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The
Trouble Boy by Tom Dolby Rating: •• (Mildly Recommended) |
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Lite Lights Jaded as I may be from having read too many debut
novels about one lifestyle or another as one comes of age, especially in New
York City, I found myself reading Tom Dolby’s first novel, The
Trouble Boy, and wondering whether he was making fun of the genre or
joining in it. I’m still unsure. Toby When my plane landed in I thought of
them as sophisticated people, though Thus it was with
a mix of fear and regret that my parents viewed my current situation. My
mother, after all, could have stayed in My father greeted me at the gate at SF0
with an obligatory grin. He looked the same as always: a little paunchy, soft
around the edges, though still handsome. “How’s “Great,” I said, since the truth was
too hard to explain. “Your mom wanted to pick you up, but
she’s been busy with her Thanksgiving preparations. You know how she always
tries to do a little too much each day.” He asked about the Web site, and so I
told him about the funding crisis, leaving out the part about the possibility
of his investing. Explaining it all, combined with the previous evening’s
debauchery, was making my stomach turn. “I don’t know, Toby, it doesn’t sound
very stable. How about something more traditional, like marketing or PR?
You’re good at that sort of thing.” “I want to be able to write,” I explained,
though he already knew this. “That’s fine,” he said. “But we don’t
always get to do the things we want to do. Sometimes you have to pay your
dues.” When I arrived at my parents’ house on
the edge of a slim pantsuit under an apron; her
figure was the result of dieting, yoga, and a complicated liposuction
procedure done several years ago that had put her in a girdle for ten days.
Her shoulder-length hair, which she still had highlighted every two weeks,
was a rich honey blond whose variations she had asked her colorist to copy
directly from a real leopard coat of hers. “My darling,” she said, hugging me.
“You look good. Have you lost weight?” My mother’s Italian accent, as much as
I was used to it, never failed to surprise me when I hadn’t seen her in a
while. She opened a bottle of champagne. “Our
hero has returned from Instead of worrying, I did what I
always did when I returned home: I ate. Despite my mother’s propensity for
thinness, she was a master when it came to orchestrating meals. We all dug
into the rich red cioppino, spooning out mussels,
clams, and prawns into large bowls. “This Web page,” my mother said after
we had been eating for a few minutes. “I don’t really understand it. Every
time I pull it up, I find it hard to read. The color combinations, the type:
I suppose it is not for people my age.” “They do try to push the envelope a bit
on the design,” I said. “Readability should be key,” my father said. “Is it my imagination, or does it have
a column called ‘StarFucker’?” my mother asked. “I don’t write for that,” I said,
hoping they hadn’t seen my piece about Real World Guy. “This woman who says she slept with
Mick Jagger? What’s the big deal? Everyone slept with
Mick Jagger at some point or another!” My father laughed. “You never did.” “I just think there are more important
things to write about.” “I
don’t see how the site makes any money,” my father said. “Actually,” I said, “they’re looking
for additional investors. I wanted to ask you two if you were interested.” “Ha!” He laughed as if I had suggested
he jump off the “Toby, we really don’t have the money
right now to do such a thing,” my mother said. “Isabella, don’t say—” “I think it’s
important Toby understands what our situation is.” They explained to me that revenue at my
father’s company was down 40 percent, and my mother’s company was nearing
bankruptcy. “How can that be?” I asked. “I thought
the label was doing well.” “Everyone thinks that,” she said.
“We’re a private company, so no one ever sees the figures. But people aren’t
buying couture anymore. It’s a dying breed of fashion.” “Why don’t you do what everyone else is
doing?” I asked. “And what would that be?” She looked at
me sternly, as if I had no business making such suggestions to her. “Branch out. Do a bridge line. Do
fragrances, accessories.” “Toby, that takes a tremendous amount
of money. And you know I’ve never taken on investors. Besides, all those
bridge lines are just shit, pardon me.” She started waving her hands around
for emphasis, something she did whenever she was excited. “They are just
watered down versions of the original vision! If I’m going to do that kind
of thing, I might as well not do it at all!” “You can’t close down the company,” I
said. It was impossible to imagine my mother not running her studio. “There are a number of people
interested in buying. I just had a meeting last week with LVMH, though I’m
not sure I can meet their terms.” “You’re going to sell to LVMH?” I
couldn’t imagine my mother’s label becoming part of a bigger operation.
However, owned by a company like LVMH, it would be visible alongside the Guccis of the world. “Let’s not presume anything,” she said. “The important thing,” my father said,
“is we would prefer you come home. Your rent every month isn’t cheap, and I
want to see you creating a solid future in something. All this Web site stuff
can be fun, but how different is it from working on the college paper? It
just seems frivolous.” “It’s not frivolous,” I said. “It’s
serious journalism. I know it’s not politics or business reporting, but
people use the site as a resource. They rely on us.” “Just think about it,” my father said.
“Six months from now, what do you want to be able to say you’ve done with
your time in “What an experience!” my mother said. A
classmate of mine could be digging ditches and my parents would think it was
fabulous. “A lot of my friends do that sort of
thing, and they hate it,” I said. “They would kill to be doing what I’m
doing.” I looked at my mother. “You should understand. I’m not the type who
can just do what everyone else is doing.” “He has a point, Simon. It wouldn’t be
fair to tell my own child he has to be like everyone else.” “I’m afraid you’re living in a fantasy
world. You have no idea of the things that comprise daily life.” There was no arguing with them. And I
certainly couldn’t ask them for money. CityStyle
not making payroll would just be one more nail in the dot-com coffin. “Let’s talk about something more
pleasant,” my mother said, and I knew exactly what we wouldn’t be talking
about. The thing about coming out to my
parents—after all the explanations, the fighting, the
tears—was that it was still impossible to discuss relationships or dating.
The phrase “I’m seeing someone” brought up a multitude of disastrous images:
the AIDS-ridden guys my mother pictured me falling into bed with, the sodomy
my father imagined me committing. They hated thinking about the lack of
societal acceptance, the inability to have children. To a liberal mind, these
were all barriers that could be overcome, but to my parents, two people whose
primary contact with homosexuals prior to my coming out was with the florist,
the tailor, and the hairdresser, these were not lifestyle choices to be taken
lightly. True, my mother had employed a handful of gay guys at her studio
over the years, but she regarded them similarly, as members of a service
industry whose practices in the bedroom were not for her to comprehend. It took my mother longer than my father
to accept that I was gay. While my father saw it purely as biology, of
winning the gay gene in the genetic lottery, my mother always thought it was
her fault, that she had made me gay. She even once
told me I was gay because I hated her and therefore hated all women, both of
which I assured her were not true. All this, along with the introduction
of a variety of boyfriends of dubious quality through the years, had made it
all the more difficult for us to relate to each other. There was a simple way around it: They
didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell. There were insinuations over the years,
like the time my mother returned from Costco during a vacation with a jumbo
box of condoms “for your promiscuity,” she said, an assumption she made
based on my proclivity for coming home at five in the morning. Or the times
my father would ask me in the middle of the evening news “what the gays think
about this,” as if I could be responsible for the opinions of the entire
world’s homosexual population. It wasn’t that my parents were
squeamish about sex, either. Unlike many parents, mine actually introduced me
to the idea of sexuality, explaining the mechanics at an early age. For them,
sexuality—as long as it was heterosexuality—was a comfortable issue, not a
source of embarrassment but a fact of life, as it should be. Still, even after I had come out, my
father continued to harass me for several years, hoping I would come around
to the right side of the fence. When I told my parents about my plans to
adopt Gus during my freshman year of college, my father said, “Why don’t you
worry less about getting a cat and more about getting some pussy?” I
knew it wasn’t worth it to make them understand. A
lot of pages in The
Trouble Boy help all readers understand that Toby has the same struggles
as his hetero peers. Some of the writing is punchy and done well, much of it goes on with little merit. Reading debut
novels like The
Trouble Boy can be refreshing, and for that reason, I’ve awarded it a
mild recommendation. Steve
Hopkins, July 26, 2004 |
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ă 2004 Hopkins and Company, LLC The recommendation rating for
this book appeared in the August 2004
issue of Executive Times URL for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/The
Trouble Boy.htm For Reprint Permission,
Contact: Hopkins & Company, LLC • E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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