Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda

Another theme in the novel is the observation that growing up is having to reintroduce yourself to the universe repeatedly, a process that can feel difficult, like everything is too much of a “big deal,” as Simon says repeatedly. One central challenge for Simon’s character is navigating coming out of the closet, reintroducing himself to everyone in his life as gay. Simon resents that this is something he’s asked to do, disliking having to awkwardly make his preferences known to the world in such a self-conscious way when straight teenagers are not asked to do anything similar. However, Simon also talks about “coming out” in a broader sense, using it to mean any time he must introduce something new or previously unrealized about himself to other people. When he has a beer at a party in Chapter 5, he reflects on his feelings on this topic: “I’m tired of coming out. All I ever do is come out. I try not to change, but I keep changing, in all these tiny ways. I get a girlfriend. I have a beer. And every freaking time, I have to reintroduce myself to the universe all over again” (56).

Simon’s parents are, for him, the worst offenders when it comes to making a big deal of every change in his life. He observes that his parents have a certain preconceived view of him, and when he varies from that view even a little, they overreact in a way he finds embarrassing. He remembers when he got a girlfriend in eighth grade, they asked many questions. When he has a cup of coffee on Christmas morning, his mother notices and asks when he started drinking coffee. Simon’s sister Alice feels similarly, and she hesitates to tell her family about her boyfriend at college for fear that they would “[a]sk a lot of questions. Stalk him online” (166). Simon jokes that Alice will have to come out as straight, showing he understands that Alice struggles to reintroduce herself to her parents as someone with a boyfriend.

Simon struggles with reintroducing himself in other relationships in his life as well. His friendships with Leah and Nick go back years and are a comfort to him, but he admits that there are some things they never talk about, like their crushes. He claims this “works out fine,” yet this limits how much he can communicate with them (133). He finds it hard to come out to Leah and Nick because he doesn’t want them to see him differently, as his relationship with them is so intertwined to his own self-identity. Later in the novel, after he breaks old friendship patterns and has an honest conversation with Leah, he admits to her that there is a part of him he’s still trying on, “[a]nd I don’t know it fits together. How I fit together. It’s like a new version of me” (284). He explains to Leah that he found it particularly difficult to share the new version with her because she was so familiar with the old version.

Simon’s attitude towards change begins to evolve through the narrative, and by the end, he suggests a different take on reintroducing oneself to the universe. The first signs of Simon’s more positive view of change come in his emails to Blue. He is the first one to suggest they meet in person, and when Blue expresses doubt, Simon admits, “...obviously that would change things—but I think I’m kind of ready for them to change” (185). At the end of the novel, Simon thinks his mother might want to have an “awkward discussion about ground rules” about his and Bram’s relationship, but he does not have the usual embarrassed reaction he has typically had through the narrative (303). Instead, he reflects that it’s all right if it becomes a “big deal,” because maybe it is “a holy freaking huge awesome deal,” and he wants it to be (303). This realization shows that Simon is coming to embrace the idea of becoming someone new and introducing this new version of himself to everyone in his life without self-consciousness.