Dear Self-Conscious Man Wearing Top Hat,

Yes, people do think you look foolish. I tell you this to preempt you telling me, as you tell everyone in your social circle, including the rabbit you possibly keep under there. You won’t find sympathy here, magic man. If a man wears strange garments, he should expect to get some looks, both of envy and derision; however, you’re wearing a top hat. No one needs to wear a top hat. Social mores may have dictated otherwise at one time or another, but nowadays showing your bare head is not a form of indecency, unless you have hair like Gerard Way, which you probably do, because you wear a top hat.

Yours Faithfully, The Gentleman of the Site

Dear Sir or Madam,

I was, perhaps, a child once. It is a time in my life that I remember fondly, with rushy feelings and necessary stares into the middle distance. Eating a pint of confectioners’ sugar for breakfast, playing with bauxite cubes from father’s factory, befriending a neighbour and extracting their innermost secrets in exchange for pretty lies. The days of innocence and indestructibility, when my responsibilities carried no accountabilities — that is to say, I didn’t have to explain my unrepentance.

One particularly ardent memory from my youth involves an oppressive little shit of a schoolmate of mine called Pyotr. Now, Pyotr was most certainly ‘scum absolutimum,’ as we would say in the Latin-esque kid language we developed, but he was allowed admission to our private school nevertheless, because his father was the custodial captain. It can be inferred that young Pyotr’s unending torment of us stemmed from this overbearing father, who was likely driven at least a little mad from spending every day in a place filled with children whose only motivation for being there is to avoid a job like his.

Pyotr was indeed a terror. He would make inflammatory bids during public auctions and then run out of the room. He practiced his kendo on us during fencing. One time, he contracted eczema purposefully that he might infect the class. To this day I find all hugs suspicious. Action was taken naturally, but there was passivity to my aggression, out of fear for my limbs and torso. It was my intention to addict him to heroin by drugging his milk over a number of weeks, and then use this weakness to control him. Unfortunately, eight other boys had the same notion and Pyotr was dead within three days. His retching, foaming body suddenly lurching onto the cafeteria floor. His feral, often airless screams at invisible demons consuming his flesh as he thrashed himself into oblivion. Having to watch his father clean his corpse up after it was over. ‘Pyotr messygon, pitynon.’ I was, perhaps, a child once. No longer.

Yours Faithfully, The Gentleman of the Site