We’re So Famous was my first published novel, but it is not the first novel I wrote. I originally attempted to emulate my hero F. Scott Fitzgerald, attracted to and influenced as I was by his narratives about sad young men, a thread I’d pick up later for my trilogy about Charlie Martens. But when my first novel failed to sell, I cast about for another theme that interested me, and didn’t have to ruminate long before recognizing my intense interest in the culture of celebrity. It seems naive to claim that back in the late 1990s, celebrity culture was a relatively new phenomenon, but fame for fame’s sake seemed new and curious to me—previously those who wanted to become famous aspired to be athletes or actors or musicians or models—and so it was the perfect subject for a novel in that moment in time before the Internet truly became the enabler it is for any and all attention seekers. (As proof of how pre-Internet this novel was, I remember a late-night trip to the record store to confirm the spelling of the name of one of the singers in Bananarama, at the behest of the copy editor.)
As I contemplated the afterword for this new Bloomsbury edition, I tried to transport myself back to that time and place in my life when I was obsessed with and amazed by fame, to create a little sketch meant to provide the context in which the novel was written. Instead a torrent of words issued forth over the course of a month, and when I was finished, it was apparent not only why I wrote We’re So Famous, but also that it was a book I was destined to write.
—Jaime Clarke
that vanessa williams thing was right around the time of the mcdonald’s massacre you couldn’t turn on a television without hearing about those poor innocents just eating lunch and then a circumstance occurs like earlier when the teenage sears security guard shooed away the kids gathered around the in-store video game console and the youngest boy whose father would become the host of america’s most wanted ended up dead at the hands of a child predator or the time before that when someone was putting something in tylenol and that’s the prevailing fear in the backseat of the gray family ford ltd except maybe the troublingly named indian school road the map of phoenix a geometric marvel you don’t think you’ve ever seen a city made of a grid but over the years it will become apparent that unlike other places you’ve lived everything about phoenix was master-planned except the freeway to los angeles which ends in a pile of concrete and slumbering construction vehicles a block from the house on the west side your father and younger brother rented in advance you and your youngest brother and mother staying behind in rapid city for reasons you may never know like all the childhood questions that just remain questions like why did everyone mail away for those free gum balls made out of a new kind of sugar and you suspect the answers are unsatisfying as answers anyway and so you don’t bother two bryan adams concerts in one summer is the result yes you dreamed at the first concert in rapid city of meeting a girl and had no idea that months later at your second time through the set list that you’d be holding hands with a girl who would ultimately get you kicked out of phoenix veterans memorial coliseum but you think the move to the empty upper deck is for something more than hand-holding and not for smoking cigarettes which security would spot pretty quickly yes you had broken up with your first phoenix girlfriend on her birthday while lying in the dark on the phone unaware that your chronic nosebleeding wasn’t tears on your cheek all those afternoons going over to the first girlfriend’s trailer across from your new school how many new schools you didn’t care to remember the first girlfriend’s mother was always home and let you hold hands on the couch while watching television but you weren’t allowed down the hall except to use the bathroom and only when the first girlfriend was firmly stationed in the front room or sometimes the kitchen the first girlfriend’s friend who lived in the trailer park had one of those arms that wasn’t all the way an arm more than the def leppard drummer after he crashed his corvette into a brick wall but still not like everyone else and you didn’t care if people stared but she did yes you broke up with the first girlfriend for the reasons time immemorial that men break up with women but you didn’t yet understand that until you did that one afternoon when the girl-who-would-ultimately-get-you-kicked-out-of-the-bryan-adams-concert’s sister stalked into the bathroom and poured cold water on you both in the shower parents that both work is a thing you have in common including an overwhelming interest in sexual exploration her lost fake fingernail found in your boxers at the rest stop on her family’s trip to california you imagined you were daniel and she agreed she could be ali from the karate kid when you snapped pictures at the same golf n’ stuff as in the movie her grandmother made you sleep on her couch in indio and the curios and doilies were unnerving and you asked to bunk in with her older brother much later the grandmother’s house is confused in your mind with that of the actor ray milland when you learn he died in indio madonna sings her new song like a virgin at the video music awards wearing a wedding dress and a bustier vh1 debuted a couple of hours after the def leppard drummer crashed his corvette
come to think of it the time the girl was inconsolable when her five-year-old stepbrother was killed run over in the street is the prevailing memory of that time also the eighth-grade graduation trip to disneyland purchased by selling tom-wat door-to-door because a lot of kids will never graduate high school the teacups and the hotel with piss-stained elevators and strawberry hill and california coolers after curfew because the basketball coach is on watch california coolers with the basketball coach that one time he drove the starting five from the basketball team to magic mountain you sandwiched between the center cradling a barrel of unwrapped smarties double lollies and the team’s point guard nursing the wine cooler so his allergy to alcohol didn’t flare or the time with the limo driven by the basketball coach his side job for the actual graduation stumbling out of the limo for more wine coolers spotted by someone who knew the girl’s mother the girl’s mother telling your mother in the checkout line at the alpha beta but the time the girlfriend was inconsolable is the prevailing memory that was when everything was new and burnished for memory keeping moving to phoenix the day before classes start a new kid yet again after being new again and again and again memories in boxes the kids in south dakota didn’t seem to know anything about what happened to john lennon that made all the teachers at your school in north dakota hang their heads or all those hostages they let go or when another someone tried to impress that actress months later or when kiss came on without makeup or fractured fairy tales or the bloodhound gang and vice versa the kids in williston were left void of knowledge of the girl from somewhere in the east being invited to russia after she wrote a letter to yuri andropov which made you start writing letters to celebrities to see if they’d write back though they mostly sent signed pictures of themselves or the handful of videos on the new music channel or michael jackson’s thriller video or what happened to michael making that pepsi commercial or the first woman on the supreme court or when that famous actress fell off the boat and died or the first test tube baby it all happened after none of it connected in your mind at least important to remember all the new names easier to make friends if you seemed like you were always there call out someone’s name make them feel known so that you can be too first calling attention to yourself in some way that wasn’t too obvious was always the next step not like ozzy and the dove or lawn chair larry in montana it was reading the most books and winning lunch with your teacher the batman skit the previous year performed with the assent of your second-grade teacher the jar of ash from mount saint helens you swept from your driveway the nude poster you claimed to have of the actress who played daisy on the dukes of hazzard in north dakota it was lighting fires with the neighbor kids learning hey jude on the piano as a favor to your neighbor who was mad like your teachers about the john lennon thing the variety show like the mandrells’ you proposed to emcee in the gym to impress the girl who tantalized you by giving you a pocket radio and telling you to listen to dr demento at the same moment she was lying in bed listening in south dakota it was fingerprinting the teacher’s assistant you were in love with making your parents drive you to the local bottling company for enough carbonated water to make strawberry soda as a science experiment for your class racking up the high score on pac-man and dig dug and centipede and donkey kong at the arcade showing the older kids how to seesaw a comb across your hand to quickly toggle the buttons for defender marathon sessions of space invaders and breakout on the atari at home waiting for your parents to come home from work writing the hardy boys–inspired novel you bragged about writing to your teacher who called you on it and who agreed to type it up and send it to publishers who all rejected it which burned more when that kid published his star wars quiz book the music teacher knew you were lying when you said you went to a country music convention at the civic center and that you’d gotten up on stage and sang a conway twitty song made you sing a song in front of the class to see if you could sing dating the seventh grader at the junior high your sixth-grade teacher passing notes to her one neighbor to another you and your younger brother each play a song on the piano on television your piano teacher arranging it your name glowing from the television as you play silver bells it seems like magic learning the moonwalk to go with the beaded glove you and your friend billy fashioned for the purpose of walking around rushmore mall getting stares writing and directing your own version of the tv show whiz kids with the av equipment from the junior high after seeing wargames a hundred times and the milwaukee 414s on the cover of newsweek also because the world stopped for the final episode of m*a*s*h you still can’t think of it without welling up when you think of hawkeye’s inability to say good-bye he only had to say it once change is sometimes change but sometimes it isn’t in phoenix the first order of business is getting out of the gifted and talented program really just a place to hide away the restless and hyperactive kids the bus would come for you in north dakota in the middle of the school day to transport you to the high school where the gifted program was high school kids throwing snowballs hard at you at recess the new kid new again but just on thursdays locking the gifted classroom door on the way out with the teacher’s purse and keys inside does the trick in phoenix as does the unrevealed fact that the eighth grade in phoenix is a repeat of the seventh grade in rapid city which means coasting academically speaking everyone thinking you’re some kind of genius but you only care about being freed to reinvent yourself shedding all the computer nonsense in favor of sports and music a pantomime of the guitar solo in let’s go crazy you standing on a chair the yardstick quivering in your hand like prince’s ax wins unanimous approval from all who witness it and naturally you form an air band with some newly made friends from the basketball team for which you’re a starting guard by virtue of being tall the air band you call phantasm after the horror movie you watched with the team on a friday night at the basketball coach’s house sworn to secrecy about the booze the basketball coach a former phoenix police officer but something funny about the story never really know for sure but don’t care as long as he keeps offering discounts on limos from his family limo company it always seems cool when the basketball coach shows up as the limo driver means he’ll buy for you too like the night everyone had their wits scared away from watching phantasm which rumor had it was directed by a teenager and then you want to make a movie too but after the band which wins the school talent show handily you lip-synching the words to open arms and don’t stop so convincingly that you incur a fan club among sixth-grade girls who start turning out for the home basketball games and then again in the bleachers during softball season phantasm is asked to headline the next parent-teacher dinner and the keyboardist drummer and lead guitarist agree with your suggestion of performing a couple of bryan adams songs run to you and heaven make the cut the whole band shops for stage clothes at the millers outpost at westridge mall keeping the receipts and tucking the tags in so everything can be returned the following day there are perks to celebrity you come to know when you follow some girls into the bathroom as a joke and even though you get hauled into the principal’s office nothing happens you sell the box of lunch tickets the printer dropped and no one wants to believe it’s really you doing it you toilet-paper the gym teacher’s car and he knows it’s you and your friends but nothing happens you break curfew at the hotel in anaheim on the graduation trip to disneyland and again nothing happens not just the basketball coach watching your back but other teachers too except for your homeroom teacher who notices and you can tell she’s unamused at all the free passes but then you rise through the ranks of spellers and represent your school at the state competition lasting a few rounds before going out on the word yawl which you spell with an o instead of an a but even that defeat is treated like a victory and back at school there are congratulations aplenty someone jokingly asks if you’re on the recording for we are the world and you laugh but there’s also menace in the joke and you think careful careful careful you don’t really understand backlash until that spring when new coke debuts and even though the soda delivers everything it promises there’s such a stink about it that they bring back the old coke and there’s a rumor that the guy who came up with the idea was fired and you think about that maybe more than you should when you’re selected as the valedictorian speaker and over the summer as you think ahead to your freshman year the summer of repeated viewings of back to the future and miami vice reruns if only to stay out of the crushing heat waiting for the sun to set to walk the neighborhood with your boom box playing van halen’s 1984 crashing party line for however many cents a minute at night the summer all the girls dressed like madonna consternation that the like a virgin tour wasn’t coming to phoenix the rumor that madonna had a revolving bed onstage while she was singing or maybe it was prince another tour that wasn’t coming to phoenix though it didn’t matter because you had to be seventeen to go everyone wondering why wild sexual rumors as guesses the kid who had a copy of purple rain on betamax the kid who asked where’s the beef so much people started avoiding him that was the summer of live aid the kids starving in ethiopia phil collins playing the london show and then flying to america on the concorde for the other show the same day jack nicholson everywhere that day too everyone cooing over a band called u2 taking the job at the fish and chips down the street from your future high school slinging monsterburgers dixie dogs fish sandwiches fries with everything using the money to catch weird science your new favorite movie replacing st elmo’s fire your other favorite movie but tied with the breakfast club and better off dead then the rock hudson jokes but no jokes about ryan white the kid born the same year as you whom they wouldn’t let go to school because he had aids from a blood transfusion parents of other kids and teachers scared out of their minds john cougar and michael jackson and elton john and kareem abdul-jabbar became his friends alyssa milano gave him a kiss ryan white proved you could get aids if you weren’t a homosexual which some people seemed to fear more than aids but he was just a little boy another innocent in a circumstance like the girl who wrote the letter and went to russia then died in a small plane crash somewhere back east right before you start high school and you think how can someone get all the way to russia and back only to die in a small plane crash in america it doesn’t make any sense but it recalls the not-too-distant past in rapid city when your entire sixth-grade class wrote letters to lyle alzado the l.a. raiders football player your teacher knew from when she tutored him in college no answer to the letters which didn’t upset you except you thought maybe your teacher one of your favorites was embarrassed that someone she once knew and helped had turned his back on her now that he was famous like madonna had to her own flesh and blood the year of madonna really desperately seeking susan marrying sean penn sean penn firing at swarming paparazzi in helicopters waiting in the parking lot of a 7-eleven to ambush someone safe but sympathetic who could buy you the penthouse magazine with madonna on the cover the photos not as good as the ones you’d seen in rapid city on rodeo weekend the dumpsters full of magazines you’d never heard of a hierarchy quickly developed oui penthouse playboy penetration the difference maker in your mind but not just yours madonna is the first celebrity you’ve seen fully nude and even after you’ve hightailed it out of the 7-eleven parking lot you can’t believe what you’re seeing like the time someone on the basketball team had a vhs copy of faces of death or the film you needed a permission slip to see in junior high the choose your own adventure about how babies are born everyone says michael jackson now owns all the songs written by the beatles which is confusing the question about whether or not your grade-school popularity will transfer with you to high school is answered pretty quickly as you become an anonymous freshman face in the small mexican town on the outskirts of phoenix the high school mostly mexican too but white kids bused in from everywhere until the mexicans are a minority again those mexicans you get to know through your after-school job at the fish and chips some of them even recognizing you from over the summer especially those you began to favor with free food including the security guard a local you’ve cultivated the saxophone that has lain dormant since the seventh grade reawakens in your first-period band class marching season that fall playing halftime at home and away games riding the bus hassled at work for needing friday nights off the busiest of the week don’t you know but band is your entrée into the world of upperclassmen who take a liking to you like others in south dakota and north dakota and montana did previously and you don’t try to analyze it just say yes to hanging out with them at their houses late into the night drinking their parents’ alcohol or to the midnight showing of the rocky horror picture show some of the upperclassmen are in the drama club too throwing toast and rice at the screen after your shift at the fish and chips has ended then driving around until all hours of the night looking for alleged parties sometimes in other school districts someone knows someone who is having a party or not breaking into the resorts ringing camelback mountain to use the pool if all else fails that fall you adopt wholeheartedly the fashions of sonny crockett which gets you noticed in good and bad ways but mostly good when it comes to girls and the blonde whose locker is on your row and who doesn’t wear a bra finally gives in to your badgering her for a date when you ask her to the ac/dc concert your colleague at the fish and chips who spent the summer drawing in pencil the scene of the seven dwarfs all puffing from the same bong offers to drive for a ticket to the concert he’ll even throw in a bottle of southern comfort but he hits on the blonde all night annoying the hell out of you but it doesn’t really matter because she’s gone by the encore falling in with some older friends she knows from you don’t want to know where but you have better luck with the junior who is the section leader of the flutes your first high school girlfriend and she takes some guff for dating a freshman but any who know you are okay with it same for whoever nominates you for homecoming prince you feel like it’s a lock everyone saying it’s going to be you but then it’s not and not even really close a local kid whose friends apparently all voted for him wins and you file that lesson away all music must come with warning labels now if the lyrics are graphic you watch huddled around the television in the classroom as the challenger explodes upon liftoff there’s an atomic meltdown at chernobyl a place you don’t really know where that is campaign season and your friends suggest you run for sophomore class president make your mark for jaime clarke on your signs and out of your mouth and when the lopsided victory is yours there’s yet another lesson about which is coveted more the beauty contest for homecoming prince or the academic honor of being class president the difference between duckie and blane even on the makeshift stage at thomas mall before it is demolished strutting with the other teenage models booked through the dubious agency you joined with your friend the surfer who orders his clothes from the international male catalog the agency books you for a commercial for an italian restaurant says bring your saxophone you never know if the commercial runs never pay for anything the only money exchanging hands is yours for head shots dressing up in various costumes against various backdrops your vanity from the time the girl in the water park in south dakota thought you were corey hart and other instances like that and maybe even the lost homecoming prince election driving you to believe but you tell no one and your surfer friend is equally mum there’s a lot of talk about who is going to be participating in hands across america the guy from st elsewhere coming to phoenix to be part of the chain the idea something ferris bueller might come up with like yours to take the senior girl you meet playing in the orchestra pit of the high school production of the hobbit on a one-day trip to disneyland limo to and from the airport courtesy of your old friend the basketball coach airline ticket courtesy of your fish and chips fortune you can’t believe when she says yes but then the day is overwhelmed with the gesture the spontaneity second-guessed with questions about if you do things like this all the time and you say no even though you know you do and when you’re not you spend too much time daydreaming grand schemes that you desire with all your heart to come true you always the star of the show another self-aggrandizer like that fake jimmy swaggart who gets wal-mart to pull rolling stone magazine from its shelves or all those celebrities in the antidrug stop the madness video including old friend and noncorrespondent lyle alzado the world is full of attention seekers it seems sean penn punching a musician at a club in los angeles eg or anyone on entertainment tonight or a current affair which becomes obsessed with the preppy murderer in new york only because he’s handsome but new york city is as far away as the moon from the hot and humid summer you spend working and scheming about your sophomore year at a loss when not actually in school an environment you thrive in the endless possibilities not true of the summer or school vacations which are all just work boredom work sophomore year starts off with the inxs concert at the mesa amphitheatre the pastel-colored crowd sweating in the summer that won’t end and when it’s over some of the crowd follows the limo you and your friends rented to ferry you to and from the party thinking maybe you’re the band but your friend sticks his head out of the window and the jig is up and the cars fall back everyone laughing but some annoyed not to have teased the ruse further to at least see if any girls were in the trailing cars no one can answer the question about whether or not max headroom is a real person or not the freshman sax player in your section agreeing to become your girlfriend which is mostly ceremonial since she’s a mormon and can’t date until she’s sixteen and even then only in groups of other mormons is the word but it hardly matters your relationship mostly revolves around band practice and traveling to away games and band competitions you going to her parents’ house after school but before your shift at the fish and chips to shoot pool and listen to music or watch movies while her mother lurks somewhere her mormon friends like you and vice versa the good crowd from school the kids all the teachers like even the security guard who catches you and your girlfriend and some other friends off campus during school hours your idea all the way not realizing residents in the small town would look out their windows and call campus security but them not realizing you have campus security in your back pocket feeding them and their families for free at the fish and chips your girlfriend panicking her reputation surely taking the biggest hit but the security guard recognizes you and gives everyone a ride to the edge of the football field as the bell for the next class rings he’ll say he couldn’t find anyone and you’ll continue to repay the favor for as long as you work at the fish and chips wishing you had the same influence over the security guard at a rival high school when he finds you hiding in the men’s room while your friend and fellow student council officer searches the campus for her boyfriend to confront him about cheating the security guard seems pleased to drag you to the principal’s office the principal yelling about calling the police charging you with trespassing and as your friend arrives in the clutches of a second security guard you remember that a girl from a party you found yourself at over the summer is on the student council at the rival high school and you claim to be her cousin from south dakota the security guard not buying it but the principal seeing a way out of the mess that threatens to turn an otherwise ordinary day into a vortex of procedure and you pretend to cower under a tongue-lashing the security guard escorting you both to the parking lot a tale that becomes as legendary as the flames shooting from your saxophone at halftime of the homecoming game your section leader rigging camping stoves in his and yours passing a lighter at a key moment on the field everyone astonished even the band teacher who is both angry and awed by the pyrotechnics you didn’t consider that he could get in trouble with the school but you and your section leader disappear the camping stoves and no one asks you about it you try for another piece of legend when in your official capacity as assistant to one of the chemistry teachers during your free period you leak some test answers not knowing that there are two sets of answers so when the girls you’re trying to impress answer their test with the exact sequence of answers for the test they’re not taking you get busted and your free period is converted to detention for the rest of the semester said detention held in the band room and run by the band teacher who lets you practice or leave early the papers full of oliver north and his secretary fawn hall and iran-contra the term plausible deniability floating through conversations a term you like there’s a rumor rob lowe is dating the secretary and also a rumor about richard gere the heavy metal group judas priest is ordered to stand trial over two teens in nevada who shot each other on a playground one of them dying instantly the other maimed and living a few more years their parents think they did it because of subliminal messages in judas priest’s music the mormon car salesman elected governor without a majority cancels martin luther king jr day calling it an illegal holiday also calling black children pickaninnies and telling black people they don’t need a holiday they need jobs oh and the time he told a jewish delegation that america was a christian nation and boy did those japanese businessmen’s eyes get round when they found out how many golf courses arizona had and the retribution is sure but slow playing out for months and years to come the kid in your class who disappears for long stretches of time is liberace’s protégé and the proximity of celebrity at your tiny high school in a tiny town on the outskirts of phoenix is unbelievable there’s a rumor his hands are insured for millions no one really seems to know him one kid calls him a fag like liberace and the protégé punches the kid with his million-dollar fists the protégé presents an interesting shot at political redemption after the disastrous first semester of your reign as sophomore class president not outwardly disastrous but a failure in your eyes the homecoming float the largest piece of legislation on each class’s agenda your idea to get a corporate sponsor met with confusion and more confusion when said corporate sponsor is the local mcdonald’s so that the sophomore class offering is a floating advertisement for mcdonald’s during construction in the jv quarterback’s backyard everyone working diligently to re-create the golden arches out of chicken wire and crepe paper you’re amazed both at how bad the idea is and how readily everyone was willing to undertake it the spring class fund-raiser is a chance to erase those memories and after approaching the protégé with the idea you present the protégé in concert as your class fund-raiser some officers had no idea about the protégé and some don’t know who liberace is but once again everyone just goes along and so the concert is booked the lone apple macintosh that constitutes the school’s computer lab is used to create the promotional flyer ads are taken out in the local papers the protégé has a piano delivered to the school auditorium he’s contractually obligated to use only a certain brand of piano and the night of the concert you pace with the protégé backstage as the auditorium fills to half its capacity the protégé says i can fill radio city music hall but not a high school auditorium and you give a nervous laugh but he’s not really kidding much later you’ll think about this over and over and over but then you go on with the show by parting the stage curtains and introducing the protégé whose playing mesmerizes the audience the success of the fund-raiser inspires you to fill a notebook with the names of bands you intend to contact via letter about playing at your high school raising even more money ac dc yes u2 of course quiet riot and duran duran and depeche mode and then a list of bands possibly looking for a way to expand their audience but the absence of congratulations on arranging the concert with liberace’s protégé is disappointing it’s like the concert never happened except for those in the audience no students really by the way just adults who enjoyed liberace’s music and absent the accolades the whole thing feels hollow unappreciation leads to some bitterness and the sudden realization that your friends will be graduating leaving you among your fellow sophomores most of them not your friends most of them resentful of your friendship with upperclassmen or indifferent but regardless there’s no way to come back into the fold and your one other friend from grade school the one who went to private school appears as a lifeline and the private-school friend arranges a shadow day where you follow him around campus and attend class with him the private school is an all-boys catholic school which is full of non-catholics since it’s one of the only private schools in phoenix and is generally regarded as the best the words college prep in its name the giveaway the private school sits on central avenue the dividing point between east phoenix where the haves live and west phoenix where the have-nots like you live the school is populated mostly with the haves which suits you just fine though in your heart you know you’ll never really be friends with any of them and that your friends will be have-nots like your private-school friend but that’s okay because you really just want the association not to have to pretend that you’re a have though you and your private-school friend angle to get a pair of fake rolexes from mexico and hoover up all the polo shirts at the used-clothing store after your application is accepted for the fall why you failed to mention either your shadow day or your application to your girlfriend balloons as a glaring cruelty when she learns about it from someone else the confrontation one of the terrible moments of your life up to that point you have no answer fumbling with an excuse that you didn’t think you’d be accepted though you never doubted that for a minute looking good on paper will become an obsession your girlfriend is never fully assuaged even though you promise you never thought of it as a betrayal and you craft a good joke about dating a mormon girl while attending a catholic school which gets you both past it also you remind her about your newly minted driver’s license which means no more hitching rides to her house after school meaning you can visit more often which you promise to do and mean it at the time you utter it not realizing the true freedom a license and the used ford mustang ii your parents give you bestow the preacher on the sunday-morning tv show loses his job because he drugged and raped his secretary along with another preacher which completely validates and supports everything you think about religion same again when the other preacher gets caught with a prostitute months later and same again but this time about politics when the photo of the senator running for president and the model on his lap is everywhere everything is just a cloak for attracting people’s attention sometimes sexual attending the baptist church with your private-school friend a megachurch down the street from the private school mostly to use the phenomenal exercise and sports facilities in an effort to curb the toll nightly meals at the fish and chips are taking on your body surprised to see the rocker alice cooper in the front pew with his family his daughter’s baptism on the agenda of the program in your lap you really don’t have any idea who alice cooper is but know he’s someone famous who lives in phoenix but he just looks like a father and a husband in church after watching your friends graduate and leave high school behind forever you move a little farther west into a neighborhood being terrorized by a rapist the starlight rapist is the name named for the neighborhood but it sounds like an album and no one goes out after dark only men are walking dogs suddenly you and your private-school friend go for jogs because you highly doubt that anything will happen to you and you both openly hope to catch the pervert roaming the streets talking tough about the violence you’re capable of everyone listening to the new u2 album the first few bars of the first song everywhere like weather someone initiates a recall of the mormon car salesman governor and then the news becomes just about that the story advancing incrementally sometimes without any new facts just everyone’s anger and embarrassment especially when the governor digs in and doubles down like politicians always seem to just like the senator with the girl on his lap did when everyone said he was finished they’re always the last to know you trade the ford mustang ii in on a midnight blue volkswagen rabbit a wolfsburg edition which just means the color and seat covers are different but feels important for the start of your new school akin to owning a nagel painting your parents are upset because the mustang ii was almost paid off but you can’t go to a fancy prep school in a mustang ii you and your private-school friend get vanity plates too yours is my hare and his is beemer for obvious reasons your junior year starts and it’s like moving again nothing that happened before really happened or is relevant and everything is in the now saying the private school’s name perks every listener’s ears and for maybe the first time in your life you feel the benefit of exclusivity membership in a club you want to belong to but know you probably don’t and never will your grades were good enough to get in but only because the public school was easy and probably only really because your teachers wrote stellar recommendations but the private school is hard harder than you anticipated and then because you live on the west side of phoenix and not the east you don’t really enjoy the social aspect of your new peer group certainly not the company of the girls who attend the all-girls private school adjacent to yours no one has heard of the area where you live and because you didn’t go to any of the same middle or junior schools as the other students and because your family doesn’t know any of the other families you’re marked as an outsider from day one and you take note of the fact knowing it’ll come into play for the rest of your life but rather than be daunted by it you just let it go you aren’t even sure what it is you hoped to gain by becoming friends with rich kids you don’t need a loan for chrissakes and they have no idea how or why they’re rich they just enjoy the designation even the son of one of the phoenix 40 a list of the rich and powerful in town who offers to sell you some cocaine at lunch somewhere in texas a baby falls through the tiny opening of an abandoned well and for two days the television documents the rescue the baby miraculously okay when she’s pulled free your english teacher the one who kisses the ass of the kid whose father is a famous golfer and the other kid whose father is a state politician and has a terribly lame joke about meeting his wife she was a stockbroker and he was looking to invest and the joke is he went in looking for stocks and came out with a bond assigns the great gatsby and you devour it thinking it’s a book about you astonished by the similarities between your story and jay gatsby’s and you become convinced that your girlfriend is daisy at least narratively and you adopt the attitude that your love for each other is doomed especially as you seem to be spending less and less time together owing to your commute downtown and then your racing back west to work your paycheck suddenly suffering the heavy tax of keeping up appearances at the private school but also because you frankly spend time cruising the east side of phoenix a part of town previously unknown to you exploring the roads lined with expensive homes even wending to the top of camelback mountain where the priciest homes of all are perched and also the biltmore area with its boutique shops and exclusive restaurants and the difference between this world and yours solidifies all of it bifurcated by the private school that resides geographically between the two and maybe not just geographically just like the two eggs in gatsby though you start to think less of jay gatsby and more about f scott fitzgerald famous and rich and then broke and forgotten in the same lifetime but immortal in death and that seems more desirable than money something to really strive for but the how is too hard to parse and you drop it until you’re watching the credits roll on the midnight showing of less than zero and see that the movie which you consider powerful for its examination of the importance of loyal friendships is based on a novel and later you do a little sniffing around the phoenix public library and learn that the author is more like fitzgerald than not and maybe that’s the blueprint you read the author’s second book which isn’t as well received as the first just like fitzgerald and it’s about the doings of kids at a college in the woods of vermont and you truthfully can’t make much of it but the striking difference between the author photos of the first two books is something to note the party scenes in the book exceed anything you experience hanging out with your graduated high school friends in their new digs in tempe the college town built up around arizona state university one friend living in a dorm with beer bottle caps pressed into the ceiling of the hall so many they gleam like a metallic rainbow and the other moving into a newly built pink stucco apartment complex across the street from campus for students only miles better than the other apartment complexes which are really just old cinder-block motels repainted and repainted all with crumbling swimming pools ringed with coeds catching rays it’s quickly clear that all the cool kids will be living at the new complex the rental application asks for fraternity affiliation so rival frat members aren’t accidentally booked into the same four-person apartment the complex deciding who will live with whom the only drawback but no one seems to mind for access to the sand volleyball court and the sparkling pool but really for the weekend parties so legendary that kids at your new private school have heard of them the apartments are identically furnished so that while the locations of the parties are different each weekend the parties have the feel of having picked up where the other ones left off all of the faces nameless to you and to everyone you think but no one cares you first hear about the u2 concerts at sun devil stadium at one of these parties and the notion that the tickets are only five dollars seems like drunken rambling but radio stations all over town start broadcasting that the band will play two shows on consecutive days to film a documentary and to ensure the stadium is full both nights all tickets are only five dollars word is celebrities from hollywood are driving through the desert in their limos to attend and you and your private-school friend score some tickets excited at the prospect even if the seats are terrible all the way up toward the top of the bowl some kids have tickets for both nights which you find slightly annoying but you also wish you could go both times but when you’re actually at the show you’re distracted by the murder of the owner of the fish and chips two nights prior someone knocking on his door while he was sitting down to dinner in his apartment the owner always lived frugally even though his chain of fish and chips was successful and mostly all-cash operations and while the apartment where he lived was in a better part of town he was still shot point blank through the chest when he opened the door his dinner still cooling on the table and in the days after leading up to christmas it becomes known that the killer was after the sack of silver coins commemorating the fish and chips’ fortieth anniversary the owner kept in his closet the local pawn shops are put on alert and just like in the movies the killer tries to pawn the coins and is arrested and revealed to be the investigator hired by the insurance company the fish and chips owner had applied to for better rates the recall election of the car salesman governor is set and your private-school classmate’s dad who is a congressman agrees to run though before the election can happen the car salesman governor is indicted for this and that and removed as governor you actually like the classmate he was the kid who sat in front of you on your shadow day way back when and he actually spoke to you unlike the others and you identified him as an all-right guy right off though you never really became friends with him or the kid running for student government who gave his campaign speech in the gymnasium and listed one of his hobbies as being an avid beaver hunter and everyone shrieked ending the kid’s candidacy and earning him a week’s suspension but also a bit of legend which far outweighed the punishment though not so for the senior who appeared on camera during a news investigation about boondockers in the desert kids gathering with illegally purloined alcohol and then scattering drunk and whatever else behind the wheels of their cars the senior agreeing to be interviewed on camera and telling the reporter that nothing could stop them from partying which although it was probably true did abruptly end his studies at the private school when he was expelled as not representative of the school’s student body you have more pressing concerns though as you realize your relationship with your high school girlfriend has completely crumbled you never see each other there aren’t enough hours but also maybe you’re just a little more interested in your reincarnation as a private-school student the part-time job at the law firm down the street from the private school another piece of the new puzzle the idea of quitting the filthy fish and chips job the ultimate goal but for now you must work both especially since you traded in the new volkswagen you’ve hardly made any payments on for a red nissan pulsar nx with t-tops and a vanity plate that reads o2b yng taking on an outrageous monthly car payment but appearances are becoming more important every day exhausting as it can be the two lives being lived simultaneously and so you initiate the breakup with your high school girlfriend in a cowardly way by writing a letter and asking her to meet you a month later to give everyone time to think about everything and when the month is over you’re kind of surprised that she shows up at the time and place you suggested but the surprise quickly turns to chagrin when you realize she’s rightly been simmering for a month and pulls out her own letter and reads it to you cataloging all your sins and drops it at your feet you knowing you deserve every word but the devastation is sudden and uncontrollable and you can barely remember driving the freeway back home your old friend who looks like anthony michael hall attempting to flag you down from his front yard as you turn onto your street but you don’t want him to see you that way not knowing it’s your last chance to talk with him never knowing what he wanted to say to you that day or why he shot himself months later his parents quietly moving back to colorado you are excused from classes to attend a seminar on teen suicide held at the convention center and your friend thinks it’s a great ruse for getting out of class and tags along so the experience becomes a goof and not the chance to heal or at least to be a little less bewildered your private-school friend has a friend who lives in rancho palos verdes outside of los angeles and you both bomb through the desert to the cool foggy shores of the rich suburb your friend’s friend is a nationally ranked motocross racer who tours the country on his sponsor’s dime which is in your mind pretty legendary except you don’t care anything about motocross but traveling here and there to perform before adoring crowds as a teenager engenders some jealousy but the motocross racer is a cool guy and he takes you and your private-school friend to a couple of parties sneaks you into the local yacht club though you get caught and escorted out the ocean air filling your desert-dried lungs hey there’s a nude beach nearby the motocross friend says and you park above overlooking the beach but it’s the opposite of what you hoped for just families frolicking in the surf without any clothes a bummer for sure but you’re perked up by the motocross racer’s saying that lyle alzado lives in his neighborhood and as you pass in front of the palatial white estate behind a tall iron gate the distance between where you are and where you’ve been feels oceanic and it makes you a little sad to think of your sixth-grade self penning the unanswered fan letter and you think maybe it would be funny to ring the doorbell and bring it up with alzado who has retired from football to become an actor but who will really become famous a few years later when he dies from a brain tumor he claims was brought on by his steroid use but you don’t that fall your history teacher wants everyone to volunteer for a political campaign during the current election cycle the incumbent democratic candidate for senator’s office across the street from campus the obvious choice but just to be contrary you answer an ad for the republican challenger someone you’ve never heard of a financial planner of some kind who hasn’t a prayer of winning and when you report to the financial planner’s house in the gated biltmore estates you learn the campaign team is just you and the financial planner’s son who has dropped out of the university of arizona and put his band’s music on hold to work on his father’s campaign the mission that day is to put up campaign billboards but the posthole digger is impotent against the hard desert floor and you don’t get one sign up the incumbent wins by a couple of hundred thousand votes and you feel no way about it not like you did in the mock vote for president in the fourth grade when you were sure carter would win and woke up to the complete opposite the credit for working on the financial planner’s campaign can’t offset the reality of your college algebra teacher holding you after to tell you that you are failing and might not graduate in the spring you beg for another chance and he says there are two jaime clarkes which one will show up and you promise the right one even though he never does and you’re ultimately busted down to a lower-level math class that you almost don’t pass though you get an a in your christian service class which has you volunteering at the children’s crisis nursery where kids are taken when the police remove them from their homes for whatever reason the popular volunteer spot is the state mental institution the stories of all the loonies acted out back on campus to slack jaws and disbelief and mocking laughter but you know you won’t last a day there and so the children’s crisis nursery it is just playing with kids during your shift and they’re just kids and love having fun and it’s sad only when you remember the high chain-link fence around the building and the orders not to let any parents who might be wailing outside in to see their kids the investigator for the insurance company who murdered the owner of the fish and chips goes on trial and the schedule is arranged so that you and your private-school friend can attend along with some other employees the murderer looks like someone’s grandfather the windowless courtroom antiseptic and overly acoustic and simply boring there’s no doubt the guy did it the procedure is just to string together the narrative in a cohesive way so that everyone can put the matter behind them before christmas the year punctuated by news that one of the popular wrestlers back at your old public school has asked your ex-girlfriend out to the christmas formal and blind with jealousy you undertake a successful campaign to win her back which is a win you needed everyone needs a win it seems not just your new private-school friend who is living in his own apartment off the freeway hiding from his deranged father but also the woman and her young daughter living in the economy housing next door to the new fish and chips location you transfer to when you and your private-school friend have a falling out over your going back with your high school girlfriend the private-school friend annoyed to lose you as part of a recent foursome with two vietnamese girls you’ve been spending quality time with you just as a wingman but you put the kibosh on the whole thing which sends your private-school friend to the moon and you don’t speak ever again necessitating the transfer to the new location where you get your new private-school friend a job the new private-school friend’s deranged father learns he’s working there and shows up waving a gun on the sidewalk you roll the metal window guards down and cower by the fry cookers waiting for the police who come and your new private-school friend watches while his father is placed in the back of a squad car the woman and her young daughter ask you about it later they weren’t home when it happened and you shrug even though you were for a moment fearful and change the subject and ask them if they have their christmas tree yet and the mother says it’s either the tree or something to put under it which guts you and you play santa and buy a big tree with lots of ornaments and tinsel and surprise the woman and her daughter who seem embarrassed and then you are too when the tree won’t fit easily into the tiny apartment the awkwardness increased when the little girl shows off the christmas tree hanging on the wall made from toilet paper tubes and cotton balls the last time you see either of them because they quit coming around a serial killer everyone describes as handsome is executed in florida you and your high school girlfriend easily fall back into the old routine of never seeing each other especially as you start spending more and more of your free time with your old public-school friends out in tempe hatching a plan to move in with them in the summer after your high school graduation a plan you’re up front about with your high school girlfriend but it’s theoretical and besides she’s never been to your house or met your parents so what does it really matter the relationship is kept within the confines of the school you no longer attend and her front room which you frequent less and less and church dances different from the rave you attend at an old warehouse in downtown phoenix with adults you don’t know your college friend procuring the address the streets dark and crime-ridden so you slip out to move your car under a streetlight and when you return you see a large black man dancing naked and when your eyes adjust you see others are naked too and your friend grabs you and says it’s time to go the actor who played the older brother on diff’rent strokes is arrested for shooting someone in a drug den in south central los angeles the president or whatever of iran puts a bounty on a writer you’ve never heard of right around the time you start to think more about the author of the book that the movie you liked was based on and you crank out a handful of short stories some only a few pages long and show them to no one even though you’d like to publish them as a book the last time you wrote something your fifth-grade teacher typed it up for you offering editorial suggestions and even helping you send it off to publishers in new york city most of them not responding but a few sending along form rejections the seriousness of the endeavor left an impression on you writing seemed like something that impressed adults but so did a million things one story you wrote a humorous piece for your high school girlfriend full of puns about having sex with her is found by her mother and you’re not allowed to see her for a period of time even though you get an audition with the mother to plead that the story is fiction nothing but which seems to matter not the commercial pepsi paid madonna millions to make debuts during the cosby show but the next day the video madonna made for her song like a prayer debuts and the two side by side are a study in extreme contrasts suddenly christians are supposedly not drinking pepsi you talk the night manager of the fish and chips into cosigning for a car phone for your new ride you wouldn’t dare ask your own parents and tread on the freewill parenting plus you know they’d say no the car phone is installed and you pretend to be talking on it whenever you pull in and out of the parking lot of the private school even letting a kid use it at recess the yellow-lit buttons lighting up with a satisfying beep when you turn the key in the ignition you’re not sure if it’s the phone or not but you inch into another group of private-school friends and when you’re invited by the kid with the black mercedes to ditch and go see president reagan at arizona state university you agree and zip to tempe with the others in the black mercedes which you note has a car phone too a point you bring up casually you learn the others are all in a young republicans club which doesn’t interest you until you learn it meets at the house of one of the girls at the neighboring private school and you agree to join them though you forget about it completely when you hatch a plan to join the mormon church in order to enliven the same stale route your relationship with your high school girlfriend is headed down unsure how else to keep the relationship going and also you have the sense that you’ll probably get married or at least it’ll come up soon because mormon girls start talking about marriage at a very young age and you know you can’t marry her unless you’re mormon and so the math works out even though math is not your strong suit but you never admit it is a stunt even when your high school girlfriend prompts you to do so when you start attending church regularly on sundays and again when you arrange for meetings with the missionaries in her cousin’s house mostly so your parents won’t find out you don’t tell your friends either and the enormity of the situation doesn’t hit until you’re wet behind the ears having been dunked into the baptismal waters standing at the pulpit in front of the crowd of mormon friends and their families smiling up at you during the command performance you give the attention welcome and familiar but the words coming out of your mouth invented for the occasion forgotten before they’re uttered shortly thereafter a terrible thing happens to a jogger in central park in new york city which is all the news can talk about until it comes out that the actor rob lowe is in a sex tape everyone wants to see but no one has any idea how you hardly have time to practice your new mormonism before you graduate and move into the tiny converted office in the one-bedroom apartment of your old public-school friend who ripped up the carpets without the landlord’s consent and spray-painted the concrete floor black the summer filled with parties put on by the foreign exchange club and you heartily attend you feel like a fish out of water too just like the college-aged foreigners far from home but you don’t find kinship at these parties mostly because the foreigners close ranks and you don’t blame them knowing it’s for their own protection a television actress from a show you’ve never heard of is murdered on her doorstep in los angeles by a crazed fan from tucson and the papers drop the tidbit that the actress became the object of the crazy’s obsession when his first obsession the girl from back east who wrote the letter to the russian president died in that small plane crash and it seems weird to share an obsession with a crazy person and you’ve never considered that the false intimacy celebrity creates could be dangerous two brothers in beverly hills murder their parents with shotguns in the family tv room and try to convince the police that it’s a mob hit related to their record producer father’s business but the police don’t buy it and the brothers are ultimately arrested you put the fish and chips behind you for good when you accept a job as a runner for american continental corporation the parent company of lincoln savings and loan in california run by the already notorious charles keating jr who made national headlines when he tried to buy influence with a cadre of u.s. senators the clip of the question to charlie about whether or not he hoped to be buying influence and charlie’s answer that he certainly hoped so a sound bite the press loves also the papers can’t get enough of charlie or his lavish lifestyle his beautiful secretaries are referred to as charlie’s angels and he lives in a mansion on the same property as his daughter and her husband parents of a kid who attends the same private school you barely graduated from the kid a nationally ranked swimmer and future olympian your job as a runner is to handle the phone calls and open the mail and rotate the company’s fleet of mercedeses through the car wash and stock the supply rooms and fetch the catered lunches for the three floors of lawyers all working on the giant bankruptcy case charlie filed to protect himself and his assets from the federal government which has accused him of looting lincoln like it was his personal piggy bank not even the fall of the berlin wall or the fact that the u.s. government has noriega holed up in the vatican or that the mayor of washington dc is arrested for smoking crack or the pictures of the oil-drenched wildlife in alaska the result of the exxon valdez oil spill can distract the local headlines from charlie and his ongoing battle against the government old stories about charlie taking on larry flynt the publisher of the porn magazine hustler back when charlie was an antismut crusading prosecutor in his native cincinnati as well as newer stories about his calling former p.o.w. and arizona senator john mccain a wimp for not standing up to bank regulators on his behalf or the fact that all of the officers of american continental are related to charlie either by birth or by marriage a news truck is always parked out on the sidewalk in front of the american continental offices on camelback road one time they pull into the driveway and you are sent to ask them politely off the property which they do but not before asking if they can interview you but even after only a month of working for charlie you are in the cult and the idea repels you there’s some pleasure in denying the request charlie is summoned to washington to testify before a committee about lincoln savings and loan and when he takes the fifth the news goes wild and the phones in the runners’ room light up the mail full of indictments and threats the one correspondent who faithfully sends a package every week with epithets and pictures of his father who lost everything when lincoln failed and took his own life the manila envelope like finding a rattlesnake in the mailbag every time it appears when you actually ask what it’s all about people shrug and say that maybe elderly investors in california were persuaded by lincoln employees to move their savings from safe and guaranteed but low-interest accounts to high-yield junk bonds so that charlie could then use the money to build the lavish phoenician hotel at the base of camelback mountain and for other purposes too the dispute seemingly is whether the investors were greedy or the bank employees were illegally aggressive and misleading no one will ever know the truth about that or the rumor that the government blocked a sale of lincoln that charlie had orchestrated which would’ve kept it from failing and from all those people losing their money you don’t see too much of charlie as his office is up camelback road at the phoenician but one day you arrive at the american continental offices and the parking lot is full of moving vans the caravan idling among the clamor and whispers of charlie’s back and you learn that the government has seized the phoenician and evicted charlie your sudden proximity to the boss is invigorating and when you discover a box of yellow buttons that proclaim i like charlie keating you wear them as part of your uniform even on errands like the daily court filings downtown and the airport runs for the cadre of lawyers from beverly hills charlie has hired picking them up on mondays and dropping them off on fridays the one lawyer the lead one telling you how much he regrets not following his first love and becoming a veterinarian which you doubt because of the rolex on the lead lawyer’s wrist you wear the button even when you’re not working like the party at one of charlie’s developer friends’ estate where the pips are performing and you notice local celebrities like the center for the phoenix suns and the guy who revi