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Authors: Peter Cameron

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BOOK: Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel
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“Not exactly,” he said.
“Then what are you having?”
“I’d rather not say, James. Suffice it to say I will not be at the house this weekend. You and Gillian are free to use it if you wish.”
“Are you having plastic surgery?”
“No,” said my father.
“Good,” I said.
“Why good?”
“I don’t know. I’d just feel very weird if you altered your appearance for reasons of vanity. I think you look fine, Dad, and you don’t need any surgery.”
“What about these bags under my eyes?” he asked.
“What bags?”
“These,” he said, indicating the dark slightly protuberant bag beneath each of his eyes.
“Those aren’t bags, Dad. Just get a good night’s sleep. And stop eating meat. That’s all you need to do.”
“Well, they are bags and I’m having them fixed on Saturday. And it’s none of your business.”
“Wow, Dad,” I said. “Plastic surgery.”
“It’s not called plastic surgery anymore. It’s elective cosmetic surgery.”
“Wow, Dad. Elective cosmetic surgery.”
“It’s not a big deal. Please don’t tell Gillian or your mother. Listen, I should head back downstairs. I don’t want to miss that conference call. Do you want dessert? You’re welcome to stay and order some if you’d like.”
“No thanks. I’m fine.”
“All right, then,” said my father. “Let’s blow this pop stand.”
In the subway uptown, on my way back to the gallery, I thought about what I had said to my father. I had no desire to go to college, and practically from the moment I was accepted at Brown, I had been trying to devise a feasible alternative plan, but it had seemed inevitable—not going to college was simply not an option I thought I had. After lunch with my father, I realized it was. It wouldn’t be easy and it would piss my parents off, but I was eighteen, an adult, and they couldn’t force me to go to college against my will.
The main problem was I don’t like people in general and people my age in particular, and people my age are the ones who go to college. I would consider going to college if it were a college of older people. I’m not a sociopath or a freak (although I don’t suppose people who are sociopaths or freaks self-identify as such); I just don’t enjoy being with people. People, at least in my experience, rarely say anything interesting to each other. They always talk about their lives and they don’t have very interesting lives. So I get impatient. For some reason I think you should only say something if it’s interesting or absolutely has to be said. I had never really been aware of how difficult these feelings made things for me until an experience I had this spring.
A horrible experience.
 
April 2003
 
I WENT TO THIS SEMINAR THING IN WASHINGTON, D.C., called The American Classroom. Two students from every state were selected to participate and were carted off to Washington for a week. Every senior in my high school had to write an essay about some aspect of government or politics, and in an effort to ensure that I wouldn’t be picked, I wrote what I thought was this very lame and silly essay about how I believed women make better government leaders than men, because women seem better able to think about others, and men—or at least men who seek power—seem able to think only about themselves: their wealth, their power, the size of their cock. Anyway, even though I do believe that, it was a stupid essay, but somehow I was selected. I didn’t want to go—the program was allegedly bipartisan but the NRA or the DAR or some organization like that ran it, and I knew it would be awful. I’m an anarchist. I hate politics. I hate politics and I hate religion: I’m an atheist, too. If it weren’t so tragic, I think it would almost be funny that religion is supposed to be this good force in the world, making people moral, and charitable, and kind. The majority of the world’s conflicts, past and present, are all caused by religious intolerance. I could go on and on about this because I find it very upsetting, especially with things like 9/11, but I won’t. The point is I didn’t want to go to The American Classroom, I knew it would be a nightmare, but I was told I had to go. This was right about the time last fall that I was applying to colleges, and being selected for The American Classroom was supposedly a very big deal that would get me into Harvard and Yale. (It didn’t.)
Of course I went with a bad attitude but it was genuinely awful right from the beginning. Actually the beginning was okay, before I got to D.C., that is. I took a train from Penn Station to Washington, and I love traveling on trains, even pathetic Amtrak. The
very
beginning was bad—I had to deal with going through the nightmare that is called Penn Station. The idea that there was once a beautiful and majestic building in New York City that I cannot experience because some men in the 1960s decided to tear it down (this is a good example of why women should be in positions of power—I seriously doubt women would have torn down the old Penn Station) infuriates me. At the new, improved Penn Station they don’t announce the platform until about thirty seconds before the train departs, which means you have to stand around staring up at the (really ugly) signboard and then make this mad dash along with thousands of other people to the announced platform if you want to get a seat. So the very beginning of my trip was unpleasant, but once I got on the train, and found a good seat in the quiet car where people were forbidden to listen to music and/or talk on cell phones, things were okay.
One of the most foreboding things about The American Classroom was the dress code. “Men” had to wear jackets, ties, non-denim pants, and leather shoes. “Ladies” had to wear dresses or dress slacks and “appropriate” blouses and leather shoes. I found it a little distressing that a program supposedly celebrating the wonder of democracy had this totalitarian approach to dressing.
So I was wearing my jacket and tie and leather shoes and appropriate pants and enjoying my last minutes of freedom on the train ride down there. In addition to the aforementioned costume, we were also required to wear name tags the entire time we were in Washington. We had been sent our tags so we could be wearing them when we arrived at whatever airport or bus or train station we arrived at. These name tags said THE AMERICAN CLASSROOM in red-white-and-blue-striped letters and beneath that, in black letters, our name and the state we represented. Mine was in my pocket, because I refused to put it on until the last possible moment.
When I got off the train at Union Station it suddenly occurred to me that I could just pass the group by unidentified and wander out by myself and have a lovely solitary week in Washington. My mother had given me her credit card “just in case” I needed it, so I would have no problem checking into a hotel. I could spend a lot of time at the National Gallery or just stay in my hotel room reading
Can You Forgive Her?,
which I had brought with me on the off chance that I might have some time in between the indoctrination sessions. I was thinking about this when I saw a large group of oddly attired young adults not far ahead. A woman dressed like a flight attendant stood in their midst, apparently checking names off a list on her clipboard. The students had their name tags on and stood around like cattle waiting to be slaughtered. I walked past them and out the front door and stood on the sidewalk. A cabby asked me if I needed a cab and I said no. I knew I had to put on my name tag and turn around, go back inside, and join that miserable group. I said to myself, There are things in your life that you don’t want to do that you will have to do. You cannot always do and go what and where you please. That is not how life works. This is one of those times when you must do and go what and where you do not want to do or go. I was nervously fingering my name tag inside my jacket pocket, flipping the needlelike prong in and out of its catch. And then I stuck my finger hard against it, hard enough so that I knew it would draw blood, because I wanted to bleed. If I had to do this, I wanted to bleed doing this.
When the perky lady had ticked off all the names on her list, we were ushered out of Union Station and into a waiting van. The lady turned out to be a (Republican) congressman’s wife named Susan Porter Wright; she was a volunteer for The American Classroom. She told us how much she looked forward to it every year, how wonderful it was to meet the brightest and most civic-minded students from across the nation. Despite the fact we were all wearing name tags, she had us go around and introduce ourselves. After that she ignored us, talking on her cell phone to a caterer about a luau-inspired birthday party for her husband at which she wanted to roast a pig in her backyard.
I knew we were all staying in a hotel, and I had pictured one of the nice hotels near the Mall, so I was a bit panicked when we drove quickly through Washington and got on the highway in the direction of Arlington, Virginia. None of the other students seemed to notice that we were about to be transported across state lines, which I believe is a federal offense. They all seemed very well adjusted and friendly, chattering about where they came from and where they were going to college and how excited they were to be in Washington, D.C. (briefly, for we had already left it behind), for The American Classroom. One girl actually said, “This is the most exciting thing I’ve ever done in my life,” but she was from North Dakota, so it made some sense. One girl asked me where I was from and I said New York, which I had already said during the very recent introductions, and the girl said Oh, where in New York, and I said New York City, and she said her mother was born on Staten Island, and I said cool. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
We drove farther and farther away from Washington, D.C., and I was about to ask Mrs. Wright where we were going when we got off the highway and pulled into the parking lot of a TraveLodge. It was one of those hotels in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by about six different highways, that you pass by and wonder who would ever stay there and why. Places like that, which seem unconnected to life as we live it, really unnerve me. It reminded me of an unfortunate incident about a year ago (that actually, now that I come to think of it, prefigures the unfortunate incident I’m about to relate). I met my father in Los Angeles for a few days; he was there for business, and we stayed in a hotel from which you could see the Getty Museum, all white and pretty and reflecting sunshine on the top of a hill, and so the first afternoon while he took the rental car to a meeting downtown, I set out to walk to the Getty Museum. I thought this would be fairly easy since I could see it; it seemed merely a matter of going around the corner and up the hill. But it turns out you can’t walk to the Getty. At one point the sidewalk just ended for no apparent reason and I was forced to walk on the shoulder of the road, where obviously I was not supposed to be walking because I almost got run over. Drivers in L.A. are not pedestrian-friendly; it’s like they’ve never seen pedestrians before and they don’t believe they’re real, so they can drive past them at eighty miles an hour. The road I thought would take me to the Getty Museum only took me to an eight-lane freeway, which I knew I could not cross, even though I could see the Getty Museum right in front of me. Risking death, I retraced my steps and found the service entrance to the Getty, a road that went up the back side of the hill the museum was so coyly perched upon, but the guards in a booth at the entrance to the road said only vehicles were allowed on the service road: apparently human feet must never touch it. This seemed so absurd to me, and I was so hot and pissed off, that I got belligerent and started to walk up the road, and the guards came charging out of the booth with their assault rifles drawn and practically tackled me. They threatened to call the police, but I pleaded with them and they ended up taking my picture and made me sign a form that said I would never visit the Getty Museum under any circumstances ever again. (I’ve since had this fantasy that at some point in my life I’ll be given some major award and the award ceremony will be at the Getty Museum and I’ll have to decline the award and they will ask me why and I’ll tell them it’s because of their unenlightened policy concerning pedestrian access to the museum and they’ll realize how stupid it is and build a walkway up to the museum and name it after me.)
The location of the TraveLodge was not its only drawback. In order to conserve money and foster camaraderie amongst participants, we were housed three to a room, and this meant that a cot was stuck in every room, and of course the democratic principle of first come, first served was in effect, and since I was the last guy to arrive it meant I got the cot.
The experience of living with two other guys in a hotel room was so traumatic I don’t remember much about it. I know this is all very abnormal and neurotic of me and I should probably shut up and join the army, sleep in a room with dozens of men, be forced to shit in a doorless stall, and just get over myself, but I hadn’t joined the army and all I wanted was a place to be alone. Being alone is a basic need of mine like food and water, but I realize it is not so for others. My roommates seemed to enjoy living in the same room in a farting, let’s-smoke-dope kind of way and didn’t seem to mind the fact that they were never alone. I only feel like myself when I am alone. Interacting with other people does not come naturally to me; it is a strain and requires effort, and since it does not come naturally I feel like I am not really myself when I make that effort. I feel fairly comfortable with my family, but even with them I sometimes feel this strain of not being alone.
The last time I had been faced with a communal living situation like this was the summer I was twelve and was sent to sailing camp. It was the summer my parents got divorced and they sent both Gillian and me away. Gillian was fifteen and got to go on a grand European tour with her friend Hilary Candlewood’s family, but I was banished to sailing camp on Cape Cod. I think my parents had waited too long to set something up for me, so all the normal camps were full (not that they would have been much better). I found out later that Camp Zephyr wasn’t even a normal sailing camp, but one of those camps advertised in the back of
The New York Times Magazine
(along with the military prep schools) that supposedly reform seriously troubled adolescents through the wonders of hard physical labor and the glories of nature. Even the motto of Camp Zephyr was sinister: “Be Patient and Tough; Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You.”
BOOK: Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel
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