The Lie and How We Told It
REBEL REBEL - Chapter 7
Yeah, I know. What a cliché, the rebel boyfriend. Wait for what's to come, though – it gets worse. I think we have established by this point that this is a story about me and my mom (and the title says so), so you'll probably be wondering what the hell am I doing with all this boy talk. Who are you, really? I mean – say you had to define your dreams and wishes, and you had had the luck of enjoying a nurturing relationship with any of your parents. Would you say "the thing I want most in the world is to keep having a nurturing relationship with (insert type of parent here)"? Hell, no. You would say "I want to be the next great American athlete", "I just want to be happy", "I want to know true love" or something along those lines. You wouldn't wish for a thing that's a given to stay the way it already was – you would ask for something different, something fancier. Now that I think about it, perhaps the smartest course of action would have been to wish for the good things to stay as they were, but I was not as smart as I once thought. If I had been, perhaps I would have wished for me and my mom to stay as close as those first 16 years. But I didn't. And you know what I didn't do, either? I didn't wish for the love of my life. I only wanted to become the next Christiane Amanpour, and so it's quite funny that at that moment in space and time, the things I hadn't wished for came clashing against each other. Because it is right then and there that a downward trend started.
In the end, I really didn't want to be the next Christiane Amanpour, but that comes much later. And I didn't want the relationship with my mom to go sour, but it did, even if I tried to make it better by hiding that I didn't agree with her on the really important things. But this I also found later. And I didn't wish for true love, but boy, did I get it. Do you know how I can tell, after all those years, that it was for real? Because it turned things upside down, it kicked me in the ass and confronted me and shook me and it pains me to say that I didn't live up to the challenge. I didn't understand what it was, and so overlooked it, like everything else. No, it was not love's fault that, when I picked up the pieces, I put everything back together the wrong way. Sadly, I also found out about this much, much later.
Jess had enjoyed the first six chapters of what was Rory's autobiography more than anything he had read in his entire life, and he had read a lot. Granted, he had a huge bias, but he had decided to shut down his critical editor mind as soon as he started and chosen to go with the flow of the book. It was an emotional rollercoaster for him, even by Rory's age 6. There she was, the love of his life, in her full glory. She was funny, she was really funny. She was in real life, also, but it brought something similar to pride to see that she was also on paper. There was a quirkiness to her prose that was captivating, and it all felt like writer's erotica to him – the way her voice was unveiling before his eyes, the way he could see her mind cogs turning, the way he would read about things she had told him herself that were transformed into narrative with a deft hand, and the way he was discovering things he had never known. She was witty but humble about it, and the amounts of cuteness, harshness and reality were balanced to an alchemic degree. She reminded him of a candid Caitlin Moran – without the overtly PR-staged agenda and themes. His critical editor mind was shut, but he couldn't turn off the Jess reader-writer, and so as he read on he filled the mauscript with his margin notes. The book could end really badly for him, in which case he would burn the thing off and none would be the wiser. But, in a way, even more than his own first novel, his notes were a work-in-progress love poem dedicated to Rory. Had a pony really died while she was riding it in her childhood? Man, that was sick. He really wished he had met Rory back then. He wished he could meet her all.
The whole thing was going to end dramatically, he could tell by chapter 5. Not because of the book, although... who knew? But for him. He had avoided thinking about her the last month as much as he could, and suddenly there he was, immersing himself in the single, most intimate experience he had ever had with her. His survival instinct told him to close the damn thing off and run for the hills at the first Dean mention, but he couldn't stop. He had to do it. And if it ended badly… well, it was bad already, how could it be worse? He needed to get to the end, even if it meant torture. That was Rory spilling her heart out. He was ready to take it.
Dean, Rory's first love as she herself put it, was a short chapter, shorter than the pony one. He knew what was coming. He lit a cigarette and dove in. The rebel boyfriend. The pain of going for the first time against Lorelai's opinion. Wait, was she hinting about true love? Fuck, she was, she really was. And also at the beginning of the end of the Rory who was sure about her place in the world. As he read on, he became painfully conscious of how he had messed Rory's life. Sure, he had been reckless and knew he had been, but, coming from a broken family, his fuck-ups had never affected everyone around him as did hers. He was mortified. But there was something else there, some conflict Rory was hinting at, about the way she handled things when he left, of how she inadvertently started building a façade, and eroded the connection with her mom by not telling her as she used to what she really felt, what she really wanted. He knew already what this had meant for the real Rory: she forsook the mirror that had been her mother, and by doing so, by avoiding being sincere in front of Lorelai, she had avoided confrontation not just with her mom, but with herself. Sure, it was minor details at first – their first kiss, her true feelings about him and Dean the summer she left for Washington, the real pain she went through when he left; and then married Dean, her relationship with Logan, stealing a yacht, dropping Yale, pretending to like her freelance journalist gigs for the sake of what her grandparents, Logan or even herself would think if she took another road, cheating on Paul. Not knowing herself. Lying to herself. Pretending. The story of Rory's life unfolded before his eyes, and it was raw. She was the bravest person he had ever known. She was also unbelievably flawed, but she was putting herself out there for everyone to see it and it was a gift of love for the world. And he loved her back for it. He loved her body and soul.
He had doubted at one stage about Rory's mistakes, afraid that they would be character traits. He didn't worry anymore – he realized, as she did, that they were character traits, but so was her kind heart, her keen mind and her insight. Knowing her armed with those virtues, he wouldn't need to worry anymore. She held, as did everyone, darkness and light inside her, but had the strongest will he'd ever known to fight for her better side.
The last chapter arrived, and with it great sorrow for the book to end. And there was Rory, 15 years later, broken again by the same rebel boy. She ended the book on a positive note, confident that she would be vigilant, this time, to put back the pieces correctly, to stay true to herself, so she could be for her little boy what her mom had been to her. And right there, when he closed the book, he realized he had the biggest proof he would ever get. She had been through the most amazing self-discovery journey, and once she had worked through the lies, through the pain, there was only one person for her there. She loved him. She really loved him. Jess owned Chris 20$ – it had been 302 pages long. He lit a cigarette and put his clothes back on. It was still 9pm, he could make it to Stars Hollow before midnight. He hoped she would still be awake.
He stopped the car in the town square at 11:30, and walked as fast as he could to Maple Street. He slowed down right before her house. He approached it slowly. The lights were on just in Rory's room. He considered tapping it, but he wanted to make a gesture – not a grand one with dancers and rocket ships, but one that would tell her straight away that he admired how brave she was for showing him her best and worst even when he had messed up – again. In all fairness, only giving her an autobiography on Jess-the-fuck-up could equal what she had done, and he didn't have one of those, so he settled for the next most embarrassing thing he could think of, so she would know that he was coming to her stripped of pretenses, just as she had done herself.