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Authors: Janet Tashjian

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BOOK: The Gospel According to Larry
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It was early Saturday afternoon, and I hadn't gotten dressed yet. Beth pointed to my pajama-and-life-jacket ensemble and asked what I was doing.
“I keep having these dreams that I'm drowning,” I answered. “Figured I'd go to sleep prepared.”
“Dreaming that you're drowning. I wonder what Freud would say.”
“Probably some deep-seated emotional problem. And we already know
that's
true.” I unbuckled my life vest, slipped it onto Beth's slim frame, and buckled it.
She flipped her long hair back behind her shoulders. “Thanks for saving me,” she said.
And right there in my kitchen, I decided to tell her. Tell her I was Larry, that I was trying to save her, save all of us, most of all me. That it would be so much easier to do if she and I were together. I wanted to tell her
all about my secret life with the ease of holding open a sleeping bag and letting her climb inside.
But I didn't.
I did something worse.
I kissed her.
“What are you doing?” She jumped away from me so fast I thought she would ricochet out the sliding door.
“I just thought … you know … after Larryfest …”
“That's what I came over to tell you.” She moved from the door to the chair to the table. “I'm going out with Todd again.”
“What?”
“I was so confused at the festival,” she said. “And when I got back, he begged me to come over and talk.”
“What about the meat oozing out of his pores?”
“That's what I'm saying. He gave up meat, he's joining the club, we're going to see what happens.” Her voice trailed off. “That's why I'm here—to tell you Todd and I are going out.” She used her fingers to make quotes around the phrase “going out” to downplay it, make it more ironic. I wanted to reach over and break those piano fingers right off.
She finally stopped babbling and appraised the situation. “I was hoping you'd be happy for me. I mean, just a little.”
I could taste the hurt in my mouth—a sweet, metallic taste. But even pain that real didn't translate into honesty. I railed into her instead.
“It's perfect,” I continued. “Just what you always wanted. To be dating a big, stupid, meat-eating jock whose chest measurements are almost as large as your IQ.”
“You're being ridiculous.”
“No,
you're
being ridiculous.”
“Look. I thought you could deal with this. I'd crawl into a hole and die if things got weird between us.”
“No, we're fine. Just great.”
I
was the one who wanted to crawl into a hole and die. Emotionally honest? Guess I still wasn't up to the task.
She unbuckled the life jacket and hung it on the back of the chair. “I know it's a giant cliché and I hate to even say it, but can't …”
“If this is about us still being friends, forget it!”
I had never in eight years been truly mad at Beth before. But her insistence on wanting me to be happy that someone else was stealing the
girl I'd always loved right out from under me was more than I could bear. I held open the door and told her I had to take a shower.
Could she make this any more torturous?
Of course she could.
She tilted her face to mine and kissed me on the cheek. “Can't we work through this?” she asked. “I'm like your sister, for chrissakes.”
Forgive me, I'm an only child, but don't brothers do things like push sisters down flights of stairs? Because that's exactly what I wanted to do—so hard she'd land in the Larsons' yard. I held open the door until she left.
When Peter and Katherine came in from shopping, I barely had the energy to say hello.
“Look what I got!” Katherine's voice was so shrill with excitement it sounded like she'd sucked on a bouquet of helium balloons.
She pulled a Humpty Dumpty candle out of a bag. “Look at the tie he's got on—polka dot to match his little hat! Can you stand it?”
It was extremely difficult to embody Larry's philosophy when what I wanted to do was tell her what a need-a-life psychotic freak she was. I looked over at Peter who smiled as if Katherine had just come up with a cure for cancer while at the local flea market.
“Remember that Larry Web site you and I were talking about?” he asked. “Some guys at the conference are determined to bring this sicko in. These last few ads of his were too much. Talking about workers in Southeast Asia. Those people are lucky they
have
jobs.”
“Yeah, we've sold them the idea of the American dream, and now they're going to drop dead working till they get it.” I had to get out of here.
Katherine tested various spots around the kitchen, looking for the perfect place for her new candle. “As I told you before, Peter, it's just a matter of time before he gets caught.”
Humpty Dumpty's bouncing from shelf to shelf in the kitchen made the whole scene even more surreal. “You can't blame Larry,” I said. “There do seem to be a lot of people buying
crap.
” My eyes pinned Katherine to the hutch. She hesitated, then moved Humpty to the counter.
I slipped the orange life jacket back on over my pajamas. My dreams were trying to tell me something. I
was
drowning.
Beth and Peter were the two people closest to me in the world, but the feelings of alienation, disgust, and betrayal squeezed me like a vise—so hard that I had to rest on the edge
of the living room couch to catch my breath. It doesn't get any worse than this, I thought.
But I was wrong.
When the doorbell rang, I answered it.
A sixtyish woman with gray hair and a floral sundress stood at the door. I smiled at her.
“Can I help you?”
“Are you Josh Swensen?” she asked sweetly.
“Yes.”
“You look familiar.”
I told her she did too. I tried to register her face. It took several moments, but I did. “I gave you a toothbrush at Larryfest, remember?”
She smiled, taken aback. “You're exactly right. How are you?”
“Fine.” What was she doing here?
Beth suddenly appeared from the kitchen. “I came back to see what's going on. There's a camera crew outside.”
The older woman answered for me. She turned toward the front lawn. “Let's go, guys!”
Suddenly, the clicking of cameras, the whirring of camcorders filled the room. I noticed the local TV news trucks at the top of the street. The whole scene slowed down as if we were underwater.
“I thought you'd be older,” she said. “Thirty, at least.” Her grimace indicated my cowlicked morning hair and pajama-lifejacket combo did not meet with her approval.
“Well, Larry, are you going to admit it?”
“I don't know what you're talking about.” I tried to shut the front door, but several reporters and cameramen were already inside.
“Josh? What's she talking about?” Beth asked. She glanced at my neck. “When did you get that chain?”
Peter and Katherine entered the room. “What's going on?” Peter asked.
“This boy here, this Josh Swensen is Larry—The Gospel According to Larry.”
I swiveled first to Beth, then to Peter. “It's not true. And this chain, I've had it forever. You've seen it a million times.”
Peter extended his hand to the woman. “It seems like there's been some kind of misunderstanding. I'm Peter Swensen.”
“Josh? What is she talking about?” Beth repeated.
No matter how many times I denied it, if Grandma Nosebag insisted, we could all traipse down to the basement. Nothing incriminating was stored on my hard drive, but the phone with Larry's modem line—that … that was sitting
right on my desk. I was completely and totally screwed.
The woman shook Peter's hand. “I'm Tracy Hawthorne,” she said. “But you can call me …”
“Betagold,” I answered.
Beth screamed.
What discombobulated me more than anything else was betagold's hand cream. The scent filled the room with memories of my mother. The sound of the cameras clicked like background music as I imagined Mom walking barefoot through the house with her long Indian dress. And this woman, this betagold, had even given me a message from my mother at Larryfest.
Betagold looked me straight in the eye. “I should have recognized you at the festival,” she said. “You were the one with the T-shirt and the smile.”
“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”
 
St. Matthew 16:26
GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LARRY—BOY IN BASEMENT
—San Francisco Examiner
 
LOCAL TEEN ADMITS HE'S
GURU
—Boston Globe
 
TEEN BASHES AD INDUSTRY
—New York Post
I have a newfound respect for Alice for still being able to function after stepping through the looking glass. When betagold entered our house, it was as if someone reached down to the wall outlet and yanked out the plug connecting my life to anything resembling reality. That afternoon still remains a blur of images: Beth repeatedly shaking betagold's arm, Peter trying to remain diplomatic as his blood pressure soared, Katherine flapping around the room like a dazed chicken.
And the media—poking, prodding, changing my life forever.
Josh Swensen died that day.
I just didn't know it yet.
To be fair, there were a few good points to being outed. Meeting Bono, of course. Lots of other activists from Amnesty International too. A few of us holed up in a hotel room and talked World Bank strategy until the media frenzy got so bad the mayor politely asked me to leave. Also, I didn't have that continual nagging feeling of saying something that would give Larry away. Not having to censor myself for the first time in months was freeing. And I would be lying if I didn't say that at first the attention felt great. I hadn't had that kind of approval since my mother died. Basking in the appreciation of millions of people brought back the feeling I used to get when Mom bestowed one of her roaring laughs as I danced and juggled around the kitchen. Kids from school called and stopped by with hundreds of invitations. This bizarre overfocus soon led
to features in the
Boston Globe
, the
New York Post
, even on
Larry King Live
.
49
As much as I had never wanted the attention, I looked at it this way: Now I could finally spread the word to the millions of people who didn't have access to the Internet. I tried to concentrate on the positive: Larry's anticonsumerism message could reach a whole new audience.
The bad news, however, expanded like a sumo wrestler's waist during training season. Journalists didn't want to know about ending consumerism or being your authentic self. They wanted to know how mad my stepfather was when he found out. They wanted to know if I had a girlfriend and how difficult it was for me after my mother died.
When they asked me to do
20/20,
I naively thought it would be a great way to spread the word.
Unfortunately, Barbara Walters had different ideas. After she grilled me on the boxers/briefs debate, I realized Larry's philosophy had little place in the interview. During a break in the taping, I approached the show's producer.
“Why don't you ask me about the Larry clubs across the country, or what people are doing in their towns to slay the corporate giants?”
The producer told me their viewers didn't want to hear about that. “They want to know about you,” he said.
“Josh isn't interesting,” I responded. “Larry's work—that's the story.”
The producer turned to the crew. “Get this—a teenager telling someone with almost fifty years of journalism experience what the story is.”
They all laughed, then he turned back to me. “You're the story, just you. People want gossip; people want sizzle.”
Barbara smiled for the camera, and we resumed the interview.
All the hours I'd spent honing those sermons and creating those pseudo ads were gone. All anyone cared about now was what kind of breakfast cereal I preferred.
50
Larry was the new Pokémon, the new Beanie Baby, the new Sony PlayStation.
Larry was now, officially, a product.
And you know what happens to products.
They get consumed.
BOOK: The Gospel According to Larry
11.92Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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