It was messy.
It was beautiful.
It ruined my vision quest.
I went home and ate a three-egg omelet with half a jar of salsa, then took the longest, hottest shower of my life.
I had been happy with Janine—she was kind and gregarious and fun—but this was Beth. As for Simon? I didn’t care what Beth said about her commitment to him. His reign was over.
I wanted to play it cool,35 so I didn’t rush over to Beth’s. I grabbed a notebook and a handful of markers and headed for the basement.
In the cocoon-like safety of my swing, I outlined several ideas. I got so carried away mapping out various projects, I ran out of paper in the first fifteen minutes.
I left the swing for the larger space of the workroom. Cans of paint lined the walls, probably leftovers from Peter’s jobs. I rolled out a giant drop cloth until it covered most of the basement floor. I took a brush from the tray next to the sink and began graphing my thoughts. Soon the tarp looked like an abstract expressionist painting with chunks of color representing possible avenues of action.36
When it was dark, I took a break and cleaned up. Peter had left a message saying he was in Worcester and wouldn’t be home until tomorrow. So I figured enough time had passed for a non-desperate visit to Beth’s.
In all the turmoil of coming home, I hadn’t made Beth a Christmas present. She and I had always celebrated the holidays as non-materialistically as possible—we made each other presents. So I sat down and spilled my guts in a letter, detailing how I’d felt about her for years and the new level we’d taken the relationship to. The thing was mushier than a stupid pop song, but the words just wouldn’t stop. I took the Ganesh statue from its box in the closet and wrapped it carefully in one of my T-shirts. I headed over to her house.
But what I saw from the edge of her yard froze me in my steps.
She and Simon were making snow angels.
They were lying on their backs, holding hands, and naming the constellations. Our constellations, the ones Beth and I had named a hundred times before.
But the most painful part of watching Beth and Simon? They looked happy.
I’d witnessed Beth with Todd, with Charlie, with Dave—but never this relaxed and comfortable with someone else.
She was right about one thing she’d said earlier today: Nothing had changed between us. Nothing at all.
I shoved the letter in my pocket and trudged home.
I tried to hate her—for using me, playing with my mind, cheating on him—but I couldn’t muster up the anger. Whatever she did to me from here on in was nothing compared to what I’d put her through. She had me over a barrel and she knew it.
I hurried to the basement to put my pent-up energy to use. But this time, the paint splattered and flew across the tarp at warp speed. Where my work that afternoon had been meticulous and well thought out, this was wild and raw. A Pollock of pain.
Should I go back to Boulder? Hit the road? Come out of hiding and be Larry? Work side by side with Beth and Simon? Oh, and by the way—Happy New Year!
I picked up the phone and called Janine, but all I got was her answering machine with the Banana Splits theme song. I wanted to tell her that my name wasn’t Mark, that I was in love with someone else, but that I still thought about her all the time. Instead, I quietly dropped the phone back into its base. Josh Swensen—King of Calling Old Girlfriends and Hanging Up. I barely slept.
I woke up at three, full of anxiety. It took me a few minutes to realize why. Between the pre-dawn darkness and Peter’s absence, it was almost exactly like the morning I’d left two years ago. I washed up quickly, grabbed Peter’s bike this time, and headed into the early morning.
My body knew where I was going long before my mind acknowledged it. Hour after hour, I pedaled south, then east. Thankfully, most of the roads were clear.
Somewhere around Plymouth, I couldn’t avoid facing my destination.
I was returning to the scene of the crime.
As I pedaled, the colors and lines I’d painted yesterday congealed into some kind of plan. The task this time seemed Herculean—or was it quixotic?37 That was also what made it appealing.
Once I hit Wareham, I coasted—almost afraid to catch a glimpse of the bridge. I stopped at a diner to use the bathroom and down two bagels and a bottle of water. Should I go along with Simon and Beth’s idea or follow my own path? I wrote down my idea on the napkin in front of me. Was I being too delusional this time, even for me? No, delusional was thinking I could ever end up with Beth. This idea seemed almost attainable compared to that one. I told myself to quit stalling, got back on the bike, and headed toward the Sagamore.
As I pedaled across the bridge, my body instinctively pulled over to the same spot I’d stopped at back then. It was much less windy than that previous day, but no less threatening. I leaned my bike against the stanchion and gazed over the side.
How had I even pretended to jump? My hands clenched the girder for support. I felt as dizzy and nauseous as I had the morning of my pseudocide. Stand here, I thought. Stand here until you realize what you’ve done. What you’re going to do.
I looked across the bay and let the past few years flash before me—the campsites, the hostels, the lies, the fake IDs, the paranoia, the loneliness. Yes, I had met interesting people and traveled to parts of the country I never would have seen otherwise. But I’d traveled as an interloper, a fugitive.
The wind pressed against my back, pinning me to the railing. I let myself feel the isolation of my existence. This wasn’t about Beth, my mother, Peter, or even Janine; it was about me. I didn’t know what the future held, where my place was in the universal plan, but I did know this.
I didn’t want to be Mark anymore. Or Carl or Gil or Tom.
Whatever the future held, I would meet my fate as Josh Swensen. And that meant embracing Larry again. And being Larry meant contributing in a big way. I unfolded the napkin I’d scribbled on in the diner and read my New Year’s resolution.
This year I will run for president.
I couldn’t be president, of course; no one my age could. The Constitution was quite clear that you had to be thirty-five to serve. But there was nothing in that document that said I couldn’t raise issues or voice my opinion.
Absurd?
You bet.
But that was what drew me to the idea.
A police car pulled alongside me, lights flashing. The cop in the passenger seat got out of the car cautiously and asked if there was a problem.
I shook my head and looked past him to the dark water below. “Don’t worry, I’m not thinking about jumping.”38
I thought about turning myself in, throwing my bike in their trunk and hitching a ride toward my newly decided fate. Instead, I hopped on my bike and headed toward Boston.
I had a lot of work to do.
PART TWO
“The future will not belong to those who are content with the present. The future will not belong to cynics and people who sit on the sidelines. The future will belong to people who have passion and are willing to work hard to make this country better.”
Senator Paul Wellstone
ELECTION COUNTDOWN
JANUARY: SET UP STRATEGY
The next several days showcased me at my best: locking myself in my room and working. I ran Internet searches and pored through data, made calculations, and created action plans. I was thankful Peter honored my request for privacy.
Beth came by several times, but I ignored her.
“You’re being immature!” she said through my barricade. “Let’s talk about what happened.”
“I’ve got more important things on my mind,” I answered.
She would storm off and return several hours later.
I continued to dissect our political system for the next five days. When Beth came by on Sunday, I unlocked the door when she knocked.
“Well, it’s about time.” She entered my room and plopped on the bed. “Are you trying to
invent sticky-note wallpaper? You can’t even find the windows in here.”
“It’s all categorized—don’t touch anything.”
“About the other day,” she began. “I used bad judgment. It was a mistake.”
“Was it?” I wasn’t going to budge on this one.
“Do you think it was?” she asked.
“Do you?”
“I didn’t until you locked yourself in your room for a week.”
“You think I’ve been in here obsessing about you?” I loved having the upper hand with her—for a change. “I’ve been setting up the groundwork for my next project.”
She bounced on the bed with enthusiasm. “Are you going to make a comeback? Run for the state rep seat?”
“I’ve decided to push the envelope a little farther this time.”
“Josh, this is great. Wait till I tell—”
“Duckie?”
She swatted me in the arm. “I knew he bothered you. I knew it!”
I inched closer to her on the bed. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking these past few days, and I want to ask you something.”
She didn’t back away from me. “Sure.”
I leaned in toward her, close to her ear. “Will you be my running mate?”
Her puzzled expression was priceless.
I described my plan in detail, answering her questions with plausible explanations. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”
“When we talked about resurrecting Larry, we were thinking more in terms of the publicity and media attention,” she said. “We never thought of taking it so wide—”
“Yeah, well, maybe Simon just doesn’t have enough vision.”
She got up from the bed and headed toward the door. “That’s what this is all about, isn’t it? Pissing off Simon?”
I pointed to the hundreds of sticky notes plastered around my room. “Yeah, this is all about Simon. Give me a break.”
She didn’t say goodbye, just bolted from the room. But from my vantage point,39 I watched her pace through my yard for twenty minutes. I dashed back to my room as she reentered the house.
“Okay,” she said. “But we’re partners. We make every decision equally, no lying like last time.”
“Deal.”
“One more thing.” She pulled herself up to her full height, just a few inches shorter than my own. “I’m with Simon. This is not up for negotiation. Whatever happened, happened.”
“Or whatever happens, happens.”
She looked at me in anger, then smiled when she saw I was laughing. “We’re going to do this,” she said. “Really blow this old, rich white man thing apart.”
When I kissed her, she didn’t stop me.
“I’ve got to admit,” she said when we came up for air, “you do have the best ideas.”
“The Wizard, at your service.”
“Oh my God, I have to call my adviser and arrange to take more time off. And Simon! He’ll have a million suggestions.” She gave me a squeeze and left.
As much as I tried not to wonder what Simon would think of my plan, his opinion did matter. I opened the kitchen window to hear something, anything, but nothing came.
I drove to the old Victorian downtown that Peter was helping to renovate and told him the news.
“President of what?” he asked.
“Uhm, the United States?”
“But—”
“I know I can’t really run, but there are so many issues I want to call attention to.”
He started laughing. “I didn’t know you were interested in a political career.”
“I’m not really, just interested in change.”
He nodded without speaking.
“This isn’t one of my phases,” I said. “Not like when I was obsessed with being the next Mel Blanc. I’m going to follow through on this one.”
“Till the Board of Elections puts the kibosh on the whole thing.”
“I’ve got some ideas on that. But first—will you be my campaign manager?”
He almost dropped his can of semi-gloss. “Josh, I don’t know what to say. All those years we—”
“Hated each other?” I suddenly flipped back into the interrupting, argumentative kid I’d always been with him.
“We did hate each other, didn’t we? Such a waste of time.” He told me to count him in, but we’d have to talk later because he had only a few hours of daylight left to finish up the trim. My new campaign manager then wiped his brow and headed back to his ladder.
Beth, Simon, and I worked through the afternoon and evening. Besides the snow angel episode, I hadn’t seen Simon since Beth had visited me on my vision quest. When she left to get the adaptor for her laptop, he walked over to the window.
“You can stop smirking,” Simon said. “I know all about you and Beth.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked.
“She told me everything.”
“She told you about us?”
“Down to the last muddy details. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
“She told you?”
Simon shrugged. “On to more important matters, yes?”
MORE IMPORTANT MATTERS? While Simon outlined his campaign ideas, I thought about his casual attitude toward Beth and his no-need-to-worry attitude about me. Even with that amazing afternoon with his girlfriend, I was obviously not considered much of a threat.
But it was hard to hate the guy; he worked hours as long as I did, was passionate and committed to change. He had been home-schooled, tutored by Oxford graduate students, and already held three patents.40 I had no choice but to bond with him; we needed his input.
Besides, he loved Monty Python. And when Beth walked in on Simon and me doing the cheese shop routine, she looked at us both with such equal affection, it almost didn’t matter that she went home with him.41
The first thing I had to do was rise from the dead. My mind raced through several scenarios from staging a revisionist reenactment of the Resurrection to taking out a full-page ad in the Globe. In the end, I went with the mundane choice of holding a press conference.
I tried to call Janine to tell her before I went public, but she must’ve still been in Seattle visiting her parents for the holidays. 42 My e-mails to her went unanswered.
Peter called the various local and national media, stating he had news about his stepson who had been presumed dead. It didn’t take long for the newspapers to comb their archives for news first on my “capture” by betagold, then on my “death.” Once they realized the potential story, they raced to the house for the 4 PM. conference.
From the safety of my room, I watched the all-too-familiar phalanx of television equipment fill the street and came down with a serious case of flop sweat.
“This was a giant mistake,” I told Beth.
“It stinks, but after this we can concentrate on the campaign.”
I pointed to the reporters descending on the front lawn. “They don’t want to hear me talk about issues. They just want the dirt on my ‘death.’”
“They don’t want to hear anyone talk about issues. They’d rather write about you dashing across the country like that guy in The Fugitive.”
Peter entered the room, a ringmaster about to take the stage. He wore a hand-scrawled LARRY FOR PRESIDENT T-shirt he’d painted that morning. “How’re you holding up, Josh?”
“Not well.”
“You want to change your mind, you can.”
He and Beth looked at me expectantly. “Let’s get this over with,” I said.
When I walked out the front door, the whir of the shutters and videocameras sounded like the clicking lock on a door being closed. I suppose there are many kids who dream about this kind of fame, but it’s a whole lot different from the inside, believe me.
I read from my prepared statement—that the media glare had driven me to extreme measures, that I regretted the pain I’d caused my friends and family, etc., etc., etc. It began to dawn on me why I had hidden behind a screen name
in the first place. I’m not someone who normally spends a lot of time worrying about getting rejected—because I’ve had so much practice—but ! I could actually feel the crowd scrutinize every word from my mouth. I was forced to muster all the persistence I had to finish my statement without heading for my hole in the woods mid-sentence. I was bombarded with questions: Was my pseudocide pre-meditated? Had I committed fraud?43 Was I starting up the Web site again? I finally got around to why we were all there.
Politicians assume young men and women of my generation are too apathetic to actually stop them from looting the world’s cookie jars, but they are wrong. There are millions of young people in this country who are sick to death of suits running the show with a blatant disregard for the price future generations will have to pay for their greediness and arrogance. You may not realize this, but we are part of the backbone of this country. We’re the ones who make your coffees, serve your food, clean your houses, watch your kids. And what do we get in return? Wages so low we have to work two jobs, with no health care, no benefits. In what kind of universe does that make sense? We’re only important to you as consumers, when we’re spending our hard-earned money on your STUFF. This is OUR country too—we deserve a say in things.
The late Senator Paul Wellstone once said, “Let there be no distance between the words you say and the life you live.” I, for one, am ready to put my time and effort where my mouth is.
I know at my age it’s impossible for me to serve as president of the United States,44 but I’m tossing my hat into the ring to raise the many issues young people have with the way this country’s goodwill and natural resources are being exploited into extinction. Our leaders are supposed to work for US; they should be doing what WE want them to do, not the other way around.
As much as I hate the thought of being back in the public eye, I can’t sit in the comfort of my privacy and hope that other people will address these issues. That is why I am declaring my candidacy for president of the United States of America. I will run as the candidate from the PEACE PARTY, an independent third party we announce today.
Vote for Larry Page 4