{"id":28724,"date":"2012-03-28T15:00:11","date_gmt":"2012-03-28T19:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=28724"},"modified":"2012-03-28T17:28:01","modified_gmt":"2012-03-28T21:28:01","slug":"dear-don-draper-it%e2%80%99s-a-wonderful-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/03\/28\/dear-don-draper-it%e2%80%99s-a-wonderful-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Dear Don Draper, It\u2019s a Wonderful Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Dear Don Draper,<\/p>\n

Birthday greetings from the year 2012!\u00a0Adam Wilson here, writing to tell you that things will be okay!<\/p>\n

I know life looks bleak right now, Don. You just turned forty. You\u2019re feeling it. Your frown lines tell the tale, your smoke-seasoned cheek skin, the whiskey jaundice blooming in your beautiful eyes. The way your manly body slumps and crumples, finally flaccid after decades of tumescence.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s 1966 and everything\u2019s orange and yellow, plush and furry, groovy, heady, already psychedelically aglow. At the end of last season you were smiling like a lobotomized monkey, gaga over Megan the secretarial sex machine, offering love and financial security in exchange for a peek at her abs.<\/p>\n

Now you\u2019ve got the spoils of that horny dream and it\u2019s not a pretty sight: an open plan apartment accented by white rugs and cream-colored decorative pillows; a wife whose sexual liberation extends outside your bedroom and into the public salon where she\u2019ll embarrass you in front of your coworkers, strutting her silky stuff while a band of blond surf bros play anesthetized hippie pop; daughter Sally quickly turning Lolita; your son Bobby all but unrecognizable from last year (it\u2019s not your fault\u2014they changed the actor); baby Gene with his creepy, beady eyes; plus the possibility of even more unwanted children! <\/p>\n

Don\u2019t worry, buddy. It gets better. You know how, in It\u2019s a Wonderful Life<\/em>, that angel arrives to show Jimmy Stewart the future and convince him not to kill himself? I\u2019m that angel, Don. And I\u2019m telling you to quit smoking and slow down with the drinking, and maybe get some exercise and cut carbs, because the future\u2019s coming\u2014and you\u2019re gonna like it.<\/p>\n

The quitting smoking part\u2019s tough, I know. I\u2019m going through it now myself. I\u2019m on day two, and I can feel the missing nicotine like a great void at the center of my being. My fingers twitch and my armpits drip. I\u2019m itchy and irritated and finding it hard to focus. But we can do this together, Don. We have to. Because frankly I\u2019m not sure I can go through with this quitting thing if I have to watch you every week, guiltlessly enjoying your cigarettes, blowing billows of smoke into the stale office air.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m rambling. My apologies. It\u2019s a Jewish thing. Try to help out someone else and we end up whining about our own troubles. Read a Philip Roth novel and you\u2019ll get what I\u2019m saying. Plus, you\u2019ll like Roth\u2014he\u2019s even hornier than you are. Or, as horny. It\u2019s in our blood. Ask Pete Campbell. Pull Pete aside one day and ask him about the things Trudy does with her tongue. But what am I saying? You had Rachel all the way back in Season One. You know from the Jewish libido.<\/p>\n

Am I embarrassing you? Let’s talk about you.<\/p>\n

No. Let’s talk about Megan. So she\u2019s not what you expected in a wife. Twenty years your junior, of another generation. The women aren\u2019t submissive anymore, Don, but it\u2019s a good thing. Remember Betty, how miserable she made you? This one\u2019s plucky and fun, fabulous and full of life. Get over your embarrassment and learn to enjoy it, because they don\u2019t make them much sexier than she is. Have you seen the way she looks at you? That combination of love and pure carnal desire could kill a weaker man. But you can handle it, Don, I know you can. Don’t get hung up on the hard-ons. We’ve got this medicine now, Viagra, and what it\u2019s taught us is that manhood doesn’t come in a pill. Or maybe that it does. We know now that gender is a social construct, but that\u2019s another conversation.<\/p>\n

Get through through the seventies. I\u2019m not gonna lie\u2014those thick ties and oversized collars won\u2019t flatter your physique. Still, rock and roll is actually pretty amazing. Don\u2019t judge the whole genre by that band at your party.<\/p>\n

Then, you\u2019re gonna love Ronald Reagan. Yeah, that Ronald Reagan, same guy. It\u2019s a thing. Lots of actors are politicians now. Anyway, Reagan becomes president. He cuts taxes and speechifies and looks great in primary-color ties. He has a picture-perfect wave, a convincing dream that if the rich get richer the money will trickle down to the lower classes. You understand rhetoric, the sweet lie of the slogan.<\/p>\n

These days everything\u2019s different. In some profound sense, you won. I don’t have time to get into it right now, but take The Hunger Games. <\/em>I … oh, never mind. I couldn’t explain. But you won. The Cold War\u2019s over, Don. Capitalism is king. Every surface is branded. Congratulations.<\/p>\n

I have a confession to make: Sunday was my birthday too. I turned thirty and I\u2019m not happy about it. No one likes to get older, and nicotine deprivation is hard. One day we\u2019ll replace our lungs with silicone robot organs and smoke as much as we want.<\/p>\n

For the moment, Don, I\u2019m like you: a human male, mortal. I know aging sucks. I know relationships are tough and the youth culture is confusing\u2014don\u2019t even get me started on the whole FarmVille phenomenon. It\u2019s a cruel world out there, Draper, but as Megan may soon tell you, we\u2019ve gotta keep on keepin\u2019 on.<\/p>\n

So here\u2019s what I\u2019m going to do: I\u2019m going to march outside into the spring sunlight. I\u2019m going to walk into\u00a0CVS with my head held high and buy as much Nicorette as I can afford. I\u2019m going to go home and download Megan\u2019s rendition \u00a0of \u201cZou Bisou Bisou\u201d from iTunes (it went online mere hours after the show aired!) \u00a0and sit in my comfy chair. I\u2019m going to chew my gum and let the nicotine show me serenity. I\u2019ll imagine your young wife dancing just for me, her dark hair hanging over one eye while the other eye stares me down, undresses me, always open, never blinking, clear as the lungs we\u2019ll both one day have. I choose life, Don, and I think you should too.<\/p>\n

Adam<\/p>\n

Adam Wilson is the author of <\/em>Flatscreen: A Novel<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dear Don Draper, Birthday greetings from the year 2012!\u00a0Adam Wilson here, writing to tell you that things will be okay! I know life looks bleak right now, Don. You just turned forty. You\u2019re feeling it. Your frown lines tell the tale, your smoke-seasoned cheek skin, the whiskey jaundice blooming in your beautiful eyes. The way […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1160],"tags":[6980,1464,6978,6975,6974,6976,676,6977,99,6971,6979,6695,6875,6972,6973],"class_list":["post-28724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-on-television","tag-betty-draper","tag-cigarettes","tag-dan-draper","tag-its-a-wonderful-life","tag-itunes","tag-jimmy-stewart","tag-mad-men","tag-pete-campbell","tag-philip-roth","tag-ronald-reagan","tag-sally-draper","tag-smoking","tag-the-hunger-games","tag-viagra","tag-zou-bisou-bisou"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nDear Don Draper, It\u2019s a Wonderful Life by Adam Wilson<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"March 28, 2012 \u2013 Dear Don Draper, Birthday greetings from the year 2012!\u00a0Adam Wilson here, writing to tell you that things will be okay! 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