Real Live Boyfriends (17 page)

Gideon and I spent the rest of the evening strolling the Ave and looking at people in costume. Lots of college kids spilling out of bars and on their way to parties, girls in sexy nurse costumes, sexy cowgirl, sexy devil. We got smoothies from a stand, blackberry for me and strawberry-peach for him. We talked about movies, and Gideon’s travels in Egypt.

I told him this stuff I heard at Woodland Park Zoo: how in China they’ve started breeding pandas to save them from extinction and now there are all these baby pandas in a care center. It’s kind of like an orphanage, only they’re not orphans. You can see videos of them on YouTube: a whole pile of baby bears crawling on each other and squinting out of half-opened eyes. “They’re artificially inseminated, though, because pandas are pretty much uninterested in sex, especially when they live in zoos,” I said. “In fact, a few years ago these zoologists made panda porno to get the young male pandas interested and explain to them what to do.”

“What?”

“Other animals, you put a male and a female together and they figure it out—but apparently pandas really cannot get the hang of it without help. So they made dirty movies. It was the audio component that made the most difference, the scientists found. The panda heavy breathing. If they didn’t have the audio on, the pandas just got bored.”

Gideon laughed. I mean, it’s funny. But I couldn’t help thinking how Noel would have riffed on the whole panda thing. He would have on-the-spot made up silly rhymes about the pandas, or sketched some completely risqué panda on a paper napkin, or made up a business plan for renting X-rated videos out to various zoos to help endangered species, probably the only possible career path that would combine porno and ecology. Something.

Gideon asked me serious questions about pandas.

Like, did I know how many there were left in the world? And did they eat anything besides bamboo?

I didn’t know the answers. Because I love animals and learning stuff about them, but the truth is, I like amusing and strange animal stories much more than I like factoids about their everyday lives. I like gay egg-stealing penguins better than straight, socially responsible penguins, and I like porn-watching panda bears and piles of itty-bitty pandas in an orphanage better than just regular old pandas doing their thing in the wild.

But I didn’t quite want to admit that to Gideon.

So I kissed him again and he seemed to forget about the questions he was asking.

1
The Sex Pistols: A British retro punk
band known for the song “Anarchy in the
UK.”

The Mysterious Disappearance of

Kevin!

gideon sits on a bench outside his dorm at Evergreen college. He’s wearing a knit cap and a sleeveless parka over a chamois shirt. Birkenstocks and socks.

Roo: (behind the camera) What’s your
definition of popularity?

Gideon: Popularity? Nora said you were
making a documentary about friendship
and love
.

Roo: And popularity
.

Gideon: I haven’t thought about
that
since
maybe ninth grade
.

Roo: Really?

Gideon: Really
.

Roo: Maybe that’s because you’re popular.

You’re so popular you’ve never had to think
about it
.

Gideon: I don’t think so
.

Roo: Trust me. You were golden in high
school
.

Gideon: (ducking his head) I had friends
.

Roo: Popular!

Gideon: Hardly
.

Roo: If you had
ever
been unpopular, you
would be concerned with it in one way or
another
.

Gideon: That seems warped
.

Roo: I mean, even if you rejected the idea
of popularity, you’d have at least thought
about it
.

Gideon: If you say so
.

Roo: Here’s a test: when was the last time
you spent a Saturday night home alone?

Gideon: I don’t know
.

Roo: Exactly
.

Gideon: But that’s not because I’m popular.

That’s ’cause if I don’t have something to
do, I call someone up and go out
.

Roo: But you have someone to call up
.

Gideon: Yeah. Of course
.

Roo: That’s my point
.

When I returned home on Hall oween, my mother was still out at Juana’s party. Before I woke up the next morning, she was gone, presumably to Oregon with Juana.

She didn’t leave a note and she didn’t call.

Dad was still lying on the floor when I got up, and he grunted at me when I told him Mom was gone, but didn’t answer any of my questions.

For the next ten days I tried to forget about Noel and the sexy college vampire girl, forget about the disappearance of my mother (who didn’t answer her cell ) and forget that my father was eating nothing but Doritos, Cheese Nips, Cheez-Its, Cheetos and other bright orange cheese-flavored snack foods, sitting on the couch and watching bad television. He even slept there at night, drooling orange drool onto the front of the same sweatshirt he’d been wearing for days.

I pretended everything was normal and excellent. I shot videos for my college application film, did my schoolwork, baked cupcakes for Meghan’s birthday and went out with Gideon.

He took me out to the movies a couple of nights, and to dinner. He was acting like a real live boyfriend right away. Calling me, showing up on time, holding my hand. He was very easy to be around, though I didn’t let him in the house or tell him what was going on with my parents. Instead, I treated being with him like an escape from the realities of my life and the things in my heart.

Gideon almost always had a paperback book in his pocket, philosophy or history, in which he underlined enthusiastically and which he pulled out to read if he ever had to wait for anything. Like if I went to the bathroom at a restaurant, he’d be reading when I came back. He was also studying Spanish and he had this funny instructional CD in his car. He wanted to learn Spanish because he planned to travel to South America with this charity organization to build latrines and help with immunizations and stuff.

So he was basically an awesome human, and yet periodically I’d think: Is there something secretly wrong with him that he wants to go out with a high school girl? And a neurotic high school girl, at that?

Maybe he seems like a normal guy but he’ll turn out to be an absolute psycho like Edward Norton in
Primal Fear
. Or Edward Norton in
Fight Club
. Or Edward Norton in
The Incredible Hulk
.

Then I’d remind myself that I’d flushed my self-loathing down with all the poo, and tell myself I was a smart and pretty person and there was no reason why a hot college guy who wanted to go out with me was automatically a secret lunatic.

Truthfully, the only thing I could find wrong with Gideon was that he wasn’t the greatest kisser. He was slobbery and overly sex-tongue-y about it. And he smelled like patchouli, which isn’t bad per se but reminded me of my boss at the Birkenstock store, which was a very unromantic association.

One Saturday he drove me up to Evergreen for the day to show me around the campus. It was lush and green and had bicycles parked all over and leaflets posted up about open-mike nights and art shows and bands. I had never been on a college campus besides the UW, which is right in the middle of Seattle, and that’s so large and manicured and full of graduate-student future lawyers and stuff that it doesn’t seem like
college
college.

“I don’t think I realized until now that this time next year I’ll not only be out of the Tate Universe, I’ll be out of my parents’ house,” I told Doctor Z later that week.

“I’ll be living
alone
. In like, New York City or Philadelphia or Los Angeles.”

“Uh-huh.”

“I’ll have to take care of myself.”

She just looked at me.

“What?”

More looking.

“I’m pretty much taking care of myself right now, since Mom left. Is that what you’re thinking?”

“It crossed my mind,” she admitted.

“Well, I just bring home take-out pizza and eat cereal for breakfast. It’s not like I’ve scrubbed the oven or anything.”

She nodded.

“Although I did clean the bathroom yesterday,” I admitted. “And I made Dad change his clothes and take a shower.”

“How did that feel?” Doctor Z asked me.

I hate it when she says shrinky things like that.

“I am trying not to have feelings about it at all,” I said. “And I’m succeeding pretty well.”

“Are you getting support from your friends? From Nora or Meghan?”

I shook my head. “I haven’t said anything.”

“Why not?”

“I’m sick of being Neurotic Ruby whose life is always in a crisis. I’m sick of self-loathing and self-pity. So I’m flushing it down,” I told her. “Crazy dad drooling Cheeto juice. Flush! Disappearing act by Mom. Flush! Dead Grandma. Flush! Noel with someone else. Flush! And then it’s like magic: no feelings!”

Doctor Z leaned forward. “I didn’t mean for you to pretend difficult situations don’t exist,” she said.

“There are some things you can’t flush.” Yeah, well.

“There’s a difference between letting something go,” Doctor Z continued, “releasing yourself of tension or a negative way of thinking—”

“You told me to flush and I flushed!” I protested.

“There’s a difference between stopping an obsessive thought pattern,” she said, “and denying your feelings or stuffing them down.”

Ag again. “You want me to do Reginald,” I said.

“But I don’t want to do Reginald. I want to flush it all down and have a lobotomy.”

She smiled. “Those aren’t the same thing,” she said. “Flushing is setting yourself free of negativity, and the lobotomy is denial.”

“Fine.”

“Didn’t you use that word
lobotomy
about Noel?”

Doctor Z asked.

“Probably.”

“Remind me what you said.”

“He was acting like he’d had one. I told him that and he got mad.”

Doctor Z nodded. “So what’s the similarity between Noel’s lobotomy and the lobotomy you want to have?” I just didn’t want to feel the things I felt. I wanted to go out with Gideon and dream about college and just ignore the badness so completely that it wouldn’t affect me.

Oh.

Could that be what Noel was doing too?

Ignoring some badness so completely he was lobotomized?

“This isn’t making me happy,” he had said. “I came back from New York and I thought you would make me happy but I’m not happy.”

“But is that really a girlfriend’s job?” I asked Doctor Z, out of context. “To make someone happy who’s unhappy to start with?”

She just went with my change of subject. “What do you think?”

I shifted in my seat. “I think maybe it’s impossible to cheer people up when they’re really sad. I think they just have to be sad and all you can do is hang out with them because you love them.”

Doctor Z nodded.

“But then again,” I said, “if they’re drooling Cheeto drool out their mouths and watching daytime television for days and days on end, forgetting to shower, you may stop wanting to hang around them.” Doctor Z leaned forward. “Are we talking about Noel or your father?”