Bill Konigsberg's Blog, page 7

Alone

The thing about traveling the country for a month by car is that you feel very alone.

You aren’t with your family and friends, the people who love you. You know they’re there, but they aren’t there, if that makes sense. You look around the coffee shop where you’ve set up to work for the day, and you think, “does anyone here really know what I’m going through? Does anyone care?”

You think about ways to numb the loneliness. You could do any number of things. That cinnamon roll looks pretty damn good. Is there a casino somewhere in Texas? Should you find a bar? But nah. You’ve been around the block a few times. You know where those answers will lead you.

So you sit with the feeling that’s nipping at your gut, and you breathe. And you breathe some more. And you realize it’s just a feeling, it isn’t reality. You’ll be fine.

—

The thing about coming out when you’re a teenager is that you feel very alone.

Even if you have wonderful parents and friends and you know you’re loved, they’re not on the inside of this journey with you. They’re there, but they aren’t there, if that makes sense. You look around the cafeteria and you think, “does anyone here really know what I’m going through? Does anyone care?”

You think about ways to numb the loneliness. You could do any number of things. There are drinks and pills and websites that could make you feel better, for the moment. You haven’t been around the block a few times.You don’t really know yet where those answers will lead you.

The more you sit with that feeling gnawing at your gut, the more you become sure that this is more than a feeling–it’s reality. And you’re not sure if you will be fine.

—

Tonight, as The Trevor Project Awareness Tour with Bill Konigsberg kicks off in Dallas, please let me funnel my energy into impacting the life of at least one teenager who knows what this feels like. Please help me find a way to let her know that she is NOT alone. Any feeling of loneliness or shame or sadness that a human being feels is NOT unique. Millions of people have felt the very same feeling, and in that way you’re not alone, not in the least. And neither am I. We are bound by so much, and sometimes the answer is to reach out and let others know how we’re feeling. Lonely. Sad. Unsure we can make it. Whatever it is. Because by reaching out, we may get the strength to realize we can survive, and thrive. And that we will.

Rules for the Road

I’m heading out on The Trevor Project Awareness Tour with Bill Konigsberg on Friday!

I’m excited and nervous. I have never taken a 5,000-mile driving trip before. When I start in the south (Dallas in early September), it will be summer. When I end (Minnesota in October) it’ll be chilly. I have to take two full suitcases to be prepared for all that. I’m gonna have to figure out doing laundry on the road, when I have a pretty full schedule. I have one day when I have a 7-9pm event in Bloomington, Indiana, and a 7am flight the next morning out of Indianapolis. This quick turnaround, along with packing for a trip during a trip, and leaving a rental car at the airport, and–you get it–has me feeling … a bit overwhelmed.

Here are some of my goals as I approach this new experience.

To be fully present for each presentation. Sometimes when you get comfortable presenting, it becomes possible to “phone it in.” My goal is to be fully available and connected for every single visit. I want LGBTQ youth to know that I care, because I do, deeply. The challenge here is being open to hearing and empathizing with the pain that some of these kids are dealing with. It’s easier to put up a wall, but I vow to keep my wall down, even if it becomes emotionally exhausting.
To smile at strangers and engage people along the way. At restaurants, at hotels.
To do interesting activities everywhere I go (when time permits). I plan to hit the Clinton Library in Little Rock, and tour Music Row in Nashville. I know there will be a temptation to sleep afternoons away in hotel rooms, and I do want to make sure I get my rest, but this opportunity is too good to pass up.
To sing along at the top of my lungs to Ben Folds and James Taylor and Fleetwood Mac, even if the windows of my rental car aren’t tinted.
To make at least some of my car snacks healthy. Okay. Healthy-ish.
To call family and friends from the road so that I stay connected.
To blog about my travels, weekly for Huffington Post’s Gay Voices blog, and more frequently on my own blog.

That’s all I have for now. I hope you’ll follow my journey!

Oh yeah: I’m raising funds for The Trevor Project during this trip. Please consider donating today!

TREVOR PROJECT AWARENESS TOUR WITH BILL KONIGSBERG

I’m so excited to announce that I’m hitting the road this September, visiting 17 locations through the South and Midwest. The tour, called The Trevor Project Awareness Tour with Bill Konigsberg, will raise funds for The Trevor Project, the leading national organization providing crisis intervention and suicide prevention services to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) young people ages 13-24.

Specifically, all funds raised will benefit TrevorSpace, a safe social networking site for LGBTQ youth ages 13 through 24 and their friends and allies.

For more information on the tour, click here.

To donate, click here.

All donations go directly to The Trevor Project.

Along the way, I will be writing about my experience for The Huffington Post’s Gay Voices blog.

Here is my itinerary:

Tuesday, September 8: Youth First, Resource Center, 3918 Harry Hines, Dallas, TX, 7pm

Wednesday, September 9: Pasadena High School, Pasadena, TX (closed event)

Friday, September 11: Center for Artistic Revolution, LMH Youth Drop-in Center, 800 Scott St., Little Rock, AR, 7pm

Saturday, September 12: Magic City Acceptance Center, 412 37th St. South, Birmingham, AL, 7pm

Monday, September 14: Pride School Atlanta, at the UUCA, 1911 Cliff Valley Way NE (enter on I-85N Access Road)

Tuesday, September 15: Oasis Center, 1704 Charlotte Ave, Suite 200, Nashville, TN, 4:30-8:30pm

Thursday, Sept. 17: Bloomington Prism Youth Group, Pourhouse Cafe (314 E. Kirkwood Ave.), basement community rooms, Bloomington, IN, 7pm 

Friday, Sept. 18: GLSEN-Cincinnati (tentative date) 

Tuesday, Sept. 22: Saline High School, Saline, MI (closed event)

Wednesday, Sept. 23: Robert W. Sneden Center Auditorium, Davenport University, Grand Rapids, MI, noon

Thursday, Sept. 24: Allegan High School, Allegan, MI (closed event)

Friday, Sept. 25: Alliance High School, Milwaukee, WI (closed event)

Monday, Sept. 28: St. Louis Public Library, 1301 Olive St., St. Louis, MO, 7pm 

Tuesday, Sept. 29: Urban Abbey, 1026 Jackson St., Omaha, NE, 7pm 

Wednesday, Sept. 30: Rochester MN (closed event)

Thursday, Oct. 1: Hennepin County, MN (closed event)

Monday, Oct. 5: Watermark Books, 4701 East Douglas, Wichita, KS, 6pm

All events are free, and while I’m most interested in receiving donations online, I will accept checks made out to The Trevor Project at each event.

Of course, the biggest part of this trip is about meeting and connecting with young people and sharing our stories. I want every young LGBTQ person in this country to know that they are not alone.

Shame, or the sportswriter who wouldn’t talk to me

As you may know, before I wrote books for teens, I was a sports writer and editor, first at ESPN and ESPN.com, and then at The Associated Press.

By the time I got to The Associated Press, I was already openly gay, having come out at ESPN.com in an article entitled “Sports World Still a Struggle for Gays” back in 2001. I made no effort to conceal my sexual orientation, and at the AP in New York, where I worked, it didn’t seem to be a big issue. When Esera Tuaolo came out, I got the interview. When there was an article about gays in sports, I was the point person. It was fine.

There was, however, one guy. He was a longtime sports writer, and I worked with him for three years, often just a seat or two away from him where all the sports editors sat.

I won’t name him, as it doesn’t matter. And this isn’t about shaming him. It’s about exploring my own shame.

I worked with him for more than three years, and in that time, he never said a word to me.

That included when we worked on a project together. That included when he was the supervisor and I was one of his editors. That included when I was doling out baseball stories, and he was one of the editors.

Not one word.

I actually tried to deal with this in a proactive way. When I realized that he was refusing to speak to me, I asked him if there was something I’d done. I can’t imagine there had been, as I hadn’t done anything to him that I knew about. He didn’t respond. I spoke to my supervisor about it, and she mused that perhaps it was because I was a new guy. But I watched others come in after me, and he talked to them just fine.

It didn’t take that long for me to realize what this was about.

I was an openly gay man.

Could this have been a leap? Could it be incorrect?

Sure.

Was it a leap? Was it wrong?

Probably not. I am a generally likable guy. I don’t have a particularly offensive personality. I was good at my job. There wasn’t too much else it could have been.

Looking back now, I see how I reacted to it.

I tried really hard to get him to like me. I attempted to help him out more than necessary, and I made sure I was always very agreeable. I laughed at his jokes.

And on the inside, I bled. I believed, at some level, that there was something wrong with me, that this was about me.

I must have. Because I recall thinking thoughts like, “If only I was a little more masculine, maybe I could win his respect.”

In Openly Straight, I wrote about the difference between guilt and shame. Guilt is about things you’ve done. Shame is about what you are. When you feel shame, you are feeling that there is something intrinsically bad about you. Shame is toxic. Nothing good comes from feeling shame about who you are. Plenty good can come from feeling guilty about bad behavior. You can change that. Wanting to change who you are to please someone else is not a good thing.

I realize now that I carried that shame. I let it inside me, and I believed it. Even though I’d been out for years and years, a part of me was still ashamed of being gay.

It’s easy to do in this culture. There are so many ways to get hurt, and so many ways to attribute the behavior of others as being about us. There’s no human being in the world, I don’t believe, who has not experienced some degree of shame about something.

I’m older now, and I’ve begun to work on my shame, and developing what Brene Brown calls “Shame resilience.” It’s so important to be able to withstand feelings of shame, and among the tactics I’m learning to use is to realize what is about me, and what is about the other person.

Today I understand. I have nothing to apologize for. I am a gay man. I can no more change that than I can change my eye color. There is nothing wrong about being a gay man. Anyone who thinks there is has their own issues that have nothing to do with me. I am a good person. I work hard to help others. I love and am loved. I am not a piece of shit, which is pretty much how I felt when I first started to come to terms with being gay. And sometimes those feelings seeped through in my adult years. Coming out is a lifelong process, and I never had any role model to show me how to do it. Now I try to be a role model for others.

I do wonder what’s up with that sports writer. What happened to him to make him develop whatever feelings he had that made it so that he would ignore a colleague for three years. I have never ignored a person I worked with for three days, so to do so for three years it must have been a lot. He’s a human being. I am no better than him; he is no better than me. We just have different stories. I admit I don’t really like him because of the way he treated me, but that doesn’t lessen the fact that he has as much a right to his story as I have to mine.

I just wonder. But I guess it’s better to wonder about what’s up with him than it is to focus on what’s wrong with me. Because there’s plenty wrong with me, but none of it has to do with my sexual orientation.

HONESTLY BEN update, and why albumen is the dirtiest word in the world

I have to write a blog post, but I have a severe case of writer’s block. I’ve just finished the second draft of HONESTLY BEN, and this often happens to me when I finish a draft. I go through a few days in which I feel a little zombified.

Ben is unlike any character I’ve ever written before, in that he’s not very much like me. It remains to be seen whether I’ve done him justice. I hope so!

So what can I tell you? THE PORCUPINE OF TRUTH is out in the world and continues to receive excellent reviews and feedback. I am getting some very interesting emails and online messages about it. A lot of people want to hear the story from Aisha’s perspective. I do, too! I think I’ll leave that to the fan fiction world, however.

I’ve been thinking about what’s next, what book I’ll write next. I have an idea for a romance between two teenage boys that takes place in the late 80s in New York City. I’ve always wanted to go back and use my own teen years in a book, and this would be a great opportunity to do that. At the same time, I’ve been playing around with an adult novel I started writing a few years back called SCRAMBLED. It’s about a guy who is afraid of eggs who goes on a quest to overcome his fear of people in general, and intimacy in specific.

—

There were two things about eggs that made Virgil want to poke his eyes out with gardening shears. One, eggs smelled. When they were hard boiled, they smelled like shame. Shame and apathy and the very worst kinds of human failure, things that never gotten written about in books until the world went crazy, sometime in the late 20th century. Even when they weren’t hard boiled, they smelled greasy, like something that would leave an eggy trail as they traveled down your gullet. Two, they were everywhere. Everyone ate them. You couldn’t possibly find a man or woman or child who was entirely egg free, which meant that the whole world was soiled. Virgil thought the word albumen was the dirtiest word in the world, and imagined that if you put that egg liquid on your tongue, it would seep into your bloodstream and make you awful.

—-

One way or the other, I need to just right back into a manuscript. It never helps to stop writing for days at a time.

8 Things You Didn’t Know About THE PORCUPINE OF TRUTH

I’m horrified with myself. I’ve gone over a month without posting on my blog, and I’ve done so just when my new book, THE PORCUPINE OF TRUTH, has come out. Not smart. I apologize for going silent, and thank you for all of the wonderful emails about PORCUPINE. I am working my way through them and will respond to them all, I promise.

I’ve been so busy! First there was some touring (The Openly YA Tour), and all along there’s been writing the sequel to OPENLY STRAIGHT, which is called HONESTLY BEN. It’s coming along. I feel a lot of pressure to make sure it lives up to the original…

Anyhow. Today I’m jumping back into the blogosphere with some tidbits about PORCUPINE. Enjoy!

1. At first, it was going to be the Platypus of Truth. True. I said it to my husband and he didn’t think it sounded quite right. We came up with Porcupine, and suddenly it all came together. There’s so much one can do with the concept of prickly truth. There’s so little one can mine from a truth that only lives in Australia, and subsists without a stomach.

2. I actually took the road trip that Carson and Aisha take in the book. I had lived in Billings for a year (felt longer!), but I’d never driven that particular path, so I invited a good friend of mine and she played Aisha to my Carson. We drove, and along the way we couchsurfed, much like Carson and Aisha do in the book. It was quite an adventure, and I used some things that happened on our trip in the book.

3. I didn’t grow up with an alcoholic father, per se. A lot of people ask me that, since Carson’s father (and grandfather) are alcoholics. I did grow up with a stepfather whose family was chock full of alcoholics, however, and I connect to the frustration of having a father figure who was there and somehow not there. For a lot of other reasons, Carson’s relationship with his father rings very true to me and feels very personal. One thing we have in common was our parents divorcing when we were very young (3 or 4).

4. In a very early draft, every time Carson went into a church and the choir would start to sing, he would hear lyrics that were clues leading to his grandfather. My editor identified this as a VERY BAD IDEA, which often happens at some point in my writing process

5. In another early draft, Carson connected with his grandfather in dreams, and the clues were in the dreams. Unfortunately, it didn’t make a lot of sense for the grandfather to not just TELL CARSON WHAT HAPPENED, so that was another VERY BAD IDEA. What kind of grandfather leaves clues in dreams but refuses to just say what’s up?

6. A lot has been made of the fact that in this book, unlike my previous two, the main protagonist is straight. I understand the disappointment of some of my fans, although it would be hard to say this isn’t in many ways an LGBT novel. And in some ways, not. I did this because I wanted to expand beyond the label “gay” in my writing. I am other things, too, you know! Regardless, Carson is a character who is probably more connected to me internally than either Bobby from OUT OF THE POCKET or Rafe from OPENLY STRAIGHT.

7. The scene toward the end of the book where Aisha blurts out, “I’m not your sidekick” to Carson is meant to be important to the novel, to both teens’ journeys, and to fiction in general. I am making a commentary about the way we authors sometimes use characters for our benefit without giving them fully realized interiors and their own purpose for being in the story. I didn’t want Aisha to be that. I fully intend for her journey, which is about finding family in the world at large, to be just as important as Carson’s journey to find his family. I think of Aisha as a dual protagonist to Carson in this novel. I hope it reads that way.

8. The big reveal toward the end of the book, the way the mystery is solved, is something I’ve wanted to write about for a long time. My only regret is that I’ve written about but cannot really talk about it, without ruining the big reveal. Lesson learned. If a topic you want to talk about would also spoil the book for new readers, you won’t be able to use it. Duh.

The Porcupine of Truth – The Playlist

When I want to feel closer to Carson and Aisha, I play this playlist, which tells the story of The Porcupine of Truth pretty nicely. The retro feel of this is pretty much in line with Carson and Aisha’s eclectic tastes, and a couple of the songs are actually featured in the novel.

1. I Am a Rock – Simon & Garfunkel

“I am a rock, I am an island.”

As the book starts, Carson is a rock. He opens himself up to nothing, and he protects himself from every sort of pain, mostly through humor.

2. Out of My League – Fitz & The Tantrums

“Forty days and forty nights/I’ve waited for a girl like you to come and safe my life.”

Then Carson meets Aisha, who is, in fact, a bit out of his league. He has trouble believing that she would even have the time of day for someone like him.

3. Cats in the Cradle – Harry Chapin

“When you comin’ home, son, I don’t know when, but we’ll get together then.”

Carson meets his father for the first time in 14 years, and it doesn’t go well.

4. Humpty Dumpty – Aimee Mann

“Better take the keys and drive forever/Staying won’t put these pieces back together/All the perfect drugs, and superheroes/Wouldn’t be enough to bring me up to zero.”

Carson’s dad is a hopeless addict, and he doesn’t have the skills or filter to reconcile with the son he abandoned all those years ago.

5. Center of Attention – Guster

“My own little world is what I deserve/’Cause I am the only child there is.”

Carson constructs his own little world to defend against all the things that hurt him.

6. The Way – Me’Shell Ndegeocello

“They say you’re the way, the light/The light so blinding/Your followers condemn me, your words used to enslave me.”

Aisha tells Carson the story of her religious father kicking her out of the house for being a lesbian. She’s lost her faith.

7. Diversity – Family of the Year

“I can’t believe no one’s started yelling at me yet.”

Carson can’t believe that his family is so willing to allow him to bring Aisha home to stay with them. He sees it as a lack of caring.

8. The Way – Fastball

“Where were they going without ever knowing the way?”

Carson and Aisha set off to solve a 30-year-old family mystery.

9. Ol’ 55 – Sarah McLaughlin

“Freeway’s causing trust.”

The highways first bring conflict to the two, but soon Carson and Aisha begin to bond even closer than they already had.

10. Q.U.E.E.N. – Janelle Monae

“Hey brother can you save my soul from the devil? And is it weird to like the way she wear her tights?”

Aisha comes face to face with homophobia, something Carson had never dealt with before.

11. Changes – David Bowie

“And these children that you spit on as they try to change their worlds/Are immune to your consultations/They’re quite aware what they’re going through.”

Carson and Aisha experience Western America for themselves and come to question the world in which they live.

12. Call and Answer – Barenaked Ladies

“If you call, I will answer/And if you fall, I’ll pick you up.”

Carson gets a call from his father, who begins to make amends for all the lost years.

13. Still Fighting It – Ben Folds

“You’re so much like me. I’m sorry.”

Carson begins to understand the ways in which he is like his father and grandfather, and he worries about what that means for his own life.

14. Won’t Give In – Finn Brothers

“What does it mean when you belong to someone/When you’re born with a name and you carry it on? It means that I won’t give in, won’t give in, won’t give in. ‘Cause everyone I love is here.”

Carson begins to see the good that goes with the bad of having his father’s (and grandfather’s) blood.

15. Laughing With – Regina Spektor

“No one laughs at God in a hospital, no one laughs at God in a war.”

Carson and Aisha find themselves in danger on the streets of Reno, Nevada, with no money and no way to get help.

16. The Last Song – Elton John

“I guess I misjudged love, between a father and his son.”

Carson finds his grandfather, and all of the mysteries and the gulfs between the two fathers and their sons become more clear.

17. The Story – Brandi Carlile

“All of these lines across my face/tell you the story of who I am.”

A new character emerges, helping Carson and Aisha understand the past as well as the present in a new way.

18. House of Love – Amy Grant

“You think you’re in your darkest hour/When the lights are coming on in the house of love.”

Aisha faces her biggest fears, and new possibilities emerge.

19. You’re My Best Friend – Queen

“Ooh, you make me live.”

The power of true friendship has transformed the lives of Carson, Aisha, and those around them.

The Launch of the Porcupine!

What a great time I had at Changing Hands last night!

It was the launch of THE PORCUPINE OF TRUTH, and a great crowd showed up for a fun night that included more than just books … cookies!

Yes, a friend of the folks at Changing Hands made great sugar cookies that were as delicious as they were pretty.

And of course there were Porcupine t-shirts, too. And they were for sale!

Thanks to everyone who came out in support! I’m so excited to take the book on the road. I’ll be in Washington, D.C. at Politics and Prose on Monday, June 1, as part of the Openly YA 2015 Tour with David Levithan (Every Day), Adam Silvera (More Happy Than Not), and Will Walton (Anything Can Happen). Here are the upcoming dates:

June 1 at 7 p.m. – Politics & Prose (Washington, D.C.)
June 2 at 7 p.m. – Children’s Book World (Haverford, PA)
June 3 at 6 p.m. – Teen Author Reading Night at Jefferson Market Library (NYC, NY)
June 4 at 6 p.m. – Books & Greetings (Northvale, NJ)
June 5 at 7 p.m. – RJ Julia (Madison, CT)
June 6 at 4 p.m. – Books of Wonder (NYC, NY)

Hope to see you there!

If the chain restaurants were in high school…

This is what I do on airplanes when I can’t seem to get any editing or writing done on my novel…

If the Chain Restaurants Were All in High School

By Bill Konigsberg

McDonalds: Most popular kid in school since Kindergarten despite not being good at any one thing. Popularity slipping as of late.

Burger King: Been copying McDonald’s homework for years but somehow his grades are always a little worse.

Long John Silvers: Fat kid who smells like day-old grease.

In-And-Out: Christian kid whom everyone likes. Doesn’t drink or drug, yet always seems to be the life of the party.

Arby’s: Weird kid who keeps bringing mystery meat in for lunch and saying it’s roast beef; it is categorically NOT roast beef.

Wendy’s: Wacky redhead who will do just about anything to be popular.

KFC: Been saying for years he has this great secret, but no one really wants to know it.

Popeye’s: Everybody secretly has a crush on her but no one would ever admit it because she’s a little weird.

Outback Steakhouse: Moved to town freshman year with a surfboard, blond hair and a great Australian accent; actually from Paramus, New Jersey.

Panda Express: Girl everyone likes to hang out with, but somehow you always go home from her house not entirely satisfied.

Jack N the Box: Hangs out behind the dumpster during recess; rumored to be a huffer.

Applebees: Hangs out with popular kids, all of whom hate him and make fun of him.

Chili’s: Decent kid, was popular in grade school and has been coasting ever since.

Olive Garden: Fancies himself a ladies man; spends every Friday night at home alone watching Hulu.

Chipotle Grill: Progressive kid who came out of nowhere to become megapopular.

TGI Friday: Always talking about how there’s going to be a shindig at his house that’s going to be off the hook. It never is.

Red Lobster: Always bragging about his father’s yacht; his father actually has a jetski.

Pizza Hut: In his third year as a senior; unlikely to ever graduate.

Dominoes: In his fourth year as a senior; even less likely to ever graduate.

Subway: Obnoxious kid whose always talking about what good shape he’s in but has actually never exercised a day in his life.

Buffalo Wild Wings: Most likely to upchuck at a party.

Papa Johns: Douchebag who hangs out with the jocks but can’t throw a spiral to save his life.

Chick Fil-A: Religious zealot who says homophobic crap and then issues apologies that make everything worse.

Carl’s Jr: No one has ever met anyone whose been over to his house.

Taco Bell: Total stoner, but somehow the first guy you text when it’s 2am on a Saturday night and you’re bored.

The first few pages of Porcupine!

Less than two weeks until THE PORCUPINE OF TRUTH hits the shelves, and I’m so excited! To whet your appetite, here are the first three pages. If you want more, check out the excerpts available on Amazon!

—–

The Billings Zoo has no animals.

Fewer than twenty-four hours ago, I was standing in Gray’s Papaya on Seventy-Second Street and Amsterdam Avenue in New York City, watching passersby ignore someone who was having what appeared to be an epileptic seizure while eating a chili dog. Taxicabs whirred by, mere mustard stains on the frankfurter that is the Upper West Side. Hordes of humans hustling in every direction, screaming, shouting, howling.

Now, I am in a place that is so quiet that I can still hear the noises of Manhattan in the back of my skull, like they are working their way out, slowly. And I am at a zoo where I may actually be the wildest life.

I’m here because after we landed and got our rental car for the summer, my mother suggested she take me for “a treat.” We cruised past multiple Arby’s and shops that sell discount mattresses and a Wonder Bread thrift store, whatever that is. She dropped me here, at the zoo, and told me she’d pick me up in a couple hours, after she got us settled in at my dad’s house. She suggested that the zoo might be a place to “locate and center myself” before seeing him for the first time in fourteen years.

My mom, a therapist slash school counselor, “hears” that I feel like she’s ripped me out of my normal summer, but “what she wants to say to me” is that I need to stop moping. And what better place to drop off a mopey seventeen-year-old boy in a strange new city than at the zoo? Had she just asked me where I wanted to go, I would have been like, I don’t know, a coffee shop. A movie theater. Any place a guy in his summer before senior year might want to hang. But whatever. My mom is down with the kids and how they all just want to stare at monkeys all day.

I do, in fact, feel a little ripped out of my normal summer — such as it is. But it’s possible that I’m milking it a bit. I mean, I was going to be working at a Pinkberry on the Upper West Side, which is the best frozen yogurt place in the city, tied with every other frozen yogurt place in the city, as they are all exactly the same. I won’t actually miss that. So “ripped” may be a little strong.

The zoo is apparently called ZooMontana, as it is the greatest of all the Montana zoos. At the gate, I buy a ticket from an old, tired-looking bald man and walk in. I wind through the trees along roped-off gravel trails. There are some nice trees. But what becomes painfully apparent is that there are basically no animals.

Perhaps because there are no animals, there are also no people at the zoo. Well, a few people. The bald ticket taker. And I come across a wedding procession at one point, an overly chipper, pregnant bride in an off-white gown, a goateed dude in a polyester suit by her side, his greasy mullet glistening in the sun.

Matrimony at a zoo with no animals. Wedding bliss fail.

I finally do find one lonely, depressed Siberian tiger. Here he is in the Siberia of America, lazing on the ground, staring into space, a look of what that guy Kierkegaard would call existential despair in his eyes. (Thanks, philosophy class!) I can barely blame him. I am that tiger. Relocated against my will for the summer to the northern tundra of my country, with nothing to do, nothing to look at, nothing but nothing.

So after I decide that sitting and staring at a depressed tiger isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, I walk back toward the entrance to the gift shop (plastic eagle sculptures and red-tailed squirrel magnets) to fritter away my final ninety-five minutes here (but who’s counting).

A ridiculously beautiful girl is organizing the greeting card display. In terms of attractiveness, she is in the 99.9th percentile of zoo employees. Her skin is black, almost purple black, and her jeans are dark blue and super tight. Her voluminous hair covers her ears almost entirely. She has sinewy arm muscles like the gymnastics girls back at my high school in the Bronx, and she wears a turquoise tank top that shows off her curves just right. Her face is wow. Soft, clear skin, uberhigh cheekbones that seem to pull her cheeks upward like a slingshot.

I can’t take my eyes off her. I do not believe in God, but in this instance, I wonder if there’s some deity to thank for the miracle of a dazzling girl in an otherwise deserted zoo. And I decide it’s very important to get a closer look at the greeting cards.

As I get within about five feet of her, she turns slightly toward me. I instinctively lower my head and turn away, as if I’m now perusing the almost empty shelf of stuffed animals, which consists of two pink frogs. I want so much to be the kind of guy who knows what to say in this situation. Unfortunately, I’m about 3,000 percent better in my brain than out of it. I’ve tried it before, verbalizing my thoughts to other people. It rarely works well.

She faces me completely now.

“Under what circumstance would you buy a greeting card in which a bear is dancing through a field of sunflowers?” she asks.