The Gospel According to Larry

by Janet Tashjian

  “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.”

  PART FOUR

  “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.

  I tried to focus on the irony of the situation. For months, my sermons ranted against consuming the lives of celebrities. But after betagold yanked me into the public eye, suddenly every movement of mine made for evening news or tabloid feature.

  Flip-Off Phillips called me from her car phone and offered to counsel me and make sure I was okay. I was touched by her concern until she asked me for an autographed photo of the two of us for her wall.

  It’s not like I was any more welcome at home.

  From the second betagold announced my secret identity, Peter went from disbelief to skepticism to outright fury.

  “My own stepson—manipulating the minds of millions!”

  “Like father, like son.”

  Thankfully, he let the comment slide. “With information you took from me!”

  What could I tell him—that I was curious, that the information looked interesting? That it was the only part of this whole mess I did regret?

  He suddenly seemed like a balloon deflating before my eyes. “I’ve lost four of my biggest clients. All because of those ads. People think I’m a traitor!”

  “I never wanted to get you in trouble,” I said. “I just thought people deserved to see the information.”

  His usually calm demeanor exploded. “Who are you protecting? Even the Communists are consumers now!”

  I might as well have been tied to the back of the chair with the bulb over the kitchen table spotlighting me, interrogation style. Peter’s Marine training came back to him, big time. He’d never been captured and sent to a P.O.W. camp, but he was making up for it now. I was making up for it.

  Each time I tried to explain that I was only voicing my opinion—which I was constitutionally allowed to do, by the way—he lost it a bit more.

  “You’re accepting that invitation to 60 Minutes and you’re telling Mike Wallace you were wrong.”

  “That buying junk is our moral imperative,” I added.

  “That’s right.” He banged his fist on the table so hard, the salt and pepper shakers flew across the room like missiles. He eyed me carefully. “Are you mocking me?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Laugh all you want,” he said. “I’ve been taking care of you for three years; your real father never took care of you for a day.” He kept going, on a roll. “He was a real philosopher too. Bumming for quarters on the streets of Cleveland before he drank himself to death.”

  Never, in all the years I’ve known him, had Peter been intentionally cruel. But the bent smile on his face gave his perverse pleasure away. When I got up to leave, he pounded the table again. “If you’re going to live in this house, you need to retract those sermons and stop all this nonsense.”

  I took a deep breath. “I can’t do that.”

  “Why? Because you like being famous? Reveling in all this attention?”

  I told him I hated the attention, that I had gone to great lengths not to be in the spotlight. “I can’t help it if we live in a culture that worships people just for being famous.”

  He shook his head, trying to compose himself. “We might have to move,” he said. “Depending on what happens with the rest of my clients.”

  I couldn’t imagine where we could move to and regain our privacy. Fiji? Peru?

  “Look,” Peter continued. “I appreciate that you’re working to make the world a better place. But believe it or not, I am too.” He held the edges of the counter for support. “No offense, Josh, but this idealism thing is a phase, like so many others you’ve been through. Remember the skydiving? The giant Polaroid camera you were obsessed with?”

  I told him they were different.

  “You say that every time,” Peter said. “You don’t have enough life experience. You don’t know how the real world works yet.”

  “Adults always say that to keep kids quiet,” I said. “You don’t have any answers; you’re all just muddling through, like the rest of us.”

  “Unlike you who has all the answers. Right, Mr. Big-Shot Guru?” He grabbed his keys and headed out the door.

  I had let myself savor my contributions, but here I was face-to-face with something I had destroyed.

  I was suddenly filled with the memory of Peter promising my mother on her deathbed that he would take care of me. And lo and behold, he was living up to his promise. Maybe I should use the 60 Minutes opportunity to deny Larry’s work and bail out Peter.

  But I knew I couldn’t. Peter’s beliefs were an integral part of his life. So were mine. A stalemate—fathers and sons had them all the time. Maybe Peter and I weren’t so different from other families after all.51

  I closed the blinds just as the photographers snapped my picture. I imagined the resulting photographs in tomorrow’s newspaper—a seventeen-year-old boy, his body divided by stripes of light, a perpetual prisoner.

  Ahhh, Beth. Beth. Beth.

  A few weeks ago at Larryfest, we held hands and chanted about peace and love. Now—post-betagold—she wouldn’t even answer the phone. As my best friend, she’d been besieged by the press, with some of
the tabloids offering her up to two hundred thousand dollars for an exclusive. She could have paid her entire college tuition with money to spare, but, thankfully, she turned them down.52

  Needless to say, Beth did not take kindly to finding out my secret identity along with the rest of the world. The shocked expression on her face as betagold outed me haunts me to this day.

  For weeks afterward, my calls and e-mails were not returned. Each time I went to her back door—followed by dozens of paparazzi—her father slammed it closed and told me she wasn’t home. I was immediately let go at the hardware store, even though my celebrity had increased sales by over 200 percent.

  I waited until a Sunday afternoon when I knew Beth would be doing inventory. As usual, a drum of chlorine propped open the back door to let in the summer air. I stood near the paintbrushes and coughed, so I wouldn’t sneak up on her. When she saw me, she smiled.

  She tossed me a clipboard and slid a box of washers across the floor. I counted them out as we spoke.

  “You could’ve told me,” she said.

  I told her I almost did, several times, in fact.

  “All this attention would drive the normal person crazy, but you …” her voice trailed off. “You must be miserable.”

  “I never would have done it if I’d known. Never in a million years.”

  My fingers grew dirtier and more metallic as I counted; the familiar smell was comforting. Beth wanted to know everything—how I came up with the idea, how I’d kept the site private. “I never once suspected it, even with the Lorax,” she said. “But in hindsight, this whole thing is so you.” She shook her head. “The Wizard.”

  She then gave me grief for writing the sermon about phonies. “You posted that one after I bagged you for Todd,” she said. “There I was thinking Larry was some kind of genius mind reader, when all along he was the guy next door.”

  “Hey, Larry had to live next door to somebody,” I said. “He just lucked out with you.”

  She smiled, a pre-betagold moment. “It’s hard to be friends right now,” she said. “I’ve got to get some perspective on this.”