Letters Never Sent

so here's goes, i have been working in these for a little while, and i kind of dont hate them. they are what happens when you find that box in the basement that you are sure you threw out two moves ago comes back to remind you of who you used to be

Chloe

April 3, 1982

Dear Chloe,

You are wonderful.

My whole life I have been in a series of bad relationships, well that’s not exactly true, its really not so much a series, as a loose collection, or an anthology would be a better description. I think you need some sort of continuity to describe it as a series, and I can’t find a narrative thread between them.

First it was Jill, she left me at the bus stop without even a goodbye, she just got on and went away and I never saw her again. Then there was Angie, she said she was going to the bathroom and she came back with another boy. After that there was Georgia, she was at least nice enough to have lunch with me, but when I asked her if she wanted some milk she picked up her food and said she was lactose and Henry intolerant. I’m not sure what lactose is, but I know what intolerant is, I heard my mom use it to talk about my dad enough when I was a kid. I could go on, but you get the idea.

Then there was you, I remember the first day I saw you in the gym, and I was smitten. Most people look goofy in shorts and a t-shirt with a giant cartoon cat on it, but on you, panther pride took new meaning. When I think about you, my stomach feel like its like climbing the rope in gym. I always saw you as an unattainable angel, floating far above the rest of the world. Then last week when went to the museum, you came right up to me and asked if I would like to like to sit with you on the bus. Well, I can tell, you, that after Jill, I have had serious issues with busses, but that all faded away.

I am not sure, but I think you are the one. I think I could spend the rest of my life with you. My folks fight a lot and I’m not sure if people can spend forever together, but if it is with you, I can try. But just to be sure, I just need to know, it’s silly to ask for a girl like you, but better safe than sorry I always say….could you tell me, do you have cooties?

Henry

Jenny

Sept 28, 1988
Dear Jenny,

Its been five days since I last saw you. Well actually its been like a five days since I saw you first, I mean, well, since I saw you for the first time. I’m sure someday I will look back at that moment and remember it fondly, but right now I am pretty embarrassed.

I realize I don’t know too much, but I really thought it was great the way did your presentation. I never knew anything about Cuba, except that they had illegal cigars, but you made it sound like a place I would like to visit. It was very exotic to hear you talk about it, it was like you had just been there. I tell you, if I wasn’t a republican, I would be a communist, just for all the hemp clothes and the what did you call them, moheetos.
You made it sound really great.

Well anyway, I just wanted to write you a letter because I think you are cool and I hope that you won’t let me being a republican stop us from getting to hang out.

Your friend?

Henry
(third row, one seat behind you)

Oct 14, 1988
Dear Jenny,

I realize that I shouldn’t have said what I said in the cafeteria, but I guess it just slipped out. I didn’t mean for you to hear me say that you have a great butt. I mean, I didn’t mean to say that you have a great butt. I meant to say that you’ve got a great body, but I didn’t get to the other parts.

I guess that wasn’t the best way to have you remember my name for the first time, but if it means that I get to talk to you more, I would say all kinds of things about you, just so you would tell me to stop. That’s not what I meant either, I’m not very good trying to write to you, which is funny, cause at least in paper I can get a sentence out to you before I break out in a sweat.

Anyway, I’m sorry you’ve got a great butt... I mean I’m sorry I said it in the café, I’m not sorry you’ve got a great butt. From now on I promise to only talk about you in appropriate ways and places, like the locker room.

Sincerely,

Henry

October 30, 1988
Dear Jenny,

What are you going to be for the Halloween Party?

I am going as a cave man. Me and the guys are going to get together before hand and TP some houses. It should be cool. I hope you will dance with me at the party. I am an OK dancer, as long as they play something slow, like She’s Like the Wind or I Get Weak. Who do you think has better hair Patrick Swayze or Belinda Carlise? Sike- its gotta be Jon Bon Jovi.

See you at the dance. I’ll be the one wearing the sheet.

Henry

Nov 1, 1988
Dear Jenny,

Sorry about the TP all over your yard. I didn’t know that was where you lived. Guess I won’t be coming over to hang out anytime soon. Also sorry about what happened at the dance. I didn’t know that your cousin was epileptic or I wouldn’t have danced like that. I wasn’t making fun of him, I just thought that was how you danced to UB40.

Henry

Dec 20, 1988
Dear Jenny,

I hope you got the Christmas Carnation I sent you, but then I saw it on the table in the café and I figured you just forgot it, so I figured I would write you a Christmas letter to say Merry Christmas. So Merry Christmas.

I’m gonna sign up for the ski trip with SADD, so I’ll see you over the break

Henry

Jan 3, 1989
Jenny,

Well I guess it gonna be a rough year. I shouldn’t be upset, I suppose that Brian must be a really great guy for you to make out with him the whole weekend. I mean you guys barely even got up on the mountain to do any skiing. From what I heard he spent most of the time ploughing you instead of the slopes.

I really thought that we were gonna be cool. Especially after the Truth or Dare when we went in the closet. I thought it was gonna be our secret that I was too nervous and farted. But I guess that was just your way of getting me back for the Halloween incident, so I wasn’t too mad, but geez, Brian. I mean, sure, he’s on the football team and he’s pretty big, but he isn’t exactly a rocket scientist. (I guess I’m not either, according to Mr. Hanson, but that’s beside the point.)

But do me a favor. When he breaks your heart or worse yet your hips, from what I hear is an enormous wang, just remember how funny it was when I farted and how much fun we could have if we were ever more than just friends.

Henry

March 15, 1989
Dear Jenny,

We learned about the Ides of March today in English today when Julius Caesar gets stabbed by all his guys. And it got me thinking. It really sucks when you think you know what your friends are talking about and them all of the sudden your getting the business end of a knife.

I hadn’t written to you since new years and the whole ski trip deal and figured that after last month when you said that if I didn’t stop sending you Valentine Carnations, that you would tell Brian that I touched your boobs. I was thinking, was that a good thing or a bad thing? Cause I would like to touch your boobs, and I don’t think anybody doesn’t know that, so I thought that maybe you wanted me to touch them, and that way you could see if I was any good at it and then decide if you thought I was better at it than Brian, but you told me in the middle of Spanish class and since you said it in Spanish I wasn’t really sure which tense you used for the verb. I never could conjugate. So anyway, which is it?

If its yes, just don’t say anything and I’ll just brush into you in the hall and pretend to fall and you’ll know. If not, I’ll think of something less obvious.

Adios

Henry

PS.
I heard Brian has VD, which they said has to do with some kind of burning in his wang, so be careful.

April 20,1989


Dear Jenny,

Before I go any further, I want to say I am sorry for saying that Brian has VD. I did hear that his wang was swollen, but it turns out that he’s just uncircumcised, which is weird, but not a disease, (It usually means you don’t love Jesus, because my dad says that if you are a Christian you get circumcised, and he should know, he went to Vietnam.)

Anyway, I guess I’m not sorry you guys broke up. I thought he was a jerk, not just cause he always shoved me in my locker when he saw me, or because he was the one who started to call be Hanker the Wanker, (which is cool anyway, because before nobody knew who I was and now everyone knows me), its not even because he told Mr Hanson that I was making out with one of the fetal pigs and got me sent down to remedial science. But because I think you are better than him.

I really think you are really great. Every time I hear that Richard Marx song I think of you, that and Def Leppard, (they rock). I wish I could tell you this stuff, but aside from not sweating so much when your around I still get sick in my stomach like I’m gonna puke and its all I can do to just stay cool. That’s why I always say such dumb stuff. Just a brain fart, which is better than it used to be, at least now its just my brain that’s farting.

Anyway, If you don’t have a date yet I was wondering if you would want to go to the Spring Fling with me?

Shot through the Heart

Henry

June 9, 1989
Dear Jenny,

Well, summer is upon us, just two more periods and than freshman year is over. I can’t believe we made it. I thought that was great when Mr. K said that our lass was the best new class ever, I bet he doesn’t say that every year, I bet we really are the best. I know at least one person is.

I hope we can hang out over the summer. My dad doesn’t let me hang out much with girls outside of school, he says that they are the devils tools to lead us to sin and then we’ll be just as bad as the heathen Vietcong.

So I have to go away for a couple of weeks to camp for drama, but I will write you while I am gone and tell you all about it. This year, I will be one of the oldest kids at camps so I get to direct a play, no more being the prop guy again. But when we get back maybe I can show you my awesome collection of Star Wars action figures. I’ve even got Han Solo with the big head, it’s really rare.

Anyway, stay cool.


Henry

July 6, 1989
Dear Jenny,

Camp stinks. Well mostly it stinks cause the cabins are just smelly, what with no A/C and the seventh graders are so gross. There is this one kid, Tommy Seaver, he’s got some kind of nervous condition and just swears for no reason. He says he can’t help it, but I think he just likes to drop the F-bomb and not get in trouble.
I can’t believe that we were like that just two years ago. I mean how immature. I hadn’t really thought how queer they are, I always thought we were cool back then, it makes me worry that I’m not that cool now, but I just don’t know it yet.

Anyway, I have been working real hard on our play. Guess who got stuck being in charge of props again. We’re doing a play by Shakespeare called “A Mid Summer Nights Dream”. Its kind of an adaptation, cause the seventh graders can’t get the language. Its funny in parts, but mostly I think its silly, lots of fairies and junk. But I’ve been doing some reading on my own and I found a poem that he wrote that I liked and made me think of you. Here it is, it’s called a sonnet, that’s they kind of poem he wrote a bunch, but this one is number 29

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,--and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings'

It basically says that no matter how bad things get, that he guy in the poem just thinks about his girl and things are allright. I think about that when the seventh graders come back from the mess hall after chili dog night.

Hope your summer is good.

Henry

July 23, 1989
Dear Jenny,

I hope you won’t be mad when you find out. I figured it would be better for you to hear it from me before it gets back to you. I just want you to know it was completely professional and that being said, it wasn’t personal. Not at first anyway.

So I was the prop guy for our play, but the kid that was gonna be Lysander, that’s one of the main parts, got poison sumac and had to go home, so they told be to learn the part. So I ended up in the play. Which was awesome, except that its harder to learn lines than just hand people cups and books. That’s not the part I wanted to tell you about, anyway, there is this scene at the end where I have to kiss this girl and we had to practice. Well, I hadn’t really kissed a girl in real life before, so I was pretty bad at it.
But this girl, Hermia, (her real name is Lisa, she’s from Hartford), decided that we needed more rehearsals. And I didn’t want to at first, but then, I kind of didn’t mind. So we’re kind of going out. She’s not as pretty as you, but like the song says, if you can’t be with the one you love…love the one that has to make out with you cause its in the script.
That was like two weeks ago, we have the performance this weekend.

I still like to think about you when I want to be away from here. But lately, I’ve been rehearsing so much that I don’t have time to want to be anywhere else or have had time to tell you. But I don’t want you to wait for me. I want you to be happy, maybe Brian’s thing has cleared up. Lisa says that I am over you, so I guess I am.

See you back in school in a month, (yuck)


Henry

Lisa

September 20, 1989

Dear Lisa,

Being back in school stinks,

I don’t mind tho, since I have summer memories to get me thru my long boring days of geometry. When I want to think about you, I pull out my script from summer camp and re-read our scenes together. I have learned to only do this when I am alone, since doing the voices outloud for both parts makes people stare. And I have been reading even more plays whenever I can even tho I have a hard time understanding all the words the Shakespeare uses, its not like when I was with you and they just made sense.

Take this one story, Titus Andronicus, I have no idea what’s going on or why, there is a lot of killing people and I think I read it right that Titus just made a pie out of these guys and made their mom eat it. Gross right? I cant have read that right, I didn’t think that kind of gore came out before the Texas-Chainsaw Massacre. (which my Dad wont let me see b/c its full of Satan worshipping heathens, but I saw a preview of it in a comic one time, so I got the idea) but I digress…

How have you been? I am thinking often of our rehearsals at camp, sometimes I wake up thinking about them and have to change my underpants, I guess that a little TMI., Sorry,

Anyway. I hope things in Connecticut are good. I wasn’t sure of what your address was, but I remembered you saying you went to “the Academy” in Hartford, so I looked up the address and I just figured if I sent it there, you would get it in homeroom, you know, like I just passed you a note.

So I hope you get this and write back. If its not too much trouble, could you send a picture, so the guys in my biology class will stop making fun of me for saying I have a make-believe girlfriend, and if it could show your boobs that would be great.

TTFN,

Henry

Kelly

February 29, 1992

Dear Kelly,

I hope you don’t mind getting letters in Campus Mail from guys you don’t know very well.

I am sure, because of how pretty you are you get lots of guys trying to ask you out and stuff. But I am a little shy about talking to girls in person, so I thought I would give this a try.

You see, its because today is Leap Day that I figured I had nothing to lose, if I totally embarrass myself, by sending this to you, and you laugh at me, or worse yet just ignore me, (nothing I’m not used to) I wont have to be reminded of the anniversary of this day for at least 4 years, and by then we’ll either be getting married (just kidding, ha ha) or wont have thought of each other in years. So it’s a perfect day to ask you out.

I work as an usher at the movie theatre in the mall and I get free popcorn and if its not too busy, my boss let’s me sneak in for free. We have been showing “Wayne’s World” for two weeks and the crowds are down enough, that if you haven’t seen it, we could sneak in for free. If not, I can pay for us to see “Stop or My Mom will Shoot!”, I heard it was really funny, or we can see something serious like that new Richard Gere movie, its got Uma Thurman too, so there is something for both of us to look at.

But I guess that’s getting way ahead of myself.

You may not even remember me, but last month, when you were in the chorus at the talent spotlight, I was the one who was running the sound board, and I had to adjust your mic. Well you said thanks to me and that was the first time anyone on stage actually acknowledged me as the sound guy and it made me feel like I was on stage too.

Not that long ago I thought I really wanted to be in the theatre, but then I hit puberty and they said I had a face for radio, so that is where I ended up. But you sang that song really great and everyone loved it.

So I have been wanted to get up the nerve to ask you out for a while, but was very nervous, since you always have a bunch of friends around.

So I came up with this idea.

I realize that it’s a Saturday night and you might already have plans, but if not, I hope you might want to go out and stuff,

I can show you how the projectors work and how the Dolby stereo works. Its pretty cool, if you are into that sort of thing.

So if you are, I am box # 126,

henry

ps.. Just in case, if you don’t want to, please just say no thanks, rather than ignoring me, I’ve spent a lot of time being ignored and I promise you, being rejected is better than not being sure if people know you exist.

Veronica

February 8, 1993

Dear Veronica,

Please stop calling me & breathing on the phone. I would have simply called you to tell you this, but then I would have been stuck on the phone with you for well over an hour while you just sat on the other end, not talking and refusing to hang up. I am scared that if I hang up you will go all fatal attraction on me. (I knew we should not have seen that movie at the campus cinema, even if it was only 50¢).

I think you are probably a really swell gal, and someday make a fella really happy, but it has to start with not scaring them.

And I am scared. The other day when I called to check my messages from Dave’s room I got your voicemail, you had rerouted my phone to your campus line, I’m not even sure how you did that.

I haven’t been out of my room in days, for fear of running into you, (first time I have ever been happy about gender specific dorms). My roommate has been sneaking humdinger chicken back from the café all week, and let me tell you after the third day, its not very humdingery.

Please stop sending me broken pieces of what I assume the heart you made in ceramics. I get it, you are way serious and I may or may not have commitment issues, I’d rather not say right now for fear of the result. I didn’t know that when we had sex it was the first and only time for you and that you assumed that meant a lifelong vow. I just thought it meant that you liked fooling around.

My professors will no longer excuse my not being in class because I have a crazy girlfriend. No I didn’t mean crazy, I meant ultra-dedicated. I realize that this may be the dumbest thing I have done in my college career, (surely my attempt at a spontaneous campus rave at 3 am by pulling all the fire alarms may rank higher)

I realize that Valentine’s Day is right around the corner and think its best if we cut things clean before then and by cut things clean, I don’t mean any actual cutting. But something about your psycho-obsession kind of turns me on, so maybe, just maybe we can fool around one more time, if you promise to stop leaving dead things outside my window.

Yours, (not exactly)

Henry

Mr. Freeman

October 15, 1997

Dear Mr. Freeman,

This letter is to inform you of my intentions to apply for a position with your company.
I have recently ended my college education and my four and a half years combined at the University of Southeastern Tech as well as the two semesters I have spent working as an intern in the sorting division of Melvin & Tanner have almost prepared me to enter the regular work force.
My supervisor at M&T often describes my work in such glowing terms as adequate and superfluous. He believes that I have a great talent for the task apportioned to me of moving shipping containers from one side of the warehouse to the other. He once compared my work to that of the first primates to travel in space, high praise indeed, given the technical skill and historic significance of their mission. But I digress.

I was informed of a potential job opportunity at your company via a mutual friend, your niece, Kelly. When I was in school, Kelly and I often had relations and last month at an alumnus fraternity function during the homecoming activities I ran into her. It was great to see her again, and was happy that she had recovered from having her stomach pumped from the last fraternal function we attended, that was a big scare for us, and am sure that her family is glad that she has recovered so well as to be drinking heavily again. Sufficed to say, when I told her about my situation and about what my supervisor thought of me, she said that you were often quoted as saying, “that a bunch of monkeys could do the work at your company and things might get done better.” Also she mentioned that working for your company it was difficult to make matters for the clients any worse, so the margin of error was fairly wide. It sounded like a perfect fit to me and thought it best to reach out to you directly.

Though my work at M&T is personally very fulfilling, I believe that my time there is winding down, as my supervisor says, even though they don’t pay me to be there, they wish they didn’t have to see me work so hard everyday.

Which brings us to the matter at hand, I feel like I can handle the work at your company and will excel at any task given. However aside from some remedial sign language and the ability to climb trees very quickly, I am not sure what sort of simian skills I can bring to your workforce. I have spent many hours playing the Nintendo game Donkey Kong Country and have studied the various moves and tasks involved, and as I mentioned have over 8 months experience at M&T moving crates and barrels, (though I try not to smash them to find the hidden gold, haha)

On a personal note, I really would like to find a paying job to change my living situation. I am currently living in my grandparent’s attic, it is OK, but I am hoping to get a job so I don’t have to continue to smell talcum all the time and listen to them sleep, sometimes they are so quiet I think they are dead and then I have night terrors, (also Kelly said she would not come over unless I had a place of my own.)

In conclusion, I feel, based on the recommendation of my supervisor and the prior relations with your brother’s daughter, I can make a great addition to your staff at Freeman Crematorium. If I don’t hear from you by next week I will assume that I should start on Monday and will be ready to begin my career in the fascinating world of ice cream novelties.

Sincerely,

Henry Brentwood



See attached resume and
letter of recommendation from my supervisor Henry Brentwood, Sr.

Felicity

May 12, 1998
Dear Felicity986,

I know we only just met and our first date was only over an hour ago, but I have so much more I wanted to tell you. When you agreed to meet me, I was very surprised. It was my first time on a dating website and I wasn’t sure if those things really worked or not.
I figured I would always just meet someone randomly crossing the street or across a crowded room, not across a crowded webpage.

I really liked your dress and you smelled nice. Not being around a lot of girls with any kind of frequency, I kind of forgot how they smell. You get used to boy smell, living in the dorm and since then I have been living with boy roommates, who are in varying degrees of funky, it was nice to smell perfume again. I had so much I wanted to tell you, but just lunch wasn’t enough time. I felt like we really connected and thought there are some things you should know right away.

#1 I really like you

#2 I am missing two toes, (just wanted to get that out of the way since someday you might see my feet and I don’t want you to freak out….(its a long story involving an oscillating fan)

#3 did I mention I like the way you smell

#4 I wanted to ask, but didn’t know how to bring it up…..do you have a lazy eye? Because if you do, that’s totally fine, but if not I was very confused by why you kept looking away to your right.

#5 normally I have would some cash on me and wouldn’t have asked you to pay for lunch, but I have to ask my brother for money to go out, since I don’t have a bank account in my name and he keeps track of all that stuff for me and when I told him I was going out on a date he didn’t believe me, so I had to find bus fare from the change jar.

#6- there is nooooo #6 (ha, its and old monty python joke, get it?)

#7- I have a great comic book collection, I have every archie from 1986-89 and the whole x-men/x-factor cross over complete story from 1990, because I hate when you are totally into it and a chapter ends and you don’t know how it really ends for like a month later when the next issue comes out….that’s why when lunch was over, I wanted to write this right away because I didn’t like the ending when I spilled soup on your shoes and knowing the shame of having to worry about damage to toes, I wanted a chance to make it up to you. Next time I’ll have a salad.

Anyway, I had a great time and hope that we can go out again sometime, next time I promise to bring money so we can split it. (did I mention that you smell nice) well that’s it for now. Oh yeah, if anybody asks, I am going to tell people we met in the bookstore in the sci-fi section since they’ll never believe I was in the romance aisle.

HANKTK421

Lisa- part II

June 1999

Dear Lisa,

I’m not sure if you remember me. We went to Drama Camp together the, summer between 9^th & 10^th grade. After camp you wrote for a little while, but then I guess its been almost 10 years since I heard from you now. I thought about it for a while back then, I thought I did something, but aside from asking for a picture of your boobs when I was a horny 15 year old, I couldn’t think of anything that offensive. I gotta tell you, it took me all year to get over you. I mean sophomore year, I should been loving life, but there I was reading Billy Shakespeare in the library, thinking of summer love. Looking back it seems lame, but at the time, I was so smitten, I didn’t care that the other kids called me Shakes the Clown or Drama Queen.

By the next summer, when I got my driver’s licence I thought about driving up to Connecticut. I looked up all the Petersons in Hartford in the phone book, you must have a lot of distant cousins up there, cause everyone I called hadn’t ever heard of you.

Anyway, by the end of summer I guess I was kind of over it. I hooked up with this girl I knew from before named Jenny. She started going out with me b/c I had a car and her old boyfriend didn’t. Its amazing what a difference even a p.o.s. Ford Escort can do for your status at 16. So that was that, and I didn’t think about you again for years, until last week.

I was wandering thru the park downtown Portland, (I am working here now) and I stumbled upon an outdoor production of Midsummer’s Night and all of the sudden, I was 15 years old all over again. I sat all the way thru the show, it was terrible. Probably a little better than our drama camp show, but still when Lysander laid one on Hermia, I got chills. So I decided to find you. Again, do you have any idea how many Lisa Petersons there are in the State of Connecticut alone. This internet is amazing, but its just a lot of info and you need a Private Eye, which I considered till I found out how much they cost. Wow!. $450 a day plus expenses to look stuff up on line and make some phone calls, its not like I was trying to find out of someone was cheating on me. But I digress.

So long story short, I thought it was high time I found my forest maiden, so I am making copies of this letter and am gonna send it to every Lisa Peterson in the tri-state area in hopes that I find the right one. So if you get this, you can confirm it’s you and if you want, you can finally send that picture of your boobs.

Looking forward seeing them

Henry

“Ay me! for aught that I could ever read,
Could ever hear by tale or history,
The course of true love never did run smooth;
But, either it was different in blood” —

Act1 Sc 1

Amy

August 19, 2001

Dear Amy,

I know we only went out a few times, but I think I need to let you know, that I don’t think we can keep going out.
I really thought I had found something with you, but now I’m not so sure.
Sure we had a great time at the Zombie Fest and I really liked going to see your cousin’s play, although I’m not sure I understood why he was wrapped in saran-wrap, let alone why he was naked, but it was certainly something different.

Its not that your not pretty, actually, your prettier than any girl I’ve been with since about 10th grade, but that’s a whole different story. And I really do try to find the things you talk about interesting, sometimes a little over my head, like the way you talk about advant garde theatre, but you are very into it and that makes it interesting in a way, and I have never seen a girl that can crush with a bat in the batting cage like you, its really intense….. no its something else.

Last nite when you asked me to come over to your house, I was thrilled and thought that we were moving on to a new level, but then I went into your kitchen. I don’t mean to be rude, well, I guess I kind of am, but your kitchen smells odd and I don’t think it would bother me, but when I went into your fridge to get a drink. It was well, your fridge. I opened the door and beheld only an onion that was reborn and had began to start a new life complete with sprout, some Diet Tab (which seemed redundant) , a milk carton that had less than a ½ cup left in it and it was almost 2 weeks passed expiration and some old ketchup. I’m not saying it was weird, and I can’t say I have very high expectations of a person’s fridge and that should or should not be the basis of a successful relationship, but it was when I checked in the crisper to see if there was any beer that we could drink, you know something I could use to wash down that “cake” that you got at the street market that was made without flour or dough or flavor for that matter, and lo and behold, there in the crisper was what I believed what might have been a hunk of cheese (maybe Camembert based on its runniness) , and next to it was something that had all the makings of what might once been a mouse. There wasn’t much left, just a little puddle and some fir. I almost coughed up the cake.

OK, I thought, clearly the little guy got it one day and she doesn’t open the fridge very often, based on the milk and the state of the onion, maybe this happened and she never even noticed. But I got to thinking, how do you not notice that smell? What could have happened to your appetite if you smelled that every time you went into the kitchen. It was weird, because before I knew what it was, it was just an odd funk, but once I saw it, it smelled exactly like old cheese and dead mouse.

So… not that I am too good for you, though my refrigerator is remarkably rodent free, I think, it was that I became overwhelmed by an irrational fear that you would have me over for some fondue and you would brain me with a blunt object and I would end up in a puddle like the little mouse in your fridge. What can I say, you have a lot of blunt objects in your apartment and perhaps you dropped just one too many references to eating my brains at the Zombie Fest . So take care and do have that thing in your fridge taken care of, we don’t need the black plague making a comeback in your crisper.

henry