The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks Read online

  Subject: Advertent Vaguery

  Also, “for what happened with Bess.” Meaning, what? Is your vaguery advertent?

  From: Porter Welsch [[email protected]]

  To: Frances Landau-Banks [[email protected]]

  Subject: Re: Advertent Vaguery—NOT

  Vaguery was inadvertent. For fooling around with Bess behind your back. You let nothing slide, do you?

  From: Frances Landau-Banks

  [[email protected]]

  To: Porter Welsch [[email protected]]

  Subject: Re: Re: Advertent Vaguery—NOT

  Nothing. But why apologize now? Why not over the summer, or at the start of school?

  From: Porter Welsch [[email protected]]

  To: Frances Landau-Banks [[email protected]]

  Subject: Burger

  Now, because I am feeling apologetic. How about a burger on Wednesday at the Front Porch?

  From: Frances Landau-Banks

  [[email protected]]

  To: Porter Welsch [[email protected]]

  Subject: Re: Burger

  Why should I have a burger with you? Give me three reasons.

  From: Porter Welsch [[email protected]]

  To: Frances Landau-Banks [[email protected]]

  Subject: Why Burger?

  Free burger bought by me. Because I would like to be friends. Because there’s something I want to talk to you about.

  From: Frances Landau-Banks

  [[email protected]]

  To: Porter Welsch [[email protected]]

  Subject: Wednesday Burger

  I always get fries, no burger. I am a vegetarian. You should remember that about me.

  From: Porter Welsch [[email protected]]

  To: Frances Landau-Banks [[email protected]]

  Subject: Re: Wednesday Burger

  You always get CHEESE fries. See? Am not a complete nimrod.

  From: Frances Landau-Banks

  [[email protected]]

  To: Porter Welsch [[email protected]]

  Subject: Nimrod

  What do you want to talk about?

  From: Porter Welsch [[email protected]]

  To: Frances Landau-Banks [[email protected]]

  Subject: Re: Nimrod

  I’ll tell you when I see you. xo Porter

  From: Frances Landau-Banks

  [[email protected]]

  To: Porter Welsch [[email protected]]

  Subject: XO

  Don’t xo me, Porter. Just because I’m letting you buy me cheese fries doesn’t mean you can xo me.

  From: Porter Welsch [[email protected]]

  To: Frances Landau-Banks [[email protected]]

  Subject: Re: XO o, then. P

  From: Frances Landau-Banks

  [[email protected]]

  To: Porter Welsch [[email protected]]

  Subject: O

  Do you want to irritate me?

  From: Porter Welsch [[email protected]]

  To: Frances Landau-Banks [[email protected]]

  Subject: Re: O

  OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

  “Why does he want to go to the Front Porch?” Frankie complained to Trish late Saturday night. They were sitting on their twin beds in the dorm, wearing pajamas. Frankie was supposedly studying for a history test, and Trish was thumbing through Chicken Soup for the Horse Lover’s Soul. “I already accepted his apology. Now he’s sending me hug e-mails and trying to buy me cheese fries; it seems unnecessary.”

  “He wants to be friends,” said Trish. “He can only feel good about himself and what he did with Bess if you let him send you hug e-mails.”

  “Do you think I have to tell Matthew I’m going to lunch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Would you want Matthew going to lunch with one of his exes?”

  “No.”

  “Behind your back?”

  “More no.”

  “So you have to tell him,” concluded Trish. “It’s mature.”

  Frankie’s cell was charging on the nightstand. She called Matthew. “I have to go out for food with my ex-boyfriend,” she told him. “On Wednesday.”

  “That one who cheated on you with Bess?”

  “I’ve only had one boyfriend before.”

  “Besides me.”

  “Besides you.” She felt warm inside, hearing him call himself her boyfriend. “He wants to buy me cheese fries to make himself feel better.”

  “Aw, don’t go.”

  “No, I gotta go.”

  “Why? You don’t owe that guy anything. Did he ever apologize to you, by the way?”

  “Yes, actually he did.”

  “So what else is there to say? Stand him up. Come with me and we’ll have a picnic down by the pond instead.”

  It would have been so easy just to say yes and to avoid the argument that seemed to be brewing. Part of Frankie wanted to say yes. But she was seriously curious what Porter had to say, and she’d already promised to go. “It’s only cheese fries at the Front Porch,” she told Matthew.

  “I know, but you’re letting him walk all over you.”

  Frankie stood and began pacing the floor. “No I’m not. He just wants to talk to me.”

  Trish interrupted. “Is Matthew being jealous?”

  Frankie waved at her to shush, as Matthew said: “Yeah, but he doesn’t deserve to talk to you.”

  “Nothing’s gonna happen,” Frankie said into the phone.

  “I just don’t think you should go. Don’t let him push you around.”

  Since when was anyone pushing her around? That was just insulting.

  “What’s he saying?” whispered Trish.

  “I don’t let guys walk all over me,” said Frankie to Matthew. “Just because Porter did, doesn’t mean I let him.”

  “Okay.”

  She hated the offended tenor that had just shot through his voice. But she said what she felt anyway: “Please don’t tell me what to do.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  Matthew sounded genuinely surprised. “I would never tell you what to do.”

  “You just told me not to go to lunch with Porter!”

  “But you said you didn’t want to go. I was encouraging you to stand up for yourself.”

  “I never said I didn’t want to go!” Frankie cried in frustration.

  She could hear Matthew’s door slam and Alpha’s voice say “Hey, dog, what’s taking you so long?”

  Matthew’s voice suddenly turned sunny. “Alpha’s here. Frankie, I’m gonna have to go.”

  “Fine.”

  “Don’t be mad, ’kay?”

  “Maybe.” How could he just hang up in the middle of the argument?

  “Go do whatever you want. Whatever you want, ’kay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Don’t be mad.”

  “All right. All right.”

  “You’re not mad? Don’t be mad, because I’m crazy about you.”

  “I’m not mad.” And she wasn’t. Not exactly. He sounded so plaintive, so warm—wondering if she were mad.

  “Good,” Matthew said. “I gotta go, Alpha needs to talk to me. Good night, baby.”

  “Good night.”

  Frankie flipped the phone closed. “He’s letting me go,” she told Trish.

  “Letting you? Since when does he let you?” Trish sat up in bed.

  “No, it wasn’t like that. It’s not that he’s letting me. He just didn’t want me to.”

  “So he was jealous.”

  “Maybe. But he doesn’t want me to be mad about it. And he ended up saying I could do whatever I wanted.”

  “How did you go from you telli
ng him not to push you around to him letting you go?” asked Trish. “That’s a big leap.”

  “Yeah.” Frankie flipped her pillow over and switched out the light. “I’m not sure how that happened.”

  THE T-SHIRT

  The next day, Matthew gave Frankie his Superman T-shirt. This was a royal blue, paper-thin T-shirt he’d had for three years. She had noticed him in it many times her freshman year, his heavy shoulders, narrow waist, and black-rimmed glasses giving him much the look of Clark Kent—a superhero body underneath journalist drag. So when Matthew wore that shirt, it was like he was still Clark Kent, only Clark Kent wearing the Superman insignia, which was very meta. And hot. Matthew never took off his glasses unless he was kissing her. When she saw him without them, he didn’t look like Superman at all. He looked confused, like something was missing. She’d looked through the glasses once and realized he was massively nearsighted.

  The afternoon Frankie got the T-shirt was one of the few times they really managed to be alone in the dorm room Matthew shared with Dean. It was Sunday afternoon, and most of their friends had taken the school vans into town, where they would eat lunch, prowl shops, and hide from the junior-level teachers who accompanied them. Normally, girls were only allowed in the boys’ dorms from seven until nine thirty at night, “co-study hours,” for which they formally had to sign in. So that day Matthew snuck Frankie into his third-floor room via the fire escape, which could be reached by climbing a tree adjacent to a hedge, which connected to the ladder, upon which you climbed to the third floor, entered through the bathroom, and went down the hall.

  They listened to music and made out on Matthew’s bed for a while. Then they played Scrabble and downloaded some music. At one point, Frankie noticed a droopy-eyed figurine of a basset hound on Matthew’s bedside table—the kind you see in Hallmark shops or in your great-grandmother’s parlor room, covered with a light film of dust. The paint was worn off on the nose, and the paws were chipped. “Who’s your friend?” Frankie asked, putting it together immediately that Matthew’s dog was the dog on the invitation, which was the dog of Senior’s secret society.

  “Please don’t touch that.”

  “Why?” Frankie set the dog down and stroked its china ears. “Is it valuable?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Well then, why?” She hoped he would tell her, share his secrets with her.

  “Just sentimental value. Could you, um, stop touching it, like I asked?”

  Frankie took her hand off the basset and looked at Matthew. “I’m not going to break it. What’s the deal?”

  Matthew reached out and grabbed her hand, smiling. “I am not going to tell you. Come back here on the bed with me.”

  She stayed where she was. “I don’t see what the big secret is,” she pouted—although she did.

  “It’s not a big secret, I just don’t want to discuss it.”

  “Fine.”

  “Frankie.”

  “What?”

  “Please don’t have hurt feelings.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You are my girlfriend,” whispered Matthew. “You’re my girl and I’m your guy, and you’re my girl and I’m your guy. Let’s not fight.”

  “But I can’t touch your china doggie.”

  “No,” he said, kissing her. “You can’t touch my china doggie.”

  * * *

  They made out some more, and then it was getting late so Frankie stood and bent to get her sweater off the floor. Matthew, perhaps feeling bad that he hadn’t let her touch his basset hound, grabbed the Superman shirt out of his drawer and handed it to her. “Here,” he told her. “Put this on.”

  She had to take her shirt off to put it on, and for a moment she hesitated.

  He was more experienced than she was, obviously. He was looking at her like taking her shirt off would be nothing. “Turn around,” she told him.

  “What?”

  “Turn around, I’m not changing my clothes in front of you.”

  He flopped obligingly onto the bed, facedown into a pillow. “Mrwwfflfe,” he said into the down.

  “What?”

  “Sometimes I forget you’re only fifteen,” he said.

  Frankie was half touched and half hurt, but she put the T-shirt on. It smelled like him—like soap and skin and boy. “Thank you.”

  Matthew sat up and hugged her around the waist. Porter had never hugged her like that, like he was feeling a rush of enthusiasm. “I want you to have it.”

  Frankie wore the T-shirt the next day, and knew from how people looked at her that everyone knew it was Matthew’s. Or had been Matthew’s. And it felt good to be in his shirt.

  But when she told Zada about it, Zada said “Ugh, Frankie, don’t be so retro. I mean, Matthew’s a good guy and all, but wearing his T-shirt is like wearing a sign that says ‘Property of Matthew Livingston’ on your breasts.”

  “Zada!”

  “Well, it is.”

  “It is not.”

  “It’s like he’s marking you.”

  “On the contrary,” Frankie snapped. “He gave me something he loves, something he usually wouldn’t want to be without.”

  “Nah, it’s like a dog peeing on a hydrant. He’s marking you with his scent.”

  “Oh, stop it.”

  “All right. Here’s another interpretation. Do you look hot in the T-shirt?” Zada asked. “I’m sure you do.”

  “Yeah, I think I kind of do,” said Frankie, giggling.

  “So maybe he wanted to see you in it. Maybe he’s dressing you up. Did you think of that, he’s dressing you up like a doll?”

  “No. If he were dressing me up, I think he’d be dressing me in something other than an old T-shirt.”

  “Really?”

  “Come on. It’s a ratty T-shirt.”

  “Maybe that’s what he likes.”

  “Zada. Maybe it’s what he owned and wanted to give me. Like a sacrifice.”

  Zada chuckled. “A sacrifice?”

  “If you wanted to take that argument further,” said Frankie, “you could say he submitted it to me like an offering to a goddess.”

  “Now you’re being ridiculous.”

  “No more than you saying he’s a dog, the shirt is pee, and I’m a hydrant. You’re making a nice happy relationship seem completely maculate.”

  “What?”

  “Maculate. Morally blemished.”

  “Whatever.”

  “Maybe I’m wearing a meaningful sacrificial offering given to me by Matthew Livingston in tribute to my unbelievable goddesslike qualities.”

  Zada laughed.

  “You see?” continued Frankie. “I listened when you went on and on all summer about feminism. And now I take it and throw it back on you! Twisting your argument until it begs for mercy! The giving of the Superman T-shirt is an act of submission!”

  “Okay, okay, you can win. Can we change the subject now?”

  “Sure.”

  “I’m not coming home for Thanksgiving.”

  “Fine. Can’t you just be gruntled that I have a boyfriend and he gave me his T-shirt?”

  There was a pause from Zada. “Sure. Yes. I’m gruntled that you have a boyfriend and he gave you his T-shirt. Use protection.”

  “Zada!”

  “I’m just saying. There are free condoms at the Planned Parenthood in town; you can walk in and take a handful if you want.”

  “We’ve been going out less than four weeks!”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “I’m fifteen!”

  “All right. Whatever. Maybe Berkeley is warping me.”

  “Seems like it.”

  “Frankie?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t let him erase you, though.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t let him erase you,” said Zada. “That’s what I mean about the shirt.”

  “Don’t worry,” said Frankie. “I’m indelible.”

  THE SUICIDE CLUB


  The monday after Frankie got the T-shirt, Ms. Jensson—the Cities, Art, and Protest teacher—handed out a stack of photocopied newspaper and journal articles. They were intended to spur the students toward topics they might select for their term papers. One of the articles was a history of a group of San Franciscans who called themselves “The Suicide Club.”

  The club got its name from a collection of Robert Louis Stevenson short stories that describe a small, select society in which the members have all agreed to kill themselves. They are desperate men—but they also live their remaining days free from social restrictions. The members of SF Suicide Club, which formed more than one hundred years after the stories were published, did not have any plans to commit suicide, though. They just wanted to live with the same kind of lawless glee.

  The club later changed its name to the Cacophony Society, and later still to Cacophony 2.0—but it’s basically the same thing any way you cut it. Club members free themselves from the sense of surveillance generated by the panopticon. The panopticon makes them feel like they are always being watched, and they are determined to

  go where they cannot be watched, such as into the sewers.

  do what that imaginary unseen watcher would never want them to do, such as climb to the top of a bridge; or

  behave in such unorthodox ways as to infuriate the unseen watcher, and yet technically not break any rules at all, such as by having parties in graveyards, or dressing as clowns for the morning commute.

  Club members refuse to abide by certain unwritten rules, and they make people aware of the existence of those rules by breaking them in public situations.

  Frankie would later do her term paper on the Suicide Club and the various urban exploration teams it engendered. It was a very good essay and she received an A.

  Here, in the interests of full documentation, is a short excerpt from the paper she turned in to Ms. Jensson on December 5th of her sophomore year.

  The activities of the club and its descendents— the Cacophony Society and Cacophony 2.0—can be classified into two categories: urban exploration and public ridiculousness. As urban explorers, they climbed suspension bridges, most notably the Golden Gate. They infiltrated abandoned buildings and dragged themselves down into the sewer system for an unofficial tour. They threw costume parties in cemeteries.

  As publicly ridiculous persons, they would dress in animal costumes and go bowling. One of their more notorious events was “Clowns on a Bus,” in which dozens of seemingly unrelated clowns, each waiting at different bus stops on the same route, would board a city bus as part of the morning commute (Santarchy Web site, LA Cacophony Web site).