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[...nitroglycerin in his veins...]
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asongofsixpence.
Insert Name Here
Troy RPS. Brad Pitt, Eric Bana. PG13.
the dreams keep you alive/the dreams destroy you
He didn't read the letters anymore because the letters didn't go to him. They went to the fan club - fan club, right? - and he wasn't sure if even they read it. Maybe some little man behind a curtain tossed all the letters into a trash can on arrival, and all the Brad fans around the world received a generic 'Dear [insert name here]' letter and an autographed publicity shot, or whatever they put in the goody bags.
Did they have goody bags?
Brad momentarily considered joining his own fan club just to see how it worked. He could join under a false name, like... Tyler. That would be appropriate. Tyler... Black. Hello, I'm Tyler Black, please let me join your club.
Sometimes the really good letters were forwarded to him. He appreciated that. Brad could find out what the public say about him in most media formats, but once in a while it was nice to know what the public say to him. "I wish your story was my story," one letter said - and this was an old letter, from years and years ago - and Brad wrote, "It can be." Then he crossed it out because he sounded like an infomercial.
About the letters everyone said, "Don't encourage them." He considered replying anyway, to take a stand against the such prevalent heartlessness. It would be the thing to do.
But no.
No, he didn't have to do this anymore. Yeah, you heard him. He didn't need to fight the battles he used to fight. He had proven his point. He had a healthy handful of major motion pictures under his belt. His name was in lights. His face was on screen. He no longer felt the burning need to burn the world and rebuild a better life atop the ashes; he had that better life.
If he hadn't attained victory, he was at least closer to it than before.
It wasn't that he sold his soul to the machine, he thought to himself as he threw away the letter. It was just that he learned to play the game.
He seemed to be winning.
***
He can still remember the drive from Missouri to California, dust-choked and sun-baked in the desert, and so fucking full of dreams that it hurt. Nitroglycerin in his veins, threatening to blow any second. If he didn't do something now. If he spent one more semester in Columbia, Missouri guzzling beer in a frat house and bullshitting his way through a major that he eventually decided, with fierce resolve, meant nothing to him, he would die.
"Don't tell my folks where I went," he said to his friends, and he threw his duffel in his car and got the hell out of Dodge.
The dreams kept him alive. The dreams destroyed him. He was meant for something bigger than this. If he wasn't, he should be. The fact that he was so far from what he wanted made him want to give up and collapse on the ground and wait for the southwestern desert picked him clean to the bones.
It was twenty years to the new millennium and Brad was surrounded on all sides by things that seemed to have no ending: the sky, the land, this road.
He wanted to shake his fists at the sky and shout, "Make it happen. Whatever you have planned for me, make it happen now."
***
"So how do you feel beating your past?" Eric asks after Brad's story. Right now they're the only two in the tent of their make-shift bar. No alcohol tonight. Eric has another beach scene in an hour and Brad has decided to be his companion in sobriety. The coffee is plentiful.
"I wanted to really live or really die," Brad murmurs into his cup, still in the zone. "I didn't want my life to be one long held breath." He looks up. "You know that song? By The Smiths? 'As merry as the days were long/I was right and you were wrong--'"
"Yeah, yeah, I know that one."
"That's me."
"What do you mean that's you?"
"The song. The guy in the song, the guy singing it. It's me. If I hadn't gotten out of Missouri, it would have been me. I'd be working in some firm in Oklahoma City, bitter and pot-bellied, and you've got everything now but I've made a mess of my life. Et cetera. And if that me saw me now, he would think, 'God, I hate that guy.'" Brad smiles wryly, says softly, "'I hate his fucking guts.'"
Eric smiles. "Do you hate yourself now?"
"No. But... It just fucking scares me sometimes."
"What scares you?"
"That I'm not the guy with a mid-life crisis in a think tank in Kentucky. And that I could have been. And that maybe I should have been." His eyes are hazy with late hours and caffeine, and he asks, "What do you think?"
"I'm just wondering if you didn't spike your coffee. Let me guess. You're a weepy drunk."
"No, I'm a happy drunk. What you're seeing is the happy drunk sober and needing sleep." Brad puts his mug down on the table, stares at it, then, "So you think I cheated Fate?"
The contemplative pause is a lengthy one. "No," says Eric. "You were following it exactly."
[end.]
asongofsixpence.Insert Name Here
Troy RPS. Brad Pitt, Eric Bana. PG13.
the dreams keep you alive/the dreams destroy you
He didn't read the letters anymore because the letters didn't go to him. They went to the fan club - fan club, right? - and he wasn't sure if even they read it. Maybe some little man behind a curtain tossed all the letters into a trash can on arrival, and all the Brad fans around the world received a generic 'Dear [insert name here]' letter and an autographed publicity shot, or whatever they put in the goody bags.
Did they have goody bags?
Brad momentarily considered joining his own fan club just to see how it worked. He could join under a false name, like... Tyler. That would be appropriate. Tyler... Black. Hello, I'm Tyler Black, please let me join your club.
Sometimes the really good letters were forwarded to him. He appreciated that. Brad could find out what the public say about him in most media formats, but once in a while it was nice to know what the public say to him. "I wish your story was my story," one letter said - and this was an old letter, from years and years ago - and Brad wrote, "It can be." Then he crossed it out because he sounded like an infomercial.
About the letters everyone said, "Don't encourage them." He considered replying anyway, to take a stand against the such prevalent heartlessness. It would be the thing to do.
But no.
No, he didn't have to do this anymore. Yeah, you heard him. He didn't need to fight the battles he used to fight. He had proven his point. He had a healthy handful of major motion pictures under his belt. His name was in lights. His face was on screen. He no longer felt the burning need to burn the world and rebuild a better life atop the ashes; he had that better life.
If he hadn't attained victory, he was at least closer to it than before.
It wasn't that he sold his soul to the machine, he thought to himself as he threw away the letter. It was just that he learned to play the game.
He seemed to be winning.
***
He can still remember the drive from Missouri to California, dust-choked and sun-baked in the desert, and so fucking full of dreams that it hurt. Nitroglycerin in his veins, threatening to blow any second. If he didn't do something now. If he spent one more semester in Columbia, Missouri guzzling beer in a frat house and bullshitting his way through a major that he eventually decided, with fierce resolve, meant nothing to him, he would die.
"Don't tell my folks where I went," he said to his friends, and he threw his duffel in his car and got the hell out of Dodge.
The dreams kept him alive. The dreams destroyed him. He was meant for something bigger than this. If he wasn't, he should be. The fact that he was so far from what he wanted made him want to give up and collapse on the ground and wait for the southwestern desert picked him clean to the bones.
It was twenty years to the new millennium and Brad was surrounded on all sides by things that seemed to have no ending: the sky, the land, this road.
He wanted to shake his fists at the sky and shout, "Make it happen. Whatever you have planned for me, make it happen now."
***
"So how do you feel beating your past?" Eric asks after Brad's story. Right now they're the only two in the tent of their make-shift bar. No alcohol tonight. Eric has another beach scene in an hour and Brad has decided to be his companion in sobriety. The coffee is plentiful.
"I wanted to really live or really die," Brad murmurs into his cup, still in the zone. "I didn't want my life to be one long held breath." He looks up. "You know that song? By The Smiths? 'As merry as the days were long/I was right and you were wrong--'"
"Yeah, yeah, I know that one."
"That's me."
"What do you mean that's you?"
"The song. The guy in the song, the guy singing it. It's me. If I hadn't gotten out of Missouri, it would have been me. I'd be working in some firm in Oklahoma City, bitter and pot-bellied, and you've got everything now but I've made a mess of my life. Et cetera. And if that me saw me now, he would think, 'God, I hate that guy.'" Brad smiles wryly, says softly, "'I hate his fucking guts.'"
Eric smiles. "Do you hate yourself now?"
"No. But... It just fucking scares me sometimes."
"What scares you?"
"That I'm not the guy with a mid-life crisis in a think tank in Kentucky. And that I could have been. And that maybe I should have been." His eyes are hazy with late hours and caffeine, and he asks, "What do you think?"
"I'm just wondering if you didn't spike your coffee. Let me guess. You're a weepy drunk."
"No, I'm a happy drunk. What you're seeing is the happy drunk sober and needing sleep." Brad puts his mug down on the table, stares at it, then, "So you think I cheated Fate?"
The contemplative pause is a lengthy one. "No," says Eric. "You were following it exactly."
[end.]