On Jude

Dear Jude,

I don't think you like your name, but I named you after Jude Law, who was pretty cool in the movie A.I. You never saw it--not your kind of movie, movies not your kind of activity--but he played a sexbot, and he was pretty much programmed to be happy. And to please the ladies. Ladies dig him. Actually, I think ladies dig Jude Law in general. So believe me when I say I wasn't trying to make you feel like a total wuss when I gave you your name. It's not my fault you've gone off and made a mess of your life.

Well, what life you've had, which, last count, was about 2500 words worth of life.

Anyways, funny story about you. I didn't know you existed right away. You kind of hid then jumped out at me when I wasn't expecting it. The way the story goes, I was bored and frustrated with everything I'm working on, the new novel seems like too much to tackle right now, the old short story seems too depressingly close to completion yet too lacking in something firm to make it real. I stared at the screen for a minute or two, the snow falling and the wind blowing outside--we really are having a hell of a winter here, which is something you'd appreciate. I guess winter got the best of me because I went ahead and opened an empty file and complained about it for two paragraphs, throwing down some angst-ridden metaphors about vampires and burials, just trying to get something out of my head. (My head's felt cluttered lately. Too much going on all at once. Or not enough going on at all. Not sure which.)

I didn't think much of it until I hit the third paragraph and I realized it wasn't really me talking, but you. Well, it was me talking, but it turns out, you were saying the exact same things as me. Word for word. And then around the third paragraph, there you were, and you took over. You did a bad thing last week, you said, and I knew what it was and I knew where you were and I know how you'd get there. And I let you tell your story over the next two nights. Quick and dirty, I thought. This works, I thought. It seemed like a good idea, like the right idea: what I needed to do, I thought, was just tell a story, a simple small story without much to it, but the kind of story someone would still read and get something from. Not an unambitious story but a basic story. A story. An easy one. One I could send out for publication in a week's time. (Unlike you, I haven't lost my sense of desire to go forward from here. You, you just gave up on life once it was ready to start. Me, I'm not there yet. Sorry.)

It all seemed so easy, but now, now. I don't know what to do with you. I don't know what you want next. You've done your bad thing. (Which isn't all that bad, though if you knew about the anger you left behind you, you might not have done it. Or you might have done it to other parking lots as well. I dunno.) You've shown us your drunk dad, you've shown us the dead neighbor (well, we didn't see her, but we've seen enough), you've shown us the neighbor's daughter (who, sorry, you never had a chance with her). You've shown us your boss and you've shown us the societal detritus that exists on a putt-putt course during the sweatiest months of summer. Truth is, we've seen a lot, through you, in the little time we've had to make your acquaintance. Now all that's really left for you to do is put the snow plow back behind your boss's car lot, give him a ride to the bar, and fall asleep in your drink while your boss tries to get laid. (He's got no chance, either.)

That's all that's left and dammit if now I'm not stuck.

I can't finish your story and I don't know why. Might be the head clutter, the disarray my writing's felt like it's been in lately. Might be something else.

Might be that you've got something else you've kept hidden from me, something else I really need to know about, something I need to stick into your story to make it really sing. Because maybe it's not as simple as I thought it was going to be. (Truth is, when are the stories, the worthwhile ones, ever as simple as that? When doesn't a story become more engrossing or difficult at the end than it felt like it would be from the beginning? When do stories take just one week to write, when they could take a month, or a year? Yeah, okay, so it kind of fell together with the bugs story, but whatever. Ignore that rule-proving exception for now.) Maybe, waiting to be buried within your little world, your little world which really does have an awful lot going on inside it I have to say, there's something else, some terrible complication that makes you and your simple concerns and your alcoholism and your missing mother and your fading father and your crap jobs and your lack of love for life rise above itself towards something else, something unique, special, wonderful, amazing, terrifying, engrossing. Maybe there's something I'm leaving out that will make you adjectival.

But damned right now if I know what this is.

So, Jude, here's what we're going to do. I'm going to send this letter out and I'm going to wait a while, wait for you to answer. I might forget about you for a little bit, a few days, a month, I don't know how long, but I might have to ignore your existence for the time being, while I'm waiting for you to formulate a response. Because although I've described you as Holden Caulfield growing up to be one of David Foster Wallace's hideous men--perhaps not the most flattering description of an individual ever--I'm proud of your story, where it is right now at least, and I think it deserves a shot, a shot at being what it really wants to or ultimately could be. I think you, Jude, deserve the chance to explain your side of the story, to stop pussyfooting around and to show me what I need to and should see, however difficult or complicating or self-damning it might be. Whatever it is, I should see it, so I can do justice to your story. Whatever your story is.

But a word of advice. You really should answer, and while it might take a while, it shouldn't take too long. Because every day I spend not thinking about you or every day I spend forgetting about you, it's another day you grow a little more sedimentary. Forgetting about you is a way of letting you fossilize yourself. Letting you become just another damned ghost in the hard drive boneyard.

And while you might be a drunk, I don't think you're ready to quit. Not just yet.

Awaiting your response,
Darby