beaus could compete with fantasy. What they yearned for was Sun Kid.

Sun Kid didn’t get the girl. Behind his back, we mock him for his behavior. But as we sat eating at Sheetz at 4 a.m., I couldn’t help but think that Sun Kid was a failure whose act should be followed. I wish I had the guts to fall flat on my face with such gusto. If what he did that night wasn’t enough, maybe he was playing to the wrong audience.

Daron Christopher denies seeing “Never Been Kissed” of his own free will. He can be reached at [email protected].