In the Key of Jonathan

“I’ll do it!” he choked. “Whatever you want, man, I’ll do it.” My hands were tied tightly around his scrawny neck, my thumbs pressing firmly on his larynx. It looked like a scene from a bad gangster movie. I was playing the part of the cold, rugged tough guy, and Jonathan – once my hero, my neurotic mentor – was playing the part of the helpless, innocent victim. His head was draped over the edge of the balcony, and with a simple push I could have thrown him over, headfirst. His thick-rimmed glasses lay half broken on the cement. One of the lenses was smashed out, and I was perched on top of my now squinting victim in true tough guy fashion, sweating profusely. If I had been wearing a button-up instead of a t-shirt, my top three buttons would surely have been undone. And had I been wearing a gold chain, I’m sure it would be visible through my forest of chest hair. That is, if I actually had any chest hair. But aside from those tough guy details, at this moment I had everything I wanted. I was at the climax. I could have tossed Jonathan off this balcony, twelve stories down if I wanted to. I could have smashed his face in with my fists if I wanted to. I could have pulled the pen from my back pocket and shoved it into his temple if I wanted. I was the lead character in my own private gangster novel. I was calling all the shots. I could have done anything to Jonathan. Anything I wanted. But it wasn’t until he screamed out, “What the fuck do you want from me?” that I realized I had absolutely no idea.


I’d like to preface the rest of the story by making it clear to you that I am not a writer. Not by nature at least. I wasn’t one of those kids who spent his childhood alone with his books, lost in the imaginative world of fiction because the real world was too much to bear. I wasn’t the victim of too much bullying, too much loneliness, or too much parenting. My glasses weren’t stitched together with masking tape. I wasn’t ugly or skinny and I didn’t have bad skin. I was normal. My childhood was normal. My parents were divorced, but in this day and age that is hardly a prerequisite for the kind of self-loathing and neurotic indulgence commonly associated with insightful writing. If I was self-loathing or neurotic, it had more to do with the substances I ingested throughout my high school years than it did with a predisposition toward depression, self-reflection, or an over-active imagination. To be honest, I don’t really have an imagination at all.
I’ve spent the better part of my adult life overcompensating for this lack of creative insight. I carry around a leather-bound notepad like Hemingway. I started smoking cigarettes in my last undergraduate year because I read Camus. I spend my afternoons holed up in coffee shops reading the New Yorker, hoping someone will notice that I look intellectual. I read books in the bathtub like Proust, but I always end up splashing around and getting the pages wet. Really, I’m not an intellectual. I’m not a writer. I’m just faking it. I’m just filling in the gaps.
My stories never amount to anything. I have never amounted to anything. And no matter how many times I change his name or his occupation, my lead character is always me, and the setting is always my lackluster existence. My life is boring. Nothing ever happens to me worth writing down. And this is my excuse for never being able to write interesting stories: nothing ever happens in my stories because nothing ever happens in real life. I’ve succeeded in convincing myself that it is not my lack of imagination, but rather the monotonous, unimaginative progression of the everyday that makes me, and the stories I write, completely uninteresting. There was just nothing to write about. Of course, that was the truth until I met Jonathan.

Unlike me, Jonathan is a natural writer. He plays the part perfectly: the Jewish intellectual type with thick black glasses, messy hair, and a mystique about him that suggests that he spends a lot of time drinking alone – which he does. He told me. Single-malt scotch on ice. He also told me that while drinking alone, he spends most of his nights locked up in his apartment reading over his ex-wife’s most recent novel, correcting her style and making notes wherever he imagines there to be a reference to himself, their sex life or anything to do with their relationship. I sometimes wonder now, on nights when I am alone, if Jonathan will ever do the same thing to these pages, if he will ever read them and if he will hate me for writing them.
If he ever does come across this confession, Jonathan will probably sue me for copyright infringement. I have a habit of adopting other people’s style. I get their voices stuck in my head when I’m writing. One week I’m reading William Gibson pretending that I can write science fiction. The next week it’s Tolstoy and I’m pretending to have insights into the lives of adulterous, nineteenth century women. When I wrote this, when all this happened, I was reading a lot of Jonathan. It is written in the key of Jon.

I met Jonathan at the airport on a cold day in January. Amidst a crowd full of modestly dressed mid-westerners, clad mostly in pullover jackets, blue jeans, and work boots, Jonathan was easy to spot. He was probably the only Jewish person in our entire town. If there were others, they were not the outspokenly nerdy, bookish types whose psychosis and self-abhorrence you could sense from a mile away. They were not the kind of Jewish people that I had grown accustomed to by watching Woody Allen movies. Jonathan, on the other hand, was straight out of Deconstructing Harry. He was way overdressed and obviously uncomfortable in his puffy, Gore-Tex parka, which looked completely foreign on his frail, urbane frame. I got the impression that he believed he was heading on an expedition to the arctic, not a speaking engagement in the middle of the prairies.
“Are you Charlie?” he asked as I approached him in the white light of the airport terminal. I had waited until after he had retrieved his bags, not wanting our first conversation to be one of those painfully awkward ones standing in front of carousel. I had imagined myself standing there, asking him over and over again, ‘Is that one yours?’ ‘How about that one?’
“Jonathan I presume?” I was trying desperately to sound collected and unrehearsed. Not only was this the first real Jewish writer I had ever met, it was also the first real celebrity. While I was waiting for his flight to come in I had thought up a handful of witty conversation starters and opening lines. But when it came time to introduce myself I couldn’t remember any of them, and instead came off sounding dull and subservient. “I have a car waiting out front. Do you want any help with your bags?”
“I just have the one here so I should be fine.” I offered to roll it for him. It was only twenty feet or so from the carousel to the front doors and maybe another five to the car, but I figured his arms must have been tired from flying all day. I said as much, hoping to sound witty, but I don’t think he heard me.
When I told him I had a car waiting out front, he probably imagined I had a limo, a driver, and a bottle of scotch waiting for him. At the very least he could have expected a nicer car. Instead, it was a rusted ‘93 Honda Civic littered with snow encrusted fast food wrappers, cigarette butts, and a heating system that barely worked. I figured that picking him up in layman’s style would let him know that I was down to earth.
The drive was full of the usual banter, which I had been accustomed to in my years of ass kissing. Where was I from originally, what’s my thesis on, why do I live in this depleted college town in the middle of nowhere – the usual out of town speech. He was friendly and awkward, but there were very few dry spells in the conversation, which was nice because if there had been, I don’t believe either of us would have known how to start one up again.
Back at the hotel, I got him checked in and asked if he needed anything. I went back to my room with the promise to pick him up in an hour or so for drinks and dinner after he got himself settled in.

If it weren’t for this first cigarette, I don’t think Jonathan and I would have ever become friends. He would have given his speech, the writing students and I would have applauded, and he would have gotten on his plane and this story would have never been written. And Jonathan would never have met Teegan.
Before Teegan, things were running smoothly. Jonathan and I were friendly. We joked together over drinks. We related about books we were reading. We talked about his life in Montreal, and he told me I reminded him of a friend of his there and that he felt comfortable around me. My storyline had rising action. Now all I needed was a climax.
It was outside the hotel, in the smokers’ lounge, that Jonathan first met the girl who would ultimately lead to the unraveling of my well-constructed narrative – the narrative that I had imagined Jonathan to complete. Teegan was in my writing workshop and was unconventionally beautiful. She had thin seventies-style hair with protruding bangs that looked like a mix between Robert Plant and a young Diane Keaton. She wore vests and old-fashioned blouses and had long beady necklaces. She smoked slims and hardly ever wore eye makeup. Over the years, my nostalgia for the hippy generation – for the revolution, for the protest, for Pink Floyd and the Beatles – had manifested itself in an affinity for seventies pornography. And Teegan, everything from her hair to her breasts – which I had never actually seen but could only imagine suited her demeanor and the rest of her outfit – were straight out of the ‘70s nudey tapes I used to steal from under my dad’s mattress.
“Are you who I think you are?” she asked sheepishly before lighting her menthol slim. “So your Jonathan --- ”
“This is Teegan.” I interrupted. “She’s one the students from the workshop.”
“That’s crazy. I was just going for a walk to get some fresh air.” She held up her smoke, immediately recognizing the irony. It was, of course, intentional. It was just as intentional as her accidently following us outside for a cigarette. She knew perfectly well who Jonathan was. We had read one of his stories in class, and like me she had been obsessed ever since.
I imagined that Jonathan would be immediately put off by this outward display of idol worship. But through the smoke that hovered just above his lips, he managed a small laugh and a half smile. This was big for Jonathan. Laughing and smiling at strangers were not common traits of a sardonic, alcoholic storyteller. This was out of character.
All she had to say was, “I’m looking forward to your talk,” and Jonathan invited her into the hotel lounge for a drink. I was paying of course. It seems that he too had a thing for seventies pornography.
My attempts to punctuate their conversation with clever anecdotes were complete failures. All I ever managed was the occasional, “That’s hilarious” or “What a funny story.” Truthfully, I wasn’t finding any of this hilarious or even remotely funny. Jonathan was mine and she was stealing him from me. Teegan was mine and he was stealing her from me. Anyway you looked at it, I was getting fucked. And not in the way they did in those tapes.
Teegan had the habit of peeling her beer bottle labels off and folding them into little paper cranes. It was something she picked up in elementary school and had stayed with her right through until she hit drinking age. She folded one and offered it to Jonathan. “That’s adorable,” Jonathan was saying. “Really, that is really adorable.” I could tell that he wanted to say that she too was adorable, but like me could never work up the courage.
Her face flushed red every time she spoke to him. With every one of his responses it would cool again, as if every one of the capillaries on her face had been spared embarrassment. Soon she started calling him Jon. I hadn’t worked up the courage to go beyond Jonathan.
They both laughed at every available opportunity. And then they would laugh some more and I was forced to laugh along with them. I didn’t know what else to do. I had nothing adorable to say to him. No witty remarks or cheap parlour tricks to grab his attention. I was an intellectual mute with no imagination and nothing important to say to anybody.

His speech, of course, was great. In front of an audience, Jonathan was just as endearing and clever as he was in print. He told the story about Jon from the Garfield comics eating his lasagna in-between the panels so as not to starve to death. He told us about being in a stand-up comedy karaoke bar and getting booed of stage for not delivering the punch lines on time. But despite his comic tone, these were just filler. They were the needless back-story that let us all know how clever Jonathan was. I was looking for something more. My story needed a climax. And Teegan was ruining my best chance at ever getting one.
You see, what really pissed me off about Teegan wasn’t that she wanted Jonathan. It wasn’t that she eventually got Jonathan. That was inevitable. Sure I was a little mad that Jonathan – who only hours earlier had confessed that I was his friend – was hitting it off with, and would probably eventually sleep with, the girl I wanted to sleep with, but that happens to me all the time. I would say it happens almost weekly, actually. No, what really got to me was that because of Teegan, Jonathan wasn’t doing anything. She was rendering him useless and uninteresting. My story was dissolving before my eyes and I hadn’t even had a chance to write anything down.

After his speech, we went out to a bar. The whole time Jonathan was making out with Teegan in the corner, drinking the scotch I paid for, or getting his ass kissed by writing students. He was turning my story into a cliché about betrayal and heartbreak, and how all your favorite idols turn out to be losers just like you. I wanted something original. I needed some action. I couldn’t bear the thought of going home without a story to tell. If I had an imagination I would have been able to make something up. I would have been able to make Jonathan into an interesting character. But I didn’t have an imagination. I was not creative. In order for me to tell an interesting story, something interesting actually had to happen to me. I needed Jonathan to be that something.

Twelve beers and a two-six of scotch later, we were back in my hotel room, acting like literary rock stars. Liquor bottles, pizza boxes, and cigarette butts littered the carpet. The muted television was playing the first installment of The Godfather. Jonathan and Teegan were cuddled on the couch, just waiting for the night to wane on far enough so they could make their exit. I imagined this is how rock stars must feel when they get the sense the party has to eventually end.
I was out on the balcony counting the cigarette butts smooshed into the snow, trying to determine which ones were mine, when I noticed the party was ending. Those three Golds was certainly mine, I thought. That menthol, though, must have been Teegan’s. That bitch. I watched them through the glass, curled up on the end of the painfully uncomfortable hotel couch, their legs hidden beneath a blanket, doing who knows what with their hands. Jonathan’s stories were more often than not about his childhood, and in my mind his character was an asexual pubescent oscillating between the ages of twelve and thirty-two years old. To imagine him caressing the inner thigh of another human being made me uneasy. He was again acting out of character.
Half way through my second cigarette, Jonathan caught a glimpse of my smoke and, like any addict, the sight of a nicotine fix tempted him to the balcony. Teegan resisted the urge.
“This has been really fun man,” he said. “The most fun I’ve had in long time, probably since my divorce.”
“No problem.” I disinterestedly lit my third. “Your talk was really great.” This is what my story with Jonathan had amounted to: small talk and empty compliments; both of us simply faking our way through a dull conversation because we were scared of silence. Like the rest of my life, Jonathan was boring, uninteresting, and unimaginative.
Have you ever read that Kurt Vonnegut novel, Breakfast of Champions? Anyway, it doesn’t really matter. The point is at the end of the book, Vonnegut is at a completely loss. He doesn’t know how to end it so he writes himself into the story. Like Vonnegut, it seems I too am scared shitless of endings. Even though I spend entire novels flipping to the back of the book, counting in my head how many pages I have left, when I get there I’m scared to read the last paragraph. That is how I felt at that moment, like Vonnegut sitting in that cocktail lounge watching his great story fall to pieces. I had to do something.
I leapt at Jonathan’s neck and within moments he was on the ground, his glasses were broken and I was on top of him. He was looking up at me with squinting bewilderment. Through his groans he managed to choke out the words that have been swirling in my mind to this day: “What the fuck do you want from me?”
Teegan must have noticed that we had disappeared from view because a few seconds latter, right after Jonathan’s perplexing question, she screamed another, equally perplexing one in my ear. “What the fuck are you doing Charlie!” I heard her but it took me a while to process the enormity of the question. I really had no idea. What was I doing? What was I planning to do with Jonathan now that I had him pinned? Was this my story? Was this my climax? “Get off of him!” she yelled.
With the help of some other writing students, Teegan eventually managed to rip me from his Jonathan’s pale frame. They held me down on the hardwood as she and Jonathan left the room. I can only imagine that they went back to his room where she dressed his wounds before they made sweet passionate love. Only afterwards, while smoking in bed, would they contemplate my actions, would they wonder what had gotten into me, would they wonder what my story was all about.

I’ve been reading Jonathan’s work endlessly since we met, wondering if he will ever mention our evening together, if I will find it interesting enough to write about. But in all the short stories and newspaper columns since, there’s been nothing about our encounter. After reading and rereading Jonathan, however, something did occur to me: Jonathan does write about his own life. In fact, he does so almost exclusively. His lead character is always a thinly disguised version of himself. His setting is always a thinly disguised version of his monotonous everyday life as a writer and newspaper columnist. Jonathan, as person and as character, is completely uninteresting and boring. He like me is after all. His life is nothing more than an unimaginative procession of meaningless events. But he still manages to write brilliant stories. He doesn’t go out of his way to make his life interesting; he just has an interesting way of telling stories about it. And I think that is what I wanted out of Jonathan. This was the climax I always imagined. I somehow believed that through Jonathan, I could harness the creativity and courage to render my life into something imaginative. In the end, maybe I did.