Perfection

Some adult content. Read at your own discretion.

He’s been telling nothing but lies since school started. Lies about where he’s been and who with, lies about keeping up in class and being on top of things. He’s always “fine” and “okay” and “well”, but he’s been wearing the same clothes all week, and the last time he took a shower was Sunday. He spends all night on the computer doing absolutely nothing, no one tells him to go to bed. He’s old enough to know better, sure. If you want to be treated like an adult you’d better start acting like one. Right? They don’t know his history, how he spent years trying to parent himself and his little sisters, always presenting a perfect image to the outside world. He never gave himself permission to be a kid. He never admitted to feeling helpless. He never asked for help. The worst part is that it was all for nothing. It fell apart anyway. The older guy offers to give him a haircut for free. He likes the way they look at him, he can’t help it. It gives him a rush, a sense of being in control. Sometimes it makes him hard. Big deal, he’s not immune to feeling. No girl would ever look at him this way, he’s not that special. And even if she did he’d never notice her. But the way these older guys act around him, it’s better than any high. It makes him feel attractive and wanted. It makes him feel special. He’s so eager to please them, always smiling and polite. Here, I’ll do it, I don‘t mind. He’s been craving a father figure for so long that he’d be willing to do almost anything. Telling him “no parent in their right mind would ever treat a kid this way” would be pointless, he’d laugh in their faces. He knows what guys want, and it’s a small price to pay to get what he needs. Besides, he’s not a little kid anymore. He shouldn’t have to talk around it, talk in riddles. It is what it is. How dare they say he’s putting himself at risk, when all he wants is to feel safe. To have someone love him, to mean something to someone. To be cuddled and held. To be allowed to feel small and needy. Don’t talk to me about setting boundaries or how to respect my body. The difference between good and bad touching, like I’m some sheltered 10 year-old. What love is and what it isn’t. And don’t act so shocked and surprised, like you didn’t already know. There’s no love here at all, no teaching by example. The atmosphere is so tense it makes his stomach hurt. They’ll barely look you in the eye, and the few times they’ve tried to touch him he pulled away so fast he almost scared himself. There's no law against grieving. He should be allowed to feel sad and cheated. To feel angry and hurt. To throw his clothes and bedding on the floor and scream, scream, scream until there’s nothing left in him. I can’t be that perfect kid anymore. I’m sick of trying.

Things

There are so many things a kid can’t discuss in therapy. She tells him ”this is a safe place to share”, ”you can talk to me about anything” and ”everything we talk about in this room stays between us”, but it’s all lies. Honesty puts you ”at risk”, he learned this a long time ago. You’re left with the not-so-important things. ”How’s school?” Fine. ”Are you getting enough sleep?” I guess. ”Did you do anything fun over the weekend?” Not really. ”You look happy/sad/angry/bored today.” Sometimes she’ll ask him to fill out a form where you rate your feelings on a scale from 1-10. He never strays too far from what’s considered normal. Not too high, not too low, but somewhere in the middle. Indifference is good. A blank expression is even better. Don’t cross your arms, don’t clench your fists. Don’t cross your legs, it’s feminine. Don’t sit with your legs too wide apart, it’s threatening. Long sleeves, even though it’s 85 degrees outside. If pushed he’ll say, ”I miss my dog”. I miss. Me. She once asked ”Do you think you’ll grow up to be a perp? Is this something you worry about?” It made him wonder if she’d ask a girl the same thing. With boys it’s automatic. Only boys grow up to be perpetrators, abusers, rapists, wife beaters, sadists. It was a question made to rattle him, shake him up, make him talk, but he hates her now. Men are inherently evil, we’re wired this way. There must be something wrong with our bodies, something wrong with our brains. There’s something wrong with me. The truth is he’s more worried about growing up to be like his mother, hopelessly stuck and powerless, unable to do a damn thing about anything. He wants to say, “I have something in common with her, we’re both scared of men”, but it sounds ridiculous, funny almost. What if she laughs at him? He can feel his face redden. The pain stays. It stays right here.

Fine

For a brief moment I feel fine, almost a little drunk or high. My body resting on top of the sheets, relaxed and warm like I‘d spent the whole day playing outside. There’s no one else in the room, no anxiety or pain. He’s not coming back. Do I want him to? I feel safe here. I’m laughing, see? Giggling in a little boy voice. I’m beyond tired. I could sleep for days, months, years and it wouldn’t be enough. When I was younger I couldn’t stand the sight of blood. Its bold aggressive colour, its warmth and smell. It doesn’t bother me as much anymore. The cuts scream look at me, please help me, please notice me, please hold me, but they’re old reminders. I haven’t cut in a long time. I miss the release, being able to cry. I’m fine now, I’m doing fine. It’s barely noticeable, what I’m doing to my body. I look healthy, you said so yourself. You gave me the all clear, permission to slide further, deeper into hell.

The little kid had so many questions. He waited and waited, but the opportunity never came. They moved quickly from A to Z, rushed through the different stages of grief, told him to share but never paused for long enough to really listen. Silence is uncomfortable. Grownups like to see results. When there’s no visible progress people lose their patience and then they give up. Throw away the crayons and sketch pads, the ugly rag dolls he wouldn’t touch. You win, Charlie. You can go now.

An interview with author Andrew Smith

I first read Andrew Smith’s Ghost Medicine in 2008 and I immediately felt that his writing came from a very ”real place”. Here’s an author who takes his readers seriously, even if they happen to be young. Who understands that girls aren’t the only ones who crave intelligent stories and characters with some depth to them. Who writes boldly about pain, loss and growing up without adding heaps of sugar. I had never read anything quite like it before. If I were to write a list of books that all teen guys should read, Ghost Medicine would be top of the list. I had some questions I've been dying to ask Mr Smith, and he kindly agreed to answer them.

You’re very passionate about getting boys to read more. Did you have a male reader role model growing up?

My father was quite a reader. In every house we ever lived in, he always made one room a library, with wall-length, floor-to-ceiling shelves filled with books. When I was a kid, I just took it for granted that everyone lived that way – with houses filled with books, and little attention paid to television. When I got older, especially after settling in Southern California, I realized how wrong I was.

From a teacher’s point of view, do you believe that boys and girls learn things differently, and do you think we could benefit from being taught in separate classrooms?

There is no doubt that boys’ and girls’ brains are wired differently and they learn, process, and articulate things differently (and I am also the parent of a boy and a girl – both teens). The problem has been, at least in American schools, that we’ve been moving toward a standardized approach and assessment of all kids, so every child, despite their individual traits and abilities, is being expected to fit into a particular mold, and the system is becoming increasingly intolerant of differences among our young people. This is really sad and scary.

We do know that boys tend to achieve more and behave better in gender-segregated classes. I’m not a proponent of eliminating choice, but I would definitely like to see all schools offering the option of gender-segregated classrooms.

One of your author friends says that “boys like violence”. Do you agree with their statement, and if so, do you think we’re wired this way or do you think it’s cultural? Are we a product of nature or nurture? In Ghost Medicine, Troy kills a snake without flinching, but when he’s forced to kill a mountain lion his reaction is quite different.

Ha ha ha! I know exactly who you’re talking about, Charlie. But I’ll opt for a broader definition of “violence” in that it means something that moves, is kinetic, has energy – as opposed to necessarily being evil and harmful. In that sense, there is no difference between boys and girls. Boys and girls report enjoying action/adventure stories to the same degree. As far as “boyish” behavior is concerned, I think that almost all of it (with very few exceptions) reflects the expectations of the environment in which boys are expected to succeed – in that case, 80% is nurture, and 20% is nature.

The thing about Troy in Ghost Medicine is that if you look at those two incidents, when he kills the snake it has something to do with saving his friend. When he shoots the mountain lion, it’s more about saving himself. I think boys, by their nature, do develop a strong bond for their “team,” almost to the point of selflessness. That’s why rulers draft boys to die in their armies.

In the Path of Falling Objects is an intense read, it‘s like a road trip from hell. Did you have any reservations about including so much violence in a YA novel? Have you had any negative reactions from parents/teachers/librarians, and were you ever worried about it ending up on the Banned Books list?

Actually, I was surprised with the overwhelmingly positive reaction to the book from parents, teachers, and librarians. A lot of schools have put In the Path of Falling Objects on their reading lists, especially because of its tie-in to the Vietnam War, and I’ve received numerous emails from kids all over the country who’ve done book reports on it.

I can only hope that one day a book that I write will actually end up on a Banned Books list.

The biggest complaints I have received so far, on all my books, is about animals dying or being killed, and references I’ve made to kids drinking, using tobacco, or smoking pot (things that kids never do… right?). I’ve never had a single complaint about cruelty between people, the senselessness of war, or the loss of family – but just whisper about a kid getting drunk or someone shooting a dog and certain people get really angry. I don’t get it, to be honest.

Many boys grow up without a father (or without any positive male role models), they’ve no idea what a “real“ man is. Is this something you think about as an author (and as a teacher/sports coach)?

I do think about that because my father died when I was young, so I feel like I missed out on a lot of things that he was supposed to show me and tell me, but we never had the chance. Little, dumb things, like how to gap a spark plug, and stuff like that (I am totally hopeless when it comes to doing anything with my cars). So I was always envious of my guy friends who had – and still have – their dads around in their lives.

Your characters are very complex, that‘s one of the many things I love about your writing. Troy, for example is both strong and vulnerable. Which character do you identify with the most? What were you like at 17? Growing up, what were some of the things you struggled with? My outlet (or release if you like) is writing and dance, what was yours?

I’ve answered this question differently at various points in my career as a novelist. I’d have to say that the character I most closely identify with is Jack, from The Marbury Lens. There are lots of reasons for this.

In the summer when I was 17, I got kidnapped by a complete stranger, in a situation that was very similar to Jack Whitmore’s abduction in The Marbury Lens.

My parents were both still alive at the time, and, I think, like boys are often likely to do, I never told anyone about what happened to me. At my age, and with the level of independence I had, dropping off the radar for a while went totally unnoticed by my family and friends, anyway.

Besides, like Jack, I mostly blamed myself for what happened to me. And I knew right away, too, that I was in a serious jam; and believed that I probably was not going to live through it. But, similar to Jack’s story, my abductor was careless and I managed to get away from him the morning that he was planning on transporting me to a different location.

When I went home, it was hard to pretend like nothing had changed. I was completely convinced that something had happened to my brain, and I’d never be able to see things clearly again. I stopped talking to my family and friends. I think my parents just figured this was a normal teenage phase.

So Jack has this really intense and angry voice. He is often the object of his own deepest disappointment. I think I was like that for a long time, and I’m still like that quite a bit all these years later. I looked for all kinds of outlets – I run, I do all kinds of outdoor stuff, but the thing that’s worked best for me is the writing.

The point is, and I mention this in the next question, too – about The Marbury Lens – is that too many people, I think, expect the happily-ever-after endings in literature with young adult protagonists, because it makes them too uncomfortable to imagine a world – this world – in which things don’t always get wrapped up in sweetly scented packages for kids. But there are a lot of kids out there – kids like me – who want someone to tell our not-so-cozy stories and stop pretending like we don’t exist, and what’s worse, stop making us feel like we’ve done something wrong because we didn’t “rise above” and find that happily-ever-after place.

Again, I think boys, in general, won’t talk about certain things because they’re expected – nurtured – to be quiet when it comes to things they sometimes, unfortunately, are subjected to. And, as a reflection of that, many people in “the real world” get very uncomfortable when light is shined on things they’d rather ignore.

Your upcoming novel Stick has a gay character in it. Tell me more about him. Why do you think so many straight male authors "shy away" from writing about gay teens?

There are a few gay characters in Stick. Bosten McClellan, Paul Buckley, and a homeless kid named Jericho. Bosten is one of the most important characters in the book, because he really is a catalyst for all the things that happen in it. He’s 16, lives in Washington with a very rules-oriented set of chain-smoking parents and a younger brother named Stark. When the boys’ parents discover Bosten has a boyfriend, Paul, they throw their sixteen-year-old son out of the house. Paul’s parents are even less tolerant toward their boy. As sad as those situations are, I knew a few gay kids when I was growing up who went through similar experiences (without revealing too much of the plot). My older brother (who died just a couple years after my father), William, was gay. I knew a lot of his friends, and I always had this sense of the enormity of the stories they had to tell, but it was always remarkable to me how they lived in relative silence and seclusion about the things they had to go through.

As far as the authors and writing about gay teens is concerned, I have a few ideas. First, from my own perspective, I only write about things that I know. I know what it’s like to be a kid with an older brother who’s gay, so it wasn’t difficult to write about, and, I think, treat the subject fairly. Second, I think a lot of people are afraid to deal with sexuality and male teens unless they confine their story arcs to nailing the hot and unattainable girl. It’s also why we see so few novels that deal with sexual abuse against boys. These are things that make some people very uncomfortable, so they’d rather not deal with it, or, if they do, then they reduce their depictions to stereotypes of gay boys, or to survivors of sexual abuse who grow and triumph and heal beautifully. This is the problem (and the complaint) that a few people have with The Marbury Lens: that Jack is so damaged by his abduction (which, again, some people find to be very disturbing), and, in the end, he never gets over it and is “all better” again, and the psychological consequences result in breakdowns in his healthy relationships with people who love him. That’s what really happens to boys in the real world.

Name 3 books that left a lasting impression on you.

Only three??? First, I’d like to say Thank You for not asking me about my “favorites.” I don’t have a favorite anything. But these are three books that definitely have a permanent spot on the shelf in my head:

In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway

Eagle or Sun? by Octavio Paz

The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy

And lastly, why do you write? And why should teens write?

I’ll be honest. This was a tough question. At the risk of sounding conceited, I think I write because I get a sense of satisfaction with the way I put words together on a page. I like what I do. I never actually intended to seek publication. I did it on a kind of whim and sold the first book I ever tried to have published (Ghost Medicine). To be honest, again, there was a big nagging part of me that was afraid of having people read my book, and it’s been that way with every book I’ve written. So, it’s a really personal thing with me.

I don’t think that teens, necessarily, should write. But they definitely shouldn’t be discouraged from doing it, either. And in the past 30 years or so, with the changing political and economic stresses on the world, I think young people are being pushed into – and, sadly, buying into – the rush-rush techno/science/big bucks/don’t let the Chinese get ahead of us mentality that devalues artistic creativity in favor of having a global-economic-competitive advantage. One day soon, I hope, people will begin to reevaluate this notion and maybe wake up to the idea that creative thought and originality of voice are the foundation to solving every problem we will ever face.

Andrew Smith is the author of Ghost Medicine, In the Path of Falling Objects, The Marbury Lens (out this fall) and Stick (out fall of 2011). He lives in California.

Mirror Twin

I’ve taken to running before breakfast. Dance class isn’t enough. You look healthy, she says. You look so much stronger. And normally I’d feel happy, reassured, maybe even proud, but today is different. I feel anything but strong. I’m tired, easily triggered. Absentminded, like I’m barely present in the room. In my head healthy equals fat. Perfectly fine means overweight. Fit or in shape, is a polite way of saying you could stand to lose a few. Everything feels too tight. The scales lie. I tug at the elastic band. My dance belt and shorts leave pink lines on my skin. I’m growing into my body, becoming more muscular. This is a good thing, something positive. It’s exactly how it should be. But it’s not okay, it disgusts me. I see fat where there is muscle. She talks about healthy eating habits and I stare at my mirror twin. Exercise moderately, not excessively. Practice, then rest. Let your body recover. Everything in moderation. Yes. We nod, but everyone knows it’s bullshit, fat isn’t tolerated here. We’re all perfectionists, chasing the ideal dancer’s build. I’ve never understood the difference between self image and body image, it all blurs together. Maybe I don’t want to understand. She’s so much tougher on the girls. It’s painful to watch, the way she stands behind the “heavy” girl and stares at the two of them in the mirror, comparing bodies. Grown woman versus teenage girl. Thin versus what ought to be normal. The girl looks composed, she even manages to smile. But on her way to the changing rooms she starts crying and the other girls rally around her. She cries like a boy, quiet angry tears. You’re not fat, don’t listen to her. She’s a bitch. I want to tell her about it. Casually, like it’s no big deal. I’m not the only one, I know that. Not in this place where you can’t hide from the mirrors and glances. Spoken casually, it’s less dangerous. Less real. Even to me.