Characters America the Beautiful? Blythe Roberson

Buddy Young Catholics: Character Analysis

Overview

Buddy Young Catholics is a minor but symbolically charged figure in Blythe Roberson’s memoir America the Beautiful?. He is a man Blythe briefly dated in New York, and their reunion in Portland, Oregon, produces a disappointing sexual encounter that becomes a key turning point in her road-trip narrative. The character appears only in Chapter 11 (“Living the Life of a Normal Human”), yet his presence crystallizes the memoir’s central tension between intellectual identity and physical experience. While Buddy himself remains a flat, almost incidental character, his role as a catalyst for Blythe’s internal conflict makes him worth examining.

Plot Role

Buddy enters the story when he calls Blythe after seeing her Instagram stories from Olympic National Park. He is in Port Angeles playing a show and asks if she wants to meet, but she declines that night because of the long drive. They make plans for Portland, where he grew up. When Blythe arrives in the city, she feels reduced to “a physical body” after a month of rough sleeping, spotty hygiene, and social isolation. Buddy picks her up, they get a drink at a pub, and the evening ends with kissing in his parents’ SUV followed by sex outside a seminary. The encounter is mechanically described and emotionally hollow; Blythe notes afterward that she was “mostly a physical body.” The next morning she drives to Crater Lake, jumps into the icy water, and experiences euphoria—a direct contrast to the deflating night with Buddy.

Buddy functions as a narrative device that forces Blythe to confront her own desires and disappointments. His presence underscores how the road trip strips away her usual intellectual defenses, leaving her to navigate raw physicality and loneliness. The encounter does not progress any overarching plot; instead, it deepens the memoir’s exploration of gendered travel, self-knowledge, and the limits of romantic escape.

Motivations and Traits

The text provides minimal insight into Buddy’s interior life. He is motivated by casual attraction and convenience: he reaches out because he is nearby and remembers Blythe. When they meet, he initiates physical contact but does not push for deeper conversation. He lives with his parents, drives their SUV, and seems unbothered by the cramped logistics of the hookup. He suggests a location that is not truly secluded, and Blythe has to direct him to a more private spot.

Blythe’s narration portrays Buddy as a “normal human” (the chapter title) living an ordinary life in his hometown. He is tall, with dark hair and a face that women ask about. He is not presented as romantic or particularly attentive; their connection is purely circumstantial. The most revealing moment is his casual question “Do you want to . . .” which leaves the emotional weight entirely on Blythe. He does not express concern for her comfort or the awkwardness of the situation, though he does mention his own neck pain from lying in the trunk.

These traits, drawn from explicit narration, paint Buddy as a vehicle for Blythe’s own urges rather than a fully realized person. The memoir never gives him a voice beyond brief dialogue, and his actions are consistently reactive.

Chronological Arc

Buddy appears only once in the narrative, but his timeline within the memoir can be reconstructed:

  • Pre-road trip: Blythe and Buddy meet in New York during a low period for her (post-breakup, recovering from IUD insertion). They go on one date and kiss, but she does not reach out afterward.
  • During the road trip: On July 5, after crossing the continent to the Pacific Ocean at Rialto Beach, Blythe receives a call from Buddy, who has seen her Instagram stories. She is at Olympic National Park; he is in Port Angeles. She declines an immediate meeting but later visits Portland.
  • Portland reunion: A few days later, after visiting a Chinese garden and bookstore, she meets Buddy. They go to a pub, then to his parents’ SUV for kissing, then to a street outside a seminary for sex.
  • Aftermath: Blythe drives away that night or early the next morning, and Buddy is not mentioned again. She processes the encounter only implicitly, through her subsequent emotional release at Crater Lake.

The arc is compact: a single phone call, a single evening, and a silent exit. Buddy has no further impact on the plot or on Blythe’s relationship with any other character.

Relationships

Buddy’s relationship with Blythe is defined by its brevity and asymmetry. In New York, she was “a week into having an IUD” and “less than twenty-four hours post my first real breakup.” She describes their first meeting as a “clinical depression version of a meet cute.” He asked her out, they talked about separating art from artist in Woody Allen movies, and they kissed. She never contacted him again.

When he calls during the road trip, there is no pretense of a continuing emotional bond. They are “hanging out only because of the sheer randomness that we were both in Portland.” Blythe is “irredeemably horny” and has not had sex in over a month. Buddy appears equally casual, showing no interest in her journey or her state of mind. The relationship is entirely physical, and it fails to satisfy even on that level—Blythe reads the encounter as disappointing.

Buddy has no other relationships in the memoir. He exists solely in relation to Blythe, as a brief echo of her New York life that she finds hollow in the context of her cross-country journey.

Key Decisions and Consequences

Buddy’s decisions:

  • He chooses to call Blythe after seeing her Instagram stories. This decision sets the reunion in motion, but the text does not reveal his reasoning—Blythe speculates only that he was in Port Angeles and needed an excuse to hang out.
  • He decides to go along with the sexual encounter, driving to the seminary location after Blythe’s insistence on a more secluded spot. He does not object or propose an alternative.
  • After the encounter, he presumably returns to his parents’ house. No further decisions are shown.

Consequences for Blythe:

  • She feels “a solid body again” only after eating at the tea house, not after sex.
  • The encounter reinforces her sense of dissociation from her intellectual self. She had spent weeks thinking about the meaning of travel, gender, and the parks; the physical encounter leaves her unfulfilled.
  • Immediately afterward, she drives to Crater Lake, where jumping into the water resets her emotionally. This juxtaposition suggests that the hookup was a dead end, while immersion in nature offers genuine renewal.
  • In the memoir’s broader arc, the disappointing night with Buddy pushes Blythe toward a deeper understanding of what she actually wants from the journey—not random romance, but connection to place and to herself.

Theme and Symbol Connections

Buddy Young Catholics connects to several major themes in America the Beautiful?:

Gender and Travel: The encounter exemplifies the book’s exploration of how solo female travelers navigate desire, safety, and bodily autonomy. Blythe is hyperaware of her appearance (shaving legs in campground showers, worrying about smelling bad) and of the risks of meeting a man alone in a strange city. Her decision to have sex is framed as both a surrender to physical needs and a test of her own freedom. Yet the experience is disappointing, suggesting that the “freedom” of a casual hookup does not free her from internal conflicts.

Freedom vs. Collective Responsibility: In the memoir’s closing chapters, Blythe argues that true freedom lies in collective care, not individual adventure. Buddy represents the opposite: an isolated, individualistic pursuit of pleasure that leads nowhere. His presence in Portland—staying with parents, driving their SUV, having no apparent responsibilities—makes him a symbol of a comfortable but empty conventional life.

Travel Ethics and Authenticity: Blythe’s visit to Portland is one of the few moments she engages with a city’s culture for more than a bathroom break. She visits a Chinese garden, bookshops, and witch stores, but the encounter with Buddy feels inauthentic. He is a tourist attraction of her own past, a random connection that she tries to force into meaning. The memory of the evening fails to become an authentic part of her travel story, unlike the emotional experiences at national parks.

The Body and Identity: Throughout the memoir, Blythe struggles with being reduced to her physical form—hungry, tired, horny, grimy. Buddy literalizes this reduction. She is “mostly a physical body now,” and he is a body too. Their interaction is devoid of intellectual connection, making it a stark illustration of her internal battle. Afterward, she reclaims her intellectual self at Crater Lake, where she reflects on the transcendentalist view of nature as church.

Questions and Answers

1. Why does Blythe call him “Buddy Young Catholics”?
Blythe explains that Buddy is a pseudonym for a man in a band called the Young Catholics. The name is her playful invention, used to protect his privacy while preserving the memorable moniker.

2. What is the significance of the seminary setting?
The sex occurs outside a seminary, which Blythe notes with dark humor: “I looked at the institution’s sign and made my peace with God.” The setting underscores the irony of a seemingly moral institutional space hosting a casual hookup, and it highlights Blythe’s internal conflict between desire and a sense of propriety or guilt.

3. How does the encounter with Buddy affect Blythe’s road-trip trajectory?
Immediately after the disappointing sexual experience, Blythe drives to Crater Lake, jumps into the frigid water, and feels euphoric. The encounter functions as a low point that makes the subsequent natural high more vivid. She moves from seeking human connection to finding solace in the non-human world.

4. Does Buddy have any agency or depth as a character?
The memoir does not give Buddy an interior life. He is depicted almost entirely through Blythe’s perceptions: his actions are reactive, his motivations opaque. This flatness is deliberate—he serves as a screen onto which Blythe projects her own horniness and loneliness, not as a fully realized person.

5. What does this relationship reveal about Blythe’s character?
The relationship reveals that Blythe feels torn between her intellectual identity (a writer who thinks deeply about travel and gender) and her physical identity (a woman with bodily needs and desires). Her decision to pursue the hookup despite knowing it lacks romantic spark shows her willingness to experiment, yet its unsatisfying outcome shows that physical experience alone cannot resolve her existential questions.