The Gospel According to Larry

by Janet Tashjian

  Until Bono read it.

  It seems that U2’s lead singer was doing research for a presentation he was giving to the U.S. Senate on his pet topic—the World Bank and Third World debt—when he turned up Larry’s sermon. The sermon intrigued him; he checked out the site and loved the anticonsumer, free-the-people-from-corporate-oppression spirit. This would have been all well and good if U2 hadn’t also released a new song. The subject was antimaterialism and it rocked. Bono had written it months before, and it had absolutely nothing to do with my sermons, but a few fervent Larry fans didn’t care. They adopted the song as their own.

  The new song led to a video—a wild smorgasbord with so much STUFF in it that if you weren’t a believer in cutting back consumption before you watched it you sure as hell were after.

  Of course, the video led to interviews and articles.

  Then a tour.

  And over the next several weeks, all these wonderful, amazing things led U2’s millions and millions of fans to one place.

  Larry’s Web site.

  Now, I’m not saying I wasn’t flattered—OF COURSE I WAS. I had grown up on their music; my mother had been their biggest fan.33 But as much as I was insanely ecstatic that Bono was talking to Kurt Loder about Larry, I also knew that one of the key tenets of Larry’s philosophy was against celebrity worship. I was torn. I would have cut off my right arm with a Weedwacker to meet Bono. On the other hand,34 I knew I should lead my own life and let Bono live his. It was a confusing yet thrilling time.

  “I logged onto Larry this morning,” Beth said when she dropped by for breakfast. “There were already over a million hits.”

  “What?” I raced downstairs, then realized Beth was right behind me. I did a mental scan of the stuff on my desk and determined it was safe.

  “A million point three,” I said watching the counter click off hits as we spoke. “I hope Larry’s got enough memory.”

  “That’s a weird thing to worry about.” Beth looked at me with the suspicious look she usually saved for guys trying to pick her up.

  I told her I just didn’t want Larry’s site to crash.

  “I’m worried about more than that. I’m worried that Larry’s message will get diluted in all this, this—”

  “Commercialism.” I finished the sentence for her.

  “It’s good news, of course. I mean, we’re talking about Bono here, Amnesty International, the whole thing. I just hope it doesn’t get out of control.” She looked me over again. “You okay?”

  I told her I was, and said I’d meet her at the hardware store later.

  After she left, I watched the Web site’s counter continue to click, a veritable McDonald’s of hungry spiritual searchers. I looked up to the beamed ceiling and prayed.

  “Mom?”

  I tried again. “Mom? This is good, yes? Getting the message out to more people?”

  The house remained silent.

  “I shouldn’t worry, right, Mom?”

  The next sound I heard was laughter—loud, guttural guffaws coming from the kitchen where Katherine and Peter had just entered the house. It must have been one hell of a joke Peter told, because Katherine didn’t stop.

  “Mom, this isn’t funny,” I said.

  But the universe didn’t care; it just continued to fill the house with enough laughter to send a pack of hyenas running for cover.

  Which is what I should have done.

  I decided to stop being paranoid and work with what the universe had presented me.35

  Even though it was the last week of school, the club’s membership had swelled to include more than 78 percent of the senior class.36 Beth clapped her hands and the meeting came to order.

  “Okay. U2 has turned millions of people on to Larry. The question is: How do we ensure Larry’s message doesn’t get lost in all the brouhaha?”

  That’s my girl—getting to the crux of the matter immediately. Her question mirrored my own concerns, which had kept me up several nights that week. I’d even gone so far as to stay up eating handfuls of M&M’s and playing Peter’s mancala game. My insomnia became so frenzied, however, that I ended up tossing a couple of glass stones into my mouth instead of M&M’s, almost leading to a full-blown dental crisis.

  I tried to keep a low profile at these meetings. Luckily, many other kids were involved. Sharon showed us a group of stickers she’d designed.

  The first one read, NO MORE STUFF.

  Good, right to the point.

  Sharon flashed the next layout. STOP SELLING US CRAP.

  That one met with hoots and applause.

  “These are a series,” Sharon said, “to plaster on print ads, billboards, whatever.” She held them up.

  THIS AD INSULTS ME.

  THIS AD INSULTS KIDS.

  THIS AD INSULTS WOMEN.

  “And my personal favorite, WHOEVER DIES WITH THE MOST STUFF IS STILL COMPLETELY, DE FACTO DEAD.”

  Barry discussed the pseudo ads he was copying onto posters. When everybody kicked in, we had enough money to print several hundred. We designated the next Saturday as “antistuff” day—a day when we would plaster the city with anticommercialist propaganda. It was my job to post our idea on Larry’s Web site in case any other groups across the country wanted in.37

  After the meeting Beth and I walked home together.

  “We’ll hit the mall first,” she said, “then as many superstores as we can.”

  I asked her if I should borrow Peter’s car.

  “No, let’s take our bikes. If we’re going to be activists, let’s go all the way.”

  “Put the active back in activism,” I said.

  “Why didn’t you say that at the meeting? That would have made a great poster.”

  She then proceeded to throw me a giant curve ball. “You’re not going, are you?” she asked.

  “Where? To the mall? What are you talking about?”

  She swung her arms by her side. “No, to the prom next week.”

  “Of course not.” We walked in silence. “Are you?”

  “Someone told me Todd was going to ask me, but I would have said no. Proms are so fake,” she said.

  “Gruesome,” I added. “Not that either of us would know.”

  Her smile was so off-kilter, so vulnerable, that I burst out laughing. She did too.

  “Two outsiders completely skeeved at the thought of being ‘in’—even for just one night.” I said it to ease the awkwardness, but deep down I knew both of us would kill to be able to walk in that world if we wanted to. Beth’s entrance to that place of parties and homecomings had only happened with the guys she occasionally dated; mine, through Larry. I guess all along our truest connection came from feeling disconnected.

  When I got home and checked the Web site, I realized lots of other kids must have been feeling oppressed by advertising too, because the number of pseudo ads continued to increase. Some of the concepts were unbelievably creative.38

  People from around the world were swapping ideas, making plans to plaster their towns with the various messages. U2 had not hurt Larry’s site by spreading the word. The group had empowered it. It was anti-apathy at its best. I upgraded my server, with pleasure.

  Unfortunately, I had left my handouts near the coffee machine on my way into the house. The horrendous noise I heard in the background was the sound of my stepfather hitting the roof.

  He laid out the pseudo ads on the counter as if he were retiling it. “Where did you get these?”

  I told him the Larry site.

  He pointed to the vodka parody. “Do you know how many people worked on this account? Doing research, design, printing, marketing? Hundreds of people putting dinner on the table because of this ad.”

  “Probably not as many people as the alcoholic population,” I said. “Now there’s a big group.” I waited for him to mention my real father, who died of alcohol poisoning before I was born.39 Thankfully he didn’t.

  I tried to listen to his opinion, rein in my growing anger.
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  He pointed to another ad. “And this one. Easy for some kid on the Internet to complain about starving children in Africa when he’s working on a high-end iMac.”

  “He’s not,” I said.

  “Oh? And how do you know?”

  “He posted a photo of his laptop,” I stammered. “It wasn’t an Apple.”

  “Well, maybe he should start bashing Apple now. Microsoft too. Wait until this Larry guy gets exposed for the nobody he is, then we’ll see what all the fuss is about.”

  “He won’t get exposed.”

  Peter smirked. “Katherine’s been doing a lot of research on him. She says it’s a matter of time.” He gathered the papers off the counter as if they were a bad hand he’d been dealt at cards. “And I don’t want to see any more of this crap in my house unless it’s in the trash.”

  I couldn’t understand why he was angry. “Why are you so threatened by this?”

  It was the wrong thing to ask.

  The next thing I knew, an alien must have inhabited my cool and calm stepfather, because he shoved me against the refrigerator.

  “No more of this nonsense, you understand? You don’t want to go to graduation, I said okay. But this? I won’t stand for it!”

  I made sure my voice was completely calm before I spoke. “Let go of me.”

  It was almost as if Peter’s spirit flew back into his body. “I … I’m sorry.” He straightened his tie. “That was completely uncalledfor.”

  My face darkened with the memory of prying into his briefcase. “No, it’s okay.”

  “These ads … they’re everywhere. We have to develop all new campaigns. We’re under a lot of pressure—the printers, the execs, the salespeople. No one knows where this guy’s getting his data.”

  I hadn’t planned on screwing Peter in this scheme; I was just trying to get the information out.40 I looked at him blankly, wishing for something appropriate to say. He left in silence, the door reverberating behind him.

  The inevitable schism between us became achingly obvious. In a few months I would be at Princeton, eventually seeing him just a few times a year.

  He was probably as happy about that prospect as I was.

  LARRY ITEM #41

  “This is a great way to spend a birthday.” Beth pedaled no-hands through the back parking lot of the mall.

  “Unless we end up in jail,” I said.

  “Come on, Henry David. Where’s your sense of civil disobedience?”

  I had one, but it was just a bit worried about getting tossed in the can on some kind of nuisance violation. It wasn’t the jail part that concerned me; I didn’t want any undue attention focused my way, considering the secret life I was harboring. To say nothing of Peter’s wrath.

  “So, it looks like Larry lives somewhere cold. New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Montana have the most votes in the bulletin boards.”

  “He could live in Florida and still have those boots.”

  “Not with a total of seventy-five possessions.”

  I told her in that case I voted Wisconsin. Thankfully, it was almost summer, and I didn’t have to wear them now.

  We locked our bikes, and I couldn’t wait any longer. I handed Beth a box. “Happy Birthday.”

  “You didn’t have to,” she said.

  “Only homemade things, usual rules.”

  She opened the box carefully and smiled when she saw the necklace.

  “I found this old Chinese abacus,” I said. “Took it apart and strung the beads on a silk cord. I placed the beads in order so they actually made sense—2,368,586 divided by 682 equals 3,473. That crystal in the middle is the equal sign …” I hoped a car would plow into me so I would stop babbling.

  “This is amazing. Makes last year’s bouillabaisse mobile seem like no work at all.”41 She slipped on the necklace and fingered the blue stones. “I gave myself a birthday present this year. I’ve been wanting to show you for days.”

  To my amazement, she rolled up her pants leg. Above her right ankle was a fresh tattoo of a dollar sign in a circle with a slash through it.

  “Are you kidding? Do your parents know?”

  She shook her head. “I had Marie’s ID with me, but the guy didn’t even ask for it.”

  I ran my hand across Beth’s skin.42 “He did a good job.”

  “I was going to get ‘Larry,’ but I didn’t want to look like a groupie. This kind of said it all.”

  The thought of Beth sporting a tattoo of my alter ego almost sent me into hyperventilation. I followed her inside the mall like a puppy.

  We plastered the halls and rest rooms of the entire mall, easily avoiding the few security guards. Judging by the people who gathered around to read the posters, we even sparked some conversations.

  Next we hit Pottery Barn, Virgin Records, the Gap, Nike Town, and Restoration Hardware.43 We were taking a short break when we saw Mr. Lynch, our biology teacher, approach us. Beth shoved the rest of the posters into her bag.

  “We’re screwed,” I said.

  He sat down at the table. “You’re doing a good job,” he said. “We Americans are using way more than our share of resources.”

  Beth and I returned his smile and handed him some of our posters.

  “You know what drives me insane?” he continued. “The tiny stickers they put on fruit—it’s for the store’s convenience, not the customer’s. By the time you peel it off, your gorgeous pear is ruined. And you know why they do it? Because no one complains.”

  In all the time I’d known Mr. Lynch, I’d never seen him so animated. He told us he’d see us next week and moved on.

  Beth tossed her bottle of water into the recycling bin and watched Mr. Lynch walk away. “You don’t think …”

  “What?”

  “Mr. Lynch?”

  “What about him?”

  “You know, that he’s Larry.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “He wears jeans; he’s got boots …”

  “I’ll bet he’s even got a watch and a belt,” I said. “I thought you didn’t want to know.”

  “It’s hard not to be into it, now that everyone else is.” She shuddered. “Did I just say that? Shoot me.”

  We pedaled home with the satisfaction of a job well done.

  “I feel like one of those women who worked in the factories when all the men were at war. Really contributing,” she said.

  “To blowing up the Japanese,” I responded.

  “And ending the war.”

  “And almost a civilization.”

  “You never quit.” She smiled and I took it as a compliment.

  We sat on her front steps until it was time for her piano lesson.

  “Aren’t you leaving today?” she asked.

  Since there were only a few days left, Peter let me blow off school. The Larry club meetings and mall visits were way more social activity than I was comfortable with, and a nature excursion was definitely in order.

  “I like my privacy too,” Beth said. “But three days alone in the woods … you’re insane.”

  “I’ll be insane if I don’t go,” I said. “It’s not just the privacy—”

  “It’s the solitude.” She’d heard the drill many times before.

  I gathered up my things.

  “Good job today. Larry would’ve been proud,” she said.

  “He’d love that tattoo.”

  “Think so?”

  “I think it’s safe to say he’d hold your foot in his hand and kiss every inch of it.”

  She swatted me. “See you on Wednesday.”

  I pedaled home, sorry to be leaving Beth for three days but happy to be lying under the stars alone.

  Little did I know what could happen in three days.

  SERMON #213

  Ever tried to jump off the consumer carousel and spend some time alone? Not just alone but alone in Nature—no commercials, no visual distractions but the birds and trees. I’ve been dipping into my Thoreau again—“For every walk is
a sort of crusade.” That’s me, walking in the woods for hours, crusading for the cause, peeling back the layers of STUFF, and letting only the silence seep in.

  Nothing to buy out here, nothing to sell. Nothing to throw away, nothing to think about.

  In my seclusion, my “real” life seems self-indulgent and superficial. Gossip, chatter, role-playing—our daily lives are the longest-running play in off-Broadway history. We just don’t know it.

  Is it a waste of time to watch a starling for an hour? To lie on a bed of moss and gaze at the stars? My man Thoreau also said, “He who sits still in a house all the time may be the greatest vagrant of all.”

  We are meant to be alone in Nature. The word lonely never comes up.

  PART THREE

  “And there came a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.”

  St. Mark 1:11

  Do you know what it’s like to be driving along in second gear and then to accidentally pop the shift into fifth? I was expecting to spend lunch with Beth, hear about how she loved the Thoreau sermon,44 but she yanked me into an alternative reality with her news.

  “You will never guess what Bono’s doing.” We talked about the mega-rock star now as if he were someone we knew personally. “A giant rock festival—U2 is playing!—along with dozens of other bands in a big empty field in Maine. Music, arts and crafts …” she read from the paper in her hand, “a spontaneous gathering of anticonsumerism and general goodwill called Larryfest.”

  “LARRYFEST?” I shouted. Was this for real?

  “Tens of thousands of people have already signed up,” she said. “And believe it or not, Mom told me I could go, since Marie and two of her friends are going. They can give us a ride. We can camp. What do you say?”

  “I go away for three days and there’s a festival in the works?”

  “It’s our Woodstock,” she said.

  “Woodstock was in August.”

  “Well, this one’s Fourth of July! Ease up!”