I’m the au pair with the jazz tapes, telling him to use Davis and Coltrane on the first date. The hero’s childhood buddy, who dies in mortar fire during their service in the Second World War. The awkward friend who isn’t attractive enough to play the lead. The sibling confidante, who contradicts the protagonist with cynicism, only to be proven wrong in a satisfying fit of glory.
All my life, I dreamed of greatness, of being the main character in some quixotic story.But I’m slowly realizing that I’m only a deuteragonist.
I wrote this entry about four or five months ago, but never published it. I held off because I wasn’t sure if it would be true a week after I wrote it. Weeks turned into months, until the sudden realization that I don’t feel this way now.
I regret not publishing it at the time. Even though it holds no relevance anymore, at the very least, it would have been a time stamp of how I felt in the moment. There are so many fleeting memories and emotions that change here, part of my ephemeral nature. But part of me thinks that it took this realization to give me the strength to say it.
Maybe I’m starting to believe in myself.
Aw man, I totally would have responded to this point back when you initially wrote it rather than now.
Oops I am responding now.
And what would you have said differently if I posted it back then?
Probably would have suggested that Woody Allen made a protagonist career out of playing deuteragonists.
That is something I never realized and a totally awesome idea. I must see more of his movies.