Avatars, Beers and the Eyes of the Lion
Dec. 8th, 2008 08:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraOn the drive up to Palo Alto we hashed out the plot for Robin’s new novel, Avatars and Beer – inspired by Youth In Revolt, Robin’s behavioral bible.
Protagonist is Florian, a 15-year-old skateboard punk and fledgling telepath in the oh-so-charming-and-let’s-not-forget-to-mention-scenic seaside village of Monterey Florian lives with his self-involved, narcissistic mother. His father died in Iraq. Florian is obsessed with Brandon Fraser, particularly Brandon Fraser in Journey To the Center of the Earth, which he’s see six times.
“All novels have that,” argued Robin. “Some kind of weird cult guy that everyone else thinks is a jerk but the hero is fixated on. It provides comic relief.”
Florian is one of those kids that nobody ever notices at Monterey High. But he has a posse:
Vassili, a young anarchist, whose father is in charge of the Russian Department at the Defense Language Institute.
A girl whose father works for the company that manufactures Camel Lights – Robin’s own mother’s nicotine of choice – and whose home consequently is the den of permissiveness and apocalyptic gray ash, the clubhouse as it were.
“She’s ugly,” Robin said.
“Paper bag over her head ugly?”
“Not that ugly. Maybe she has bad acne scars or something. And she has an ugly name. Like Helen.”
“Helen’s an ugly name?”
“Well, nobody’s named Helen. It’s not a pretty name.”
“What’s a pretty name?”
“You know. Victoria. Megan. Brittany. Normal names. I know! Her name is Carla!”
“Carla’s an ugly name?”
“Her name is Carla,” Robin told me firmly.
Finally there’s BC Gonzalez, an illegal Mexican who snuck across the border to take advantage of America’s superior educational system. BC crashes more or less permanently with Florian since Florian’s mother is never there and consequently will never notice. A running riff throughout the novel is jokes about BC’s name. At various points he’s called Benjamin Charles, Brandon Christopher, Bertram Caleb etc. etc. At the end of the book it’s revealed that BC stands for “Bill Clinton.”
There’s a complicated plot involving the defacement of a mural in the gym of Monterey High School: the Invention of Monterey Jack Cheese. (My contribution!) Our bande a la parte flees to Ithaca, New York where Florian’s crazy aunt lives –
“Wait a minute!” I said. “I have a crazy aunt who lives in Ithaca, New York!”
Robin grinned.
There they fall in with a homeless hippie telepath named Toaster. Misadventures ensue and they end up living in Eco-Village. Finally through scamming and computer manipulation, Vassili and Florian end up on a plane to Russia.
“So the last scene is they’re in an airplane, and the in-flight movie is Journey to the Center of the Earth,” said Robin. “And the stewardess asks Florian, ‘Would you like to buy the headphones?’
“And he says, ‘No thanks, I’ve already seen it.”
We amused ourselves so much with this that I got to Palo Alto in a record hour and a half, forgetting to be nervous about driving. As I was attempting to avoid a tour of not-so-scenic East Palo Alto, we got the call from a peevish Max – he wanted to be picked up on campus. Drinking? Bathing his brain cells in herbal essences? Some things a mother is better off not knowing.
One of my many faults is that I was born entirely without a sense of direction. I don’t have any spatial sense – even my drawings have no sense of perspective. So I knew I was going to get lost on campus, and I did – kind of a set-up really, and I was mildly resentful. Stanford University is always being built up or torn down; there was a detour off Campus Drive that I was too flustered to make.
“You’re crazy, Mom,” Max said, getting into the car. “Look! See that car? Making that turn? You can do what he’s doing!”
“Sorry, I just didn’t see that the first time,” I said weakly.
Max’s laughter has a braying note. “My favorite part is when you told me that other cars were turning around too!”
“Well, I thought they were.”
Robin joins in the merry laughter.
We drive to a bad Mexican restaurant and I get my first glimpse of Max in full fluorescent light – he doesn’t look so good. He’s wearing a ski hat which always makes me think he’s about to take off on a tri-state killing spree. He’s very thin – not a great look for a mesomorph. Plus his eyes have this weird bright spin to them.
“Are you going to stay a vegetarian after this semester?” I ask.
“It’s quarter, Mom. Stanford is on a quarter system. Yeah, sure, why not? I mean I’m not opposed to eating meat. I’m opposed to eating meat from animals who’ve suffered –“
“So that means you won’t go hunting anymore!” Robin pipes up.
Max tosses him a contemptuous glance. “Not at all,” he says.
Robin wants a toothpick. The toothpicks are in one of those dispensers that are mini-IQ tests designed to train rats: honest to God, it’s not all that obvious what the release mechanism is. So Robin sticks his hand through the top to grab one –
“That is so gross, Robin!” says Max in his loud, booming voice. “Sticking your hands into things that other people are going to put in their mouths. Just gross.”
Silently I demo the release mechanism for Robin and hand him a toothpick.
Things begin to go downhill pretty rapidly after that. Robin announces he’s not hungry. I order him something anyway. The food here is really quite bad, and it’s hard to make bad Mexican food.
When the food comes, Robin picks at his refried beans and announces they taste like coffee. Then he gets up to wander around the restaurant.
“So when’s your last day of school?” I ask Max.
“Friday.”
“And what are your plans after that?”
He clears his throat. “Well, I’d like to spend some time in Monterey, of course –“
Of course we both knew he was thinking, the less time, the better.
“—and then I’m going down to Southern California on the 22nd –“
Another holiday with the Hares.
“—and then I’m going to Hawaii.”
“Hawaii!” I say cheerily. “Well, that will be nice! Are the Hares doing a family reunion?”
“No,” he says. “I’m going with Molly and her family.”
“Oh,” I say.
“I told you that.”
“No, actually. You didn’t.”
“I did,” he insists. “You just forgot.”
I wouldn’t forget something like that, I think, but I just sit there smiling and blinking as is my wont. “You do have a gift for inspiring well-heeled adults to take you on expensive vacations. Like that time the Newells took you on that Caribbean cruise.”
“It’s nothing like that,” said Max, squirming. It’s true – I was trying to make him feel uncomfortable. I’m not sure exactly why. “They had the Frequent Flyer miles.”
“I suppose it’s another case where they look at you and think, ‘How did this wonderful Golden Boy manage to come out of an environment like that?’ I saw it in Molly’s father’s eyes the day you brought him to the store. He thought I was a lunatic.”
“Something like that,” agrees Max.
“It was like reading the subtitles under him. I actually made him physically uncomfortable.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think they actually like me very much either,” says Max. “They just assume that Molly and I are very, very serious. That we’re in it for the long haul.”
I didn’t ask the next question – are you? – because I already knew the answer: he’s not. Max is incapable of love, at least at this point in his life. Probably that will change when he gets older. But maybe it won’t.
At this point Robin wandered back over to the table. “What are you talking about?” he demands.
“If you want to know about a conversation that sit here and participate in it!” Max snaps.
“It’s hard to distill something into the Conversation’s Greatest Hits, honey,” I say more gently.
“I want to go to Hawaii,” says Robin.
Break my heart. Seldom have I felt more acutely the great unfairness of my Reversal of Fortune. Max got everything. Robin gets… nothing.
It could happen to anyone. You’re brilliant at your job, but when they dissolve your division there’s no other hole in the company where you really fit – precisely because you were so brilliant at that particular job. So they lay you off. So you look for another job. Nobody’s ever gonna admit it but finally you realize – you won’t be hired into an executive position ever again because you’re too damn old.
Eight years later the father of your son’s latest girlfriend thinks you’re a bag lady.
It could happen to anyone.
This is already waaaaay too long so I’ll stop now. Though not before noting that I didn’t enjoy this year’s show nearly as much as last year’s. Maybe it was my mood. Maybe it was because Robin – thoroughly dissed at dinner – was now in A Mood.
Max’s piece centered around his complicated friendship with Aaron. How before Aaron’s fourth stint in rehab, Aaron had eyes like a lion’s, but after Aaron’s fourth stint in rehab, Aaron’s eyes were just like everybody else’s. Zoological metaphors are difficult to pull off unless you’re William Blake (Tyger, tyger burning bright…) or D.H. Lawrence (The elephant, that huge old beast, is slow to mate…) What did Max know about lions anyway? Certainly he didn’t know enough about Aaron to be able to spot that Aaron is just another spoiled white kid exploiting Daddy’s guilt for everything he could get.
SO GAY, Robin texted me as Max agonized in front of the foot lights. Max is in love with Aaron!
Don’t think so, I typed back. Although it was certainly true that Max at this moment was demonstrating more emotion on this stage than I’d ever seen him demonstrate towards either of his two serious girlfriends.
I never want to see Max ever again! I thought experimentally. And then more furiously: Fuck Max! But I knew I was just being defensive. Rejecting him before he could reject me. And it certainly felt like he was rejecting me.
Protagonist is Florian, a 15-year-old skateboard punk and fledgling telepath in the oh-so-charming-and-let’s-not-forget-to-mention-scenic seaside village of Monterey Florian lives with his self-involved, narcissistic mother. His father died in Iraq. Florian is obsessed with Brandon Fraser, particularly Brandon Fraser in Journey To the Center of the Earth, which he’s see six times.
“All novels have that,” argued Robin. “Some kind of weird cult guy that everyone else thinks is a jerk but the hero is fixated on. It provides comic relief.”
Florian is one of those kids that nobody ever notices at Monterey High. But he has a posse:
Vassili, a young anarchist, whose father is in charge of the Russian Department at the Defense Language Institute.
A girl whose father works for the company that manufactures Camel Lights – Robin’s own mother’s nicotine of choice – and whose home consequently is the den of permissiveness and apocalyptic gray ash, the clubhouse as it were.
“She’s ugly,” Robin said.
“Paper bag over her head ugly?”
“Not that ugly. Maybe she has bad acne scars or something. And she has an ugly name. Like Helen.”
“Helen’s an ugly name?”
“Well, nobody’s named Helen. It’s not a pretty name.”
“What’s a pretty name?”
“You know. Victoria. Megan. Brittany. Normal names. I know! Her name is Carla!”
“Carla’s an ugly name?”
“Her name is Carla,” Robin told me firmly.
Finally there’s BC Gonzalez, an illegal Mexican who snuck across the border to take advantage of America’s superior educational system. BC crashes more or less permanently with Florian since Florian’s mother is never there and consequently will never notice. A running riff throughout the novel is jokes about BC’s name. At various points he’s called Benjamin Charles, Brandon Christopher, Bertram Caleb etc. etc. At the end of the book it’s revealed that BC stands for “Bill Clinton.”
There’s a complicated plot involving the defacement of a mural in the gym of Monterey High School: the Invention of Monterey Jack Cheese. (My contribution!) Our bande a la parte flees to Ithaca, New York where Florian’s crazy aunt lives –
“Wait a minute!” I said. “I have a crazy aunt who lives in Ithaca, New York!”
Robin grinned.
There they fall in with a homeless hippie telepath named Toaster. Misadventures ensue and they end up living in Eco-Village. Finally through scamming and computer manipulation, Vassili and Florian end up on a plane to Russia.
“So the last scene is they’re in an airplane, and the in-flight movie is Journey to the Center of the Earth,” said Robin. “And the stewardess asks Florian, ‘Would you like to buy the headphones?’
“And he says, ‘No thanks, I’ve already seen it.”
We amused ourselves so much with this that I got to Palo Alto in a record hour and a half, forgetting to be nervous about driving. As I was attempting to avoid a tour of not-so-scenic East Palo Alto, we got the call from a peevish Max – he wanted to be picked up on campus. Drinking? Bathing his brain cells in herbal essences? Some things a mother is better off not knowing.
One of my many faults is that I was born entirely without a sense of direction. I don’t have any spatial sense – even my drawings have no sense of perspective. So I knew I was going to get lost on campus, and I did – kind of a set-up really, and I was mildly resentful. Stanford University is always being built up or torn down; there was a detour off Campus Drive that I was too flustered to make.
“You’re crazy, Mom,” Max said, getting into the car. “Look! See that car? Making that turn? You can do what he’s doing!”
“Sorry, I just didn’t see that the first time,” I said weakly.
Max’s laughter has a braying note. “My favorite part is when you told me that other cars were turning around too!”
“Well, I thought they were.”
Robin joins in the merry laughter.
We drive to a bad Mexican restaurant and I get my first glimpse of Max in full fluorescent light – he doesn’t look so good. He’s wearing a ski hat which always makes me think he’s about to take off on a tri-state killing spree. He’s very thin – not a great look for a mesomorph. Plus his eyes have this weird bright spin to them.
“Are you going to stay a vegetarian after this semester?” I ask.
“It’s quarter, Mom. Stanford is on a quarter system. Yeah, sure, why not? I mean I’m not opposed to eating meat. I’m opposed to eating meat from animals who’ve suffered –“
“So that means you won’t go hunting anymore!” Robin pipes up.
Max tosses him a contemptuous glance. “Not at all,” he says.
Robin wants a toothpick. The toothpicks are in one of those dispensers that are mini-IQ tests designed to train rats: honest to God, it’s not all that obvious what the release mechanism is. So Robin sticks his hand through the top to grab one –
“That is so gross, Robin!” says Max in his loud, booming voice. “Sticking your hands into things that other people are going to put in their mouths. Just gross.”
Silently I demo the release mechanism for Robin and hand him a toothpick.
Things begin to go downhill pretty rapidly after that. Robin announces he’s not hungry. I order him something anyway. The food here is really quite bad, and it’s hard to make bad Mexican food.
When the food comes, Robin picks at his refried beans and announces they taste like coffee. Then he gets up to wander around the restaurant.
“So when’s your last day of school?” I ask Max.
“Friday.”
“And what are your plans after that?”
He clears his throat. “Well, I’d like to spend some time in Monterey, of course –“
Of course we both knew he was thinking, the less time, the better.
“—and then I’m going down to Southern California on the 22nd –“
Another holiday with the Hares.
“—and then I’m going to Hawaii.”
“Hawaii!” I say cheerily. “Well, that will be nice! Are the Hares doing a family reunion?”
“No,” he says. “I’m going with Molly and her family.”
“Oh,” I say.
“I told you that.”
“No, actually. You didn’t.”
“I did,” he insists. “You just forgot.”
I wouldn’t forget something like that, I think, but I just sit there smiling and blinking as is my wont. “You do have a gift for inspiring well-heeled adults to take you on expensive vacations. Like that time the Newells took you on that Caribbean cruise.”
“It’s nothing like that,” said Max, squirming. It’s true – I was trying to make him feel uncomfortable. I’m not sure exactly why. “They had the Frequent Flyer miles.”
“I suppose it’s another case where they look at you and think, ‘How did this wonderful Golden Boy manage to come out of an environment like that?’ I saw it in Molly’s father’s eyes the day you brought him to the store. He thought I was a lunatic.”
“Something like that,” agrees Max.
“It was like reading the subtitles under him. I actually made him physically uncomfortable.”
“Well, if it makes you feel any better, I don’t think they actually like me very much either,” says Max. “They just assume that Molly and I are very, very serious. That we’re in it for the long haul.”
I didn’t ask the next question – are you? – because I already knew the answer: he’s not. Max is incapable of love, at least at this point in his life. Probably that will change when he gets older. But maybe it won’t.
At this point Robin wandered back over to the table. “What are you talking about?” he demands.
“If you want to know about a conversation that sit here and participate in it!” Max snaps.
“It’s hard to distill something into the Conversation’s Greatest Hits, honey,” I say more gently.
“I want to go to Hawaii,” says Robin.
Break my heart. Seldom have I felt more acutely the great unfairness of my Reversal of Fortune. Max got everything. Robin gets… nothing.
It could happen to anyone. You’re brilliant at your job, but when they dissolve your division there’s no other hole in the company where you really fit – precisely because you were so brilliant at that particular job. So they lay you off. So you look for another job. Nobody’s ever gonna admit it but finally you realize – you won’t be hired into an executive position ever again because you’re too damn old.
Eight years later the father of your son’s latest girlfriend thinks you’re a bag lady.
It could happen to anyone.
This is already waaaaay too long so I’ll stop now. Though not before noting that I didn’t enjoy this year’s show nearly as much as last year’s. Maybe it was my mood. Maybe it was because Robin – thoroughly dissed at dinner – was now in A Mood.
Max’s piece centered around his complicated friendship with Aaron. How before Aaron’s fourth stint in rehab, Aaron had eyes like a lion’s, but after Aaron’s fourth stint in rehab, Aaron’s eyes were just like everybody else’s. Zoological metaphors are difficult to pull off unless you’re William Blake (Tyger, tyger burning bright…) or D.H. Lawrence (The elephant, that huge old beast, is slow to mate…) What did Max know about lions anyway? Certainly he didn’t know enough about Aaron to be able to spot that Aaron is just another spoiled white kid exploiting Daddy’s guilt for everything he could get.
SO GAY, Robin texted me as Max agonized in front of the foot lights. Max is in love with Aaron!
Don’t think so, I typed back. Although it was certainly true that Max at this moment was demonstrating more emotion on this stage than I’d ever seen him demonstrate towards either of his two serious girlfriends.
I never want to see Max ever again! I thought experimentally. And then more furiously: Fuck Max! But I knew I was just being defensive. Rejecting him before he could reject me. And it certainly felt like he was rejecting me.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 05:45 pm (UTC)do you want him to grow up to be a writer? (in terms of sensibility if not in practice?)
no subject
Date: 2008-12-09 12:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 06:37 pm (UTC)molly's parents might even be fending off molly's rejection by taking along max as insurance policy hoping to keep molly mollified (mollyfied!) . money sometimes buys christmas presence.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-09 12:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 09:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-09 12:40 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 10:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-09 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-08 10:23 pm (UTC)Jeff
no subject
Date: 2008-12-09 12:38 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-09 08:35 am (UTC)Also, and I hope this isn't inappropriate, but if Max ever does come out as gay, and it also turns out he has a thing for Jewish guys twice his age... you know what, I'm not even going to finish that thought. Sorry, never mind! :)
no subject
Date: 2008-12-09 02:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-09 02:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-09 06:51 pm (UTC)Yeah, I think Robin will do very well for himself. He's brilliant and resourceful and also uncannily physically beautiful -- Angelina Jolie would kill for his eyelashes.
no subject
Date: 2008-12-10 06:52 pm (UTC)