I think about books. I read through a stack of paperback mystery novels from the public library when the term ended, and then I read some books from Brit Lit that I blew off during the year. I watch too many movies. I think I’ve seen all the Woody Allens now.
I think about getting a job. No more babysitting. I hate it. Maybe I could help out at the Woodland Park Zoo for a few bucks an hour. Or at the library.
I think about getting my driver’s license. Not that I’d have a car, but I could take the Honda on weekends, maybe. My birthday is in August. I’ll be sixteen.
I think about turning sixteen, and how I won’t have a party like I always thought I would, with my friends all sleeping over and being silly and eating cake.
I probably think too much.
In early July, I got on my first ever airplane and went to join my mom in San Francisco, where she’s doing her show. I didn’t want to go, I said I’d rather rot than hang out with her all summer, and my dad made a lot more fuss about her being selfish and how that wasn’t how they’d agreed to run their marriage—but in the end, she went—and I realized I wanted to go too. I wanted to see some men in drag and some general California stuff and just go somewhere where the air smells different. I called her up when she was in Los Angeles and asked if I could come meet her in San Francisco. It was funny. I didn’t think I’d be as glad to see her as I was when she picked me up at the airport. When we’re done here, we’re going to Chicago and Minneapolis.
Don’t get me wrong. Elaine Oliver is driving me nuts, because I have to share her hotel room and she is so full of self-importance, what with an audience clapping for her every night, that she’s damn near impossible to deal with—but she’s given up the macrobiotic thing and she took me to five different Chinese restaurants for lunch, all in one week. They have an amazing Chinatown here. It feels like you’re in a different country.
When she’s doing her show, I stay in the hotel and write on her laptop—which is the stuff you’re reading now. Or I mess around with my watercolors. Or read more mysteries. Then I fall asleep and she comes home and calls my dad and moans about how much she misses him, which wakes me up. And then I talk to her while she takes off all her makeup.
In the daytime, we go do tourist stuff. I saw the Golden Gate Bridge, rode a streetcar, toured Alcatraz. We walked through the Castro district, where someone asked my mom for an autograph.
Last Monday, the day when theaters are dark, we rented a car and drove down the coast to see Big Sur. I drove part of the way, and when my mother commented eight times about how fast I was changing lanes and had I checked whether I was going the speed limit, I told her to please be quiet for at least fifteen minutes and see if we stayed alive. And she did.
At one point we stopped and took a picnic down to the beach. It was cold, and sand got in our potato salad, but we stayed anyway. There were surfers in the water, looking like seals in their wet suits, sailing into shore on huge waves. We watched them for like an hour.
Tommy Hazard would have loved it.
I loved it.
I was out of the Tate universe, standing on the edge of the sea.
1 Doctor Z: “Is it impossible that he liked you as a person and just wanted to go to the movies with you?”
Me: “Yes.”2 And he was right! Ag.3 Complete idiocy. I know.4 In case you don’t remember: Jackson, Noel, Angelo and Cabbie.5 I wanted to kill him. Telling another guy how he squeezed my boob! What a sleazy gross thing to say. But now, I think it’s not so different from what I told my friends about Shiv and Jackson, and what I know about Kaleb and Finn and Pete.6 Or actually down, in this case, given that his hand was coming from over my shoulder.7 Me: “You let him? Isn’t that supposed to be fun for you?”
Her: “It’s supposed to be, but I get bored.”
“How come?”
“I don’t know, it’s just boring. Maybe he’s not very good at it.”
“What’s it like?”
“Not much. Not like in the sex-ed books. I think about other stuff while he’s doing it.”
“Why bother, then?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “It’s something to do. I think it makes him feel like a sex god.”
“Maybe you could train him. So he’d get better at it.”
“Maybe. I hate to burst his little sex god bubble. He seems so proud of himself, after.”
After the Adam “debacle” in chapter one, Roo and Kim begin a notebook called The Boy Book in which they write down everything they know about boys. Have you ever started a book like this on your own or with your friends? Do you think it would be useful? What information would you include?
On page 41, Ruby spills her guts to Kim about Finn. Is this smart? Are there circumstances in which it’s better to keep your mouth shut? Has something like this ever happened to you—you tried to do the right thing and it backfired?
Ruby gives three examples of the way love works in the movies. In her example on page 64, the couples hate each other half the time but still get together in the end. In her example on page 65, the couple breaks up, but then the man realizes that he loves the woman and can’t exist without her, and they get back together and live happily ever after. And on page 198, the hopeless dorky guy who’s been there all along eventually gets the girl. Do you agree with Ruby that these happy endings don’t happen in real life? Pick one of the movies mentioned and discuss it. Does the romantic situation in the movie ring true? Can you think of other movies, books, or television shows that would fit on Ruby’s lists?
Ruby discovers that dating Jackson isn’t the way she thought dating was supposed to be. Have you ever discovered that your ideas about something were wrong? How was the reality different from what you had imagined?
In chapter six, Kim and Ruby invent the perfect boyfriend and name him Tommy Hazard. Do you have your own Tommy Hazard? Are there hazards in creating a “perfect” boyfriend?
After stealing Jackson, Kim tells Ruby, “When you find your Tommy Hazard you’ll understand. I honestly couldn’t help it.” Do you agree with Kim’s justification of her behavior? Does she do the right thing?
Even though Noel has become Roo’s only ally, she turns on him on page 176 after he says, “… if those are your friends you’ve got no need for enemies.” Why does this upset Ruby so much? Do you think Noel is right? Why is Ruby not yet ready to give up her old life, even though it has become the source of such pain?
When Kim calls Ruby a slut in class, Mr. Wallace gives a lecture on the negative effects of labels and points out that “there are no equivalent epithets for men whatsoever, and didn’t that say something about how women are viewed in our culture?” (page 177). What does it say? Can you give examples of the negative effects of labels, from real life or from movies, music, television shows, or books?