Seeking advice on a dilemma

How cool is Will Freeman?

Will has nothing else on his mind but himself. A childless single man aged thirty-six, who spends his life avoiding any emotional or rather any problems at all. 

Doing nothing all day gives Will the endless opportunities to do whatever he likes, including inventing new personalities to impress the womankind. Only the "coolness-score" he achieves in the questionnaire of “Men’s Health”, women and music are of any interest to him.

To put it concisely, Will is “the star of the Will Show!”

On New Year’s Eve he falls in love with Rachel, a beautiful, ambitious and intelligent single woman. Intimidated by Rachel’s charisma Will feels like a dull idiot, ruggedly pulled out of his self-indulgence.

Suddenly he realises that he neither has achieved anything reasonable on his own nor had actually cared for anyone else than himself.
Pressured by getting Rachel’s attention, Will starts to search for something that he could use to pique her interest. Unfortunately the only thing that comes to his mind is Marcus. So he mentions him coincidently in the conversation.

Rachel assumes that Will is the biological father of Marcus and Will, who is too afraid of telling the truth (again), does not correct her.  

Will's request for advice 

  

To begin with, be assured that I am not doing that very often, telling my personal problems to a random columnist. Actually, thinking about it, I hadn’t had any problems until this boy Marcus decided to mock things about by showing up at my flat randomly, forcing his companionship on me!

However, he is not my problem right now.

I’ve met this woman on a New Year’s Eve party and I have to admit that I’ve fallen in love immediately. I actually never wanted to fall in love. For me it means nothing else than the destruction of your personal freedom!

Well, at least I thought that until I met Rachel. She is beautiful, intelligent and her charm got me right from the start.

But as I talked to her, I felt like a blank twit, like I had never done anything reasonable in my life. There was just nothing to be proud of. 

I don’t have to work for the money I earn, you know, what leaves me with tons of time to do whatever I like. And I loved it! But how could I catch her interest without having anything essentially to show?

Marcus came to my mind. Inventing Ned for the SPAT-meetings gave me this little extra bonus back then. Being a single dad means that you can’t be a complete idiot.

So I mentioned him and she just assumed that he is my son. She even smilingly told me she has a twelve-year-old herself. We connected. Thus I did not correct the misunderstanding.

What am I supposed to do now? If she finds out that I lied to her about Marcus on our very first meeting, isn’t she going to dump me in a blink of an eye?

Will Freeman

The columnist's advice

 

Mr Freeman,

Without wanting to offend you, I have to advice you to grow up and deal with your problems like an adult.

Firstly I have to say that not having a job does not mean that you are a “blank twit”. You still have things that interest you, haven’t you? 

However, maybe it is time for a change.

Regarding the problem with Rachel, there is just one simple solution:
You have to face the facts and tell her the truth.

Be as honest as you can, tell her the reasons why you lied and how you feel about her.

If you are lucky, she is sensitive enough and understands. 

Wishing you all the best,

The columnist

Why Will is going to heed the columnist’s advice

Certainly Will is already aware of the fact that his life is nothing more than an empty shell. Because he is too afraid of being hurt, he shuts real life out by dealing superficially with things. It is pure self-protection.  

Rachel represents the turning point. Will realises that if he wants to impress Rachel, he has to change his attitude to be worthy by starting to tell her the truth.

A diary entry of Marcus referring to the "Dead-Ducks-Day"

Saturday, „The dead-ducks-day“

I knew that this day would be awful, because I knew that every day I would have to spend with that SPAT lot would be awful. I am ten years older than most of the kids of them. The last time just looking at them convinced me of getting a vasectomy. My mum thought that was a joke and started laughing as I told her, but I was actually being serious. 

I never want to have children. 

But Mum wanted me to go. Now she is even crying in the mornings. She said that she needs a rest and that “We’re not doing each other any good”. 

This was the first time I actually wanted to cry, too. What did she mean by that? What had I done to her? She is the one who’s always crying and upsetting me, so what did I do wrong?!

But I went to do her a favour. 

Suzie, the friend of mum that was supposed to take care of me, collected me with her daughter. At the Regent's park we met up with such a trendy bloke called Will, who was supposed to bring his son, too, but didn’t.

I did not like him at first.

I had the impression that he just tried to be cool to impress Suzie. He started to ask me stupid questions which sounded as if he had gotten them out of a book. As he asked why Suzie has to take care of me, she answered that my mum is a bit “under the weather” currently. 

I think that’s wrong. I think, mum is nuts. 

Anyways, Will and Suzie bored me. It was pretty obvious that Will tried to get off with her. So I went down to the pond and started feeding the ducks. Suddenly I had this really big piece of sandwich in my hand and I was so angry about Suzie and my mum that I tried to hit the ducks head with it.

I tried to do all sorts of things in my life: to achieve the highest score on the Stargazer magazine, to read Nicky’s thoughts by staring at the back of his head in the maths lessons – both things did not work out. And now the one thing I actually hadn’t even really wanted to do worked out – the sandwich hit the ducks head and the stupid animal keeled over. 

I could not believe it!

Maybe it was just about to die anyways, but who would have believed me that? 

I ran back to get Suzie and Will and we all stared at the dead ducks body bobbing up and down in the pond. 

I hated this silly Will-bloke even more as he started to make stupid comments about what I had done, but suddenly the park keeper appeared and I just thought: That was it. I will be imprisoned for a crime I probably haven't even committed.

But Will somehow got me out of the trouble. He convinced the park keeper that I just wanted to sink the duck, which has already been dead, by throwing bread at it, because the dead body was upsetting Suzie’s Baby Megan. It worked.

Maybe I didn’t hate Will after all. 

Apparently I did not know how nuts my mum was until we got back from our trip. 

Suzie gave me a lift home. I don’t know why she had insisted to come with me to the flat of my mum. And I don’t know why I was nervous as we walked up the stairs. Maybe I just imagined that afterwards. Will followed us, of course. 

As I opened the door, I saw my mum lying half on half off the sofa, with sick everywhere around her. It stank horribly.

I did not understand what I was seeing. 

At first, I was just confused why Suzie started screaming and slapping my mum. 

I did not see the empty bottle of pills until the ambulance came. Will had called them.

I could neither speak nor cry. There was just nothing to say.

But Suzie started to cry and then her Baby cried, too, and it was very noisy. 

I was just standing there, watching my mum making terrible moaning noises, which I knew I would never ever want to hear again in my life. 

“How could you do this? You’ve got a kid. How could you do this?” Suzie jelled at my mum.

Only then I started realising what was happening in front of me. 

This was not one of these horror movies, which never gave me nightmares before, because I know that they’re not real. I always thought that it does not make a difference whether you see something horrible or disgusting on TV or in reality. Shock is shock, isn’t it? 

But it makes a difference. 

This was the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life, even if it was just some puke and some shouting. My mum wasn’t even dead. 

But I knew that I would have to think about it forever.

 Marcus 

Here is a picture of us - Suzie, Will, Megan and me - staring at the dead duck. 

As I told Will that I had only tried to feed the duck, he took a look at the bread bobbing up and down next to the duck, and said: "That is not a sandwhich Markus, that's a bloody french loaf. No wonder it keeled over. That would have killed me!" 

Who did this Will think  he was?