It’s 1924, almost the middle of the decade. The last few years have been different from any of the others I have experienced. The parties are wild, the girls are more free than ever with their questionable fashion and lose ambitions, and the drinking is out of control.
The crazy parties. The stench of alcohol and liquor permeates my senses and mixes with the mess from drunkenness. Sickness covers the floor. There are billows of smoke in the distance from a car wreck, no doubt caused by a drunk partygoer’s trip home. The smoke is visible against the night sky. The moon provides the necessary lighting for the party. The music blares, partygoers dancing the latest dance, ‘The Charleston’. It's the newest fad; all part of the culture which attempts to consume everything, even music.
These parties are the perfect backdrop to the loose morals of men and women alike. The qualities of a gentleman including good manners, are long gone as they dance and fill themselves to the brink with the illegal substance of alcohol. Women, in their short dresses with fringe and sparkles can tempt even the most virtuous of men. America has lost its morals.
You’d think that with prohibition, America would become more moral; unfortunately, this is not the case as there are illegal smugglers, bootleggers per say, that furnish the illegal sale of alcohol. Alcohol makes for loose morals, something America doesn’t need right now.
On top of everything else, people are losing sight of God. God is what saved America from destruction in The Great War. Instead of praising his holy name, America has fallen to the idea that one’s value is determined by what they have. The stockbrokers on Wall Street cash in daily and build up their wealth, failing to give to charity. The bootleggers and keepers of illegal establishments strip away any authority the prohibition may have ever had, shows the path that America has chosen.
Should we not remember what is important we will all be doomed. What kind of message are we sending to our children? We take them to dine in what looks to be a wholesome, law-abiding restaurant. In reality, it is where bimbos donning their tawdry, sinfully short dresses knock a secret code at a door by the kitchen and are led underground into an illegal, immoral, and unscrupulous dance hall, known in our common language as a speakeasy.
I was sitting in a café having lunch with a dear friend of mine one chilly spring afternoon. I was a regular at this café and thought that I knew the owner well. A man of my generation, ‘the lost boys’, he was a good man of moral character who had fought in France just several years earlier. After returning home, he opened up a café serving some of the best baked goods and coffee I have ever experienced in this city.
What I didn’t foresee was the flaw in his character; that he was wearing a mask and putting on a façade. My friend, the man I thought I knew was a fraud. He was not the upstanding man I once thought he was.
His pedestal shattered that chilly afternoon when I saw a young woman, wearing one of the shortest dresses I had ever seen decorated with more sparkle than is found in a diamond ring, entering his café. A woman of that immoral character had no place in a family café such as this. It dawned on me that this woman was not here for scones and tea, but rather for something more intimate, more sinister that lurked in the basement.
I watched as the owner greeted the woman, taking her by the hand and leading her to a door that was labelled ‘storage’. The owner looked out the window, presumably checking that there were no police or alcohol inspectors near, and let the woman into the basement.
Rage filled my veins. I had been lied to. The man who told me stories of his church-going family, was a phony. I wonder, was everything he said a lie? Did he really attend Oxford prior to the war?
It was at this moment that I realized that America has reached the point of no return. At this moment, an idea popped into my head. An image of two islands separated by a sound. In the east, men and women who were from the lost generation lived in mansions bought with family money. People whose morals and character remained because their money stemmed from long family heritage. In the west lived the men and women who just became wealthy enough to afford luxurious houses. These were the people ruining America with their celebrations. People living on the west side of the sound would be just like the owner of the café who had made their money in the illegal venture of alcohol and parties.
With this idea in my head, I go home to write a story. Thoughts fill my head with names. What should I name my characters? It must be something that is special, something extravagant to fit with these times. As I turn left off the street where the café is located, I see a street sign. The bolded white letters against blue metal reads “Gatsby Crescent”. I’m not sure why, but the name clicks. Gatsby. Gatsby who is great at deception, like a magician. The Great Gatsby who deceives all.
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