The Son of the Star

He often wonders, in moments like this, what it would be like to have a father who’s not famous, who didn’t appear on television screens weekly for seven years as Captain Gavin Gideon, chief of a ragtag crew on the interstellar spacecraft SS Mascha. Gideon’s Bible is still held up as a paragon of science-fiction storytelling, Dad’s trademark phrase (“Mascha’s heart is her crew”) still used in pop culture conversations even though the show went off the air twenty-five years ago. Greg was born midway through the third season, and the internet is rife with pictures of him as a toddler being cuddled by the crew and cast, followed by his younger sister when she was born the year after.

On top of him, Verona (or whatever her name is) makes a moderately convincing orgasm sound and smiles at him. He rolls her over and thrusts until he finishes a moment later. Still basking in the post-coital glow, he watches her get up and go to the bathroom, her curves and long dark hair almost putting him in a trance. When she returns, she has a photo album under her arm.

“Where did you get that?” he asks, fumbling for a sheet to cover himself.

“I saw it in the living room. Could I have a peek?”

She cocks her hip and gives him a smile, and he finds himself returning it, even though he’s grimacing on the inside. He doesn’t bother bringing up that the bathroom is right next to the bedroom, and the photo album is next to his PlayStation in the living room, so it wasn’t so much stumbled upon as sought out. It would ruin the moment, and right now, he just wants to placate her until enough time has passed that he can ask her to leave.

“Sure, sit down.” He kicks himself for once again going home with someone he barely knows. Next time, he’ll go to her place. It’s too much. Too awkward. Too embarrassing. Too depressing. He turned thirty a few months ago. He should have a plan for hookups by now.

He turns to the first page and Verona leans forward, caressing the image of his dad in the heyday of his career, ready to command a starship heading into the unknown.

“This is going to sound strange…” He knows what’s coming before she even finishes the sentence. “…but I used to have a little bit of a crush on your dad when I was younger.” She tucks her hair behind her ear and tries to seem sheepish. He hopes she’s not an actress, because she’s terrible at lying, but she probably is, because this is L.A., after all, where every pretty girl is either a superstar or trying to be. “It’s a little weird, isn’t it?” she says.

It is, but he can’t tell her that. Not now. “I don’t know.”

She tosses her hair and rubs his shoulder. He manages to not flinch. “Not like a huge crush, but I thought he was cute when I was twelve and watched reruns after school.”

He bets she had posters on her wall and kissed them every night. Probably masturbated to terrible fanfic involving his dad and Renee, his co-star and on-screen love interest. He should have known, as soon as she found out his last name and became slightly more willing to laugh at his bad jokes, that this would be the result. He had to stop doing this. But how many women would he actually have slept with if not for his father? He was a short, socially awkward goofball. No way were women like Verona going to give him a second look without his connections. It wasn’t bad self-esteem; it was being realistic.

He flips through the album as fast as he can, and in the appropriate time frame, he ushers her out the door and into an Uber, making vague, half-hearted promises he knows he won’t keep. He wonders if she’ll write about this somewhere online, a fan site or some celebrity encounters Reddit thread. She waves as the car pulls away; he doesn’t return it. He goes back into his apartment, grabs a beer from the fridge, and sits down on his couch, staring into space, alone with his thoughts for the first time in hours.

People always ask him what it was like growing up with a famous father, as if he had anything else to compare it to. His dad was already a household name when he was born, he’s lived in L.A. all of his life, and he doesn’t know anything else. His dad has always been Gavin Gideon to him, for better or worse.

To be honest, he knows his experience in a famous family is different than most. His dad’s popularity dwindled once the show ended, even though he still does guest appearances on television shows and appears on the convention circuit. Greg’s never been hounded by the paparazzi, and his childhood home didn’t have eighteen bathrooms or a sauna. His parents have been married for thirty-two years and are still disgustingly in love with each other. Except for the financial stability and fans who interrupted them when they went out for dinner, it wasn’t really different than growing up non-famous in Iowa, like his cousins, although nobody believes him when he says that.

He tries to remember when he first realized his life was different from the average American teenager and guesses it was around the time he noticed that people always came up to Dad to take pictures with him. They would lean over to him and say, “You look exactly like your father.”

He does. They have the same light brown hair and dark brown eyes, with one dimple in their left cheek. Dad’s a few inches taller, which has always smarted, but can’t be helped. Greg also has a softer face; no one would trust a guy with this much baby fat to command a spaceship. Still, Greg could’ve gone into acting, but it was never something that interested him. He always loved photography, so he focused on that. He’s had a couple of shows and earns enough to support himself, even though Dad helped with the down payment on the condo in West Hollywood and his trust fund helps him not subsist on ramen, rice, and beans. The only thing he has to deal with is people asking him about his dad on Instagram, asking for follows or to send a message to him, as if his dad doesn’t have his own social media accounts. He knows he could have taken on an alias, hidden behind a photography studio with a vague name, but he also knows that he got to skip a lot of lower-level bullshit this way. Nowhere are the perks of nepotism more apparent than Hollywood.

His sister is the smarter of the two of them, both figuratively and literally. She’s working on her doctorate in psychology and doesn’t have any social media. She lives in San Diego, has a serious boyfriend who does something with software, and only experiences Dad’s fame when he’s in town for the comics convention.

Christ, that’s a place with a lot of memories for him. He lost his virginity there to a girl who waited in line overnight to see the Gideon’s Bible panel. She was a year older than him and clearly had more experience, because she threw him on his back and did all the work. He finished before he even knew what was happening. It had probably (definitely) been awful for her, but she hadn’t said anything, just ruffled his hair and gotten dressed and asked if he could get her an autograph. The other women he’s slept with were mostly forgettable one-night stands, though a few of them were serious relationships. He’d only found happiness with one of them: Jana, who, to this day, he tries to surreptitiously follow on social media.

He’s lonely, and he doesn’t know how to fix it.

So he calls his dad.

“Greg, what’s wrong?” his dad asks, immediately helping him feel more at ease. Dad has a soft, growly voice, a captain’s voice, one made for giving orders and comforting his crew.

“Nothing. I’m okay, Dad,” he says.

“Then why are you calling me at three in the morning?”

Greg looks at the clock and winces. “I woke up and didn’t realize how early it was,” he lies.

This seems to satisfy his father. They say goodbye and hang up. Greg doesn’t want to go to sleep on his sex-soiled sheets, but he also doesn’t want to change them this late, so he ends up tossing and turning on the couch until the morning.

********************

The general consensus is that the low point of Gideon’s Bible happened in season six, when they introduced James Gideon’s long-lost, half-alien son. Greg thinks it was an attempt to make the show accessible to a younger audience, but either no one realized how the original audience would react or no one cared. The answer, of course, was that fans hated Xyma Gideon. He was too young and messed up the crew’s dynamics. His jokes and lingo were instantly dated and clearly written by people in their forties. The writers quickly realized their mistake, and wrote Xyma off as a mass hallucination due to a coolant leak in the ship. Now, Xyma regularly fights it out with Wesley Crusher for most hated character in a sci-fi show.

Greg never admits it, but when he was young, he thought Xyma was really cool. Finally, a character like him! And he was playing his dad’s son! As a kid, Greg liked to imagine that, had he been old enough, he would have been offered the role of Xyma, conveniently overlooking the fact that the actor playing Xyma was way better looking than Greg turned out to be. When he grew up and realized how the fans felt about Xyma, Greg wondered if they felt that way about him and his mom and sister too, if his entire family was a blight on the image of Gavin Gideon, noble and perpetually single.

********************

Two nights after his fling with Verona, Greg heads to the opening of his newest show in Silver Lake. There’s cheap prosecco and snacks, lovingly paid for by his agency, sipped and nibbled on by a small gathering of friends and family and even some strangers. His sister couldn’t make it due to school, but she sent him a text saying how much she wished she was there, even though he knows how much she hates driving in L.A. His parents show up to offer their support, at least.

“Good on you, sport,” Dad says, giving him a hug. “I’m proud of you.”

Greg flinches, wondering if his dad realizes how much of his success is due to him. Or, at least, to Gavin Gideon. Even now, people have been coming up—even the nerdy-cute gallery assistant Greg has been trying to flirt with—to ask for selfies, or to pitch terrible science-fiction ideas (even though his dad has nothing to do with producing series), or to tell Greg how lucky he is to have such a wonderful father (as if they know anything about his father, the person, as opposed to the part he played). After one particularly long-winded wannabe author finally leaves, his mom shuffles off to get a drink.

He must make a face, because his father’s expression shifts from happy to concerned. “Are you all right, Greg?”

“I’m on top of the world,” Greg says, trying his hardest not to sound sarcastic. “Why do you ask?”

Dad lowers his voice. “Well, it’s not often my son calls me in the middle of the night for no reason.”

Greg swallows. “Oh. That. Just your usual pre-dawn existential crisis. No need for you to worry.”

His dad puts his hand on Greg’s shoulder, squeezes. “I’ll always worry about you. I’m your father. It comes with the territory.”

Greg’s eyes meet his father’s, and he sees the concern and the warmth and the love in them. No wonder people think of him as a selfless starship captain; he had the same look when he was dealing with a crisis or worried about Xyma. He makes people believe he cares—something Greg has never been good at.

********************

After the opening, Greg ends up at a nearby bar, where he orders an Old Fashioned and chokes down half of it in one go. He wonders how many, if any, of his photographs will sell, and how many it would take to make him feel like an actual artist instead of a fraud hiding behind Daddy’s money. He’s just about to scroll mindlessly through his phone when he hears a voice right beside him.

“I like your work.”

He jumps in surprise. The woman standing next to him can’t be older than twenty-two. She also can’t be more than five feet tall, with a smattering of acne scars on her jaw, a short black bob that may or may not be a wig, and an intense stare. She hops up on the barstool next to him and orders something complicated that makes the bartender roll his eyes when she’s not looking.

“Oh, um, that’s kind of you to say,” he replies.

She nods, accepting his tentative thanks, and takes a sip of her drink when it’s set down in front of her, never taking her eyes off him. “You have a really good eye for the sacred in the mundane,” she continues.

“Thanks a lot.” He licks his lips, savoring the whisper of whiskey that lingers on his tongue.

“I was going to buy one tonight, but they’re a little out of my reach at the moment.” She giggles. “Hopefully I’ll save up enough soon.”

He grins at her, a warm pocket of hope bubbling up in his chest. These kinds of interactions—someone complimenting him without mentioning his dad or Gideon’s Bible—are so few and far between. It’s unexpected and nice.

She smiles back and tosses her hair, and he can’t help but notice that she has very impressive cleavage on display. In fact, now that he’s torn himself away from her stare, he can see that she’s quite pretty. This might be the perfect end to his evening. A little bit of flattery and an okay fuck. At her place.

“I understand how artists need to be supported,” she says. “I’m an artist myself, actually.”

“Oh yeah? What kind?”

“I dabble in mixed media here and there, but I’m mostly focused on my poetry right now. They’re villanelles with a speculative flavor.”

“That’s interesting,” he says, signaling for another round for both of them. “Where have you been published?”

“Well, nowhere yet, but soon,” she says, nodding her head in affirmation. “You know how it is. Sometimes you have to wait for the artistic establishment to catch up with genius.”

He doesn’t know what to say to that, but finally settles on, “I bet.” Their second round arrives and they clink glasses together. After taking a sip, she licks her lips and looks around, making sure there’s no one who can overhear her, even though they’re the only two people seated at the bar. She leans in close to his ear. “To be honest, that’s not the writing I’m most well known for.”

“Oh really?”

She shakes her head, meeting his eyes once again. He’s pretty sure she hasn’t blinked the entire time they’ve been talking. “Yeah. I’m quite prolific in the Gideon’s Bible fanfiction community. Have been for years.”

God. Damn. It.

He recoils from her, taking a swig of his drink to give himself time to gather his thoughts. He should have known this wasn’t some simple meet cute. Of course this girl has an ulterior motive. He’s stupid for thinking otherwise.

She sees his reaction and glares at him. “Don’t act like that. I’m really good at it. You should read some of my work. I’ve watched the show my whole life and I have very good ideas. Sequels, spinoffs, alternate universes, you name it. My coffee shop AU has millions of hits on AO3.” She tries to put her hand over his but he snatches it away.

Greg takes another gulp of his drink, trying to finish it fast so he can get away from this girl with her penetrating eyes trying to climb into his soul in the worst way.

“Please don’t misunderstand me. It wasn’t just the show I liked,” she says. “I’ve been a fan of yours since I was young.” She picks up her drink and trails her finger in the pool of water it leaves behind, shoving her breasts up, as if that could tempt him now. Iciness runs through his body.

“I think you mean you’ve been a fan of my father.” There’s no mistaking the coldness of his tone.

She shakes her head. “No, I mean you.” She takes out her phone and shows him a photo. It was taken at a premiere for one of his dad’s shitty B-movies. He’s all of thirteen in the picture, dressed in a band t-shirt and jeans, but smiling with his father next to him, their dimples matching. “I mean, I love Gavin Gideon. When I was little, I totally wanted to marry him, but then I grew up, found out your father was married, and—no offense—way too old for me. But I saw this picture on a fan page when I was ten and fell in love with you.” She looks at the photo and giggles. “Look how cute you are.”

Greg slams the rest of his drink and signals to the bartender to close out his tab. He shivers, but hopes the girl doesn’t notice. He realizes she never even told him her name, but she clearly knew his.

“I’ve been following you as best as I can since then,” she continues, still caressing his face on her phone screen. “You were hard to find for a lot of your childhood; just some photos from when your dad took you to premieres. Then you started doing your photography and I knew it was your way of reaching out to me. Some of your work matches the imagery in the poems I’ve written. We’re fated to be together.”

The bartender brings him his credit card and bill. He signs, leaves an enormous tip, and grabs his jacket. “I don’t know what you’re on, but I wasn’t trying to communicate to you.”

She jumps off her barstool and follows him as he heads for the door. “Don’t you see? I love your dad. And Gideon’s Bible. And you. I want to marry into the family. I have my poems and art, you have your photos. We could work together. We could start the second generation of a nerdy dynasty.”

“Not interested.”

He hits the door and emerges into the cool night air. She grabs his arm.

“Please, please, you have to give me a chance.” Her voice is loud now, cracking as it rises, and the people around them turn to watch. “I’ve seen you with all those girls, I know I could be better for you.”

Greg yanks away from her, a mixture of fury and fear coursing through him. “You’ve been stalking me?”

She’s latching onto his sleeve and crying now. “Not until recently. You share everything on Instagram. I needed to see you to know what you needed. And I know now. You need me. Please let me show you!”

She collapses on the sidewalk and clutches his leg, sobbing. He looks around, very aware that people are staring, that this will probably be a minor news item somewhere, and how it will impact his career and reputation to be so uncaring to a girl who’s screaming that she’s “such a fan!” The smart thing to do would be to shake off her grip and book it, but he’s glued in place, watching her mascara run down her cheeks. He looks up into the cloudless night and hopes that there is another Greg out there, the actual son of Gavin Gideon, somewhere across infinite galaxies and time, living happily in the stars.