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When I was younger, nobody would have pointed the finger at me. But today, when she heard that I was heading to the bar, my granddaughter dashed to me in exaggerated shock, repeating the same rhetoric that she had uttered to me for the hundredth time. She waved her arms in exacerbation, rambling about how drinking was detrimental to my liver, scolding me for not being responsible for my life, and begging me to take care of myself.
But I pushed her away, walked to the bar, sat at the counter, and knocked on the wooden desk.
“A glass of Long Island Iced Tea, please”
Alcoholic drinks have played a significant role in my life, especially when I was less frail and further away from the call of mortality. I had only been drunk once before the ban was imposed. In one fleeting summer afterwards, however, this mounted countless times. I suddenly became sober when I left the East as if someone–in fact, I myself–pulled me out of the depth of an ocean. Once I was able to breathe in the fresh air again, the nearly-drowned would not dare to approach any waters anymore. Soon after the awakening, the 25th Amendment was passed, and the 18th was lifted.
As well in 1933, Jordan Baker officially retired. Her boyish face occupied a whole page in the newspaper. But the over-amplified image was too low in quality, which made the glittering drops of sweat on her cheeks look like a darkened scar, for it was shot during one of her final matches. I wrote her a letter, but it was returned to me because I got the wrong address. Then I saw the news of her moving overseas. If she is still alive today, she would be a grandmother. Or, she may have never married. For men, she avoided the smart and contemned the dumb. Her world, in this way, becomes too narrow, which is rather indescribably pitiful from my perspective. It felt like the times when she always tried to poise herself in a delicate balance, but in fact, it was because she had nowhere else to move around. But it was Jordan’s choice, after all, I could not be entitled to interfere now. I myself am now a father of two adults and a grandfather of many. The returned letter still lies in my desk drawer, waiting for my descendants to figure out which “Miss Baker (crossed out) Jordan” this letter, which is neither affectionate nor appreciative, was meant to go to.
I have never been secretive with my family. On one hand, it was due to me never liking troubles and constantly trying to avoid them. On the other hand, it was to make up for my churning guilt of not knowing my wife earlier in my life. But I was not truly regretting meeting her so late; I myself would despise the idea of acquainting with Nick Carraway in his late twenties. I was such a naïve and incomplete human back then, entangled in this rotten and corrupted luxurious life in West Egg, intoxicated with alcohol, a fading dream and so much more and buried in the deathbed of someone I was barely a friend of.
But a tragic demise is never a definitive end to the main character. The story must go on. Jay Gatsby has existed, or continued to materialise in my piling autobiographical manuscripts and verbal recounts of stories of the East, despite him succumbing to the sickles of Death decades ago. He is an unwelcome ghost to my wife, signalling a questionably mysterious and probably unpleasant past of her loyal husband; a mythical enigma to my children, who are mostly mature enough now to understand how the time has played foul on him. But Gatsby has done some of the most disreputable deeds, my older son used to argue with me. He then apologised for offending me, as he perceives me to be very much fond of Gatsby, and that he came to the realisation that the filth of his wealth was not the point. I would never deny any of these assumptions and allegations, for they were simply undeniable. Yes, Gatsby was not incorruptible, for he was, after all, a fallible human being. And the very fact that he started out in West Egg, already corrupted, did not justify any whitewashing. But still, I must rise to defend his innocence and his admirable yet miserable heroism, against the judgement of ignorant eyes. He has been stuck in the muddy ground of Lake Superior all his life, reaching for the unreachable stars while being sucked further down into the swamp of society.
The ‘Roaring Twenties’ was nothing but a boundless, bottomless but indeed roaring sea. We, powerless humans that could never defy nature, were all stranded on a small boat amidst this, pulled and pushed by the menacing undercurrents, going against the tides and failing, and ultimately thrown off into the water, helplessly. Some, like me, were fortunate enough to survive, but more had disappeared in the endlessly surging waves.
And we move on. We did not stand by their empty coffins to mourn. We did not stop at their humble tombstones to pay tribute. Wild nameless flowers spread and flourish on their graves, but we people, their contemporaries, would not stay further, nor would we hesitate to rush into the future. Most of those who passed on, forever consumed by the turbulence of the times, were deemed a necessary sacrifice–a price that we must pay in order to advance into the unknown, and would be soon forgotten even by the most sympathetic amongst us. We were meant to be engulfed by the ‘roaring’ ages. No one can help, and no one can escape.
I met my wife in Minnesota while I was on a business trip. She was a handsome young girl with noticeable features of a typical Midwesterner. If I was asked what those features are, I could not describe them as they were not related to appearance or dressing. But a radiating energy and paradoxically a lack of it at the same time, and a certain carelessness from the loud and cheery bar waitress, has surely convinced me that she belonged to this land, as I have seen too much of it. It was near closing time at the bar, so she sat down with me, asking the bartender to prepare her a “Long Island Iced Tea”. Out of all courtesy and curiosity, I politely said to her that caffeine in tea would deprive her of a good night's sleep. She squinted in sheer doubt at me, glancing at my cup of lemon water and snorted.
“Oh good sir. You’ve never heard of it, eh? It’s a type of cocktail, dontcha know, eh?”
I apologised, admitting that I had refrained from consuming alcohol for years. She chuckled sharply at me and passed me the drink explaining the history behind this peculiarity. The amber-coloured liquid looked exactly like a cup of finely-brewed black tea and nothing similar to liquor, yet the pungent smell of rum and tequila sold it out instantly when I drew my face close. I took a sip or two. It did not taste like a cocktail either. It felt surreal that I knew I was drinking a mixture of high-proof alcohol with some sweetener, but the icy coldness sparkled on the tip of my tongue, and burned all the way down my throat with an alluring scent.
“It reminds me of an old friend,” I said to her.
She yawned in disinterest. “Yeah? More like your old girl, eh?”
“No. Really, just a friend. He lived on Long Island. Around the time this was invented, I was there, too.”
“Huh. Good for you, I guess. You sir are a loaded gentleman, eh?”
“I’m not,” I patiently clarified, gulping down the drink, “But he is. Not exactly a gentleman , but loaded, yeah, indeed.”
“Then why are you sir here? We are just poor Midwesterners. Y’know, rich people like you don’t really pay us visits, eh?”
I frowned, dropping the glass, almost breaking it. My hands were shaky due to the sudden intake of the mammoth amount of alcohol. “First I’m not one of his monetary acquaintances. Second, I'm also a Midwesterner.”
“Huh. You sir surely don’t sound like one.”
“I’ve been in the East for a bit too long.”
I asked for another glass, after another. I hadn’t allowed myself to indulge in such excessive consumption of an addictive substance for years, until then. It was like breaking the curse of the ancient monstrous dragon–once it is out, we are doomed forever. I turned a blind eye to the guilty pleasure of drunkenness, my mind and consciousness paralysed in the deception. Alcohol disguised as harmless tea, while they were essentially so different. Alcohol swallows you in sleep, while caffeine keeps you awake until dawn. Both of the friendly toxicity fascinated me.
I fell asleep on the counter, and the waitress took care of me. Just before the war, she became a lifelong commitment of mine.
My wife lifted her eyes in front of the remains of a white mansion, sunken in swarms of greenery. There was nothing done to it. Nobody dared to touch it–rumours had it that it was cursed by the late owner who was brutally murdered. I have bored her with the same old tale of Jay Gatsby, but I was glad to see her being impressed by the building.
“It’s like history all over again, eh? The west, the war, and you went back to the east.”
“And I don’t like it.” I murmured.
“Fancy some wines, later in town eh?”
She quickly turned away, holding my hand. We stepped onto the lawn that other party people and I have trampled over and over again years ago. The grasses were going wild with such uncontained vitality, submerging our feet up to our ankles. She complained a little about how no one was tending to this place.
I replied, “Just some Long Island Iced Tea would be nice.”
I turned, one more time and maybe one last time, to the last bits of grandeur of the West Egg. Jay Gatsby’s face flashed in front of my eyes in the mysterious hazy fog. My wife was leading me away, but I could no longer feel her hand.
“Old sport, welcome!”
I heard Gatsby say. And I was too ashamed to admit that I was never coming back.
FIN.