Dear Sir or Madam,

My goslings, I have been a tad under the weather lately, and it can be somewhat difficult to keep a sheet of parchment in focus through two crusty, bloodshot eyes under a haze of pharmaceuticals. Truth be told, I’m not sure what sort of plague I’ve been stricken with. It feels as though a longshoreman has pushed his salty dockhand through my right nostril (my favourite of the two even) and down my sinus in order to play my tonsils like a tiny, rudimentary piano with his calloused fingers. Please do understand why there’s been no correspondence this past week or so. One cannot look down their nose at people when it’s caked with snot.

Likely this virus found purchase in its current luxury estate at the costume party I attended this past weekend. I think it was at Dabney Manor, although it very well could have been some other residence disguised as Dabney Manor, but they invited me so their taste in company was suitable enough for me to attend. I’ve since revised those criteria to exclude places riddled with sick. Not completely sterile, mind you. A little malady is fine. A lot of fascinating people are disease-carriers, beyond myself even. I think Coach makes a designer disease carrier…

Anyhow, as is custom at most masquerades, all of the women came basically naked save some small token to show which person or profession they were embarrassing with promiscuity. Dame Elizer arrived as a raunchy nurse with the traditional stethoscope — worn as a bikini — and I believe I saw another lady nurse that night. Very creative, she wrapped a thrush in spinach, shoved it up her twat, and was Florence Nightingale. Neither of these was my Typhoid Mary.

I spied a few acquaintances as well. Marcus Albatross had gained nearly three hundred pounds over the past month and came as a stupidly fat man. Mrs. Albatross arrived as a depressed, embittered spouse who sips gin in the corner and doesn’t talk to anybody. She won fourth prize I believe. Trevor James Jarnold, who had lost his arms and legs in the Iraq War / backyard wrestling, wore mannequin limbs on his stumps and came as a human being. He was propped up in the corner, unable to evade Patricia Hardly, scantly dressed as the abstract concept of Chastity, who complained that the polenta had been made out of candy corn.

Perhaps it was the refreshments that had stolen the colour from my cheeks. All I ate was one apple, however I did bob for it after a man who had cut up his face like Sam Neill from the end of Event Horizon. Also, perhaps I shouldn’t have spoken to those chaps who had scotch-taped slips of paper with “costume” written on them in pencil to their day clothes. People that uncreative probably would have difficulty wiping themselves properly. And maybe when I was offered a chair by a fellow who said his costume was “Dirt Ass,” I should have just called the police.

Thus here I lay this All Hallows Eve, surrounded by the tissue paper ghosts that had trick-or-treated at my face and were rewarded with copious amounts of boogers and phlegm. I will not be taking sugarmad guests tonight. The lights of my current residence shall be kept off and the exterior painted with a substance that becomes cyanide gas when combined with egg yolk. There’ll be no confections for The Gentleman either. I couldn’t taste it anyway and I’d rather not find out what Rainbow Nerds look like as vomit. Ah well, with a life as sweet as mine, does one even need candy? (Yes.)

Yours Faithfully, The Gentleman of the Site

P.S.

How terribly rude of me. I entirely forgot to mention what my costume was. I’m usually wearing a mask of whatever appropriate emotion no matter what event I am attending, thus a tangible disguisement scarcely affected me. I came as you, actually. Be flattered. Everyone said I looked just like you. I walked in your distinctive gait and parroted a number of your more ridiculous catchphrases to the delight of the other guests. I also committed some felonies in your name. Happy Hallowe’en.

Dear Beggar Lurking Near ATM,

What an ingenious plan you’ve conceived! You have me quite caught, good sir. I cannot say that I have no money to give, because I’ve just exited an establishment whose only purpose is the dispersal of monies. Thus I must concede either to your solicitation or to my utter indifference toward the less fortunate. Very clever. Just not crisp, whole twenty-dollar bill clever. Now, why don’t you go beg for food outside Costco?

Yours Faithfully, The Gentleman of the Site

Dear Sir or Madam,

When this world and its pleasures become dry and flavourless to my palate, my thoughts often drift to the moist womb of the sea. Oh how I love the ocean. Its salty splendour has always been a source of awe for our kind and its diverse bounty is catnip to our exploitive imagination. From our delicious entrées taken of the meaty sides of fish to the repugnant hors d’oeuvres made from the nasty eggy bits. Sea urchins are hunted for their intriguing flesh and the spines often become toothpicks for naughty vegans. The chalky coral from which we make sponge candy and the stickfish that become fishsticks in our grimy factories. When we eat out, we eat out to sea.

However, we must not forget that the sea is home to the greatest and most easily avoided dangers on the planet. Creatures roam the deep that have far more teeth than conscience, frivolous poisons, and tentacles that would create and destroy a Japanese erection. I have heard legend of an underwater leviathan more deadly than anything imaginable. It has one eye that peers above the waves and when it opens its gaping maw, the depths flash and explode. This legend, of course, came from a tribe unfamiliar with submarines like my own. I shared a dish of caviar with the village chief, and became a god for a time. Unending worship bored me, as most things inevitably do, and once again my mind slipped into the brine.

Yours Faithfully, The Gentleman of the Site

Dear Sir or Madam,

The Mortal Arts are something of a hobby of mine. Before I was even born, I would spend countless hours tinkering away at my stillborn identical twin’s corpse. I came into this world clutching him, contorted into a perfect Dremont’s Body Cube, like a wee briefcase. In my later years, I would study the finer skills of mummying. At age fifteen, I could pull the pulp out of a blood orange like the brains of a Pharaoh through a small incision, without damaging the rind. Sometimes I forwent the hooked rod in favour of my mouth. I was quite popular with the girls in my class at this time.

I had all but forgotten how much I enjoyed the rituals of preserving the dead, until a startling event the other day. I was in the parlor of Mr. Brolin Potemkin, the well to do butcher from whom I purchase my quail and long-pig, enjoying tea and conversation around his rather unique coffee table. You see, being a suspicious fellow by nature — the man does handle meat — he decided not to have his wife buried when she died of candy cholera the previous year. Instead, my friend decided to seal her in her obsidian casket, sit her up in the home she maintained for many a year, and be done with it.

The butcher was in the middle of explaining to me how tiger tenderloin sells very well due to its side effect of tumescence (although any connoisseur can tell you the stiffness remains in the abdomen and goes no further south), when there was a bump from under the table. After the second bump, it became clear the tremors were coming from within the table, from within the coffin rather. Being also your standard egotistical evangelical, Brolin began to weep with joy, and scampered out of the room to retrieve his sturdiest cleaver, that he might free his resurrected wife.

It was when the butcher returned with the blade that I suddenly remembered what happens to decomposing flesh in an airtight environment and therefore the true cause of the commotion, but Brolly shoved me as he strode over to the box, so I remained vindictively silent. After a few strong blows, Mrs. Potemkin happily leapt up to meet her stunned husband, however in a more putrid and liquefied form than he remembered. The look on his face was well worth the smell and soiled loafers.

I hear he’s a vegan now, or a sociopath. Ah well, in my experience these two are far from mutually exclusive. Lately, I’ve been practicing my old skills on a neighbour cat. She’s doing fine so far, thus I’ve failed. You may be wondering whether or not I intend to be mummified once I am gone. Well, dear reader, that is entirely dependent on whether or not I intend on dying.

Yours Faithfully, The Gentleman of the Site

Dear Sir or Madam,

You must forgive me for being so very absent this past week. I’m sure your days felt as empty and meaningless as mine never do. You see, my staff ornithologist informed me that this past week did not augur well, so I’ve been laying low in the root cellar, reading my serialized Wodehouse and trying to get a buzz off of year-old parsnips. For your trouble, here are two stock comics with only one letter in accompaniment. I know how much you prefer bright, colourful pictures to dirty, ugly words. I cannot promise that such a delay will not happen again or that I will feel genuine sympathy those times (or this time), but I can promise that by the time you finish this sentence, you will have legally forfeited your right to be angry.

Yours Occasionally, The Gentleman of the Site

Dear Sir or Madam,

It is inevitable that whilst following the innumerable avenues of conversation, the discussion will turn to conversation itself — words, phrases, and sentences. It’s such a common occurrence, it’s not even considered meta. It’s not even considered pretentious. Actually, most times, it’s not even considered at all. However, when one is in company as excruciatingly garrulous as I was nearly one year ago, it is often best to bury oneself in deep thoughts and befriend the words one is assaulted with, lest they consume your very heart.

Truly a lovely couple of characters are Ms. Mulgahe Townsend and her devoted brother Franklin, with whom I spent an evening last November. So close are these siblings, that many members of their social sphere assume them to be husband and wife. This is understandable, as one is almost never seen apart from the other. Also they sleep together and have sex and have twenty-four ugly children.

After a decidedly pleasant meal of eggs and pérfaan at my flat, I suggested we discover the local cinema, and as we walked, the pair engaged themselves in a lukewarm debate about the correct pronunciation of the word “facetious.” “Now, Mulgahe, we know what a facet is, don’t we? Like those of the emerald brooch I bought you for your birthday. And we know that this word is pronounced with a hard ‘t’.”
“Yes, Franklin, but when paired with an ‘i’, the ‘t’ makes a shushing sound as in ‘petition’ or ‘defenestration.’”
“Don’t forget ‘masturbation,’” I added facetiously.
“Heaven forbid,” said Franklin, “I’m sorry, but I just like the idea of saying that Uncle Herbert’s face is as facet-ious as a Chinese golf ball.”
“Now, that’s not even the correct definition, Franklin. — ‘Defintion.’ That’s another shushy word. — And for God’s sake, why Chinese?”
“I don’t know. Everything there is more. There’s so many of them… Wait. Do they have golf in China, Gentleman?”
“Given their population, I’d say there’s little room for decent courses. In any event, we are arrived.”

The brittle yet constricting fibers of dialogue gave away under the bright lights of the marquee. It was my hope that the darkness and enforced silence of the theatre would quell further prattling, but unfortunately there was still the matter of selecting a picture. “Children of Men,” Franklin read, stroking his chin thoughtfully, “That’s absurd. Men cannot have children.”
After a moment Mulgahe agreed, “No, I don’t think they can.”
“Do you suppose… they mean… poop?” suggested Franklin.
“Now, I hardly think they can justify filling two hours with poop,” said Mulgahe.
“Obviously you’ve never seen— ” and I can’t remember exactly how I completed that sentence, but I can assure you it was the funniest thing that could have been said.

The Townsends were amused and, for a time, blessedly silent as we enjoyed the film. Actually, only Mulgahe enjoyed it, because she is sexually aroused by Sir Michael Caine. Franklin was disappointed because the plot did not touch on how the dip in global population had affected China’s stance on golf. Personally, I couldn’t reconcile mass infertility with dystopia. Sounds like a right good time to me.

I voiced this opinion and Franklin immediately corrected me that the word is pronounced “di-stop-ia,” “because everything stops,” he said. I graciously agreed and began to mentally list all the words that rhyme with “imbecile.” There are none. Perhaps in Chinese?

Yours Faithfully, The Gentleman of the Site

Dear Sir or Madam,

I have written recently on the subject of the innocence of Youth and of those souls who still shine from having bathed in its waters. Now, I think it is time to discuss the loss of innocence, which is as potent a thing as the abstract of Innocence itself. Innocence lost is ‘la mort invisible,’ the unseen death. The jaded body walks the wonderless world, slowly rotting, not knowing why. It is an exquisite thing!

Some people don’t lose their innocence even years after they lose their virginity, all the while thinking they’re so worldly and mature. Children today run to lose their innocence like they do their baby teeth, and the exchange is not dissimilar. Except instead of a magical fairy swapping cuspids for currency, you find a manged Albanian prostitute eying you through her conjunctivitis with inverse revulsion as she darns decaying stockings with bellybutton hair, murmuring just audibly some cutting remark that will eat at your self-confidence until you’re seventy-three. Ex. Quis. Ite.

Two nights ago, I was in the eclectic area of the city I happened to be gracing. You know the type. The air is thick with the odour of saffron and bourbon and the walls are creeping with a moss of rock band and head shop stickers extending radially because no one wants to place theirs by itself. I was skulking about because I had a sudden desire to see a nude nun. Witness the pale, rumpled skin of the cloistered and trace the scars of wounds self-inflicted in the name of the Lord, whose name I’d surely take in vain as I rush with orgasm — I was in a weird place. Anyway, it was in this bohemian nexus that I encountered a girl of about twenty.

She said that she was waiting for somebody and that her name was Doris. I offered to wait with her and she said, “OK,” in a nervous tone, as if I’d offered to massage her ears. I asked her whom she waited for and she said, “A friend.”
“Male or female?”
She blushed, “My boyfriend.”

And although she was unavailable, I continued to sit and wait and play at the idea of being infatuated with dear, doting Doris. I had no interest in stealing her away from Mr. Boyfriend — too much time to do it properly, and the stress of seduction would likely mar that which made her so attractive. She had a slight, natural smile that would likely become set in time like artisaned grooves in maple. I bought her a cherry cola and a red scrunchie and a brass whistle which, to my delight, she played with great virtuosity. I told her a secret; it made her frown. She nodded solemnly and told me a lavender bit of whimsy which meant absolutely nothing, but could be taken as testament to all the world’s loveliness.

Boyfriend Boyfriend never arrived, but there was a phone call during our time together that made Doris inconsolably silent for an hour. Inferences could be made, but the sun was setting gloriously and a breeze from down the street carried new scents and sensations. “I think I’m going to go home now,” said she suddenly.
“Would you like to see a nude nun with me?”
“No thank you. I’m going home.”
“The world loves you, Doris. I only agree.”
“OK. Bye.”

I watched her walk away, moving me from her thoughts like a sunbeam crosses a dusty carpet as the hours pass. I wondered what had made her so sad. I wondered what had ever made her so serene. I wondered if it would be easier to strip a clothed nun or find a dead one or something. Then I let all wonderances fall and bought a quick, expensive dinner. No time for such thoughts in our wonderless world. Not for the innocent.

Yours Faithfully, The Gentleman of the Site