Gatsby and I

A two-week lie

This was the start of a period of two weeks of being forced to lie. By whom? Why, by none other than Celestine. Two hours a day there were, two hours in which I'd see him. But how we talked! My lord we talked a lot. About painting, flowers, classical music, skills, whatever we wanted to talk about. But most of all, he told me of his life.

The things Fitzgerald said about him were, in any case, all true. Well, with just some minor changes. But one thing was left out by Fitzgerald, in fact quite a few of them were. One of those things was the fact he had a middle name: Harper. That's right. James Harper Gatz. Don't it sound good? For me at least it does.

But that's one of the least surprising things I heard. Did you knw that he survived diphtheria? Or that in fact he was not a Major, but a Marshall? Bet you didn't. Fact is, I had to make up a story about myself and I really enjoyed inventing things. Here's the skinny on what I said:

I would have been born on a ranch near Wichita, Texas that my father had to sell later on. Then with the money for that ranch, he bought some bonds in the stock market and another smaller ranch, in Nebraska. The stocks went up and he really won big time. That's how he became rich. Then he married Rosemary King, the daughter of the fabled Roderick and Amalia King, the oil magnates. What the Heavens "magnates" meant, Jay understood and I didn't. Well not fully. I knew for sure that magnates were really influent in the industries where they were administrated stuff. But let's get on with the story.

Rosemary had a sister and Augustus had two brothers - Wilbur and Orville who were also cattle farmers. I would have ten cousins - five on the behalf of Rosemary's sister, three from Wilbur's first marriage and two from his second one. Orville would have died in a thunderstorm after I'd known him for just three years. Because of what happened to Orville, Wilbur thought I was a bad omen and didn't really want anything This is why I would still believe in omens.

But I was an only child in this narrative, living most of my life in the state of Nebraska My life had been led between boredom, conduct, chores and the death of my mother in a thunderstorm. I was disinherited and cut off just for not being the son that my parents hoped for. But I had, nonetheless, learned to act like a lady and work like an ox.

But recently, close to the day when I turned sixteen, I headed East with aunt Perry (short for Periwinkle) who just left me at random in West Egg. Then, y'all know what happened.

It was nice to see that this was all so believable that he fell for it and in fact I was really happy that someone finally listened to my inventions. But I felt like I was guilty. My super-ego was acting up. Again. But then again. I'd rather lie than be put in an asylum for nothing. And I didn't mind lying for that moment.

If I lie for me, I'll lie. I'll lie for my safety until I become the definition of a liar. Reputation over sanity. This, forever.