ME:
Kinda, yeahâ
LUCY:
Oh my God, it was so gross. I mean, like, this guy gets dropped in a well, with all these human heads bobbing around!â
ME:
I hate bobbing heads.
LUCY:
Yeah, right? Ha ha. It was disgusting.
ME:
Okay. Well. Like maybe some other one then?
LUCY:
I would be into that.
ME:
When? Like, when would be a good time?
LUCY:
When were you thinking?
ME:
This weekend, possibly? If you can. Becauseâ¦or you knowâ¦if you're not busy.
LUCY:
No, I can. But not on Saturday. Because I have to babysit.
ME:
We could meet at the theater.
LUCY:
Okay, or. Do you have a car?
ME:
Not at the moment.
LUCY:
Okay. We could meet there.
ME:
So is Friday okay?
LUCY:
Friday works.
ME:
Yeah. Friday. Maybe I should email you.
LUCY:
Email?
ME:
Or call you. I'll call you. I'll totally call you.
LUCY:
Yeah, okay. Why don't you call me?
ME:
I'll call you. What movie, though?
LUCY:
I don't know. I don't know what you like.
ME:
I'll call you.
LUCY:
You can pick. Do you have my number?
ME:
No. Can you give it to me?
LUCY:
Here. Wait. I'll write it down.
ME:
Cool. Thanks. I'll call you.
The boy sits on his bed and thinks. He has never been on a real date before. He is extremely nervous. He feels physically ill. He tries to remember why he wanted to do this. He can't remember.
He puts on his coat and leaves his house and rides the bus downtown to the movie theater. He has left plenty of time to get there, but the bus ride takes forever. He can't believe how long it takes. The bus stops every two seconds to let on some weird person who can't speak English or doesn't understand money or needs directions to some other town or city or country. Then a very large woman gets on with eight shopping bags but she doesn't have enough money so the driver kicks her off and she has to move her very large self and all her eight bags back off the bus, which takes about an hour.
The boy is totally freaking out.
He gets downtown and walks into the movie theater and his heart is racing and he feels like he's going to puke. He buys two tickets and sits in the lobby and waits for his date.
He stares out the glass doors of the theater and he doesn't know what he's doing. He wants to run away. He looks at the tickets. The movie they're seeing, the movie he chose, is in French. HE HAS NO IDEA WHY HE CHOSE A FRENCH MOVIE. THAT WAS EXTREMELY
STUPID. So he sits there, gripping the two tickets in his sweaty hands, waiting for his date.
The girl arrives. His date. She comes in and she's wearing jeans and Pro-Keds and a Ramones T-shirt under her coat. She might even have a little eye makeup on, though the boy is too nervous to look at her face.
She goes to the counter where they sell the tickets but the boy tells her he already got her ticket and he jams it in her face in a clumsy, graceless movement.
She takes the ticket. She looks around the old theater. It's called Cinema 21. It's known for playing strange, artsy movies, including movies in French. The boy thought it would impress her. Plus there was an article in the newspaper saying the French movie was good. But now the boy realizes that the movie reviewer is probably just a snob, trying to impress his readers by liking French movies. Just like he is trying to impress his date. He sees that all of human existence is people trying to impress other people. He wishes he was at home or at his favorite 24-hour restaurant writing this, instead of actually doing it.
His date wants to pay him back for the ticket but he won't let her, so then she wants to buy the popcorn. He waits while she buys it and they go to their seats. They eat popcorn. That's when he tells her the movie is in French. She says, “How are we going to understand it?” He says there are subtitles, like on a DVD.
“Oh,” she says.
The movie sucks. It's totally boring and it's two hours and fifteen minutes long. The boy is too freaked out to suggest they leave. So he sits there. So does she, chomping her popcorn until it's gone. The movie is about a man whose daughter runs away, so he drives around Paris and argues with his wife in French. The car he drives is one of those miniature French ones that probably get 100 mpg. Those would be good to have in America, but nobody would buy them, because you can't impress people with a little car. You have to have a big stupid ridiculous car in America or people think you're a wuss.
After the movie, the boy and the girl leave the theater and walk around. The girl's big sister is home from college and they're going to call her when they're done hanging out. They go to a café near the theater. Again, the boy hopes to impress his date with his knowledge of interesting cafés downtown. She doesn't notice. They order two hot chocolates.
The girl has long brown hair, brown eyes, a pretty face, a cute body. When he asked her out, the boy figured they'd go to the movie, walk around, make out a little. They would do this a couple more times, they would get to know each other, come to like each other, and eventually they would have sex. She already likes him, after all. And she agreed to go to the movie. He thinks this is pretty much a sure thing; he just has to put the time in.
But he is wrong. This is the opposite of a sure thing. This is fingernails on a blackboard. Especially sitting in the café. It is just about the worst hour he has ever spent in his life. Trying to talk to her, trying to act natural, trying to drink the hot chocolate. Nothing is easy. Everything is impossible. He spills his hot chocolate. It's like he's forgotten how to use a cup.
The girl calls her sister and she comes and picks them up. The boy sits with the girl in the backseat. The minute they get in the car, the girl and her older sister start talking about family matters. They chatter away about this and that. It makes the boy feel bad. The conversation was so stilted at the café. And now finally his date can talk freely. She is finally able to relax.
He gives directions to his house. There seems to be no chance for a good-night kiss as they pull up. He says good-bye and gets out. The girl looks a little disappointed as he shuts the door. Then she calls for him to wait. She gets out and comes around and kisses him. It's just a peck but it's on the lips. Then she runs around to her side of the car and gets back in.
The boy goes inside with the knowledge that he is a total idiot.
The End
After preparing myself for a typical nothing-happening Spring Break, there has been a change of plans.
The Hoff family is going on vacation.
My dad has decided to take us to Sun River. It's a last minute decision, which is always the case with my dad doing something nice for the family. One day we're sitting around twiddling our thumbs, the next day we're frantically packing the Honda Pilot at five in the morning. The sudden change of plans obviously has to do with Dad wanting to meet someone or impress the other executives at his work. He would not do this otherwise.
In case anyone cares, my dad works for a company that makes artificial parts for your body, like plastic kneecaps, or titanium hip joints, or even whole arms or legs if you lose yours in one of our glorious wars against non-consumers. He doesn't actually do anything there, he just talks on the phone. He has a big, commanding phone voice. I hear it at home sometimes. He makes the big bucks sounding like he's better than other people, pretending he knows what he's talking about. My dad's kind of a scumbag, did I mention that? But that's okay. The main way to rise up in your average American Corporation is to be a total scumbag.
So we get to Sun River and we pull in through the heavily guarded gate and the whole place turns out to be
one big playground for Luxury SUVs. EVERY SINGLE VEHICLE WITHIN THE WALLED PREMISES OF THE SUN RIVER RESORT IS A SNORTING, PIGLIKE, GAS-GUZZLING TRAVESTY OF MOTOR TRANSPORT.
My sister, Libby, who's been watching
Gilmore Girls
on her portable DVD player, puts it away, so she can watch the cute boys throwing snowballs in one of the parking lots. There are cute girls, too, in down vests and bouncy winter hats. They jump in and out of Cadillac Escalades and Range Rovers, laughing, their white teeth shining, throwing one last snowball before they slam the door of their parents' $80,000 vehicles.
This is probably what college looks like.
We proceed to our rented cabin, where we unpack and settle in. Later, my sister and I walk to the main lodge where there's a place called the TeenZone, according to my mom's brochure. This turns out to be an arcade/burger-joint kind of place. I order some fries and sit in a booth and read a book called
Black Elk Speaks,
which Mr. Cogweiller recommended. Libby walks around and plays video games, checking out the other people as she does. She has more social possibilities in a place like this than I do. She's a prep, what can I say? She has cute, normal friends. She likes cute, normal boys. She's not going to think about the destruction of the world until the last possible second, when all the other cute, normal people think about it.
Black Elk Speaks
is about the Lakota Indians of the central plains. Black Elk himself was a little kid when the
first white people showed up, so his story pretty much covers the gradual disintegration of his tribe, thanks to the “gnawing flood” of the white men. The Lakota are cheated, herded, imprisoned, and eventually massacred by the white people. Also, Black Elk gets to watch us kill just about every living buffalo in North America. We do this by shooting them from trains. For sport.
A little bell rings, which means my fries are ready. I pay for them and sit and eat a couple. Libby comes and eats some, too. She's found a girl she knows. The two of them sit across from me, eating fries and chattering about schools and people they might know in common.
I get bored and decide to walk around. I go upstairs and stand in the main lobby and watch a limousine pull up, gleaming in the cold desert air. There are people in suits standing around, men in “dress” black cowboy boots, women with Botoxed faces. Maybe these are the people my dad came here to network with.
I think about my mom back at the cabin with my dad. I'm not a huge fan of my dadâI guess that's pretty obvious. He has a way about him, though. He is good at making people do stuff. Forcing you. Manipulating you. People like him rule the world. Maybe I should be glad. Our family has everything
we
need.
I look up at the ceiling of the big main room. It's designed to look like a Native American lodge, with huge wooden beams, all of them going into the center like spokes on a wheel.
I miss my mom. I mean, it's not like she went somewhere. She's right downstairs every morning when I wake up. But not really. Not totally.
I walk around more. There are nice carpeted halls on the second floor, leather couches, old photographs of ranches and early settlements. I find two high school girls talking on cell phones. They wear sweatshirts, sweatpants; their hair is pulled back in neat ponytails. They look at their nails while they talk. Boyfriends back home, no doubt. I pass them and go outside, onto the deck. The stars are out. And you can see Mount Bachelor standing in the distance. Silent, god-like, Mount Bachelor. What if, when the polar ice caps melt, the oceans rise so high that the mountains are the only land that's left on earth? That would be weird. Like only the stuff on those mountains would still be alive, like alpine flowers or certain birds. Gabe says birds can survive anything. They've been here longer than any other species. That would be funny if, in the future, aliens came to earth and found this water world, with only a couple tiny islands sticking up, and they moved here and set up floating colonies and lived here for hundreds of years, and then one day a couple aliens decided to explore the ocean and went down there and discovered our abandoned cities.
Wow,
they'd say in their alien language,
someone was here before!
All the other aliens would get very excited. There would be TV specials about us. They would have pictures of what they think we looked like. But then the buzz would die down. The average alien
wouldn't care that much. Eventually it would only be the geeky scientist aliens who would think about it. Nobody else would really care. They'd have their own problems.
It's cold on the deck so I go back downstairs to the TeenZone. Libby wants to stay and hang out with her new friend. So I slip
Black Elk Speaks
into my coat pocket and walk home to the cabin without her, which turns out to be a mistake.
ME
(
walking in
): Hey.
MOM:
How was the lodge?
ME:
Okay.
DAD:
Where's your sister?
ME:
She met some girl she knew.
MOM:
What? You left Libby?
ME:
I didn't leave her. She met some girl she knew.
DAD:
Where is she now?
ME:
I don't know. Back at the teen place.
MOM:
You can't just leave your sister!
ME:
She's thirteen. She's fine.
MOM:
It's too late for her.
ME:
It's not even ten o'clock.
DAD:
She can't walk home by herself.
ME:
She met some people. And why can't she walk home? There's nobody here but rich people.
DAD:
Don't start giving us attitude. This is Libby we're talking about.
ME:
What attitude?
MOM
(
to Dad
): Do you think she's okay?
DAD
(
to Mom
): I'll drive over there.
MOM
(
to Dad
): Where do you think she is?
DAD
(
to Mom
): I don't know. I'll find her.
ME:
She's at the stupid TeenZone place. In the basement of the lodge.
MOM:
How long ago was that?
ME:
Ten minutes?
DAD:
This is not responsible behavior, James. You do not leave your sister. You do not leave family members alone in strange places.
ME:
You left us.
DAD:
What?
MOM:
What did you just say?
DAD:
Answer me, James. What did you just say to me?
MOM:
Answer him, James. What did you say?
ME:
I said,
You left us.
MOM:
Are you trying to ruin this trip? Are you trying to ruin this entire vacation?
ME:
No.
DAD:
Well, that's what you're doing.
When my dad left our family, I went to this guy in a sweater vest for counseling. He was a doctor of some sort. My parents paid him. Normally, I would not agree to this. I generally avoid people in sweater vests but this was a difficult time, and people wanted me to do it, so I did.
Going to counseling was another example of CONSUMER AMERICANS solving problems by buying stuff. Our solution to all problems is to buy something. Buying me time with this guy was a waste of money, but it made everyone feel better. Almost everything we buy IS A WASTE OF MONEY but it usually succeeds in MAKING US FEEL BETTER.
Which is not to say I wasn't upset at that timeâI wasâbut it was not a particularly mysterious feeling. It was the usual
holy crap, my parents are splitting up
feeling. You probably don't need years of mental health training to understand it. But I went to the guy anyway and we talked and we “sorted things out.” The main things we sorted out were that my dad is self-centered, my mom is emotionally distant, and I have “anger issues.”
I was mostly angry at my dad. My counselor said this was partly because my dad and I were so much alike. Whenever he pointed this out, he acted very proud of himself, like this was a profound insight. I did
not think this was a profound insight.
Of course
people are like their parents; it's called
genetics.
During the separation, Libby and I were living with my mom, so we mostly heard her side of things. But to be brutally honest, I could see my dad's side, too. He got sick of us. It happens. You get sick of people. I know parents aren't supposed to do that, but I could see how they could. Dad got bored and annoyed and pissed off and he bailed. Then he saw how lame being a fifty-year-old divorced loser was going to be and he came back. My sister, Libby, totally freaked. She didn't understand it at all. But I did. It still made me mad but it was not incomprehensible.
My counselor's office was across the street from our local mall. Sometimes I walked over to the mall afterward and got a smoothie or whatever and thought about what we had discussed. I suppose I did learn a few things from my time with the counselor. I just can't remember what they are.
The main thing about when your parents split up is that they stop being your parents. They become like couples you know at your school who are breaking up. The whole WE ARE YOUR ALL-KNOWING AND ALL-POWERFUL PARENTAL FIGURES breaks down and they become Kayla and Josh having a fight in the parking lot. That's the part that screws up the kids. The feeling that there are suddenly no ALL-POWERFUL PARENTAL FIGURES standing over them anymore. Kids need that. They need the protection. It's sort of
sad how fragile we are, how dependent. The whole situation is just embarrassing, when you get right down to it. Which is why it would be better if it didn't happen.
But it did, so there you go. And then my dad came back and there were all sorts of weird mornings and weird evenings and weird this and that. “Things change,” my mother used to say to us, during the worst of it. They sure do.
The “leaving your sister at the TeenZone” controversy blows over and the next day we pack up our snowboards and go to Mount Bachelor. Riding on the chair lift, I think about sophomore-year Christmas, when we went to Costa Rica on a different last-second vacation. Sadie and I had been going out for about three months at that time and it was weird because I didn't know what I was supposed to do when we were apart. I called her a couple times, but my parents didn't want to pay the international rates. So then I wrote her a letter. Like on paper, with a pen, and sent it through the mail. Sadie loved that. She never shut up about “the letter.” It was two pages, in my bad handwriting. It was pretty sappy, actually. It said things like
I will love you for as long as the trees whisper in the moonlight, for as long as the mountains stand guard over the sea.
Or some crap like that. I kid you not. I wrote that. I should give myself more credit. I was an okay boyfriend.
That night we go back to the TeenZone and meet up with Libby's friend, Tasha. It turns out she lives nearby and they know each other from horse camp. Tasha's all right. She's an eighth grader like Libby, but she's more mature somehow. The three of us play video games and goof around in the lodge. Tasha kind of flirts with me. That's a little weird. Also, she does that thing where she sort of challenges you, calling you on stuff. But I don't mind. She's funny. And it's not like there's anyone else to talk to.
It snows all night on Wednesday, and Thursday is a spectacular day on the mountain. Libby and I ride up on the ski bus and I stare out the window at the mountain stream, semi-frozen, beside the road. I imagine myself as a young Lakota brave, picking my way along the creek bed on horseback. The warm sun, the blue sky, the muffled silence of the snowy forestâhow permanent the natural world would seem to that person. And how wrong he would be.
Later, after dinner, Libby and I walk back to the TeenZone. Libby catches a stray snowflake in her mouth on the road. She says to me, “See, the world is not in such bad shape.” Tasha is waiting for us and gets even more flirty when she sees me. She and I talk a lot that night. We keep ending up alone in odd places and having strange little conversations.
TASHA:
So how far have you gone?
ME:
What do you mean?
TASHA:
You know.
ME:
Not that far.
TASHA:
But you're in high school! And you had a girlfriend!
ME:
Just because you're in high school doesn't mean
that
happens.
TASHA:
That's not what I heard.