Back when I was in high school, I knew a guy named Nigel Bruce. He was a couple years older than I was, a bit taller, with shaggy dark hair. Whereas I wrote stories that were rapidly getting better, he wrote poetry. I would visit him now and then, at least once or twice a week and talk to him on the phone. As a result he would end up giving me a few poems to share with my friends, as he knew they were already reading my stories we felt they might like some of his poetry as well. Some of his poems were written especially for me or at least inspired by things I'd tell him about what had happened to me. Whether or not the poems were any good was a matter for others to decide. Occasionally he would write songs. After distributing a few of his poems here and there and letting a few people read copies I had, I typed up a collection and distributed that rather seriously. People liked it.
Most people figured the whole thing out rather quickly. Needless to say, I was Nigel Bruce.
This was a period nearing the end of my senior year and I had a new female that I was friendly with and she with me. As part of this, I got hit with a bad case of poetry. Now, while I have nothing but respect for poets, I really have problems appreciating it. To me, it's like fine art, if I see something I like, I like it, but much of it I just don't understand. Free form poems that don't rhyme (why not just write a short essay?), abstract art (especially the stuff that looks like randomly splatter paint) and other such things are beyond me. I tend to write silly (well, relatively silly) stories and poetry is moderately fancy stuff. Still, with a run of emotions (and hormones) the poetry poured out. And I blamed it on 'Nigel'.
The name was generated by selecting a very British sounding name 'Nigel' and a very Australian sounding name 'Bruce' (directly from the Monty Python sketch). The two names sounded quite good together. A few months later I realized why. Glancing over the videos in my house, I realized Nigel Bruce played Watson to Basil Rathbone's Sherlock Holmes. I immediately decided my Nigel was named after his grandfather and did my best not to worry about it further.
In my opinion, while some of the poems had clever rhymes or patterns, my poetry by in large sucked big time. As such, I felt sorry I blamed it on Nigel. Really, I was uncomfortable with the idea of writing the poetry and wanted to get a reaction from it before I admitted to being its author. All the lies that made up Nigel's character creation were spur of the moment and, surprisingly, held together rather well. One young female friend of mine quizzed me rather hard about Nigel and was eager to meet him. This amused me, as I had the impression she would be interested in dating Nigel (whereas she wasn't interested in me and Nigel was me).
Nigel was around for about a month or so when the collection of his works was released. One of my friends glanced over it, looked me in the eye and said 'You wrote this.' I admitted it. The story was over. That Nigel was me could now be revealed. The young lady who had expressed some interest in Nigel now noted she had a developed a suspicion that I was he but she wasn't completely sure. The young lady who had inspired all this poetry rather innocently never figured it out and I told her a short time later . . . wait, I should backtrack slightly. It gets complicated at this point.
A relatively new friend of mine took the collection of Nigel's work, which included two songs, picked up his guitar (which he played very well), and recorded one of the songs on his home equipment for me. I was well pleased, especially as it sounded quite good in its own way. What makes things more interesting was that he had been dating the girl I was fond of when she turned her attention to me (because of the writing and the poems and such) but I don't believe he was fully aware of this as he never mentioned it to me and we got along quite well. Anyway, I hadn't separated them intentionally. Any road, after I got the song from him, I let her listen to it on my Walkman. It was after that song that I casually mentioned I had wrote it (admitting I was Nigel) and realized she hadn't figured out I was he before. I felt very clever indeed.
Due to timing issues more than anything else, she and I never did get very far. When we last saw each other, a couple years from school, we were still quite friendly. I had the tape with that song for a few years, forgot about it, uncovered it, was about to make copies of it, and then the jacket I had it in was stolen. Sad as I was about losing the jacket, I mourned the loss of the tape more. I could replace the jacket, but not the tape. Oh well.
In the few times I wrote poems since then (and it has been years since the last one) I have still given Nigel the credit. Most of those last poems have gotten to few people if any. Unless I get a rush of interest in them, don't expect to see any posted here. I really don''t think they were very good. Still, it's a good story.
-Stephen M. Wolterstorff
3/14/00
