{"id":667,"date":"2011-12-01T06:00:29","date_gmt":"2011-12-01T14:00:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/?p=667"},"modified":"2011-11-25T13:11:20","modified_gmt":"2011-11-25T21:11:20","slug":"mark-reads-looking-for-alaska-eighty-nine-days-through-eighty-four-days-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/2011\/12\/mark-reads-looking-for-alaska-eighty-nine-days-through-eighty-four-days-before\/","title":{"rendered":"Mark Reads ‘Looking For Alaska’: eighty-nine days through eighty-four days before"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eighty-nine days before it happens, Miles is set up on a date with Lara and SURPRISE. IT ENDS IN DISASTER. Meanwhile, Alaska continues to be more and more distant from everyone else. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read Looking For Alaska<\/em>.<\/p>\n

eighty-nine days before<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don’t allow my friends to set me up with anyone. That is one of my only rules of being my friend: Don’t be an asshole, and don’t try to hook me up with someone you know. 99 percent of the time, you don’t understand my taste, and you’ll fuck everything up. THIS IS TRUE SCIENCE WILL BACK ME UP<\/em>. So perhaps my own cynicism on the matter, combined with my own picky taste, led me to correctly guess that Alaska and the Colonel “finding” a girlfriend for Mile was going to be a complete and monumental disaster. When does this sort of thing ever<\/em> end well, actually? Plus, sometimes I get the feeling that while these two do like and care about Miles to some extent, they are setting him up to entertain them. I imagine watching someone as clueless as Miles try to navigate through life might be entertaining on some level to these people.<\/p>\n

Whatever the reason, Alaska sets up a “date” with Lara for Miles while the Colonel badgers the two of them. Oh, and he’s reading Moby Dick<\/em> at the time this set-up is happening, and we get this lovely line:<\/p>\n

“God, I understand whale anatomy. Can we move on now, Herman?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I MEAN <\/em>RIGHT?!?!?!?<\/em><\/strong> I enjoyed that book a lot, but it sure drags quite a bit.<\/p>\n
eighty-seven days before<\/strong><\/p>\n
Miles’s date with Lara, as I said, was a complete disaster. There’s no way around it, one way or another. Puking on a girl’s lap after getting a concussion from a basketball hurled at one’s head is pretty damn awful, and I’m pressed to think of a worse example.<\/p>\n
I don’t often talk about dating or any of the relationships I’ve been in. I actually addressed recently on my Tumblr, and it basically boils down to this: most of my life is online these days, so I’d like to cling to some semblance of privacy in this digital age. Y’all know more about me than most people I interact with every day. ALLOW ME THIS ONE CONCESSION<\/em>. What I’m liking about Looking For Alaska<\/em> the most is that it’s inspiring me to think about my high school and college experience and to look past all the awful things that happened to me and find the good stuff. There’s a lot to relate to in this book, at least for me, and it’s nice to reflect on things that aren’t a dark abyss of sad. Naturally, Miles’s first date ever got me thinking about my<\/em> first date ever, and I realized I’d had a pretty disastrous time.<\/p>\n
I’ve said before that I didn’t come out to anyone until after high school, which is when I was outed by other people and then was forced to start telling people. This is not about that. I distinctly remember my first date; it was just a couple weeks before I went to Long Beach to go to college. One of my only friends at that time was excited that I’d come out and took me some sort of social group for gay\/queer youth in downtown Riverside, and it’s there that I met a guy named Christian. (And to nip this before it starts: yes, I realize the irony in becoming an atheist and then my first gay experience is with someone named Christian. Clearly, this was meant to be.) I’d been attracted to other guys for a long, long time, and while Christian wasn’t the best-looking person in the whole universe, he was the first guy who hit on me<\/em>. And that’s\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6.weird, right? I was a month and a half from my nineteenth birthday and no one had ever really hit on me. THIS IS THE SADDEST STORY EVER TOLD. Okay, it’s not, because it’s actually HILARIOUS.<\/p>\n
See, I am pretty sure I was so excited that any<\/em> boy would like me that I just went after the first person who showed any interest. In this case, Christian was cute and nice, but he eventually turned out to be incredibly and unfortunately bizarre in ways that made me sort-of, kind-of regret ever talking to him. The past is the past, though, and what’s important is that my very first date ever was a clear sign of how unbelievably inexperienced I was. First of all, we agreed to go on a date at the movies. FIRST DATES SHOULD NEVER BE AT THE MOVIES<\/strong>. That’s like\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6fifth date material. If I’m going on a date, I genuinely want to spend time getting to know someone! YOU CANNOT DO THIS IN A THEATER. Well, I suppose I discovered that the hard way.<\/p>\n
Which is not to say it was a complete <\/em>disaster. I think that I’ll always appreciate the memory of that day because it was the first time I got to hold a guy’s hand and make out with someone ever<\/em>. And after seeing so many of my friends and schoolmates getting to go through these apparently “normal” relationships, I certainly felt extremely left out that I was both a virgin and<\/em> had never had a relationship in high school. All of these things that I’d seen–slow dancing at prom, holding hands in the hallways of school, kissing someone you liked after school while waiting for a ride, going on dates–it seemed like everyone did it except for me.<\/p>\n
So I want to state that I was<\/em> very excited to be able to hold some guy’s hand somewhat<\/em> in public. We did sit in the back row and we kept our hands low because this was Riverside. It’s not a haven for queer folk in most senses, so we had to be careful. I also remember that I chose to see Minority Report<\/em>, because I’d already seen it and I mistakenly thought we wouldn’t have to pay attention if we knew the plot. I WAS YOUNG, CUT ME SOME SLACK<\/em>. The truth is that while the theater was mostly empty, it was still incredibly difficult to pay attention to anything else. The screen was so huge and loud! But even that wasn’t my own undoing.<\/p>\n
See, the thing was, I didn’t really want to watch the movie. I just wanted to make out with someone for the first time in nineteen years. I DON’T CARE NO SHAME<\/em>. It took about an hour for me to get Christian to realize this. The moment of that first kiss\u00e2\u20ac\u00a6look, even with what happens after this, I still think it was pretty awesome, and it just felt right<\/em> to kiss another guy, and it was beautiful for all of about ten seconds.<\/p>\n
It was important for me to point out that Riverside wasn’t exactly the most gay-friendly city in the world, because right at that moment, about ten seconds into kissing a guy for the first time, someone yelled really loudly, “WHAT THE FUCK?” I made the terrible mistake of assuming that this was meant for myself and Christian, and in the panic of being gay-bashed or–worse–recognized<\/em>, I startled myself and promptly knocked an entire cup of soda into Christian’s lap. I then panicked over that<\/em>, and in the ensuing chaos, I tried to grab for a napkin across Christian’s lap and knocked his bucket of popcorn out of his hand, sending it flying onto his lap, the floor, and the seat in front of us. Which wasn’t empty.<\/p>\n
Oh, and the best part? The person who yelled was yelling at the movie we were supposed to be watching<\/em>. It had nothing to do with out makeout session. I’m still surprised to this day that Christian went on a second date with me, but he did. I sort of owed it to him anyway, as he had to go home that first night with a sugary, sticky gloss of Dr. Pepper all over his legs.<\/p>\n
WHO WANTS TO DATE ME<\/strong> lol<\/p>\n
eighty-four days before<\/strong><\/p>\n
Okay, something I immediately did not understand: Did The Beast not get in trouble for giving Miles a concussion? That seems mighty serious if you ask me. Miles wasn’t even the one who insulted the guy? Also, you play sports<\/em>. Surely you’re used to the other team insulting you as you play???<\/p>\n
With the Colonel’s sadness over Sara dumping him comes the rain. I have experienced neither the sun or the rain that falls in Alabama, and Looking For Alaska<\/em> convinces me that I probably never would want to. And I love the rain! I genuinely do, and it rarely, if ever, can ruin my day. I just put on my waterproof cycling jacket, some rain boots, and concede to wearing pants for the day, and then nothing can stop me<\/em>. But there’s something innately miserable about the way that Miles narrates the rain here, as if it is some Biblical punishment for all the collective sinning of Culver Creek.<\/p>\n
This mood dampener affects Miles a bit, but it’s clear that Alaska’s continued detachment from things is far worse for him. I can’t say I understand why Alaska is acting like this, nor can I say I really like Miles’s sense of entitlement about the whole thing. Either way, he is right about one thing: Alaska seems to be moving further away, and I don’t know why.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Eighty-nine days before it happens, Miles is set up on a date with Lara and SURPRISE. IT ENDS IN DISASTER. Meanwhile, Alaska continues to be more and more distant from everyone else. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to read … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[125,23,123],"class_list":["post-667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-looking-for-alaska","tag-john-green","tag-mark-reads","tag-mark-reads-looking-for-alaska"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/markreads.net\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}