Where the hell are you? April 10, 1985

  

Dear Stranger:

It is hard to believe that five years has passed since our wonderful time at The Morgue. But alas, time passes quickly and each of us have gone our own way., some of us making the effort to communicate with others, while there are clowns like you stuck in their closest eating marshmallows.

What is the matter with you? Have you lost your fingers? Or do we in this part of the world remind you of a time you’d rather not think about?

Too bad! You’re stuck with ghosts like us, like it or not, and the longer you hold out, the more persistent we will be in sending such communications as this to you.

Since I know almost nothing about your doings – except from some mutterings from the recently married Mary Kay, I shall begin with an update of my life and hope that you’re just bored enough to put up with it.

If not, skip the next few paragraphs to the end where the secret message waits.

Since you left our part of the world, I have confronted many ghosts in my own life. Suzanne and I broke up on Easter, 81 though she still haunts the neighborhood, trying to score with my best friend, Pauly.

School fell apart for me that semester and I withdrew, finding myself working at a baker in a Dunkin Donuts for the next year or so. That didn’t last.

My ex-wife appeared on the scene, dredging up a lot of old and sometimes painful feelings from the distant past. She had apparently been involved with some questionable practices that included the world’s oldest profession and was in deep trouble when she surfaced again. I fell in and out of love with her once more, knowing that I couldn’t have her or wouldn’t know what to do with her if I could.

Incidentally, I quote this just to tease your romantic inclination. So, cheer up.

After some turmoil, I fell apart, tried school again, dropped out again, found a new job in a Fotomat, went back to baking after about a year or so. My writing floats up and down like a cork in a rough river. Sometimes I want to give it up and start something more profitable such as suicide (only kidding). I don’t know why you stopped writing, but I fully understand why a writer might surrender. I just don’t understand why I don’t hear from you anymore.

Well, to conclude, I fell in and out of love another time with a short girl named Fran, and currently suffer the ach of that breakup, while I ponder past mistakes and dismal futures.

So, in that vein, I thought of you. I figured by writing you it might cheer me up. But it’s like writing to a spirit. I know you’re out there, but nothing ever comes back.

Anyway, for your secret message: I miss the hell out of you, stupid.

 

Sincerely yours,

Al Sullivan

 

 1985 menu


email to Al Sullivan

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An old nemesis December 11, 1985

Image
    Surisky hated me from early on in grammar school, although “hate” may be too strong a word to describe his reaction to me. I was simply available to him for abuse, Third grade was pivotal for both of us. Prior to that, we were simply feeling our way through Catholic School routine, emerging eventually as whole personalities from the muck of early childhood. He came across as a thug, trying to convey the image of a tough guy. He wore a leather jacket and spiked boots, and snuck into see James Dean movies. Third grade was tough on everybody, including the teachers, who considered us the worst class in the history of the school – even in the safe grades of Kindergarten, First and Second. Two of the three nuns retired after passing us on. But it was in the third grade that we began to work our magic, driving even the stout-hearted nuns crazy. Later, the nuns tried to break our spirit. But we fully represented our age and had the full impact of the 1960s behin...
Read more

The clock is ticking July 18, 1985

Image
  We’re talking love here – silly fictional love with all the connotations of disaster. I seem to be on the meat chopping block with Safire looking for qualities in me that are lacking in her husband. The fact that there is a husband in the first place greatly disturbs me. All this said, I’m uncertain as to why I haven’t ended this already, except to know she is too much like my ex-wife to pass up without a closer examination. Even the way she thinks: slow, methodical, going from point A to point B. It has only been a week since she blurted out drunk that she wanted me in bed. It seems like much longer. And she hints of something more permanent, suggesting that I might fill in for her husband for a much longer duration. The night before last she suggested I come see her in her trailer, as if she is legally separated from her husband, when in fact she is supposed to be biding time until he finds them both a place to live in Baltimore. This is the same kind of smoke and...
Read more

Pauly leaves Passaic for the final time July 24, 1985

Image
    Pauly is leaving Passaic again. This comes after two years of us rubbing shoulders after he had been cast out of paradise in Towaco, after his goddess, Jane, went and married that man Pauly calls “a bum.” This has been a tough two years, filled with Pauly’s typical manipulation, his usual shaping of reality to his own needs often at other people’s (mine) expense. When Pauly first came I had Fran’s cultist brother as a temporary guest and Pauly spent most of his time trying to push me into getting that guest out. A few months later – in November – Fran got the ax from her ex and changed her mind about moving in with me after I had committed the spare room to Pauly. He assumed she meant more to me than he did and was already packing when I told Fran no. She had no place to go except for her father’s house, a father she had a love/hate relationship with, and she held it against me, even though we continued to see each other romantically. Pauly being Pauly drove ...
Read more