E. Lockhart - Real Live Boyfriends

I thought: This is such a better idea than being with Noel.

And then I thought:

I wonder if Noel will walk out of the party and see me.

Don’t think that, you boy-crazy lunatic. Just kiss Gideon and feel lucky.

Yeah, but what would happen if Noel did walk out of the party and see me?

Brain, shut up. Shut UP!

Noel didn’t walk out of the party.

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 Halloween, 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.