A Few Minutes with the Fictional Character Support Group

Thank you for letting me be here on such short notice, I had no idea something like this even existed and I appreciate you all giving me this time. OK, I’ll give you a little background about me first, as much as I can. Based on all the drafts of this story so far, I can tell you I’m a pretty reserved person and I am the calmer one in the relationship I have with a woman named Kara. While Kara has had a few minor re-writes along the way, she’s generally stayed the same and is the one who is more outgoing, more impulsive, and the one who has more questionable behavior, but almost always in a good way and in a way that brings me out of my shell. The problem for me has been that my character has been re-written so many times that I really have no real sense of who I am. I get that writers are going to make changes to their stories and that the editing process can be as important as the writing process. Fine. But my God, I’ve already gone from being a straight male to being a lesbian and then to being a trans woman to then being a trans man and now to what I think is being back to a straight male, but one who may be bi-curious. I have no problems with any of those. I just want the writer to make a freaking decision about who and what I am and stick with it.

           The writer has had a lot of stories published and I’m pretty sure there was short story collection published a couple of years ago so I’m surprised he can’t land on what the hell he wants to do in this story. I’ve also a series of names starting with Carl and then continuing with Louise, Marissa, Clifton, and now Graham, which I’m hoping he sticks with. I don’t love that name, but Jesus, why can’t he just pick a name for me and stay with it? I know names can be a sticking point with writers, but he hasn’t had issues with any of the others.

           Then there is whole matter about what this story is even about. It is a road trip so that part’s clear, but we’re now on our fourth departure point which have been, in order, Ashland, Portland, Bend, and Seattle. Seattle has stuck for a while now so I’m feeling pretty confident that won’t be changing, but the destination and the purpose of the trip keep changing. First it was to a wedding in Las Vegas, then a funeral in New Mexico, then a bar mitzvah outside of San Diego, but now it’s probably some sort of class reunion in Rosarito in Baja California. I’m not 100% sure about that so let’s call it 90% sure. Where we are staying seems to be up in the air too, but it sounds like we’ll probably end up at the Rosarito Beach Hotel which would be really cool, and that at least is something I can truly get behind.

           What else? The car we’re in has changed with every draft. I won’t bore you with all of them, only to say that we started out in a station wagon and we are now in a beat up Honda CRV, which isn’t a complaint, I just thought I should note that.

           And then there are the people in the car with us, another couple that we were friends with in college who we haven’t seen for a few years who somehow wound up traveling with us to whatever event it is we’re going to. Their names and Kirk and Janey, and seriously, Janey? Is anybody named Janey anymore? I know that’s a minor matter to bitch about, but that sticks out to me. We don’t know a whole hell of a lot about them yet as he is still developing them, and for the most part that’s fine, but I really hope there are a few changes made. At this point, Kirk is an accountant and Janey is an administrative assistant at an art gallery who may have done a couple of porno movies several years that Kirk may or may not know about. That part is pretty unclear so maybe that will get edited out. What is clear is that Kirk has terrible taste in music. His favorite bands are Journey, the Eagles, and Nickelback. I don’t know Nickelback well, so I’ll be kinder about them, but I can’t stand the other two, and with the Eagles it is mainly that I’ve just heard some of those songs way too much and I do think some of them are truly awful.

           What else? We’re all about forty years old and that mostly works. Neither couple is married, but both may be headed that way and both are really vague about having children or not, and that will need to be decided soon. There are tensions between Kara and Janey that haven’t been spelled out, but hopefully we’ll get that in the next draft. I don’t know what I have in common with either of them. I work in book publishing and Kara works as a buyer at a record store so why we are traveling with them is an unknown and that still needs to be developed too. There was also something in the most recent draft about stopping in Napa Valley in northern California and taking a ride in a hot air balloon and the mere thought of that terrifies me. If one thing goes wrong we’re falling a few hundred feet down to the ground and we’re all dead. What the hell?

I hope you can see why I’ve gotten so frustrated with so much of this. A lot of this still feels so aimless, and I don’t know what I can do about it. It feels great to get this off my chest though, this has really been bothering me, as you’ve surely noticed.

I feel like I should wrap this up and I realize that I should end this with something positive and that is Kara. She is wonderful. Her smile, her laugh, her self-confidence, and her sheer unpredictability are all breaths of fresh air to me. I feel that she is the one for me. Sure, maybe she shouldn’t occasionally shoplift. Maybe she shouldn’t occasionally publicly provoke Trump supporters. Maybe she shouldn’t grab my ass in public as much as she does. But all of that and more makes her who she is and that is what makes me happy so no matter what happens with the rest of this mess of story, I will always have that and I will be grateful for her.