The Radical Gatsby: A 1990's Retelling

The Radical Gatsby

Charlie Wood

Copyright © 2022 Charlie Wood

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photography, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written consent from the publisher and author, except in the instance of quotes for reviews. No part of this book may be uploaded without the permission of the publisher and author, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is originally published.

This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.

Inspired by The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

To contact the author:

CharlieWoodBooks@gmail.com

www.charliewood24.blogspot.com

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Also by Charlie Wood

About the Author

Chapter 1

Summer of 1996

You’re trying to get rid of me.

No, I’m not. This will do more good for you than you could ever imagine.

My mom has just finished telling me that I’m gonna live with my cousin for the summer, to get me ready for college and the real world.

"But I just finished my junior year. I still have a whole year of high school to go. Shouldn’t I live with him next summer?"

No, that’ll be too late. The sooner you get used to living away from home, the better. You need to learn there’s a great big world out there beyond our little town.

But I like our little town.

I know you do—that’s why you gotta go. Now help me pick one. She holds up two paint swatches from Home Depot, a blue one and a yellow one. Which do you like better?

For what?

Your room. It’s either gonna be a workout room or my home office, I’m not sure.

Ha, ha, you’re hilarious. You went to Home Depot and got those just to set up this joke, didn’t you?

You know me too well.

Even though I’m protesting a little, I have to admit I’m excited. Sure, I’m gonna miss my friends, and being away from them for an entire summer is gonna be bizarre, but my cousin lives in one of the nicest areas of New York—West Egg, a little but insanely rich coastal neighborhood full of mini-mansions and beaches and who knows what else. I’ve looked at pictures of it in magazines, wondering what it would be like to live there, and now I actually am going to live there, for a whole summer? When my mom first brought up the idea, I didn’t run screaming and yelling out of the room, let’s put it that way.

So, before I know it, the last day of school comes and goes, it’s officially summer vacation, and I’m standing in what will be my room for the next two and a half months—the guest room of my aunt and uncle’s house in West Egg, New York.

So, my cousin Jeremy says. Is it everything you ever dreamed of?

Yeah, actually it is. Walking downstairs, we head out the back door and onto the dock behind his house. The dock juts into a short but wide saltwater river, lined on either side by cattails and sandy beaches, and the great big Atlantic Ocean is only a few hundred feet away. The dock acts like a bridge leading to my uncle’s boat, and it seems one could get on that boat and head out into any kind of adventure they wanted.

Looking around the neighborhood up and down the river, I see my cousin’s house is actually one of the smallest in West Egg, even though it’s twice the size of mine. The other houses in the area are full-on mansions with brick walls and columns and stuff like that. Standing there on the dock, with a beer in my hand and surrounded by the feeling of a permanent vacation, the sun feels warmer and shines brighter than at home.

Your parents aren’t gonna care if they see us with these? I say, holding up my beer.

They’d have to see it to care, and to see it, they’d have to be home. Which they never are. He finishes his beer and walks back to the rear of his house, grabbing another from a little refrigerator. Things are different in West Egg, you’ll see.

Well, I’m liking it already, I say, cracking open another beer.

He smirks. If you like this, wait till you see where we’re going tonight. You ain’t seen nothing yet.

At 10 o’clock, we’re walking through his neighborhood, new beers in hand, this time quasi-hidden in red Solo cups. West Egg is an egg-shaped piece of land that sticks out of the eastern end of Long Island, and to get there, you have to drive down a long road with nothing really around you but the forest. Then, suddenly, you get to the end of the road and see the river, and you feel like you’re in some hidden, secret cul-de-sac at the very edge of America, looking out at the water and surrounded by immaculate houses with perfect front yards and perfect green grass. The smell of the salty sea air is everywhere and intoxicating. For some reason, feeling it on your skin gives you the instant urge to be with people and laugh and stay up all night. For some reason, it makes you feel more alive.

At this time of night, the neighborhood is quiet, and most of the houses are dark. Though up ahead, where I assume we’re going, I can hear thumping music, the unmistakable beat of hip-hop.

Where are your parents, anyway? I ask.

My cousin motions to the neighborhood. Somewhere around here with all of the other West Egg parents. Once you hit like 45 years old, you have to be seen, and go to all the right dinner parties and shit, to actually be someone. That’s what they think anyway. He shrugs. They leave us alone as long as we don’t get arrested or do anything really stupid. We’d just get in their way if we were with them. Or embarrass them.

We turn a little corner and I gasp. Suddenly, in front of me, I see a house three or four times bigger than any other in West Egg. It’s only four places down the street from my cousin’s, but it feels like it exists in its own separate part of the neighborhood, slightly raised on a hill and overlooking the rest of the houses like a watchman. My cousin’s house is nice, like the house of a very successful surgeon, which is exactly what his father is, but this house? It’s a palace, made almost entirely of white marble and at the end of a short, winding seashell driveway that leads to it like the yellow brick road.

Holy shit, I say. Whose house is that?

My cousin smirks. That’s where we’re going. Welcome to Jay Gatsby’s, home of the greatest fucking parties in New York.

Chapter 2

We walk down the seashell driveway, the little bits of white crunching under my feet, and I hear the music getting louder. Walking through the gold-trimmed archway, my cousin opens the front door and I see the inside is just as luxurious as the outside. The blaring music is the same as parties back home—Notorious B.I.G., Dr. Dre, Beastie Boys—but everything else is different. The floors are hardwood instead of carpet, even in the living room, the ceilings are twenty feet high, and there are way more people than I’ve ever seen at a high school party. Instead of like seven of us at most, drinking a thirty rack of horrible beer we got from one of our dirtbag uncles, there are dozens of kids all over the giant, spacious, open-floor house. And even though there must be close to 100 people, no one seems to be worried about the cops showing up or the neighbors knocking on the door to see what the hell is going on. They definitely aren’t worried about a parent coming home and catching us.

Everyone is loud and laughing, the music is bumping, and all the partygoers—an equal amount of guys and girls—are walking around freely with beers and booze, sometimes just carrying around the entire bottle of Jack Daniels and swigging from it like it’s a sports bottle. It’s a far cry from this past New Year’s Eve, when my friend and I secretly took sips of my mom’s peppermint schnapps from above the refrigerator when she wasn’t looking.

Walking through a mass of people in the entryway, we get some breathing room in a hallway that leads to the kitchen. On the wall, I see artwork I recognize of dancing stick figure guys surrounded by colorful, swirling shapes.

Isn’t that by someone really famous? I ask, pointing at the painting.

Yeah, don’t touch or break anything, that’s pretty much the only rule. My cousin stops and looks at a blue-and-white, ancient-looking vase on top of a pedestal. He should probably put that somewhere safer, he shrugs, before continuing our journey into the kitchen.

How old is this guy?

A little older than us, like nineteen. But rumor is he lives here all by himself with no one else, not even parents.

When we get to the kitchen, I see it’s just as jam-packed with kids as the living room. All of them are dressed to the nines—the guys in polo shirts or even button-ups, the girls in skirts and high heels—and they all look exactly alike: incredibly attractive, thin, tan, and with the same haircuts: the guys’ trim, gelled hair looks like Ross from Friends and the girls’ hair looks like Rachel’s. At my high school parties, there’s usually a decent mix of kids—theater kids, jocks, a few comic book geeks, preppies, straight A-students, whatever. But here, it’s only the beautiful people as far as the eye can see. I wonder if the other types of kids aren’t invited to these parties, or if the West Egg kids don’t even know those type of kids exist so how could they invite them.

My cousin stops near a long marble counter (everything is made of marble) and I see why we made a beeline for the kitchen: there are four kegs of beer here lined up in a row, and he uses one to refill his cup. Not that I needed any more, but this is more evidence I’m at a different type of high school party: I’ve only ever been to one party with kegs, and it was for my grandfather’s retirement. Here, it’s clear that kegs are a regular feature of the house, like the couch or television.

"This house is insane, I say, handing my cup to my cousin, since I don’t even know how to use a keg. And the