It should be said that Ethan isn't me.
I mean... he looks a lot like me... the way, perhaps, I look in good light. He looks at himself in the mirror in the morning, and sometimes he sucks in his gut and pretends he has a... 6-pack? Yeah... no.
Sometimes he doesn't brush his teeth before bed... like a slob, and he wakes up with the taste of roadkill in the back of his throat.
He thinks he knows women... he knows perhaps, a version of himself... the one he can maintain... the dressed up, picturesque portraiture version... and that's okay. He's okay with it, okay?
Ethan is a writer.
He likes to say he's a writer... but he hasn't finished writing anything in years. Nothing he's too damn proud of. He's written a letter here and there... written a line or two, maybe even a couple scenes... lots of beginnings, but no ends.
He doesn't really know how things end, because, for the most part, they end without his permission. They end while he's not in the room.
People used to talk about Ethan... in hushed tones... I mean, sure... he was talented, but he had an unhealthy ego and didn't know how to cut it back with social scissors...
It should also be known that Ethan was a compulsive liar for a good part of his life... that's purely a phrase, most people wouldn't call it the 'good part' of anything.
Ethan has parents like you or me... and they're divorced... like yours, and hey, mine.
He's a little scared to be a drug addict, but he's so attracted, moth-like to the flame of dangerous people and situations.
Ethan has a best friend... just the one... or, it should be noted, just the one that he hasn't slept with. Because his best friend is a gay man. And Ethan is a straight man. He's pretty sure.
And he has a mole on his face. On the left side. So that when we look at each other, some would say it's like a freaky funhouse mirror.
At the beginning of our year together, Ethan's girlfriend had just dissolved their relationship, and I, living next door, was the ideal scratching post for his aches. He and I have a strange relationship... mirror people that we are.
When I told him that I was a writer too, and that I was struggling to find my voice, he suggested I take his voice, as he was overly vocal and tired of speaking, tired of writing... sort of just tired in general... wanted to get out of the whole scene.
So I did. I've spent several of the last months with Ethan and I think I've started to get a sense for his voice. So, before this all becomes a play... with characters and dialogue and form... I thought I would bring this world into being, somehow.
I hope I do Ethan, and his experience, some sort of justice, and that, in the process, find a way to calm the meddling forces in my own writing life.
And so... we begin. With a wedding.
-e.- (Eugene)
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