Tariq, who saw me and looked away as fast as he could but not fast enough to hide the guilt that soured his face.
We had both been crushed out on Tariq, my big sister and me. He wasn’t like the other boys on the soccer team, even if he did spend an awful lot of time with them. He wasn’t a bully. He was handsome and smart, and even nice, sometimes.
That’s what made him so dangerous. Everybody knows to steer clear of a bully. Maya would never have gone to meet up with Tariq in secret if he had already showed us all he was a brutal thug.
But he seemed . . . human. So she did.
He didn’t know that I knew. And, admittedly, I didn’t know much. Just that they met up that night. So maybe nothing happened. Maybe he just gave her a ride to Providence, to this recording studio I don’t really believe exists, or to where one of her bandmates lived. The fact that he gave her a ride that night wasn’t what made me suspicious. What made me suspicious was this: something shifted, in Tariq’s body language, after that night. He doesn’t look me in the eye anymore. He turns his shoulders away from wherever I am standing.
Like right then, as I approached the front door, where he stood with his best friends, staring at the ground with his perfect lips pressed tight together.
I gnawed my fingernails furiously.
My mom tells me it is a disgusting habit. She tells me to stop. I can’t stop.
It hurt, how much I wanted to smash my face against those perfect lips. I wanted it even though I felt pretty sure Tariq did something terrible to my sister. And the wanting got rolled up with the shame and filled me with a sputtering, stupid animal rage. How could it be, that in spite of everything, I still felt lust when I looked at him? Lust, and hate, in equal measure.
That’s why I’m writing this Rulebook.
Your body is a treacherous savage thing and it is trying to kill you. I am here to help you win. Together, we are both going to win.
Ott saw me stop and stare daggers at Tariq.
“You want something, Matt?”
That’s my name: Matt. I didn’t want to tell you, because I hate it.
A matt is something people step on. A matt is full of filth.
I debated lying. Making up something badass or manly, Damien or Colby or Barrett or Bo, something gay-porn-star-y. But honesty is important. I want you to trust me. Because pretty soon I’ll be telling you some things you’re going to have a very hard time believing.
So, Ott called my name. My whole body twitched with fight-or-flight triggers, but I knew either choice would be disastrous. If I fought, I’d get my ass beat, and if I ran, my limited ability to make Tariq feel uncomfortable, to apply pressure, would evaporate.
People were watching. If Tariq hadn’t been standing there, I’d have gone about my business, but he was my real audience. Ott didn’t matter.
I winced, tasting blood where I bit down too hard on the cuticle of my ring finger.
In movies and books, all you need to do to stop a bully is to punch them back. Bullies are cowards, the story goes; they can dish out violence, but they can’t take it.
This, you should know, if you haven’t already found it out the hard way, is bullshit. I tried it, in middle school, and it made things worse. Maybe it’ll work for you, if you’re stronger than me, or a faster runner, but it earned me a lovely session of puking up blood.
I knew that hitting Ott wouldn’t get me anywhere. But I did see something flicker in his eyes, something like fear but not exactly that, something bigger, messier: hate and fear all at once. I took a step closer. I took a deep breath. I smelled him.
And don’t ask me how, but I knew. I knew from the smell: I made him nervous. I terrified him. My existence, my gayness, threatened his whole way of understanding the world, what it meant to be the male of the species.
I’d never understood the word homophobia before—people who are homophobic are not afraid of gay people, they just hate them! But in that moment it all made sense. Straight men will insult and assault and beat and kill gay men because they are terrified. Because masculinity is the foundation they built their whole worldview on, the set of lies that lets them believe they are inherently better than women, and gay people expose how flimsy and arbitrary the whole thing is.
I turned to him and said, “No, Ott, I don’t want anything. I was just wondering. What about me?”
His mouth curled into a snarl. “What about you?”
“Which one am I?”
He unfolded his arms with a slowness that revealed his uncertainty. “Which . . . one?”
“Yeah. Am I pretty? Not pretty? I definitely think I’m pretty.”
A girl giggled. Even Tariq cracked a grin, though he turned his head to hide it from me.
I took another step forward. Ott’s lips parted slightly, and I saw muscles tighten in his arms. He was confused and getting angry: he sensed I was humiliating him, but not in any way he could reasonably understand. He was desperate for me to touch him, or explicitly insult him, so he could hurt me. I had planned to tap his chest with one finger when I delivered the finishing line, but that would have made Ott feel justified in a physical response. So why bother.
Seconds ticked away—
“You are Not Pretty,” I told Ott an instant before the first bell rang.
Then I slipped by him and walked inside.
RULE #2
For the student of the Art of Starving, and dear reader, that is what you are, knowledge is the most important weapon. The strongest warrior in the world cannot achieve victory if she does not comprehend with perfect clarity the fight that she’s fighting. Here is the most fundamental fact; the most essential rule:
Hunger makes you better. Smarter. Sharper.
I have learned this through practical experimentation.
DAY: 1, CONTINUED . . .
Try it yourself sometime and see. Skip lunch and watch what happens. I’m not talking about sitting in a classroom or a cubicle: go out into the world. Put yourself in challenging situations. Walk a crowded sidewalk, run errands, get in an argument you’ve been putting off for a while. Your brain, your nose, your eyes are suddenly turned up to eleven. Your skin tingles, newly sensitive. Your muscles thrum with energy. Hunger is your body working as hard as it can. So all the bullshit gets set aside.