Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You: A Novel by Peter Cameron Read Free Book Online

supposed to be walking because I almost got run over. Drivers in L.A. are not pedestrian-friendly; it’s like they’ve never seen pedestrians before and they don’t believe they’re real, so they can drive past them at eighty miles an hour. The road I thought would take me to the Getty Museum only took me to an eight-lane freeway, which I knew I could not cross, even though I could see the Getty Museum right in front of me. Risking death, I retraced my steps and found the service entrance to the Getty, a road that went up the back side of the hill the museum was so coyly perched upon, but the guards in a booth at the entrance to the road said only vehicles were allowed on the service road: apparently human feet must never touch it. This seemed so absurd to me, and I was so hot and pissed off, that I got belligerent and started to walk up the road, and the guards came charging out of the booth with their assault rifles drawn and practically tackled me. They threatened to call the police, but I pleaded with them and they ended up taking my picture and made me sign a form that said I would never visit the Getty Museum under any circumstances ever again. (I’ve since had this fantasy that at some point in my life I’ll be given some major award and the award ceremony will be at the Getty Museum and I’ll have to decline the award and they will ask me why and I’ll tell them it’s because of their unenlightened policy concerning pedestrian access to the museum and they’ll realize how stupid it is and build a walkway up to the museum and name it after me.)
    The location of the TraveLodge was not its only drawback. In order to conserve money and foster camaraderie amongst participants, we were housed three to a room, and this meant that a cot was stuck in every room, and of course the democratic principle of first come, first served was in effect, and since I was the last guy to arrive it meant I got the cot.
    The experience of living with two other guys in a hotel room was so traumatic I don’t remember much about it. I know this is all very abnormal and neurotic of me and I should probably shut up and join the army, sleep in a room with dozens of men, be forced to shit in a doorless stall, and just get over myself, but I hadn’t joined the army and all I wanted was a place to be alone. Being alone is a basic need of mine like food and water, but I realize it is not so for others. My roommates seemed to enjoy living in the same room in a farting, let’s-smoke-dope kind of way and didn’t seem to mind the fact that they were never alone. I only feel like myself when I am alone. Interacting with other people does not come naturally to me; it is a strain and requires effort, and since it does not come naturally I feel like I am not really myself when I make that effort. I feel fairly comfortable with my family, but even with them I sometimes feel this strain of not being alone.
    The last time I had been faced with a communal living situation like this was the summer I was twelve and was sent to sailing camp. It was the summer my parents got divorced and they sent both Gillian and me away. Gillian was fifteen and got to go on a grand European tour with her friend Hilary Candlewood’s family, but I was banished to sailing camp on Cape Cod. I think my parents had waited too long to set something up for me, so all the normal camps were full (not that they would have been much better). I found out later that Camp Zephyr wasn’t even a normal sailing camp, but one of those camps advertised in the back of The New York Times Magazine (along with the military prep schools) that supposedly reform seriously troubled adolescents through the wonders of hard physical labor and the glories of nature. Even the motto of Camp Zephyr was sinister: “Be Patient and Tough; Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You.”

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    Friday, July 25, 2003
     
    WHEN I ARRIVED BACK AT THE GALLERY JOHN WAS SITTING behind the front desk, but when he