Inside The Mind Of Gideon Rayburn Read online

  inside the mind of gideon rayburn

  inside the mind of gideon rayburn

  Sarah Miller

  m ST. MARTIN'S GRIFFIN m NEW YORK

  INSIDE THE MIND OF Gideon rayburn. Copyright © 2006 by Sarah Miller and Alloy Entertainment. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin's Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  Produced by Alloy Entertainment

  151 West 26th Street, New York, New York 10001

  www.stmartins.com

  ISBN: 978-1-4299-3243-1

  for eric

  Contents

  acknowledgments

  Who am i?

  Where am i?

  tiny dancer

  cullen and nicholas

  the yellow thong

  the bet

  more girls, more guys

  sneaking out

  skinny fat

  of the buffalo mcgarrys

  of the bahia blanca benitez-joneses

  may be not zero game

  sleepover

  crates aren't inhumane

  antifreeze

  it's fiona's party, and you'll come if she wants you to

  vicodin makes you love yourself

  upstairs

  bonding

  pork butt

  impulsive gid

  hero

  and the other one dies

  image rose

  totally playing the dog

  give me an a

  first base

  surprise indeed

  really okay

  tick tock

  the yellow ghost

  sour november

  it's not the bet

  please don't talk about love tonight

  the gueen city

  happily ever after

  acknowledgments

  First and foremost I am grateful to everyone at Alloy Entertainment and St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to write this book, and I single out the following individuals: Josh Bank, Bob Levy, Les Morgenstein, Sally Richardson, and Jennifer Weis.

  Thanks also to Peter Lopez.

  Clearly, I am most indebted to Jennifer Rudolph Walsh at William Morris.

  Thanks to Joy Gorman, my manager and beloved friend, who makes sure i don't do anything too stupid, and to Tom McGrath, my Men's Health editor, who makes sure I don't starve to death.

  Thanks to Mike Abssy and my parents.

  The following is a list of people who either read this book in various incarnations or provided general goodwill and support: Nancy Bell, Phil DAmecourt, Colin Dickerman, Jennifer Doyle, Melissa Kantor, Liz Kinder, Martha Lucy, Heather Lukes, Jennifer Lyne, the real Molly McGarry, Michael James Reed, Anna Reich, Bill Stavru, Kim Stenton, Nancy Updike, and Valerie Van Galder.

  Last I thank Ben Schrank. Many people helped with this book, but Ben was the one constant. There are a lot of things I could say about him, all nice, but I'll just say the only one that matters: I could not have written this book without him.

  inside the mind of gideon rayburn

  Who am i?

  Like most girls, I want a lot. Fame and fortune. Equal rights. Shoes no one else has. But I'd trade all that in for the Perfect Guy. (Don't tell me there's something wrong with that. I don't know of a single person who doesn't spend most of her time thinking about love.) Anyway, ever since I could think, I have been imagining and reimagining the exact sort of boy I want to love and who would love me back. Basically, I imagine someone who has all the good attributes of the male species and whose bad ones wouldn't ruin my life.

  I never thought it would be a guy like Gideon Rayburn. He's not gorgeous, not overwhelmingly brilliant, not all that great at sports. Jesus. Why am I bothering to explain to you why he isn't stereotypically crushworthy? Trust me, you'll see for yourself soon enough.

  The point is, he's so not the kind of guy I ever thought I would fall for. But then again, how would I have guessed that I'd be seeing what goes on inside his head? That my eyes and thoughts would go with him everywhere? When you know someone like Gideon this well, it's kind of impossible not to fall in love with him. And when I say I know him well, understand: As I tell you his story, as it happens, I not only know what he's doing, I know what he wishes he were doing, what he thinks he should be doing, and what he would wish he were doing if he were just a slightly better person. (Don't get me wrong. Gideon's amazing. But he's a boy. He's fifteen. And he's a typical American kid from the suburbs. My point: He's got a lot working for and against him.)

  By the way, Gideon has no idea I'm inside his head. Guys are cute, but they're not very observant.

  My feelings, though perhaps passionate for someone of my age and experience, are pretty normal. But my situation—that is unique, and that's what puts me in a position to tell you everything. I mean it. Everything you've ever wondered about what guys think (and feared about what they want), I'm going to tell you. You are going to learn what boys say when girls are not in the room and how they feel when they're on top of one. I will, for now, leave out one very crucial thing: who I am. I'm in this story too, and not just inside Gid's head. But there are a lot of girls—and women—in this story. Which one am I?

  Where am i?

  The first thoughts I hear that are not my own are disjointed, weird, and uncertain. That should have been my first clue that something was wrong. They are: Do I like this place or do I want to go home? I'm just a simple kid from the suburbs of Virginia. What do I know about how to act at a prep school? But I'm not a total idiot, right? Hmm. Or maybe I am. Oh, God. And these boxers...the seam is stretched so uncomfortably against the left side of my nut sack. What earthly reason is there for my not having thrown them out?

  Like everyone else, I am used to hearing my own thoughts. These are not my thoughts. I would never refer to myself as simple. I am not from Virginia. I am not remotely an idiot, even at my most self-hating. Naturally, it is nut sack that throws me like an earthquake up against a very hard wall.

  Thoughts keep coming: Don't be scared, everything's going to be fine. Yes, prep school's a little alien to you but it's not literally alien. I mean, it's not as if I have left this world. Some of the same rules must apply. And then: Don't let Dad know you're scared, because he'll just make it about him.

  Then I start to see and hear things that I am not actually seeing or hearing. I mean, I am actually seeing and hearing them. But I am not in the place where these things are being seen and heard. I do not know how I got here. But I am in someone else's head.

  The boy whose head I'm in is looking out the window of a car. He (we?) is in the passenger seat. He swings his head to the left. What I am seeing, through these eyes that are not mine, in this place where I am not, is a man I don't know, about fifty years old, and he's driving a late-model Ford Silverado. He fiddles with the radio and settles on an Eagles song, "Lyin' Eyes." (For those of you not familiar with their repertoire, this song's about a guilty but incorrigibly unfaithful woman.) The man nods through the chorus, a faraway look in his eyes, then starts to twist an unfashionable and graying mustache.

  A new thought accompanies this not terribly pleasant image. It is: God, I hate this song, because this song reminds me of Mom. Except that it's so seventies and Mom is so nineties. I see a flash of hair with very obvious chunky highlights, a brightly colored yoga bag, a dark pedicure inside a pair of lime green slip-on wedge open-toed mules, and finally a matching New Beetle.

  This, I take it, is his mom. Nice to meet you.

  And sudde
nly...no thoughts. Just...buildings. The prep school. The source of anxiety, the major one at least.

  I see brick dormitories around one end of an academic quad and in the middle of it, a statue of a man on a horse. On the other end is a very old building—a tiny-windowed wooden two-story colonial—and a considerably more imposing building with a clock tower. There are a few graceful stands of maple and ash trees, the tips of their branches just starting to redden and yellow. At the far end, past the quad, is a chapel, made of stone as well. Its stained-glass windows glow blue and violet through a web of foliage.

  On a patch of grass in front of the clock tower building is a wooden sign reading: Midvale Academy.

  A question: Does Gideon know I'm here? I guess not, because then we would be having a conversation.

  He/I/We won't stop looking at the chapel. Why? Is young Gid interested in stained-glass? No. I wonder if this chapel would be a good place to...The thought trips on itself. First it is, a good place to have sex. Then, holy fuck, which one?

  I laugh out loud, forgetting that I am with friends, who look at me like I am crazy. I think about sex, but never like this, never with a twinge of ashamed panic, like, Oh God, I'm thinking about sex again.

  Now this: That chapel would be a good place to hook up with a girl if I were the kind of guy who could get girls to hook up with me. Do I like this place or do I want to go home? The grass here is so green. I feel like it's laughing at me.

  The boy who owns this mind is very vulnerable. And rather sweet. He has been on the road since dawn. He is hungry and craving root beer. He's holding in his hands a glossy black-and-red folder that reads Midvale ACADEMY: NEW STUDENT Information. He opens the folder, and the first sheet of paper is addressed to Gideon Rayburn, 989 Christmas Park Circle, Fairfax, Virginia.

  The Silverado has stopped in front of a brick Georgian-style dorm called Proctor. This person, this Gideon Rayburn, knows he's going to have to get out of the car eventually, but he's not ready. A glance inside the windows of this building, his new home, is not at all heartening. On the first floor, a kid with floppy blonde hair hangs a Bruce Lee poster above his bed, then goes to the closet and lovingly hangs up a white gi with a brown karate belt. On the second floor, a lumbering sort in a baseball hat and overalls conducts a symphony (Schubert) with a plastic spoon.

  Gid's reaction to them is both surprising and cute. He thinks, Fuck these guys. Okay, he knows he's partly jealous, but he's also heard how everyone at Midvale is good at something, and confronted with it for the first time, he kind of wants to puke. Why, he wonders, does everyone have to be talented?

  I am sympathetic to what Gid sees as an insidious moment in history, one where everyone has to be a star.

  Appealingly, he seems to lack this drive. He doesn't lack ambition altogether, but even though we've just "met," I can safely say he seems most invested in being a well-liked person. It's just a hunch. A warm hunch.

  Gid enjoys a righteous moment of feeling just regular, decent. He looks in the mirror and for the first time, I can see his face. This feels extremely weird because up to now, when I looked in a mirror, I saw me. Instead I see a boy who does a handsome job of regular. I like the squareness of his mouth, and the way his nut brown eyes and wavy hair match. His hair isn't creepy, run-your-hand-over-it wavy, it's loose, cute, beachy wavy. A little too long. Anyway, looking in the mirror, what Gid sees is a guy who—despite his anxieties about this place—really, really doesn't want to go home. And the reason is sitting right next to him.

  Jim Rayburn. Gid's mind isn't quite sure where to start on this, and neither am I, but here goes. Jim Rayburn, born 1959, Newport News, Virginia (Pisces, Dog). He is a contractor. He was dumped about two years ago by Gid's mother. (Capricorn, Pig...What a terrible match. That is my thought, not Gid's. Boys don't know anything about astrology, although, Gid's dad being a perfect example, they really should.) Wendy Rayburn—a carefree spirit in her lime green mules if there ever was one—fell in love with Gid's middle-school science teacher, Mr. Soames. Gid thought Mr. Soames was gay. He now has proof (some of it, unfortunately, audible) that this is not true.

  Gid's dad spends a lot of time tugging his mustache, smoking Carlton 100s, and looking at Gid with a forlorn expression that says, Don't make the same mistakes I've made. Jim is a weird combination of emotionally clueless and needy. He never asks Gid a single question about anything—school, girls, visits to his mother—but he's real big on things like hugs and punching Gid on the arm, lots of forced bonhomie.

  They say a boy needs his father. And i would never say that Jim Rayburn is a terrible person. But it's probably good that Gid's getting away, for both of us. Because Gid needs to figure out who he is. And if I'm going to be spending a lot of my time inside Gideon Rayburn's head for a reason that I do not yet understand, there are a lot better things to think about than why Gid and his dad don't have a perfect relationship. For example: I understand that Gid is unclear about when and if he will be having sex in the chapel, but how, exactly, can he be unclear on whether or not he's a virqin?

  tiny dancer

  The last twelve hours of Gid's life are about as clear as the last twelve hours of my own. That is, they are very clear—almost as if I had lived them myself. I am glad I didn't, though, since he spent most of them trapped in the car with his dad.

  Let's go back five hours. We are in the grass-blown, wild-flowered but not especially fascinating landscape of central Connecticut, and Gid is in the midst of a Things You Love exercise that he got from his mother's Journal of the Zen Hut. The exercise suggests that in times of negativity, you should think of, as the title not so subtly suggests, things you love. He intones: "Cookies. Street hockey. Kissing. My down comforter that smells like bleach. Kissing again."

  Really? Interesting how he hasn't mentioned sex yet. Told you sometimes boys feel like girls.

  "How are you feeling about your new school situation?" Jim Rayburn blurts out, ruining what was for everyone a nice moment. To Jim, everything is a fill-in-the-blank situation. When they're out of milk, it's a milk situation. When Gid's mother dumped him, he had a messed-up lady situation. Which, from a seminal image conjured in Gid's brain, has become a no-lady situation punctuated by Saturday nights with other romantically bereaved, similarly pathetic work buddies. They hang out in the basement den, listening to Neil Diamond and, as the hours tick by and the Carlton 100s pile up in the amber glass ashtrays, Merle Haggard.

  "I'm not worried about school at all," Gid lies. "I think Midvale is going to be a very good place for me."

  This seems to shut his dad up for a while. Gid takes advantage of the silence to employ another device he read about in Journal of the Zen Hut: relaxing the mind by listing and categorizing everything he sees. He observes cows in the field. A Buick LeSabre with a crushed back end, held together with a red bungee cord. A yellow house. A tree stump, recently cut. The splinters in the stump make him think of a girl's fingernails, and this makes Gid think of having his pants unzipped.

  A jagged tree stump can make a guy think of having his pants unzipped? That's incredibly dirty! However, I am beginning to see that there are benefits to being in this boy's head. I will never again have to wonder how and why guys think and feel all that weird shit. I'm now inside the madness.

  Midvale Academy draws closer and closer. They are twenty miles away, then ten, then, much too quickly, one. Gid starts to panic and can't keep from turning over and over one unacceptable possibility: If my fear is really this palpable, isn't there a good chance no one is going to like me? What if not one of these twelve hundred students from forty-two states and eighteen foreign countries wants to be my friend? His exhalations take on a tone of desperation. His father tugs on his mustache and says, "Hey, Gid, someone got your balls in a vise?"

  "Dad, could you please just give me a minute?" Gid says.

  His dad shrugs, as if to say, "Hey, when have I ever let you down?"

  Gid knows that he cannot arrive at school with this muc
h raw terror in his heart. Once again—I'm sensing that this flaky mysticism is the one thing Gid and his mom have in common—Gid turns to the venerable Journal of the Zen Hut for comfort. Many times, Journal of the Zen Hut had counseled that when feeling inadequate, you should merely focus on yourself, all aspects of yourself, good and bad, and concentrate on being open to those things existing all together at once. You will see, he remembered reading, that when you accept yourself totally, when you lay yourself bare and accept yourself as you are, people are open to receive you, absolutely as you are.

  Gid closes his eyes and concentrates, starting to get a mental picture of his whole self, good and bad. The bad comes first. I think that's natural. He thinks about how he can be lazy. That he had cheated on his PSAT—just one question that he went back to after consulting a pocket dictionary—nadir: the lowest possible point—in the bathroom during the break. That he didn't know whether he was actually smart, even though people said he was. That he wasn't all that nice to his father, considering Jim wasn't such a terrible guy. Those were the not-so-painful things. Then he concentrates on the bad thing, the worst thing. That sometimes he just loathes himself, absolutely. That at times he suspects he is a total fraud.

  In spite of all this, Gid commands himself, I am totally likable and lovable. I am great at math. I have good hair and I don't have those weird fat thighs some guys have. I am energy made by the universe [it is a good thing those Journal of the Zen Huts are not going to be in his line of vision for a few months, isn't it?] and therefore perfect as I am.