Summary

The author reflects on their teenage years when they wrote fan fiction-like letters to a friend, fabricating a romantic relationship with an imaginary boyfriend named Marc with a C.

Abstract

The article is a personal narrative where the author recounts the embarrassing yet formative experience of writing elaborate stories to their pen pal about a fictional boyfriend during their early teens. The author, now a writer, recognizes this as an early exercise in storytelling and lying on paper, which was easier than in-person interactions. Despite the deception, the friend never confronted the author about the imaginary Marc with a C, leading to mixed feelings when the letters were later discarded by the friend. This experience is seen as a stepping stone to the author's development as a writer, transitioning from self-insert fan fiction to creating original stories.

Opinions

The author initially denies being a liar but acknowledges their ability to lie more convincingly in writing.
There is a sense of nostalgia and slight embarrassment regarding the creation of Marc with a C as a means to impress their friend.
The author feels slighted that their friend did not value the letters enough to keep them, indicating a perceived lack of appreciation for the author's creative efforts.
The author questions whether their friend knew the stories were fictional and chose to preserve the author's dignity by not confronting them.
The experience has left the author with complex feelings about their past relationship with their friend and the nature of truth in storytelling.
The author sees their early storytelling as a natural progression to their current profession as a writer, suggesting that even lies can have a constructive outcome in the realm of fiction.

I Wrote Fan Fiction About Myself

The embarrassing truth about my early teens

I was my own greatest fan. So much so that I wrote fanfic about myself. Photo by Anthony DELANOIX on Unsplash

I used to write fanfic about myself.

It’s not something I’m proud of nor is it even something I remembered until this weekend’s Human Parts prompt about lying came up.

At first, I was indignant. I’m not a liar. Whenever I lie, people know I’m lying. They can just tell. And usually call me out on it. So why bother?

But then I realized I’m a writer. And I can lie so much easier on paper (or on screen) than I ever could in person.

That’s when I remembered I used to write letters to pen pals. The longest ones used to go to my best friend after we moved away from her town.

The fact that I wrote letters to her is not unusual. It’s the subject matter that surprises me now.

I would tell her all about my non-existent boyfriend. Entire fictional stories about the things we’d talk about and do. How incredibly in love we were with each other.

It was all very exotic…in my own mind.

I was 13. I don’t know why I thought I needed to have a non-existent boyfriend. I didn’t even have any friends in this new city, let alone boys who were interested in me. It made for a long and boring summer.

But I told her tall tales all about this boy, Marc with a C. Always with a C. Somehow that was exotic to me, Marc with a C, even though I grew up in a place with lots of French people. And where I moved to didn’t have lots of French people.

I never claimed my 13-year-old self was smart.

But I sure was boy crazy.

I still don’t know why I would have lied to her about this imaginary boyfriend.

She had the good graces never to call me out on it. I’m surprised she didn’t ask me more questions because she would come and visit several times that summer, staying over for days at a time.

Why wouldn’t she have asked to meet him or talk to him on the phone? For a photo or a handwritten note? Any sort of proof that this boy was real?

Maybe she always knew that he wasn’t real and was trying to help me save face.

I blush even thinking about it now.

I’ve been trying to remember that time many years ago, and I don’t think she ever did ask me in person about him.

It’s like my letters were just that: fanfiction. And she took them as fanfiction. An imagined version of my life in the big city, but one that was entirely in my own mind.

Possibly the fact that I was such a huge dork made her realize that I would not have been able to attract a boy let alone keep one as a boyfriend.

I blush even thinking about it now.

So although I put such great effort in to making up grandiose stories about me and Marc with a C, she apparently never put much stock into what I told her.

Currently undecided how I feel about that.

Years later, I asked her if I could get copies of the letters I sent her. Or just the letters themselves if she didn’t want them.

She told me she threw them all out. It made me sad because all that effort I had put in to creating this imaginary boyfriend was gone. Trashed.

Marc with a C was no longer alive even on paper.

I felt slighted. I’d kept all her letters. Even the boring ones.

I was upset because she didn’t even ask if I wanted to keep them. This person who was supposed to be my best friend discarded a huge part of my life, albeit my imaginary one. And that wasn’t fair.

Our relationship changed after that. And eventually we lost touch. Neither of us was the same person we were.

Why continue with the strained relationship?

I haven’t talked to her in a long time. But it’s really no surprise that I became a writer and she became a real estate agent. My imagination was writing entire lifetimes while she just wanted to play house.

If I ever do run into her again, I’ll be sure to ask her if she thought I was a liar.

I say that I’m not good at lying but I’ve always been a storyteller. And those strange letters to my best friend were a foundation for writing stories about relationships that I may never have tried to write if I hadn’t started by writing about Marc with a C.

From fanfic about myself to all-out fiction about the people in my head. This seems like a natural progression to me.

This is a letter to myself based on this week’s Human Prompt about lying.

Here’s another story I wrote about the first time I fell in love with a fictional character, my original book boyfriend:

The First Time I Fell In Love With A Fictional Character

You never forget your first time, even if it was fictional.

medium.com

Are you a Medium member yet? If not, use my affiliate link to join and I’ll earn a little bit, as well! Once you join, you’ll have access to thousands of stories published on Medium every month.