AWOL: Jay Gatsby Meets Don Draper on the Five-Forty-Eight

AWOL - Story One: Delirium Fades

I was suffering from terrible writer’s block in the Summer of 2021.?

We were on vacation in Hilton Head, South Carolina, and my sister-in-law, Michele Kwasniewski was in the middle of releasing her first of three Young Adult novels, RISING STAR (https://michelekwasniewski.com) I was proud of her, but also a little jealous. I had been the first one in the family to publish, back in 2010, with HiStory of Santa Monica (Aqueous Books), but I had only managed to release one other collection in 2016. I took a shot at a detective novel in 2018—a 300-page monstrosity—that I was not very proud of. It was promptly shelved. I needed a new angle; I needed advice.?

Michele’s suggestion was to write about not being able to write. So, I did. One story slowly came out. Then another and another. By September, I had half the collection done and wrote the other five on weekends when school started. With the help of Elaine York, my editor, and Cassy Roop, of Pink Ink Designs, the book was out and published by Christmas.?

The first story was one I wrote last and was inspired by a few stories I have taught and read before. First, Cheever’s “Five-Forty-Eight”. I teach AP Literature and, a year ago, I read an intriguing excerpt from the middle of the story appeared on our AP mock exam. I went back and read the full story. I was kind of angry because the whole middle section was completely out of context. Blake is a self-centered, overly judgmental executive, who has an affair with a young, unstable secretary, Ms. Dent, then fires her. She comes back to seek revenge on him. She brings a gun and stalks him on the way home on the train, eventually humiliating him as payback. Perfect! However, I decided to twist the plot to avoid any plagiarism. Besides, how could I outdo Cheever? His style is the envy of many a writer.?

The second influence was Don Draper from Mad Men. His story has always intrigued me. In Episode 12 of Season 1 on Mad Men, Draper flashes back to his actual identity: Dick Whitman, a GI who goes to Korea to escape his life. He was the poor orphan of a dead prostitute, growing up in a whorehouse in the Midwest. Stationed alone with Lieutenant Don Draper, the two come under fire and hide in a foxhole. When the attack ends, Draper takes out his cigarettes and Whitman accidentally drops his lighter on spilled fuel. It blows up his lieutenant, who is burned beyond recognition. In the aftershock, he trades dog tags with him. He later awakes in an army hospital and is awarded a Purple Heart and told he will be sent home. He has stolen the identity of a more educated, affluent superior, which leads to opportunities when he returns to America.?

Then, there’s the case of Gatsby. At age 17, he chooses to rid himself of his name—James Gatz—because he hates and the life he has come from. He wants to be rich, and his name follows suit. His parents were poor, unsuccessful farmers from North Dakota. He boards Dan Cody’s yacht and sails around the world. Dan Cody dies in Boston, of all places, and Ella Kaye, his girlfriend, sues Gatsby for the $25,000 in inheritance. He is left penniless and has no choice but to join army. He ends up in Louisville, Kentucky and meets Daisy. Eventually, he must go off to WWI and loses his true love to a rich man named Tom Buchannan. When he returns from the war, he gets a job from Meyer Wolfsheim, the man who fixed the 1919 World Series. Gatsby reinvents himself as a mobster, using his new wealth to get his true love back.?

In AWOL, Fatalier is the vice-president of Puritan Trust, a bank in Boston. A woman shows up at his office and he staggers through a psychological breakdown until we find out that, Brent Fatalier stole the identity of David Essex, his lieutenant. Landing in France on D-Day, Fatalier has a psychological melt down and decides to go AWOL. His fellow paratroopers are mowed down by German anti-aircraft fire, but he survives and stumbles upon the execution—by hanging of Lieutenant David Essex. He decides to put aside his cowardice and save him but his inexperience with grenades kills everybody. In the haze of the chaos, he steals his dog tags and collapses. He is taken in by a teenage French girl, who he has a romantic relationship with. Eventually, American troops show up and send him home. He uses his new identity to get a Harvard degree and rise above his prior place in society as an orphan son of a prostitute and a father, who he never knew.?

Every good story starts at five minutes to midnight. The elevator doors open and Fatalier sees the one person who could destroy his life: the French girl. It has been fifteen years, but she has vengeance in her eyes for his abandonment. Of course, he runs but like a fox with his tail on fire, he returns to all the predictable places.?

There’s a twist-a-plot at the end of the tale. It will be one that will intrigue or possibly anger the reader. I took some risks. It’s like my experience as a musician: you try to steal a set of chords or a riff but the final product always comes out different.?I can only base this on Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, The Who, and just about every rock group that recorded their own version of the blues. That said, I feel like AWOL might have the legs for a novel some day. Time will tell.?

Your delirium will surely fade. Mine certainly has. Enjoy!