okay, so maybe he's a shit and a fuck. . .

i love david brandt.

David Brandt, age 38, is a twice-divorced community college professor. He's also a selfish prick and he knows it. He says he doesn't give a crap but you can't put too much stock in that because he's a liar, lying mostly to himself. He's a seriously lonely fuck. He drinks Bacardi 151 to excess. He fancies himself an idiot. He fucks up more often than not. He dreams about bullets and black lace panties for God's sake. . .

I love him so much.

David Brandt is my main character in CHERRY. And the truth is, for much of the novel, he is all those things, but he isn't only those things and that's what makes him so interesting to me. That's what makes him human. He's floundering--trying to make sense of a world that sometimes make no sense. His misery is self-indulgent and insufficient because he's supremely unhappy, but not quite unhappy enough to call it quits.

Yet.

A complicated man.

I can safely say that David Brandt isn't the person at the end of the novel that he was at the beginning, but his transformation certainly isn't complete. It can be measured in degrees and may be temporary. Transient. The guy fucks up, he has in the past, anyway. Chances are, he will in the future and yet, he's willing to keep going, keep going, on the outside chance that the future holds some promise; that some good news might be waiting around that bend. He's willing to think that all may not be lost. It might be a case of a guy on the road to ruin, pulling the wool over his own eyes. Then again, maybe he's finally willing to accept some hard truths about himself, change some things that might not yet be cut in stone. 

Maybe.

I don't know, because I don't know how his story ends. CHERRY is a year in the life, as they say. Just like Brandt, I'm privy to his past, but not his future. I hope things go well, I hope he doesn't slip back into the skin of that selfish prick he was, but you never know. Maybe I love him precisely for that reason: he doesn't know either and grapples with that uncertainty. He wrestles with a past that seems hell-bent on fucking up the rest of his life.

How would I write his future? "Even when he loses the one person he loves, he's willing to consider a happier ending. Maybe not now, but at some point maybe something good will happen. Maybe. He's willing to stick around a little longer and see how it all pans out."

I love David Brandt because at the end of the day I believe he's still here, holding on to hope of better things.