Everything You Want Me to Be(31)

LitGeek: Hi everyone. I’m new to the forum. I saw the discussion on Thomas Pynchon’s book signing next week and CAN’T BELIEVE IT. I won’t be in New York then, but if anyone is planning to go, can I send you a book for him to sign and $50.00 for your trouble?

HollyG: $50 for your trouble? You must be from the Midwest.

LitGeek: Guilty. How did you know?

HollyG: Because nobody would do it for less than $200 and it’s not going to happen anyway. Thomas Pynchon’s an urban myth.

LitGeek: Hmm. I’ve read his books and bio and he seems pretty corporeal to me.

HollyG: Not the guy. The book signing is an urban myth. You’re a newbie so you don’t know the Thomas Pynchon book signing is like Giuliani running for president, like the construction finishing on the crosstown, like Amelia Earhart’s plane landing at JFK.

LitGeek: Oh. Right. That sucks. I was excited. So why are people posting about this event like it’s going to happen?

I sent the next message in a PM.

HollyG: Some people think it’s funny, but most of them just want your $200. I flagged the thread for the moderators to take down. They can be pretty slow, though.

LitGeek (replying to the PM): I guess I should thank you for saving me the cash and the disappointment.

HollyG: Can’t let a fellow Midwesterner get suckered by the scammers.

LitGeek: You’re from or live there now?

HollyG: Live there now, temporarily. I’ll be in NY by this time next year.

LitGeek: Where are you now?

HollyG: Southern MN.

LitGeek: Me too(!), unfortunately. What town are you in?

HollyG: Too embarrassing to say. Besides, you’re probably a child molester and I’m not going to meet up with you at the local Perkins.

LitGeek: We’re definitely not from the same town then, if you can boast of a Perkins. So, to clarify, if I’m a child molester, are you the six-year-old on your dad’s computer?

HollyG: Of course.

LitGeek: Then let me give you a tip. Don’t go through Daddy’s temporary internet files.

HollyG: lol

LitGeek: Oh—I get it now.

HollyG: ??

LitGeek: HollyG. Except you’re still Lula Mae at the moment, aren’t you?

HollyG: Took you long enough if you’re really a LitGeek.

LitGeek: What can I say? I’m as slow as this internet connection. It’s a good thing I don’t actually have anyone to talk to.

HollyG: Poor, friendless LitGeek. [Violin playing]

LitGeek: I know, I know. It’s just that I moved out to the sticks pretty recently and feel out of touch with all my friends.

HollyG: You came here voluntarily??? As a consenting adult?

LitGeek: That’s a matter of debate. I came because of my wife.

HollyG: So why don’t you talk to your wife?

LitGeek: Uh . . . I do.

HollyG: No, you said you didn’t have anyone to talk to, remember? What about your wife?

LitGeek: Oh, right. You’re obviously not married.

HollyG: I’m six. I can’t even legally work in a sweatshop yet.

LitGeek: lol

HollyG: So, LitGeek, who are your favorite authors besides the elusive Mr. Pynchon? Obviously not Capote . . .



It went on like that for weeks. September turned into October and everything else seemed normal. The entire school went crazy when the football team made regional playoffs. I got fitted for costumes at the theater and rehearsals were off-script now. Midterms started and Portia’s dad freaked out when she got a D on her trigonometry test.

I was practically oblivious to all of it. Instead, I constantly checked the forum on my phone. Every time I looked at the PM he’d left a new message. Sometimes we started new PMs for new topics, and a lot of nights we were online at the same time, talking in real time for hours. He told me about Don DeLillo and David Foster Wallace and we debated the best works of Tom Stoppard and Edward Albee. We agreed on how fabulous the new Guthrie Theater building was and disagreed on how awful the Rochester theater scene was. I didn’t tell him about my role in Jane Eyre. We were both careful to not say too much about our lives. He called his house a death camp once, but he never talked about his job or his wife. He asked me things like if I could inhabit the life of any character in a book, who would I be? I had no idea. I became the main character in every book I read. I felt myself inside their skin, but it didn’t have anything to do with liking them or wanting to be them. He said when he was young he wanted to be Charlie Bucket and when he was twenty he read Love in the Time of Cholera and felt strangely jealous of Florentino Ariza, who I guess loved a woman he couldn’t have for fifty years. I said if he wanted to be frustrated and sad his whole life, why didn’t he just become a guidance counselor? He laughed and then he said, “Florentino knew what he wanted. Even Charlie knew what he wanted. I guess I’d just like to know what my chocolate factory is.”

He was married and probably bald and fat and gassy, too—and none of that mattered because we weren’t in the real world. I told him how I really felt about everything, how I wanted to move to New York more than anything but that sometimes I was scared, because I didn’t have a plan or know anybody and I couldn’t tell anyone that. He said anything worth doing should scare you a little, and that some of the greatest stories began with a journey. Then I started posting Journey lyrics and pretty soon we were both rocking out to “Don’t Stop Believing.” I started imagining LitGeek when I was in bed at night, feeling my skin and my heartbeat under the sheets, my head bursting with everything I was going to see and do, and I pretended my hands were his as they skimmed up my thighs, that he was exploring me, that he wanted me, too.