Holden Caulfield (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
goddamnphonies) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
dear_mun2012-06-07 01:54 am
goddamnphonies) wrote in dear_mun2012-06-07 01:54 am
(no subject)
DEAR MUN,
Well, first of all, I just find that title up there as depressing as hell. "Mun," that just plain doesn't sound like something you can call someone in an intelligent conversation, but then it turns out it's not even just some random made-up word, it's short for "Mundane", which is about a thousand times worse. It really is just a terrible thing to call someone - not just calling someone that, but acting like it's their goddamn official title. I can barely stand it.
Besides, how you're supposed to be the boring worthless one here when you're real and I'm just some crumby pieces of paper or something of the like, I don't know. I felt like being real was pretty nice, back when I thought it was. Granted, a lot of being alive is absolutely awful, I'm not about to deny that, but I sure as hell never wanted to be some boy from some book. At least I'm not out of some movie, though. God, I would die if Hollywood ever got their dirty whore hands onto my life. I swear, I really would. That goes double for if you got that goddamn boy who fell off that boat in that dumb movie Sunny was talking about. I don't even look a thing like him, I have no idea where she started thinking I did. I'm six foot two with gray hairs down half my head, for Christ's sake. So I guess compared to all that tripe some sixteen-year-old girl sixty years into the future pulling the strings isn't so bad.
That's the first thing I wanted to bother you about though. This whole goddamn future thing. At first I thought it might be really neat since I heard you have all these newfangled gadgets and all. Like you have these tiny phones, for instance, that was the first thing I heard, these tiny phones you can carry around in your own goddamn jacket pocket, and let me tell you, when I first heard that it just gave me such a kick. A real thrill.
See, what I was thinking was, with something like that I could give Jane Gallagher a call whenever I finally felt like it. Since you have to really get into the mood to do something like that, you know, and the whole book -- boy, it's weird, talking about my life and calling it some book -- my whole book though, I never did, and if I did then I couldn't get to the phone or some other stupid thing would make me forget, and so I wouldn't do it after all, and looking back I've always sort of felt sorry about that.
Now since I'd been feeling so sore about that whole business and all, when I heard about these new phones you can use to buzz up girls whenever you feel like, I got really excited. But then I'm looking at one of them, these "mobile phones" (or cell phones, or smartphones, or communicators, or whatever, I haven't got the faintest idea what they are really), and the thing is they don't look like a normal phone does at all. I mean, I should have known that since it had to fit in your pocket of course it wouldn't be the same as a normal phone, but I figured it would at least look like one a little bit. Maybe just carrying around the part you hold in your hand, or something.
They're not anything like that though, just these stupid rectangles that you can open and close if you don't snap them in half by accident before you manage it. I thought it was the crumbiest thing I'd ever seen in my life at first. Of course then that pneumatic blonde broad came over and showed me how to work it, so that turned out decent. She was alright. Of course she was dead stinking stunk drunk, but at the same time she had this way of going about being smashed that made it come off alright. I don't know how, she was being a terrible flirt - it was like she'd never seen a boy in her life before - but somehow she just managed to act entirely kind and all through the whole thing anyway.
She's a great girl, that Roxy. She deserves a lot more than hanging around with some little princess like you. Not that you're that bad, I'm not saying anything of the sort, the point is that it would make me almost sad, talking about how she's just stuck here getting completely blackout drunk all day, except that apparently her personal life is even worse, like her mother was dead before she was born and she doesn't have any father at all and if that weren't enough the Armageddon came too and it just went on and on and on. It was way too depressing, though, so I didn't get much further than that. I didn't really want to pry in the first place. I didn't even actually ask her, if you want to know the truth. That's all nothing but what I picked up, you know, just by being around here. I figure if you can know that much being in the same mind with someone, not even by asking, it's just flat-out tactless to actually go ahead and ask. Besides, she was being so stupid sometimes it almost came out the other side to charming instead, too, like how she kept slurring things. I think she might have been doing bits of it on purpose. Not all of it, though.
So I'd found out about this phone and how to use it, and I had gotten really excited about this whole thing. Talking to Jane Gallagher again and all. But then, here's the funny thing that happened: I dialed her number and didn't get an answer. Or, well, I got an answer, but it was just some goddamn geezer of eighty or something telling me nobody ought to be phoning the Fossie residence at this hour and then hanging up on me. I stared at the thing for a while and then dialed again, just to make sure I hadn't gotten the wrong number or something, because I know that is a thing that can happen all the time, and maybe it's even commoner now that every one of you future people has one of their own swank new phones. But he just hung up on me right there. Didn't even say another word to me.
I sat down then and decided to call home at least, because I might get some conversation with them, or maybe old Phoebe, and that could still be great. But there was no answer at all, just some really stilted voice saying the damn thing was disconnected. It was the eeriest goddamn thing, I swear to god, like nothing I'd ever heard before. So that was when I finally went and asked the damn doctor for a phonebook, which she gave me, of course. Docs love it when you actually ask them for things. She's a shrink, would you believe it. Of course you would, you created her. That killed me right then, it really shot me dead, when I found out there was even a shrink right here in your head. It's just so ironical.
Anyway, so there I was, sitting there in the middle of the floor with your goddamn phone book, and I looked up everyone I could think of. I think I even looked up Ackley. But the initials were all wrong, or else there were just too many names for me to even pick out one. I definitely tried to buzz Stradlater and Ackley, and I think maybe even Mal Brossard on top of them, who I barely goddamn knew in the first place. He just went to Pencey Prep while I was there, and I invited him to that movie, that one time. I was just that desperate to hear someone, anyone at all, who I knew, but finally I had to give up and slam the book closed. Big noise when I did it.
Then I started staring at the cover, because it looked sort of funny, the way the letters were printed on it and all, and finally I saw that it wasn't the letters that were weird, but what it said. 2011 edition, it said. I don't know how That just hit me really hard all of a sudden, that everyone I knew was probably dead as a damn dumb doornail. I'd kind of worried about the future thing at first, but not too much, since I could see how I turned out. Whether I'd ended up in a real insane asylum, or in jail, or who I'd gotten married to, or where I worked and all that. Maybe I'd even turned out a flit after all - wouldn't that give Mr. Antolini a laugh - and gotten married to some other flit. That's apparently a thing they do nowadays, I heard about it later. It's the queerest thing, I swear. I think I even actually said it was the queerest thing to the guy who told me it, and he just scoffed right in my face. Queer asshole, and full of himself, too, for some boy three goddamn years or more younger than me.
None of that's something I can do now, though, because all of them are dead. Do you remember at the end of the book when I said I missed Maurice, for God's sake? I'm thinking something just like that now. Since apparently nobody I ever even met in my life is "developed" enough to show up for some reason. Sally looked pretty damn developed, if you know what I mean. I almost got some bright ideas about how people show up being different because of all the different times and countries and so on you see here, and how if they brought me to the future then they could bring anyone else - this hurts to tell you the truth, I almost thought I might see old Allie again. But that was stupid. I've got my fingers crossed for Phoebe, I think that sweet kid at least has a chance because of how long she was talking to me, but I'm not going to hold my breath too long.
I'm just here in the future with a bunch of goddamn phonies. And that's the funniest thing: I'm one of the goddamn phonies. I'm literally a living work of fiction, for God's sake. Less than that, some of them say, since you're not even J.D. Salinger, but I don't really see where they're coming from there. Sure, he might have written the original book and all that crap, but you're actually a teenager - sixteen, even, just like me. Granted, you're still a girl, but at least you're not just some phoney adult writing about what he thinks the semimodern adolescent is like and all that. It would kill me if you were and a girl on top of that, I swear. Some forty year old woman with too many goddamn cats or whatever they have instead in the future, and going around pretending to give a damn about all these fancy boats - what would a bunch of women even care about sailing for? That's how I know this is all something fake.
There's not much more I can say about that, though. Nothing else that really meant anything happened - you aren't going to give me time to get into all the other weirdos I've met in here, are you? Like the freaky little pervert who told me about the flits nowadays in the future. I wouldn't want to get into all the boring details of every single one of them now. I didn't do that for my goddamn parents in the book, for Christ's sake. Here I am just tapping away at a typewriter, except for some reason you're having me write just like I would talk instead. That's the strangest thing out of all of it. I don't even know how it figures out which words to italicize, it's just there. Is it supposed to be easier for you? Or I guess it's better practice for that project, since that's supposed to be what you're doing here. Up way past midnight, but here we are. Just don't get kicked out, okay. I couldn't bear it if you went to all this trouble working with me and then lost it just like I did. There's ironical and then there's just sappy.
I'm going to sign this like a letter regardless of everything, though, since I started it like one and all.
Yours truly,
HOLDEN CAULFIELD
Well, first of all, I just find that title up there as depressing as hell. "Mun," that just plain doesn't sound like something you can call someone in an intelligent conversation, but then it turns out it's not even just some random made-up word, it's short for "Mundane", which is about a thousand times worse. It really is just a terrible thing to call someone - not just calling someone that, but acting like it's their goddamn official title. I can barely stand it.
Besides, how you're supposed to be the boring worthless one here when you're real and I'm just some crumby pieces of paper or something of the like, I don't know. I felt like being real was pretty nice, back when I thought it was. Granted, a lot of being alive is absolutely awful, I'm not about to deny that, but I sure as hell never wanted to be some boy from some book. At least I'm not out of some movie, though. God, I would die if Hollywood ever got their dirty whore hands onto my life. I swear, I really would. That goes double for if you got that goddamn boy who fell off that boat in that dumb movie Sunny was talking about. I don't even look a thing like him, I have no idea where she started thinking I did. I'm six foot two with gray hairs down half my head, for Christ's sake. So I guess compared to all that tripe some sixteen-year-old girl sixty years into the future pulling the strings isn't so bad.
That's the first thing I wanted to bother you about though. This whole goddamn future thing. At first I thought it might be really neat since I heard you have all these newfangled gadgets and all. Like you have these tiny phones, for instance, that was the first thing I heard, these tiny phones you can carry around in your own goddamn jacket pocket, and let me tell you, when I first heard that it just gave me such a kick. A real thrill.
See, what I was thinking was, with something like that I could give Jane Gallagher a call whenever I finally felt like it. Since you have to really get into the mood to do something like that, you know, and the whole book -- boy, it's weird, talking about my life and calling it some book -- my whole book though, I never did, and if I did then I couldn't get to the phone or some other stupid thing would make me forget, and so I wouldn't do it after all, and looking back I've always sort of felt sorry about that.
Now since I'd been feeling so sore about that whole business and all, when I heard about these new phones you can use to buzz up girls whenever you feel like, I got really excited. But then I'm looking at one of them, these "mobile phones" (or cell phones, or smartphones, or communicators, or whatever, I haven't got the faintest idea what they are really), and the thing is they don't look like a normal phone does at all. I mean, I should have known that since it had to fit in your pocket of course it wouldn't be the same as a normal phone, but I figured it would at least look like one a little bit. Maybe just carrying around the part you hold in your hand, or something.
They're not anything like that though, just these stupid rectangles that you can open and close if you don't snap them in half by accident before you manage it. I thought it was the crumbiest thing I'd ever seen in my life at first. Of course then that pneumatic blonde broad came over and showed me how to work it, so that turned out decent. She was alright. Of course she was dead stinking stunk drunk, but at the same time she had this way of going about being smashed that made it come off alright. I don't know how, she was being a terrible flirt - it was like she'd never seen a boy in her life before - but somehow she just managed to act entirely kind and all through the whole thing anyway.
She's a great girl, that Roxy. She deserves a lot more than hanging around with some little princess like you. Not that you're that bad, I'm not saying anything of the sort, the point is that it would make me almost sad, talking about how she's just stuck here getting completely blackout drunk all day, except that apparently her personal life is even worse, like her mother was dead before she was born and she doesn't have any father at all and if that weren't enough the Armageddon came too and it just went on and on and on. It was way too depressing, though, so I didn't get much further than that. I didn't really want to pry in the first place. I didn't even actually ask her, if you want to know the truth. That's all nothing but what I picked up, you know, just by being around here. I figure if you can know that much being in the same mind with someone, not even by asking, it's just flat-out tactless to actually go ahead and ask. Besides, she was being so stupid sometimes it almost came out the other side to charming instead, too, like how she kept slurring things. I think she might have been doing bits of it on purpose. Not all of it, though.
So I'd found out about this phone and how to use it, and I had gotten really excited about this whole thing. Talking to Jane Gallagher again and all. But then, here's the funny thing that happened: I dialed her number and didn't get an answer. Or, well, I got an answer, but it was just some goddamn geezer of eighty or something telling me nobody ought to be phoning the Fossie residence at this hour and then hanging up on me. I stared at the thing for a while and then dialed again, just to make sure I hadn't gotten the wrong number or something, because I know that is a thing that can happen all the time, and maybe it's even commoner now that every one of you future people has one of their own swank new phones. But he just hung up on me right there. Didn't even say another word to me.
I sat down then and decided to call home at least, because I might get some conversation with them, or maybe old Phoebe, and that could still be great. But there was no answer at all, just some really stilted voice saying the damn thing was disconnected. It was the eeriest goddamn thing, I swear to god, like nothing I'd ever heard before. So that was when I finally went and asked the damn doctor for a phonebook, which she gave me, of course. Docs love it when you actually ask them for things. She's a shrink, would you believe it. Of course you would, you created her. That killed me right then, it really shot me dead, when I found out there was even a shrink right here in your head. It's just so ironical.
Anyway, so there I was, sitting there in the middle of the floor with your goddamn phone book, and I looked up everyone I could think of. I think I even looked up Ackley. But the initials were all wrong, or else there were just too many names for me to even pick out one. I definitely tried to buzz Stradlater and Ackley, and I think maybe even Mal Brossard on top of them, who I barely goddamn knew in the first place. He just went to Pencey Prep while I was there, and I invited him to that movie, that one time. I was just that desperate to hear someone, anyone at all, who I knew, but finally I had to give up and slam the book closed. Big noise when I did it.
Then I started staring at the cover, because it looked sort of funny, the way the letters were printed on it and all, and finally I saw that it wasn't the letters that were weird, but what it said. 2011 edition, it said. I don't know how That just hit me really hard all of a sudden, that everyone I knew was probably dead as a damn dumb doornail. I'd kind of worried about the future thing at first, but not too much, since I could see how I turned out. Whether I'd ended up in a real insane asylum, or in jail, or who I'd gotten married to, or where I worked and all that. Maybe I'd even turned out a flit after all - wouldn't that give Mr. Antolini a laugh - and gotten married to some other flit. That's apparently a thing they do nowadays, I heard about it later. It's the queerest thing, I swear. I think I even actually said it was the queerest thing to the guy who told me it, and he just scoffed right in my face. Queer asshole, and full of himself, too, for some boy three goddamn years or more younger than me.
None of that's something I can do now, though, because all of them are dead. Do you remember at the end of the book when I said I missed Maurice, for God's sake? I'm thinking something just like that now. Since apparently nobody I ever even met in my life is "developed" enough to show up for some reason. Sally looked pretty damn developed, if you know what I mean. I almost got some bright ideas about how people show up being different because of all the different times and countries and so on you see here, and how if they brought me to the future then they could bring anyone else - this hurts to tell you the truth, I almost thought I might see old Allie again. But that was stupid. I've got my fingers crossed for Phoebe, I think that sweet kid at least has a chance because of how long she was talking to me, but I'm not going to hold my breath too long.
I'm just here in the future with a bunch of goddamn phonies. And that's the funniest thing: I'm one of the goddamn phonies. I'm literally a living work of fiction, for God's sake. Less than that, some of them say, since you're not even J.D. Salinger, but I don't really see where they're coming from there. Sure, he might have written the original book and all that crap, but you're actually a teenager - sixteen, even, just like me. Granted, you're still a girl, but at least you're not just some phoney adult writing about what he thinks the semimodern adolescent is like and all that. It would kill me if you were and a girl on top of that, I swear. Some forty year old woman with too many goddamn cats or whatever they have instead in the future, and going around pretending to give a damn about all these fancy boats - what would a bunch of women even care about sailing for? That's how I know this is all something fake.
There's not much more I can say about that, though. Nothing else that really meant anything happened - you aren't going to give me time to get into all the other weirdos I've met in here, are you? Like the freaky little pervert who told me about the flits nowadays in the future. I wouldn't want to get into all the boring details of every single one of them now. I didn't do that for my goddamn parents in the book, for Christ's sake. Here I am just tapping away at a typewriter, except for some reason you're having me write just like I would talk instead. That's the strangest thing out of all of it. I don't even know how it figures out which words to italicize, it's just there. Is it supposed to be easier for you? Or I guess it's better practice for that project, since that's supposed to be what you're doing here. Up way past midnight, but here we are. Just don't get kicked out, okay. I couldn't bear it if you went to all this trouble working with me and then lost it just like I did. There's ironical and then there's just sappy.
I'm going to sign this like a letter regardless of everything, though, since I started it like one and all.
Yours truly,
HOLDEN CAULFIELD
STANDING OVATION + TEARS
Phones aren't that hard to get used to, though.
THANKS......
Yeah, I'm figuring I'll run out of time pretty quick. A few days maybe. None of those crumby "games" for me. Boy, I lucked out there! What about you, mister?
Omg, you are amazing. It sounds JUST like him too.
[She's not deterred, though, and smiles.]
Those gaps in time can be quite overwhelming, but it's not so bad, really. I've settled quite nicely, I think. You might be surprised, Mr. Caulfield.
no subject
Probably not either. She thinks she's got more work to do on me. But hey, if I do it's an opportunity. Close as hell in her head, not to mention crowded.
You should work harder to hang on. It beats winking out of existence. Unless that's what you want.
You flatter me.
[He ends up moving the typewriter away to underneath a desk and straightening up to sit against a sort of wall. Definitely acting more proper on account of tis seeming to be a really proper lady.]
I could probably get used to it, really I could. I just don't think I'll get the time like you've had, Miss.
no subject
Well, it's not as if I know what the hell I want, at my age and all. The only career path I've even begun considering is being a lumberjack. I've looked into that a bit. The nice quiet empty virgin forests of Minnesota. But there's not any Minnesota "jamjars" out there, and did you hear me mention the part where literally evryone I ever knew is dead?
--Sorry. [Feeling mild shame now at this rudeness to an adult.] I mean, good luck in your game and all, if you do get there, sir. I'm just still figuring out this whole muse thing for myself.
no subject
Do you want to die, though? I feel like that's a pretty simple question to answer. Either you want to die - or not exist, same difference - or you want to live. One or the other.
Oh, and don't call me sir. Adorable and everything, but weird.
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[A curious headtilt before he half-chuckles.] Haha, alright, whatever you want. You got a name then, man?
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Aden. [ Mostly. ] And . . . Holden? Not a name you hear much anymore.
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Yeah, I'm Holden. Like how I signed the letter. Where I talk about how this is seventy years in the future and all. Boy! Seventy! That's just longer than I thought I'd ever even live.
no subject
[ He raises his eyebrows. Smartass. ] Yeah, when I said 'anymore' I meant 'in the last hundred years'. If your name was Cecil or Harold I wouldn't have said anything.
Congrats, though, you get to witness the glorious modern world. At least for a little while.
no subject
no subject
So is the time travel just part of the entire fictional setup, or do you have all the time machines and things in the modern era? [Actual specific scientific marvels such as "clones" and "spaceships" are out of his 40s vocabulary.]
OH man I am late but I couldn't resist all this delicious text.
wavy hair
wears pink and white
smells like she drank every bar in every state
that roxy?
You're welcome any time!
What, do you know her?
Have you given her the time?
no subject
shes family
i look out for family
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So... yeah. The girl's here.
Lives with me. Not that we're close, exactly, we're just both in this same headspace place.
Are you going to make something out of it?
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just because im from texas dont mean im gunning for a shotgun wedding or anything
she can flirt with whomever cause thats none of my business
and if i made it my business id be one of those weird rednecks who loves banjos and family too much
which i dont
i am the most ardent fucking fan of genetic diversity youll ever meet and the antithesis of banjoyplayers everywhere
each broken string is a song in my heart
each fading twang a notch in my personal wincolumn
no subject
Is it true you farm there?
What even grows in Texas? I mean naturally you have to have something to feed the cattle, but...
Also, I really have to ask her sometime how exactly you're related if you're not interested in telling and all, because she sure as hell isn't from Texas.
no subject
shit
when are you even from
every reference i got just got dashed against the cliffsides
the colorful beak of time is just demolishing any chances of succesful communication and gorging itself on the awk silences that spill forth
were talking national geographic levels of brutal here