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Authors: Janet Tashjian

BOOK: Vote for Larry
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Ahhh, the physics of the downward spiral.
I mean, if you're at eighty-six possessions, what's a few more to get you to an even hundred? I'd been at seventy-five possessions for years, and where had it gotten me besides semi-deprived and out of touch with my peers?
13
Advertising and consumerism creep up on you slowly, lulling you into thinking nothing is happening until it's too late. Like staying at the beach all day without sunscreen; you don't realize you're burned till you've enjoyed what you thought was a fabulous day. Then, of course, you're screwed.
It wasn't long before I looked forward to accompanying Janine on her little outings to a vintage store or REI. And then, following the laws of physics, it was only a matter of time before gravity forced me to make my first purchases.
14
The creativity I brought to justifying my new items was limitless. I
needed
that Gore-Tex windbreaker—didn't it get chilly hiking in the mountains in the early evening? And if I had a few extra
pairs of pants, I wouldn't have to go to the Laundromat so often and could get more work done, right? The excuses and rationalizations for what I knew was excessive spending astounded me. It happened slowly, but it happened nonetheless. The final proof that I had completely abandoned all my principles was when I received my pre-approved credit card in the mail.
15
Janine liked to talk about
spaving
money, a philosophy based on the theory that the more money you
spent
on sale items, the more money you saved. She'd march into my room with several shopping bags, bragging about how much money she'd spaved that afternoon. I'd re-wrap the items in their tissue and ask her how much she'd
spent.
From the outside, I looked content and well-dressed.
Inside, I was dying—too depressed to even do my morning yoga.
Here's what I thought about while I lay awake most nights: How can you take part in this vibrant culture of ours
and
honor your principles? How do you balance the stimulation of the outside world with the tranquility of your interior landscape? Is that what life is—a constant tug-of-war between the external and the internal? And more important, have I become one of the people I despise?
16
I guess the thing I thought about most was the formula for life's happiness. It seemed to me there was a direct correlation between how happy (or unhappy) you were and how authentically you were living. I wasn't being authentic to my beliefs, and it showed. But did that make me change my behavior, mend my so-called ways?
No.
I'm ashamed to say that I was so relieved to finally have a girlfriend that I continued to stuff my real feelings and beliefs into a metaphorical laundry bag stashed in the back of my closet.
Janine was worried.
“Mark, what's wrong with you?”
Even though I'd been using the alias for months, I still had to remind myself to answer to the name Mark. I told her everything was fine.
“You're not fine. You're miserable.” She climbed into my lap and played with my hair. “This isn't like you.”
I'll tell you what isn't me, I thought. It isn't like me to be wearing an Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirt with jeans that say Diesel across my ass. It isn't like me to waste valuable Saturday afternoons inside stores that underpay their workers, to say nothing of the Asian slave laborers who made all this stuff. Of course it
was
like me to
think
it and not
say
it. That passive-aggressive, don't-say-what-you-mean nonsense was buried in the DNA of the real me: Josh Swensen. And when I spotted Janine's copy of Thoreau's
Walden
on the table, I dove across the room to turn it over. My hero's face staring out at me from the cover was too much to bear.
With every new purchase, I became more and more miserable. Instead of being honest with Janine, I did something cowardly, unthinkable.
I began to compare her to Beth.
Beth had haunted my psyche since sixth grade, why should she stop now just because we were two thousand miles apart?
17
You would think that having a great girlfriend like Janine would dilute some of those Beth feelings, make her fade farther and farther into the background of my mind. But strangely enough, going out with Janine actually made my Beth-fascination worse.
Beth would never make videotapes of her dog to send to a lame TV show. Beth would never yak on a cell phone while flipping through a rack of shirts at Urban Outfitters
. These comparisons weren't fair to Janine, but they ran through my mind like some lovesick ticker tape. And when December 5 rolled around, I had no choice but to succumb.
Beth and I used to gag at the fake holidays the greeting card companies invented to get people to buy cards. Our favorite—even more than “International Hug Day”—was “Play Hooky from Work to Go Holiday Shopping Day.” Every December 5 for years, we goofed on such a ridiculous, manufactured event. Last year, a few months after my pseudocide, I couldn't help but call her from a pay phone on the road in Nashville. I realized she might be at Brown, but given it was a Saturday, I took a chance.
18
Beth's hello made me hang up the phone quicker than if it had been on fire. I jumped on the next bus out of town, scared but empowered by the sound of her voice.
This year, I used another pay phone and a pre-paid calling card that couldn't be traced.
I slipped off my Nike jacket before I dialed, as if Beth's spirit could see me through the telephone wires. I ignored the part of me that felt like I was cheating on Janine.
“Hello?”
Beth's voice shot through me like a wayward rocket; I hung up quickly, willing the words “Happy Hooky Day” to the familiar red wall phone hanging in Beth's kitchen back in Boston.
Hearing Beth again brought back a flood of memories. The tabloid stories and crush of reporters outside my door after betagold outed me.
19
These thoughts always led to a low-grade panic that bloomed into a full-fledged paranoia I'd grown to recognize. I'd check out other kids in class, wondering if any of them were working for betagold or the
National Enquirer.
And what about Janine—could the shopping trips be a trap? During these bouts of fear, I'd start talking to myself or fall asleep at the bakery's kneading table.
I told myself things couldn't get any worse.
Then I got my first credit card bill.
$847.24?!
Are you kidding me?
I did the math: If you charged $2,000 on one credit card and faithfully made the minimum payment every month, it would take you eleven years to pay it off.
Eleven years!
You would have paid more than $4,000 on those original purchases, even if you never used the card again. The only thing that made sense was for me to take this invoice and pay off the $847.24 in full.
But I didn't have the money.
Between making minimum wage, taxes, and the cost of living, I could barely scrape together the monthly payment. I had to take on a second job in a video store just to pay off all this STUFF.
I complained to Janine on our way back from the movies.
“You get used to the bills,” she said. “It's like this for everybody.”
“No, it's not. I know plenty of people our age who aren't slaves to debt.” Of course, the person I was thinking of was Beth.
Janine shrugged. “Life is short—you should enjoy it.”
“Yeah, paying off credit cards—that's my idea of fun.”
“You're such a spoilsport. It's the holidays, Mark, come on!”
 
 
But the credit card and the debt only increased my anxiety. From the back room of the bakery, I checked out who was in line at the counter up front. I began to delete any sites I visited on the Web, using the latest software to cover my e-tracks. I wondered if betagold had ever gotten down off the Larry Conspiracy soapbox.
20
I even stole an old trick from the movies and stuck a match between the door and the jamb in case anyone tried to break into my room while I was out. It became habit to check it each morning and afternoon.
“You're insane,” Janine said. “Completely adorable.”
I didn't want to be adorable; I wanted to be safe.
Six days later, after coming back from hiking, I stared at my door in disbelief. The match was on the floor, bent in half.
I backed away from the door and hurried over to Janine's.
One thing about Janine—she never could keep a straight face.
“Mark, relax! It was me! You were being so ridiculous, I
had
to.”
A few months ago, I would have thought this was funny. But I was not amused.
“You've been acting crazy lately,” she said. “Worried about having a credit card, about someone breaking into your room. What's next—a secret identity?”
I headed back to Mount Sanitas and broke my own record on the ascent.
As I sat on the ledge overlooking Boulder, I wondered how I could have become so distant from my own life, barely the Josh/Larry/Mark who had moved here months ago. I did a mental Ben Franklin list: on the plus side, I had a girlfriend. I liked having someone imaginative and smart in my life; it had been something I'd daydreamed about all those years I'd been staring at my computer screen back home. And my new field of study was challenging and rewarding.
On the minus side, I was living a life diametrically opposed to my belief system—or was I? Maybe all those theories I'd been spouting on my old Web site weren't the real me at all. Maybe I was a consumer zombie all along, pretending I wasn't. No matter which way I analyzed it, I felt like a giant fake.
The sweater I was wearing, a present from Janine on one of her preppy days, had POLO emblazoned across the chest in giant blue letters. I felt like a cow—branded, letters burned into my skin—telling the world who my owner was. I tore the sweater off, left it on the rock, and headed back down the mountain.
On my descent, I almost bumped into a guy my age on his way up. He was wrapped in several layers to ward off the evening winds. He eyed me in my T-shirt.
“Dude, aren't you cold?”
I shook my head, in no mood to talk. By the time I got back to my bike, I was shivering, but not from the weather.
I hoped I had the courage to change my own life—again.
I had given up the match trick after Janine's little prank, but I hadn't given up the vigilance. That night, I peeked through the blinds and checked up and down the street for any strange cars. I made sure I was the last one to sleep in the house and locked the front door.
It didn't do any good.
I woke up the second the door to my room clicked open. I jumped out of bed but was quickly knocked over by someone in the room. He
21
pushed me back down on the bed and quickly tied my hands behind my back. When I screamed for my housemates, he pulled out a roll of duct tape, snapped off a length, and covered my mouth. I shouted NO! as the tape closed around me. Another masked intruder looked through my closet and drawers, throwing my stuff into a box—laptop, books, backpack, a few clothes.
Okay, I thought. It's just a robbery; there are burglaries around campus all the time. It's not because you're Larry; it's
not.
Let them take what they want and leave. I tried to let the dangerous thoughts—
betagold, betagold
—simmer down in another part of my mind.
The intruder lifted me to my feet—my attempt at making
myself dead weight was obviously not working—and shoved me toward the door. Visions of tabloid headlines filled my head in twenty-point font: HOAX! GURU LARRY ALIVE. I fought him every step of the way.
The two people worked quickly and efficiently, one carrying my shoulders, the other my legs. Outside in the darkness, they shoved me into the backseat of a car parked across the street. One jumped behind the wheel; the other climbed in next to me. When the big one pulled off his mask to drive, I studied his face: beard, my age, focused. I hoped his face wasn't the last thing I'd see on this earth.
Then the kidnapper sitting next to me reached for his hood. Of all the faces that had flashed before me in the three minutes since they had burst into my room, this one was not on the list.
It was Beth.
“Nautica pajamas. Really, Josh.” She barked out driving directions to the guy behind the wheel. “Take a right, Simon—70 East.”
I tried to talk through the tape, a jumble of grunts and noise.
“Forget it,” Beth said. “It's your turn to listen.”
I wondered if she could tell I was grinning underneath the tape. Beth! God, I
missed
her.
“I apologize for the drama—it was Simon's idea. He didn't think you'd come willingly. Plus, he thought it might be fun.”
“A bit of the old fraternity hazing, hey, old friend?” His accent was high-end British, maybe Cambridge or Oxford. I wanted to rip the tape off but couldn't.
Beth looked at me kindly, then belted me in the arm. Hard.
“You let me think you were
dead
! I cried every night for months!”
Now
this
was worth listening to.
“You were selfish and cruel and I hate you. What do you have to say for yourself?”
I arched my eyebrows in an attempt to illustrate the obvious. She ripped off the duct tape in the same way my mother used to rip off a Band-Aid: no coaxing, just fast, sharp pain.
“Beth,” I said after the sting wore off. “I'm so sorry.”
“You should be.” She reminded me of her stubborn and gorgeous grade-school self.
“When did you figure it out?” I asked.
“I was home for the weekend last year, totally thinking of you on Blow Off Work and Shop Day when the phone rang. No one was there, and I just
knew
.”
“I didn't stay on the phone long enough for a trace. Besides that was last year, and I was in Tennessee!”
“Then
The Gospel According to Larry
came out and I was sure of it. So I put together a plan and waited.”
“A year?!”
She looked pretty pleased with herself. “I took this semester off for independent study, then hired a security company to put a trap line on my parents' phone December 5. It records every call that comes in—blocked calls, pay phones, cells. It cost me a hundred dollars an hour, but I knew you'd call again. I got a printout the next day with all the numbers that had come in, and there was one from Colorado no one recognized. I flew out to Denver, hired an investigator, gave her your photo—it didn't take long after that. Simon's at Harvard this year, so he drove out to meet me.”
Of course Beth would be the one to find me. It only made sense that she'd put our platonic telepathy to good use. My love for Beth had been my Achilles heel my whole life. Why
should things be any different while I was underground? And here she was in the flesh.
“I never thought I'd see you again.” Then I made the mistake of reaching over to kiss her.
Simon swerved into the breakdown lane so quickly, three cars behind us almost collided. He lunged into the backseat. “What the hell is going on?” he asked.
“Simon, you're acting like a caveman,” Beth said. “Knock it off.”
I looked at Beth, not caring what Simon was feeling. “You two?”
“We've been together almost a year,” she said. “Simon was one of the keynotes at the Global Debt Conference.” She reached for his arm reassuringly. “Duckie, there's nothing to worry about.”
22
He put his blinker on to re-enter the lane. “You okay, little rabbit?”
“Are you talking to me?” I asked.
Beth elbowed me again.
“If you two don't knock off the baby talk, I'll jump out of the car, I swear.”
Simon ignored me and began driving again.
Well, I guess some things never change. Beth told Simon I was “nothing to worry about.” That pretty much summed up my relationship with her in a nutshell. And Simon—good looking, at Harvard, and with an impossible-to-compete-with British accent.
Duckie? Please let this be a nightmare and I wake up back in Boulder. But when I looked at Beth again, I knew I'd rather be in an absurd nightmare with her than in any kind of reality without her.
She pulled a three-ring binder from her bag. “Simon and I have done a lot of amazing things together.” She tallied up their accomplishments—candidates getting elected, workers' rights, legislation passed. I could feel myself shrink into the seat; while Janine and I had been circling the outlet stores for parking spaces, Beth and Simon had actually made a difference in the world. I saw myself through her eyes and thought about how silly and superficial I must seem. Larry had been the impetus to open the doors of activism for her,
23
and now she had left me in the dust. And as much as I felt like I'd let the world down by not contributing, a small piece of my mind fixated on something else. Something personal.
Beth had a boyfriend.
And it still wasn't me.

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