Character Sketch Revisited

His lips were pursed as if his smile were a real liability. Where the mouth’s theatrics were successful, the rest of his face failed. His active brows sharply rising with surprise, thought trains chug chugging along, rerouting themselves with a new destination and new tracks to get there. His green eyes scanned the relatively small room, devouring his environment whole, digesting it through the brain to the brows, and passing its uncontainable agreement, questioning, or disgust along to the once stoic mouth. His dark brown hair was perfectly in place, in stark contrast to the bulk of his life.

When he was younger, before he felt The Weight, Scott had a laugh that was rich with authentic emotion. Many considered him the verifiable definition of a “man-child.” Such was his delight in life, even as a young adult. They envied him for this but genuinely delighted in his presence: He opened up for others a part of the Self severely constrained by modern society. Conversation with Scott was highly interactive. There was a pervasive theme of transcendence, a rising above the amalgamation of preconceived notions that comprise our day-to-day baggage. He very rarely felt satisfied with the status quo, his brain would not allow it: too many contingencies unaccounted for, to many questions still left to pose. In others, this quality may have manifested itself differently, but in Scott it only illuminated his absolutely earnest nature.

Scott Fitzgerald Socrates Porter was born to Laura and Thomas Porter on the day Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as the 40th President of the United States of America. This has no other real significance save that James would grow up with an aversion to most actors (not acting as such, but actors with whom he came into contact) and at the age of six remarked to his mother concerning President Reagan, “Mommy, couldn’t an actor just act and pretend to everyone he a great person?” Smiling, equal parts sadness and joy for she had an inkling of the future, she had said that the President was no different than anyone else: “everyone acts differently than they are and proclaims their own greatness to whoever will listen.” At age 14, Scott would admonish his mother for such a view; her judgment was much too harsh and unsympathetic to the human condition.

It would be difficult, as well as pointless, to attempt to discern which parent contributed more with respect to James’ disposition and constitution. They both held the same philosophy of child-rearing: a Daring Honesty stressing the importance of fact-based knowledge tempered by the fact that a type of stoicism tangential to this is an isolation of Reason to itself, a denial of the fundamental capacity of human beings to feel Love, to experience Beauty. He came to know these as proper nouns always, causing much angst in his adolescent years.

Laura and Thomas did not name their son as they did with an eye to “The Blueprint for a Grandiose Future.” No, they thought it reflected as well as any name could. Really, how much could a name hurt? Or help, for that matter. So, they found it pretty arbitrary and decided to pick two of their most beloved historical figures, representing pretty fairly the child-rearing dynamic they wished to cultivate. Whether this was done intentionally, we know not. His parents decided on Scott after coming to the conclusion that Socrates carried with it far more expectations and to have a name like that one should choose it.

Neither one expected the dramatic turn of events that would follow from all of this, years later.