Opaque Lucidity

Winter Dreams Of The Good Old Days

NOTE: I wrote this post in September, 2007, but it was not until today that I realized it had never been posted. It's not really relevant to anything right now and I don't remember what triggered the mood in the first place.

I released a new episode of the podcast last night, a short history of the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald. If you don't know who Fitzgerald was, just know that he was the man who wrote The Great Gatsby, one of the greatest novels produced during the 20th century. He was a tortured man, an alcoholic whose body gave out when he was only forty-four. He left behind stories that defined his age, but more importantly to me, he left behind a short story that had a greater effect on me than any non-fiction I have read since.

I first read 'Winter Dreams' when I was 17; it was an assignment in my American Literature class. It is the story of Dexter Green, a young man who finds success at a young age. When he returns to the country club where he worked as a child, he meets Judy Jones, a young woman he had first seen years ago. Beautiful, disrespectful and intelligent, Judy has a string of gentlemen vying for her affections. Dexter becomes one of that group, but soon finds himself the center of her attention. He is ready to marry her (even breaking an earlier engagement to do so) when she does as she has always done: she flits away to some other man.

Heartbroken, Dexter sells his business and moves to New York. Years go by. One day, a man comes to his office and while talking about their childhoods, the visitor mentions that one of his friends married a young lady from Dexter's hometown, a woman named Judy Jones. The visitor talks about Judy's marriage and how her husband cheats on her time and again, much to Dexter's chagrin. When the visitor leaves, Dexter stares out his office window, trying to remember the Judy he knew. It is then he realizes that the woman who haunted him has not existed for years, replaced by a struggling mother who has little choice in life but to forgive her husband's many infidelities.

I read the story early in my Junior year, unaware of the tortured life I was about to start living in the spring of 1988. Like Dexter, it was over a girl, and I allowed myself to be manipulated in exchange for those moments during which I was the center of her world. As an adult, I can look back and see a scared girl with no father figure, no self-worth and a self-destructive personality. At 17, she was all I wanted. When we broke up, my life turned from a ride on a roller coaster to a dive from a high cliff. No matter what was said to me by friends and family, I was inconsolable. School ended and, again like Dexter, I left town.

All of us have had a Judy Jones in our lives. It may have been a woman, a man, or a dream that pulled us away from what was really important in life. It's critical, I believe, not to delve too deeply into our past mistakes for we can not change what we were and what we did. But I do believe it's healthy, sometimes, to know "the rest of the story", as Paul Harvey says. In my case, Judy Jones is divorced and her life is a train wreck. I pity her, a feeling she would despise if she knew about it. I feel relief when I see her, relief borne on the wings of a marriage in which I trust my drama-free spouse. My life that could have been does not haunt me, but teaches me that my heart does not always make the best choices and that time will put everything to rest.

Unfortunately, not everyone learns these lessons. If you are in your 30's or 40's, you are surrounded by certain co-workers and friends who dream of the good old days when they were wild and free. They have forgotten the heartaches, the broken promises, the petty jealousies and all the rest. As my Uncle Gus used to say, as he pointed to the ground, "THESE are the good old days."