Dear Adrienne

Dear Adrienne,

                         I know you might be surprised receiving a handwritten letter.  It’s almost the end of 2012 and we have truly embraced the digital age, but I’m sitting here in work and I suppose I want to be distracted from the ‘business’ side of the book store.  I never enjoyed math and finance in school and I still don’t enjoy them now.  I thought to myself; ‘it would be great if Ade was here’ and decided that I wanted to talk to you.  I could have emailed you, but in all honesty, I’ve spent the last few days reading some of Fitzgerald and I suppose I felt inspired to take pen to paper.

You told me that you’re visiting Brazil in the New Year, so I’m hoping to have this letter sent to you before New Year’s Eve, because it would be great if you replied before you left.  Are you excited about Brazil?  I’ve been looking at some books in our travel section and I definitely suggest exploring Rio.  As you know, the dancing there is spectacular, but I presume you’ve already booked some dance classes in the Lapa district.  Rio has also been voted one of the most gay friendly cities in the world and judging from the last conversation we had, I would definitely recommend that you satisfy your ‘curiosities’ while you’re away. 

There’s just so much I could recommend to you.  Maybe I should just drop work for a few weeks and join you?  We could go exploring; the beaches are meant to be beautiful.  We could go to the Copacabana just to see what all the fuss is about – apparently it’s great to ride waves if nothing else.  I’ve also heard that despite what everyone says, there are NO nude beaches.  I know you’ll be disappointed with that, but you could always sport some bikini wear from whatever decade you decide to fashion that day.

I’m getting pretty carried away here, so I’ll tell you about what's been going on in River Falls in order to bring me back to reality.  I can’t remember if I told you this, but my mom had this weird Asian flu for a couple of weeks and we were really worried, but I think she’s going to be alright.  She asks for you a lot, keeps asking why your visits here are so sporadic and short-lived.  I told her that no one would come back to River Falls after moving to New York.  I know I didn’t want to.

The store is doing pretty well, considering.  You always said River Falls was stuck in the past and I agree, but I use it to my advantage.  People still like buying books from stores and they act like the internet is something created by the devil.  We get a lot of visits from college students too.  I definitely don’t mind when some of those girls visit.  I’m sorry; I can imagine you rolling your eyes right now.

I should probably tell you that Shannon Harley asked me out the other week.  I still haven’t given her an answer, because I’m not sure.  You know we’ve had a complicated relationship since middle school when we first kissed when playing spin the bottle.  We’ve shared these intimate moments over the years when she wasn’t going out with Randy Masterson, as you know and I suppose I thought it would stay like that.  I’m not sure why, because mom keeps telling me that I ought to settle down.  I didn’t realise I was that age yet, but I suppose when you’re in your mid-twenties and you’re from River Falls then you are expected to be married with kids by thirty.

I know you hate Shannon, because she was a bitch to you, but I think she’s grown up a lot.  As you know, she and Randy split up when she found out he had cheated with girls on his college campus, and she’s got a kid, so she can’t exactly act like she did when she was sixteen.  I suppose I want to know what you think.  You’re a good judge of character.  Please don’t psycho-analyse me in the process…

My life sounds ridiculously dull right now, so can we go back to talking about yours?  I remember you telling me that you were working on some new songs.  How’s that going?  I know you said that the last one you sang to me – ‘Burying My Dreams Underground’, right? – wasn’t very good, but I liked it.  I’ve always your songwriting ability, and I know that sounds like bullshit, but it isn’t.  I think you should just ignore those fucking idiots that say you won’t get anywhere, because you’re too unpredictable.  People love what you do – I know that, because you sold so many copies of your first album and that seemed to have every type of genre.  Some people say that your style is eccentric, but it’s not at all.  I like that you wear clothes from a different decade every single day.  I especially liked your flapper phase – that was a lovely month.

You probably want to know how the writing is going, as you ask me the same question every time we meet.  Unfortunately I am in the exact same state I was before: I have not been inspired to write in a long time.  This letter is the first thing that I’ve been inspired to do in…years.  Jesus, is that true?  I get these ideas that seem like genius at the time, but it usually happens when I’m working, or I’m just about to go to work, or I’m just about to go to bed.  You would tell me to spend the night writing or take the day off and I’m going to sound so fucking old when I say that it isn’t as simple as that.  So, I have time to think about these seemingly great ideas and then I see the irreparable plot holes and I abandon the idea completely.

To be perfectly honest, I miss how confident I was in high school.  I recently cleaned out my old bedroom in my mom’s house and I found tons of short stories, ‘novels’ and even poems (you remember how philosophical I felt when Rachel Johnson broke up with me).  Most of them are completely alien to me.  What I mean is, I don’t know how on earth I could have found the will to finish most of them.  I was reading them and I kept saying ‘no, that wouldn’t work’, ‘that’s not realistic’, ‘and that doesn’t make sense’.  There was actually a novella about a Priest that was conflicted between his duties to God, and his love for this emotionally unstable young woman.  I mean, what the hell was I thinking?  It actually read like a soap opera and even you would laugh if you read it.

I miss it though, Ade.  I miss seeing the sun rise and the sun set after spending the night writing or typing out some genius idea.  I miss walking into school having not slept and then spending the day hoping to blow your mind with my prose.  You have always been an excellent source of advice and criticism when I needed it.  I wonder if you miss receiving emails at three in the morning begging you to read what I wrote so far.  God, I just remembered the one time I called you when you were in the middle of…playing with Jeffrey Adams.  I can’t believe you actually paused that to listen to me hammering out ideas in my head.

You’ve always been the best person to talk to about my writing.  This is going to sound so stupid, but we have the same mind.  Your mind seems to be full of the impossible, like mine.  Nothing is out of bounds – we can create scenarios that other people wouldn’t even be able to dream in their deepest, darkest sleep.  We can describe feelings that people don’t even realise they have.  We can communicate with each other unlike anyone I’ve ever met. 

My mom tries to be helpful, but she’s too preoccupied with the store.  She would never say it, but I think that she would rather I focus on building up some security for myself and the woman I marry.  I make her sound dismissive of my hobby, but I just think that she wants me to be stable after what happened with my father.  She doesn’t want me to ever find myself close to the situation he was in.  I can’t be angry at her for that.

I can’t talk to Shannon about writing either, because she doesn’t really have the same imagination we do.  Sometimes she looks at me like I’m sick and it makes me wonder why the hell she wants to go out with me.  I suppose it doesn’t matter that she doesn’t understand my writing, because it’s likely I won’t be inspired for a long time.  At this stage, I wonder if I’ll ever write again.

Sometimes I wonder whether writing about myself is a good idea.  I know it’s not very imaginative, but it would be writing something.  I don’t want to sound arrogant or even sorry for myself, but I suppose there’s at least one event in my life I could write about.  I don’t know if mom would ever forgive me though, because she still seems heavily attached to the whole thing.  I sound very unsympathetic; why wouldn’t she be heavily attached to her husband’s suicide?  I also read that some great author wanted to write about his brother’s suicide, but that he couldn't, because he was too close to it himself.  Does it make me a monster because I feel like I could write about it? 

I don’t know what perspective I would take.  I could write from the perspective of my father, but that might be disrespecting him.  I don’t know what he was going through – his letter indicated the motions, but I don’t know exactly what he was thinking when he decided to take his life.  I could write from my mom’s perspective, but I doubt she’d ever speak to me again and in River Falls it sometimes seems like she’s my only ally.  Of course, I could write it from my perspective, but I wouldn’t want to alienate anyone.  You know how I felt when it happened and the last time we met, I got drunk and said things to you that I shouldn’t have said out loud.  How you’re still my closest friend, I don’t know, but I appreciate it, Ade.

You know what else I could write about?  I could write about this young man you might have heard of.  His name is Jim and he really wants to be a writer.  He started writing when he was a little boy.  He asked his father what to write about and it turned out his first story was a (terrible) Star Wars fanfiction.  After that he moved onto stories about vampires and serial killers – he has never understood why his parents weren’t concerned about this. 

As he got older, he visited his father’s bookshop and found himself disappearing to the travel section where he immersed himself in different cultures from all over the world.  He tried to write about these exotic places, but it didn’t feel right.  He decided that he couldn't possibly write about these places until he had been to them and experienced everything the books recommended.  So, he decided that when he was old enough, he would visit all the places he’d read about and made a huge list.  In the meantime, he wrote about things only he could experience, with the help of his best friend, who had a surreal imagination herself. 

Jim made plans to attend the best college that would nurture his talent.  He planned to write for their newspaper.  He imagined travelling the world between semesters with his best friend, because she said she was going to get away from River Falls no matter what.  They made plans to go away together, because it didn’t make sense for either of them to go with anyone else.

And then you know what happens.  Something terrible breaks up Jim’s family and because he’s the only child, he has to fix it.  He has to comfort his shocked and devastated mother.  He has to make plans for the funeral.  He has to make plans for the bookshop.  He has to provide for the future.  He has to save the family and discover the secrets his father had been keeping.  He has to surrender the money he was saving for travelling and his college fund, because there are debts that need to be paid.  He has to wave goodbye to his best friend at the airport and even though she promises to send postcards and make him feel like he’s actually there with her, he’s disappointed and realises that he probably won’t get to visit these places, ever.

I don’t mean to sound bitter, Ade.  You deserve every turn your life has taken.  I grew up with you, and I always knew you were unhappy.  It was like you had a shadow following you around when you were in River Falls.  I know you didn’t get along with people the way you got along with me, but that’s because they didn’t understand you.  They didn’t understand why you dressed up when you went to school or why you sometimes spent the whole day not speaking to anyone and just immersing yourself in music.  You needed to leave.  After the horrible things that happened to you when you were little, I understand why you don’t come back here much.  I’m surprised you come back at all.

I suppose I’m just jealous.  It’s tedious and immature, but when you tell me about where you’re going on tour next or where you and your friends are travelling to, I wish it was me.  No, I wish it was us.  I wish we could travel the world and write about our experiences.  That’s all I have ever wanted.

God, I miss you, Ade. 

Jim