Ask the Passengers
I say, “Abracadabra.”
Dee kisses me and then says, “You know what? I don’t want to rush. I want to have fun and fall in love and actually—I don’t know,” she says. “It’s like you’re teaching me to slow down or something.”
I don’t say anything, but I’m somehow not embarrassed that I just finally said abracadabra and she’s all no, thank you.
She continues. “Must be all that Socrates shit rubbing off on me, but I got to thinking about how since I came out, all I’ve done is work on being sexual, and while that’s fun and all, I never took a minute to really just relax and feel loved, and I like it.”
“It’s nice,” I say. “No doubt.”
“My first few times were kinda awkward and fast.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Actually, that thing you said a few weeks ago? About how I was a fiend and all that? Reminded me of my first girlfriend and how—uh—I guess—pushy—she was. It was fun, and I liked her a lot, but she didn’t love me,” she says. “I think she just wanted to pop my cherry, you know?”
“Yuck. I hate that expression.”
“Me too.”
I think about all those guys in school.
They say: I popped her cherry last night!
They say: She bled all over my varsity jacket!
“So okay,” I say. “Abracadabra whenever it comes naturally. How’s that?”
She nods and kisses me again. “I never asked you what your favorite food is,” she says. “And I really want to know.”
I turn to look at the sky and rest my head on her shoulder. “Well, I know it’s sure as hell not shrimp.”
We laugh, and then she gets serious. “You sure everything’s going to be okay? At home? School? Do you feel like you did the right thing?”
“I have no idea. I’m sure people will still be weird about it. Ellis will probably come around. My mom might manage to say she loves me before I graduate college. My dad probably forgot it already.”
She laughs. “Some people will always be a pain, but all in all, it’s easier to be yourself, I think. I mean, now that the pressure’s off to be perfect.”
I stay quiet for a minute and let that go through my head a few times. The pressure’s off to be perfect.
“Jones?”
“Yeah. Sorry. I think I just got a message from Socrates. I have to go.”
She laughs. We get up and walk down the hill to our cars, and when she takes off, I open a notebook and grab a pen from my glove compartment.
My paradox is all wrong. I write out a whole list of other paradoxes until I come to the one I most want to argue. I want to argue it with everyone in this town. Everyone on TV. I want to argue it with Claire and Kristina and even with Dee, who puts too much pressure on herself to play well and run enough. Or Juan, who swears at himself every time he makes a tiny mistake in the kitchen. Or Ellis, who is still a scared little girl trying to fit in.
I want to tell them: Nobody’s perfect.
42
THE SOCRATES PROJECT.
LET’S START HERE: Wearing a toga to school is totally boss. Given free roam of the school in order to pick fights with anyone who looks willing is also totally boss. I mean, I’m usually Astrid Jones, pacifist poet type who doesn’t usually pick fights outside of correcting your grammar. But now I’m Astrid Jones, recently out lesbian who just got back from being suspended for saying the F-word several times right in front of the vice principal. This is a little different than I’d imagined it all quarter.
I have a small sign with my paradox on it. Nobody’s perfect. I find most people won’t argue with this, so I have to ask them related questions. I start with teachers. Mr. Trig walks by me after first period. “What is perfect, Mr. Trig?” I ask. “And can you say that anyone’s achieved it?”
“We’re all born perfect,” he says.
Good answer.
“My right foot is a half size smaller than my left foot,” I say. “Is that perfect?”
He waves me off and winks because he has to get back to class.
Mr. Williams walks by me, and I ask him, “Is perfection possible?”
“No.”
“How are you so sure?”
He says, “Everything is a matter of perception.”
“So does that mean nobody is perfect or everybody is?” I ask. “Because if it’s a matter of perception, then either could be true.”
“Up to you,” he says as he walks away toward his room. I could have kept that going for a while, though. This whole notion of perfection intrigues me. How can we say nobody’s perfect if there is no perfect to compare to? Perfection implies that there really is a right and wrong way to be. And what type of perfection is the best type? Moral perfection? Aesthetic? Physiological? Mental? I write this down in my project journal.
During the five minutes between second and third periods, I start to rant on my crowded pseudo–street corner (which is the hallway next to the gym).
“If perfection were possible, which type would reign? Moral perfection? Mental perfection? Would the smarter man win, or the stronger? The dark-skinned or light-skinned? Would the winner be the most beautiful?”
“Perfection is equal,” someone says. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
This draws a laugh from someone in the crowd.
“There is such a thing as a perfect race,” he says.
“A whole race of perfect people?” I say. “Really? How do you know this?”
“God said so. It’s in the Bible,” he says.
“The Bible?” I ask. “What’s that? And which god are you talking about? Zeus? Hermes? Poseidon?”
He flips me the bird while he’s walking to the library wing steps.
Someone yells, “Perfection is stupid!”
“I like that!” I say. She can’t hear me, but I riff on it. “Perfection is stupid! So, what is stupid, then?”
“That toga,” Kristina answers as she slips by me and into the classroom to my right.
“I believe that’s a matter of perception, Ms. Houck. My toga is not stupid. If the rest of Unity Valley wore togas, then I would be at the height of fashion.”
During third and fourth periods, we have the group debate in the gym, and Ms. Steck invites some of the school administrators to watch and argue with us. We each sit with our signs pointing out, waiting to be picked on by audience members. Camus-loving Clay gets the superintendent all wound up about the true meaning of education by saying that in recent years, our highly paid administrators are simply puppets for yahoo school boards who don’t know anything about the tenets of a good education.