theme: confabulate, title: the best of both worlds in misc. flash fiction

Pete Best never got the chance to be full-on “Beatles” famous, he never got to be one of the four coolest dudes in the world for a handful of years, never chased by mobs of screaming girls, either in reality or on the silver screen. In our shared cultural mythologies, we’re told to consider it one of our great modern tragedies. “Poor Pete Best missed the golden chance, doomed to just be Pete One-Of-The-Rest.” That’s how we’re told to value fame.

However, consider that Pete Best never had a stalker attempt to stab him to death inside his own home. Consider how Pete Best also never had his head blown off on a busy city thoroughfare. He never had his marriage scrutinized by an entire civilization worth of bored busy-bodies, he never got lost in mires of lawsuits and protests, never had photos of his face burned by religious zealots over an off-hand joke. Pete just barely missed out on a life bouncing from hotel to hotel, dodging paparazzi trying to confabulate some embarrassing half-second into a profitable scandal, evading police with no greater goal than popping a Beatle in prison for a joint in his back pocket.

But we’re told this is a cautionary tale. How quickly fate can twist and shout away from us, fired for being not quite good enough a drummer or a bit too pretty, leaving us within the dustbins of what-if and why-not. Sad curios of pity and derision. Never considering that in missing out on a Standard Rich And Famous Contract, Pete Best dodged a bullet. Literally dodged a bullet. And yet, living without wealth and adulation is supposed to be the fate worse than death.

Pete Best never married a model but then again he never had to divorce one either. He never got the mansion or the yacht, lived a life of doing his own shopping and paying his own bills. But he always had stories to tell and never paid for a pint again. He worked in the unemployment office for decades then, upon retirement, started a band to play with modest success on the strength of having once brushed against the curse of greatness. Because it’s a curse, you know that, right?

Pete, at best, a living breathing question mark. Pete, at best, a vortex of maybes. Pete, at worst, the cautionary tale of a long life, kids and grandkids and wife, which probably helps him sleep at night. Yet our culture carves into our marrowbones that Pete’s story is the worst at best, he must know only regrets from a life of little red wagons instead of little red corvettes. I want to believe that I’m wrong about my life as well, wrong as we are about Pete Best, but I’m not sure enough where I’d take bets. This all could be what I tell myself so I can sleep better beneath blankets of failure and obscurity. Perhaps I am the one confabulating patches for a spent reality.