Last week on Love in the Time of Bae, the time our writer has been spending with teenagers Charlotte and Anthony made her painfully aware of the hot breath of mortality breathing down her neck, and she was maybe not as professional as she should have been in touching her subject’s face and pressing on it but has since been given a talk about reporter-subject appropriateness and is back on track.
4.
A Lot of People Have Busts of Ronald Reagan in Their Living Rooms
By Taffy Brodesser-Akner
Illustration by Angie Wang
There is a bust of Ronald Reagan in Charlotte’s living room. I have changed only a few key details in this story, to protect the identity of these kids, and when I asked Charlotte’s mother if she wanted me to change that one, she was confused. She can’t be the only person in California with a bust of Ronald Reagan in her living room, she told me. They sell them at the Reagan Library, after all.
Theirs was not the only sand-colored house in their San Diego development that, a few years ago, featured a sign encouraging people to vote for 8, the proposition that allowed residents of California to maintain marriage in this state to be between a man and a woman. Theirs is not the only house on the block with a gun in a gun safe. Theirs is not the only house on the block decorated with various pieces of Americana: flags, tasteful Uncle Sam posters. Charlotte’s father and mother are immigrants from very young childhood — he from a Communist country, she from England. Both of them have seen the ways that zealous and involved government can go wrong. Charlotte’s father is a neuroscientist, and he likes to explain things: things like the free market, most of all, and other stuff, but mostly that. When I mentioned a story I’d written that included the transgender point of view, he gave me a speech about how being transgender was a delusion, how if someone came in and wanted a part of their body removed like an arm, we wouldn’t do it; no, we’d treat them for delusion. Later, on her own, in another room, Charlotte gave me the very same speech, believing every word, and her version comes with no apparent awareness that homosexuality was considered a mental illness just a few years before she was born.
The house is more peaceful now. But the year before this very same sand-colored house had been aflame in worry for Charlotte. She was depressed and she was suicidal, and God, the cutting. Charlotte’s mother didn’t know whether or not to believe that her beautiful daughter could want to end her life, but she did know that she might regret it if she didn’t take it seriously, so she did. There were psychiatrists and pills and names for things that looked like quirks. Charlotte began pulling hair out of her head in clumps, and there was a name and a medication for that, too. There were all kinds of pills, and then there was also now the cognitive behavioral therapy that Charlotte had to go to for anxiety, where she learned that the best way to reinforce a behavior is by practicing it; the worst way to reinforce it is by ignoring it. If you think crazy thoughts when you’re feeling crazy, you’ll feel crazier. Ignore them, it might get better.
Then there was the day Charlotte sat her mother down on her bed and started crying. Finally she was able to get it out: She was gay. Charlotte’s mother’s gift is her great stoicism; her ability to retreat instead of to react. That night she cried in her husband’s arms. This wouldn’t change her politics; this wouldn’t make her think being gay was all okay. But this was her daughter, and if her daughter was gay, she needed to parent her well. She was not going to ever stand up at a PFLAG meeting and say she was wrong; she didn’t believe she was. Deep down, Charlotte’s mother wondered if maybe this is the way someone who has nothing to rebel against rebels.
There was a lot of drama with the girls she was dating, besides. The one who needed the break after the random Tumblr suicide threat. The boring girl from the Latin convention. The cuddly girl from the anime convention. There was the girl who eventually admitted that she isn’t a lesbian; she’s a transgender boy who is straight and Charlotte didn’t want to date a boy so that was over.
So maybe, when she met Anthony, she just needed a break from girls. Or maybe maybe sexuality is fluid. Maybe Charlotte is bisexual. Maybe she defies sexuality. Maybe she just doesn’t know yet. Or maybe she is attentionsexual, which is something I’ll invent right now after spending so much time on these Tumblrs and the Twitters. (Charlotte’s corner of the internet looked like an episode of Glee, everyone singing a unique song about how unique they are.) That’s about as much conjecture as I’m willing to give on someone else’s sexuality, and I hope Charlotte forgives me for it. How about just this: Whatever is going on with Charlotte, it is the truth when she says it because she means it.
All this to explain why after Anthony and Charlotte exchanged pictures, their went like this:
Anthony: [you’re mighty cute.], testing those waters.
Charlotte: [Yes, I know] because Charlotte’s confidence is a combination of knowing that she is cute because she’s been told it a thousand times, and the shock value of not being like the other girls and responding by saying [ugh not true I’m so fat/ugly/pock-marked].
Anthony: [You are wife material]. Anthony, who is from a small town in a small country and who has nothing to send or give Charlotte but a promise. And probably Anthony who largely dates internet people doesn’t think so much about matrimony.
But at this, Charlotte didn’t respond. She didn’t quite know how to react, but then she said [wait warning I’m very flirtatious but also very gay and I’ll always flirt with boys and not tell them and it’s just not cool]. And of course this drove Anthony absolutely crazy. He sat bug-eyed and panting in his living room, contemplating a girl who won’t respond to an implication of marriage.
Which are the animals that begin their mating by butting their heads and nudging against each other? I swear I’ve seen it, maybe on The Nature Channel, or maybe (this is embarrassing) I’m remembering when Bambi and Faline use to have at each other, or even when Nala and Simba found their way back to each other. Just conjure that for a minute so you know something a little about the moment when Anthony began to pursue Charlotte, and Charlotte decided to tangle, nudging head to neck, two steps forward, three in retreat. And over in the corner of the kitchen, making brownies as her daughter stared smiling down into her phone, Charlotte’s mother breathed a sigh of relief that Sarah Palin could hear all the way close to Russia.
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