This, I believe, is one of the first letters I wrote from New York City, where my wife and I had moved the summer of 1988 so she could attend medical school. While it is the fifty-fifth in a stack of old letters in a string-tied folder that I retrieved from storage last year during halftime of the Seahawks playoff elimination in Atlanta (now, a year later, the Seahawks are world champions), the letter is actually number one or close to number one based on chronology.
Addressed to two good college buddies who had moved into an apartment on Oak Street in San Francisco across from the Panhandle, this epistle specializes in that cocky, macho, tongue-in-cheek bluster that only youth truly believes in.
Autumn 1988
Mark and Niall,
I hope this gets to you, you fuckers. What if Sherry/Sherri steams it open? Then you'd owe her one from me. You'd have to strap her to Niall's back and smear her with honey -- humm baby. New York gets more and more like home every day. Mark, I was sick for a solid week after you left. Had some throat & fever combination. Ashley took me down to the in-house nurse who felt me up and down and made me think of the two of you and what that first night in your new home must have been like. Wow! But seriously, all sarcasm aside, I bet you guys really care for each other, huh? Well this illness abated and then Lyn and Oliver appeared, stayed a week, and just left today, Sunday. During their sojourn we cracked open the bottle of sour mash from Dinosaur, CO, the bottle I bought from the Good Samaritan with a sledge hammer -- and I helped myself to a fine cigar. All of sudden I was back on Easy Street. Saw the Lady. We were on the Staten Island Ferry. Boy o boy.
I'll tell you guys when I get work. How is law school, Piall? Ashley has started her studies -- biochemistry and CPR. I met a few of the physicians-to-be. After a little thought I dubbed them the Cotton Nazis. All goose down and dew drops they are, new underwear and Ivory soap. Quite a contrast to the Mexico City suburb we live in. One student caught my fancy, a Berkeley grad no less. Her name is Nancy -- a big healthy Leviathan of a woman. And I blush when I say that there is undoubtedly a reciprocal interest. But no, I am now a married man. The days of sowing oats are behind me. I look forward to a life of study and even-keeled contemplation.
I read Exley's A FAN'S NOTES. Some good shit. I ate it up. My only problem with it was that I didn't feel we were getting the whole story. Too many aporias, thematically, and too many five-dollar words, stylistically, mean the guy still has got something to hide -- he never gave up beating the popularity pony. My favorite scenes: the confrontation/non-confrontation with Gifford in the coffee shop; buying everybody in the dining car a round of drinks; flopping at the counselor's pad, on the sofa with LOLITA. The guy's got a real touch for tragicomedy.
You fuckers gotta write me, otherwise your souls are gonna die. At least get me your new address and phone number. Adieu, adieu.
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