Fair Jolene,
You are my moon craft and I am the moon rocks that are trapped in the vaults at NASA wishing they could be drove on by you. You are the salty pretzel hanging in a pretzelry and I’m some brown mustard sitting in a cupboard in a house owned by people who don’t even put mustard on things.
The aching in my loins for you is like the aching in the loins of a King, that has loin-aches just for you. This King is also in prison. It’s like I’m a piece of maple wood, the prison system is a lathe, and you are the curls of wood falling to the floor and then glued back together into the form of a majestic BBW who put skin over the wood and mailed me a hot pic in her lingerie.
Is that a recent photo? It makes me want to take you out on the town to all the finest of places and show you off to all the finest of people. We’ll have steak or spaghetti and you don’t wear any panties. I think about that all the time. Sometimes I think about you not wearing panties when we’re just sitting around or maybe on a boat.
It would be great to meet you for real sometime. You could even bring Zack. I’ve always wanted to be a dad, but my own kids are a-holes.
Anyways, I’m really glad that you signed up for that website and that we’ve been able to be pen pals. It already feels like we’re pen lovers. So, until that day when the sun cries its tears of freedom on this penitentiary and the walls melt into rubies that roll me down to Arizona and maybe get me a job at the State Fair grounds or something, then, that day we will be together my mermaid, my mermaid of the sand. Yes, then. Then.
Your caged bird who is so hard for you,
Travis
Finally,
I’d like to tell you a story about your grandpa, Karl. He was named after Karl Malden, chronologically that is. You were named Karl after my high school beau, Thomas “Karl” Hendershot. Grandpa was named Pjelt, which is what some Norwegians called “dirt farmers”. The dirt was poop.
Pjelt means neither dirt nor poop. They were tough times and there’s little nutritive value to sucking on rocks, as you well know, but people did as people did and time moved on and here we are.
Grandpa, or Grand Pa, as folks would write but not say, toothless from rock-suck and bent like a reed from Rickets, gave his favorite foot to who would have been your Gram-Gram, if she had accepted his love/seed and not just his foot. Her name is lost to time, and hatred, and hatred of time. Forgetfulness was in fashion in those days, mainly due to terribleness, the terribleness of being gummy, crooked, mono-pedal Norwegians, of which your grandpa was only one of a very many.
Back to Karl Malden. Though born before Karl Malden, grandpa had no name until he was twenty-six. He was named after a great many people, but he called himself Pjelt.
Finally, Mom
Jak,
You still have my cigarettes.
I already asked Treena to get them but that bitch is sad in the head about smarts. None. You married her. I told you when we first met her at The Express that she had shit for brains, buck teeth, and a pound in good ass. Only two of those things has stayed fucking unchanged.
Anyway, I want my cigarettes. You said you just needed to borrow them for a sec. Next thing, I hear your fucking Pontiac start up and you’re off with my cigarettes. I had to bum smokes off Krestine and she smokes fucking Mistys.
So give me back my fucking cigarettes. I am not afraid to come over there and beat your ass.
Sincerely,
Dean
Dear Reverend Gabe,
It’s possible you don’t remember me, although that seems unlikely. I am, after all, a three-time graduate of your “Scared and Prayer’d Straight” Healing Homosexuality Summer Boot Camp.
Reverend, it’s been almost 10 days since I returned home from my latest stint at your camp and already, Satan is back on the offensive, ferociously challenging Christ for possession of my soul, loinage and groinage.
This time around, though, the devil has made himself present in the form our recently-arrived Portuguese foreign exchange student, Ever Ruiz. Specifically, Ever’s denim-clad trouser bulge which, prodigious for a 16-year-old high school junior, continually threatens to steer me off course and dash me – soaked and heaving for breath – upon the jagged rocks of eternal torment.
Oh, to return to the warm embrace of the Boot Camp – the camaraderie, the frolicking in the name of Christ, and of course, the nights locked in the musty Shame Shack where you and the Junior Counselors would unleash yourselves upon me – Biblically – until I was once again, born anew in God’s perfect, and perfectly-heterosexual image.
My only respite is to pray that the remaining 9 months that separate me from you, the camp, and I guess, my fourth consecutive summer of being scared and prayer’d straight will fly like that angels that rushed to Daniel’s side to protect him in the lion’s den. Until then, Reverend, I remain…
Agitatedly yours,
Elliot Whipple
P.S. That you may better visualize the Satanic slings and arrows I’m up against, I’ve enclosed a clandestinely-procured photograph of Ever shirtlessly washing my father’s Range Rover. Pray for me, Reverend. Pray for me.
My Dearest Food and Tina,
It is with no moderate amount of embarrassment that I again write this missive.
It seems, for the third time, that I have squandered my riches and find myself, once more, stranded on the outskirts of Bangkok in what appears to be a filthy diaper mine. If the odor is any indication, they have struck a rich vein.
I have befriended the local rodent populace and they treat me with all the honor due a fallen soldier, if that soldier was a cardboard box and his innards so much macaroni. I’ve taken to giving them all names, blood-curdling names. I name them until I can name no more and fall into a fitful sleep, wherein I’m visited by angels. These angels try and take me to heaven, one tiny piece at a time, meat first.
The remittance of this post was paid with all remaining currency of value – my pluck, that and the tearful surrender of my embouchement and trunk proper to the local constabulary and resident militia. Should I survive their continued and constant-seeming graciousness, I vow to abstain from spit-roasted game or any meat stuffed with meat.
If you could be so kind as to contact the embassy, have them seek the gaped-out, dripping hobo wrapped uncomfortably around an armed man.
Ever,
Stevens
My Darling Bunny,
I really can’t believe how fast time flies. You’re turning into such an amazing woman and I’m so proud to call you my daughter. You’ve brought such a welcome light and airiness to our home with your bright smile and high spirits. Here’s a little B-day poem:
For Caitlynne, on her Sweet Sixteen
The great expanse of universe
all collected woe
A point of singularity
bearing down upon my soul
You hear me, don’t you god!?
railing, spittle flies
White knuckle, hardened fists
my empty, broken cries
Unmerciful torturer
A banner black with blood
Unceasing agony
these wasted breaths
these stretched out years
upon the rack of your comedy
The misery in floods
and I the mad grotesque
in spite, I let me linger.
For whom to pray for death?
Love you, Bunny,
Daddy
Mrs. Trent,
Berndt here. All of your flavors are in; the jellies, the jams, the preserves, everything. I think you’ll be rather pleased with the progress we made in simulating the varied tastes of Mark.
He was the tough nut to crack. Some parts of him are surprisingly salty, as you must know, while others have a pungent specificity that baffled even our most seasoned replicators, bio-engineers, and grandmas. What he tastes like has no name.
That you want to spread a simulacrum of such a mysterious sensory conundrum on crackers, biscuits, puff pastries, waffles, bulgur wheat breads, et al. is completely understandable. To wit, the spreading of this jam on human subjects is not recommended, as the untested combination of musks may prove disasterous and quite possibly toxic.
Do not spread Mark on meat, unless that meat is actually of Mark. If you do indeed intend on eating Mark, please be so kind as to save us a morsel as there is much study to be done. All attempts at recreating anything like the flavor of Lance have been met with failure. I cannot comment further at this time.
Necessarily,
Dr. Berndt Fleischekonig
President, CEO
Chief of Science
Yummy Yummies, LLC
Dear Bryce,
If a letter could approach its recipient in a sheepish manner, that is, with eyes averted, hands in pockets, feet shuffling like a scolded schoolboy, this correspondence would approach you as such.
For, it’s possible that you and Amanda are still sour about my hasty and ignoble departure. Some might say I left you “up Shit’s Creek without a paddle,” not unlike the time I left you, literally paddle-less in the middle of Shitz Creek with nothing but a tackle box and your two hands to steer you back to shore. (On a sidenote: Why the Sewage Plant doesn’t fence in that old drainage ditch, I’ll never understand.)
But truth be told, I may not have been the world’s most obliging houseguest. In the seven months I lodged with you and your lady-friend, I contributed no more than negative 37 dollars toward rent and utilities, the negative balance, of course, reflecting the exactly 37 dollars I stole off your bedroom dresser the morning I bugged-the-fuck out of town.
Speaking of Amanda, please give her my best. I recognize that she never felt entirely comfortable with me in the house, especially after those upskirt photos of her surfaced on the Internet. Assure her that I fully intend to dismantle that web site as soon as I can scare up access to a computer with web-browsing capabilities, which, in this one-turkey town, is more difficult than I would have guessed.
Now, onto the primary reason for this letter (sheepish, as it may be): Please dig up the pound of marijuana I buried in your front yard. Just to the left of the bird bath, about two to three feet deep is a Sherman-Williams paint can containing 16 ounces of the finest Panama Red you’ll find north of the Rio Grande. At your earliest convenience, Bryce, mail it to me at the return address provided, but NOT without first breaking off $37-worth of bud for you and yours. I trust this will more than make up for the pilfered cash referenced above and – I pray – eliminate any acrimony Amanda (and possibly you) still harbor toward me.
Thank you in advance.
Yours in Christ,
Rudy
