Fakebook (29 page)

After all, that was the plan. I'd started Fakebook to be a self-deprecating, absurdist adventure that would court people's voyeurism and get people to question what they saw on Facebook. And if Elliott was my audience, then that's exactly what had happened. I held his interest for nearly six months. I kept pushing Fakebook into stranger places until he couldn't bury his doubts anymore. I rode it off the rails to where he finally stopped believing it and called me out right on my wall—just like it was supposed to happen.

But then he surprised me. He changed his mind. When he held the fate of Fakebook in his hands…he undid its destruction. He protected it. There was something powerful about that.

For so much of Fakebook's history, it was about pushing things until they became undone. But now that it had happened, it felt so hollow. The story of Fake Dave felt real to me now, despite the strange places it continued to go.

Looking back at Fakebook as an almost completed whole, I could see there were accidental themes. I actually wasn't writing a series of unrelated events and Photoshop gags—I was drawn to certain story beats, to certain conflicts. Even when I tried to subvert a belief, I was still guided by what resonated—and what resonated to me also spoke to my audience. I didn't set out to write a Facebook novel, but it seems I couldn't avoid doing so. Just like everyone else, I was choosing what to post, and my life and my anxieties couldn't help but be a part of those decisions.

And that's why there was a connection strong enough to make a guy like Elliott pace around his apartment, gathering the courage to find out for sure. That's why he gave me the opportunity to write a real ending. I just had to figure out what it would be.

Somewhere between responding to people's judgments and an unsuccessful search for airport elk burgers, the real world chimed in. A job offer arrived from LiveWired. It was exciting—validating even.

This was something I wanted, but suddenly I became nostalgic for Handler before I even quit. I wasn't sure I wanted to take the LiveWired job. I didn't want to jump at the first new job presented to me…but I didn't want to pass on it because I was scared of something new, either. I wasn't sure what to do.

I looked over at a big sign just outside the food court. “Welcome to Texas.” Funny, for the first time since Fakebook began, Fake Dave and I were in the same state. Too bad for him, I had the passport.

The long ride on the J line wasn't as exciting as last time with Dhara, so I just sort of meditated while watching the outer boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens pass by through the window. I had a job offer and a dinner planned with Juror 10, and I had just publicly assassinated my own character. It was a productive trip.

When I got home, I threw my bag down, kicked off my shoes, and lay on top of my covers with the lights off. I couldn't help but wonder what Fakebook must look like to someone who was just getting to know me.

So I sent Juror 10 a text: “I hope you like jury-based humor. Keep an eye on Facebook.”

I was going to do a post that was meant for her—an attempt to build a relationship out of Washington Square Park.

I put the phone down on my chest. I was tired and had work in the morning, but my mind was too active for sleep. I looked ahead at my bedroom wall. The ambient light of the building to the north came in through the curtainless window, as the heavy bass of the nightclub on my east permeated through our shared wall as a low-register beat. A house-music lullaby.

LiveWired offered me the opportunity to build an art department, to build a brand, and to make real things. I'd finally break free of being in service to a service industry. But the job at Handler wasn't without its merits.

Balanced on the dresser that didn't quite close was my superhero shipper. If I left Handler, this was what I'd be giving up. For a guy who grew up drawing superheroes in the margins of every notebook I ever owned and idolizing Jack Kirby, projects like these were really special.

While most people know of Stan Lee, Kirby, in my mind, was the truer genius. He was the artist that co-created almost every superhero you can name—dozens of characters and whole worlds that have continued to endure for well over fifty years. Captain America, The Hulk, the X-Men, Thor, Fantastic Four, and Iron Man—to name just a few. It's amazing how prolific and enduring his legacy in popular culture has been. Each one of these characters has outlived him and spawned billions of dollars and hundreds of millions of fans.

His illustrations have a pop-art quality, with their unapologetic grandeur and powerful dynamism. But the brilliance isn't easily accessible—it's out of step with modern, naturalistic sensibilities. I mean, his drawings mock the very notion of nuance—but there is a deep humanity to them. How else could all the crazy, ridiculous concepts he came up with manage to endure?

Take the Silver Surfer, for example. That one still astonishes me. A surfer…who is silver. What a dumb idea. I mean, if the thought of a shiny spaceman on a surfboard crossed my mind, I'd dismiss it immediately. It's outlandish. But the way Kirby drew him…it was like the Surfer was sculpted out of cosmic marble, evoking all the nobility and grandeur of Greek myth. In Kirby's hands, the Surfer was a god who, to soar through the universe, simply needed a place to stand.

And within that weird, cool image he infused a tragic irony. For despite how much the Silver Surfer's flight evoked freedom, he himself was a slave—forever in search of new worlds to be sacrificed for the appeasement of his creator. That is, until he arrived on Earth and was forced out of the sky. Here, he walked among those whose doom he heralded, and discovered his humanity. He turned on his master and saved Earth. His punishment was to become exiled to it. He regained his soul, but it cost him the sky.

It's so elegant and grand. A beautiful and bold tale of compromise and rediscovery wrapped up in a cosmic adventure that's captured imaginations for fifty years and counting. The Silver Surfer. Such an inspiring, exciting, enduring, beautiful, tragic story that Kirby created out of such an incredibly dumb idea.

And to think—he grew up here on Delancey Street, where I live now. I lay on my bed—eighty feet and eighty years away from where a young Jack Kirby had lain on his—and looked into the eyes I had drawn on a face he imagined.

Kirby was a guy like me. He had bills to pay; he had deadlines; he had a boss. He was a guy working for a wage. He made a living and not much more. Hell, he made less than the lawyer who approved my version of his creation.

But he built a legacy out of nothing but pencil lead and imagination—a legacy of original ideas and restless creativity that continues to grow. So far, my legacy was a drawing unoriginal enough to please three legal departments.

Jack Kirby was a hero of mine, and working at Handler allowed me to contribute to his legacy. This project had been special—the most Handler could offer me—and it was no longer enough. Because I realized then that I was still in service to other people's ideas—even if the idea belonged to Jack Kirby. And what truer tribute to Kirby could there be than to imagine something new?

I still loved the piece. But it was a tribute to what can come out of dreaming on Delancey Street, nothing more.

I decided then to take the job at LiveWired. It was time to create new things.

I felt my phone vibrate on my chest. It was Juror 10, responding to me teasing her about courtroom humor. “It's my favorite kind,” she wrote with a little winky face.

I smiled a little. I didn't even know how Fake Dave's trial was going to turn out. I still had to write the Fakebook ending I'd never planned on—all because this story had earned an audience that deserved one.

More than anything I've ever done, Fakebook made people laugh and feel inspired and excited, and it captured imaginations. It did everything I ever wanted art to do. It was worth the frustrations and the labor that had come with doing it. But it wasn't done yet. I opened the front pocket of my suitcase and pulled out the weekly planner I plotted out Fakebook in. And from atop my covers, in my apartment on Delancey Street, I started to map out the ending I wanted to tell.

It came naturally and surprisingly easily. It felt like the only ending Facebook could ever have—a twisted, funny, slightly mean-spirited mess of Fake Dave's own making. But it was upbeat and optimistic and ultimately satisfying. It felt like the only way Fake Dave's journey ever could have ended. Heh. Lying on Facebook. What a dumb idea. But I'm a believer in dumb ideas.

“Hey, Dave,” Christine said, as she popped her head into the graphics bullpen. “Did you get my email?”

“The one you sent”—I took a look at the time stamp—“seventy-four seconds ago?” I replied with a smirk. I actually enjoyed this ritual, now that it was ending.

At LiveWired, there'd be no client and no client demands. It'd be predictable and ownable. I even had some ideas about creating downloadable wallpapers to match the cases we would sell, and maybe rolling some of what I'd learned working at a PR firm into creating buzz.

It was a job where I was going to create new things. I was going to be building an art department and a product line. I was going to be building a look and feel for an entire company. It was exciting.

“Haha,” Christine said. “Yeah, you know how it is. But I just want to make sure this is on your radar. The event is in six weeks,” she said as she put her hand on my arm.

“You'll still let me go to the party, right?” I asked.

“Why wouldn't I?” she asked.

“Well…” I almost whispered, “I just put in my notice. My last day is in two weeks.”

“What!” Her hand on my arm quickly turned into a fist.

“Ouch!”

“Is this another one of your little lies, David Cicirelli?”

“No, no, I swear it!” I said. “And my lies aren't that little!”

The rest of March would be about wrapping things up—I'd already begun wrapping up six years at Handler. And at the end of the month, I'd wrap up being twenty-six. Most important to me was wrapping up the six months of Fakebook. Prior to the discussion with Elliott, I would have thought that falling apart was the only way for it to end. Now I wanted it to hold together—and I feared that a nonsensical ending that failed to turn a half-year of random thoughts into a story would make the entire enterprise silly and forgettable.

I wanted to stick the landing. Of course, for his story to end, Fake Dave needed to go back to its beginning. I was going to send him back to New Jersey and give him a chance to reconnect to our father before he finally connected with himself.

“All this food for ten dollars!” my dad told me over the phone from Florida. “You'd have to be an idiot to eat after six!”

My parents had rented a house for a month in a fifty-and-over community outside Naples. It was a trial run before they committed to the tried-and-true model of getting old and migrating south.

“Your father's obsessed,” my mom chimed in. “We're spending all our time at the Players' Club.”

“Wait…where?” I said with a laugh.

“The community has a club,” Ralph explained, “with a beautiful pool, a gym, and a restaurant that has a great early-bird special.”

“…called the Players' Club,” I said, unable to hold back the laughter as I pictured the “players” popping the collars of their finest Tommy Bahama shirts and diamond-studded hearing aids.

“It's where the players go to play,” Ralph said, making himself laugh, too.

There's something inspirational about it. I mean, I've never seen someone take to being an old man quite like my father. The man loves getting discounts and having nothing to do.

I've got to admit that after I visited my parents in Florida, they sold me on it. You wake up early, take a walk around a lake, feed some ducks…and before you know it, it's time for an affordable 4:00 p.m. dinner. Life's pretty sweet when you're a player.

At the time of his retirement, however, I didn't know any of this. I was worried that he'd just sit at home all day watching cable news and getting angry at whatever outrage they were manufacturing that week. So to start things off in the right direction, he and I went on a road trip down to the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia.

It was a pretty good time—and it gave me a great batch of pictures to use in Fakebook, as Ralph and Fake Dave spent the second week of March driving back from Texas and mending their relationship.