While It Lasts
It was harder than you expected. Dating Serena van der Woodsen.
Your father warned you, advised you, taught you all he knew, but months later you find it still isn’t enough. The only way you learn about this ‘world’ is by diving headfirst into it.
Praying to God you don’t hit your head on the way down.
Because you see it for what it really is. It’s cruel and judgemental and trivial. You’ve always viewed good and bad like black and white and never in your life have you seen so many shades of grey.
You’re drowning in this moral cesspit that is the Upper East Side.
You grasp onto her smile like a lifeline and she pulls you back up.
---
You imagine your life as a giant ‘what if’.
What if Lincoln Hawk had made it? You don’t remember much, but you’ve heard the stories; a makeshift crib out of a guitar case, one of the Nine Inch Nails nearly dropping you on your head.
But your mother has always been the queen of ultimatums and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse - his band or his family.
He chose the obvious. Obviously.
You imagine growing up, son of a rock star, travelling the world. You imagine private jets and Grammy’s; drug addictions and affairs.
Your Dad would blame ‘the pressure of it all’ and your mother would break down on Diane Sawyer.
All while you date models, actresses and fame whores, partying on weeknights and hanging out with people like Chuck Bass and Nate Archibald.
Not knowing she existed. (For once the tables turned).
You shudder at the thought of it all.
You’d take this life any day.
---
She clings to you at parties. You notice, you always have.
It’s more frequent now.
You glance around the crowded room, filled with alcohol, drugs, sex and other temptations, and you start to feel more like her counsellor than her boyfriend.
As her best friend plays the role of the antagonist, she turns to you for security and you gladly comply.
(It’s all you have to really offer.)
And the antagonist/best friend storms off, the battle is won, but the victory is short lived.
You can save her from them.
But you can’t save her from herself.
---
They congratulate you in the hallway. In a school that values excellence among students that all strive for academic achievement, you begin to stand out.
They’re not dumb; you realise. Just because the girls read cosmo doesn’t mean they don’t read Austen.
(After all, even Gossip Girl wants to get into an Ivy League college.)
So they acknowledge you; talk to you. No longer are you ‘Dan Humphrey, that guy dating Serena’, but ‘Dan Humphrey, that guy who got published in the New Yorker’. If anything, they recognise success when they see it.
But you begin to learn the hidden flaw of this morally grey world; they expect too much. All of them. And you suddenly learn that maybe all those ‘poor little rich boys and girls’ did have something to cry about.
They’re constantly looking at you to see your next move. It’s the Publishing house or bust. Instead, you chose the unheard of third option: nothing.
And you wait for a masterpiece to fall from the sky and onto your lap. If anything, you expect it.
It is, after all, the Upper East Side way.
(And, like it or not, you’re kinda part of it now.)
---
She lies on grass that isn’t meant to be laid on, in a courtyard not meant to be used.
She pulls you down beside her and laughs.
You worry too much.
You worry too little.
True. But together, we’re perfect.
You smile even though you know the truth. You’re both far from perfect, with your broken families and broken hearts and you’re secretly both surprised that this…thing you have has lasted so long.
Everyone is.
But if history is anything to go by, it’s only a matter of time before it’s over.
Like mother, like daughter.
There’s only so many hotdogs one can eat before they begin to crave caviar.
So just enjoy it while it lasts. And watch out for the rocks.