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By Edward Abbey Submitted by Misti Date: 2002 Jul 21 Comment on this Work [[2002.07.21.11.37.18674]] |
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Dear Willy, Well, companero, que pasa? Let me give you my great tidings first- she left me, my Elsie, my sweet and irreplaceable Elsie with her great white ass and her hairy armpits and all the rest. Gave me the slip on the sly, she did, walking out while I was away. Can't say I blame her one bit, of course. Back to the homefolks, Gawd help her. Anything to get away from Ballantine. But never mind. My irreplaceable Elsie has already been replaced. Yes. Her name is Darnelle, she's only 29, she has brown eyes, secondary mammaries and- all the rest. Do not misunderstand me. I am not going to marry the woman. We have agreed to share my humble penthouse for a time, on a trial basis, you see, endeavoring in that way to lay the foundations of a durable union. But marry the woman? I should say not. Why spoil a perfectly good relationship? Why buy a cow when I can get all the milk I need through the fence? They murmur of love. Live for love, they whine in my ear; live for the fulfillment which only love can bring, they whimper in their term papers. What do they mean, fulfillment? What is a man, some kind of a jug, that he has to be fulfilled? And this continual hysterical bleating for love, for love, for love, like a herd of goddamned sheep for christsake! Baaa...baaa...baaa. I say- and listen carefully, friend Gatlin- I say, give us some wolves. Man, in this sick sheepfold, give us some wolves. Love? I love women, god damn it. I guess I'm queer, Will: I love women. Not this one or that one but all of them, god damn it, all of them. Even me old mother, bless her saintly gash. I tell you, Will old buzzard, in your lonely forest roost, I tell you, marriage is a dying institution in our society. That's why it smells so bad. And you know why it's dying? I'll tell you, Will old comrade. No one else will tell you but I will tell you. Marriage in our society is rotting away from too much love. They're killing it with love. Romantic love. They marry for love, the bloody fools, turn their backs on the world and start sucking each other's blood. They poison marriage with love. They feed on each other, they cling to each other, all these lonely desperate couples all over America cut off from the earth, cut off from the past, cut off from any sense of a common life, just these miserably lonely, frightened brats, all feeding on one another like parasites, each man demanding from his wife what no single isolated woman could possibly give or be, each woman demanding from her husband the strength and security and tenderness which is beyond the power of any single isolate man. Because they have nothing else they bank all their hopes on marriage and inevitably they are disappointed. Love and marriage cannot give anyone more than a token of what we all need. Love and marriage in themselves are not enough. And so in disappointment they turn against each other, these stranded and lonely couples, and their love soon sours into hate. Well, old buddy, we all know about this, eh? We've been through this mill, eh comrade? And so I say- but what shall I say? I have no answer. Not yet anyway. But I'm working on it. I'll give you a solution one of these days. Enough of all that rubbish. What are you doing? Come down out of your tower and give us the word. Come to California. We need you here. My God, Will, you must see it, the glossy living wenchery that surrounds me on all sides, these flashy coeds, these well-fleshed females, these flashy fleshy fillies with their filigreed eyelids and callipygian fannies. The ingenious depravities these tender creatures are capable of. Shocking, I say, even to a hardened Christian like myself. But are you tempted? No, not you, up there in your tower, happily beating away in solitary satisfaction on the old family tom-tom. But I must warn you, Willy, there's a limit to what flesh and blood may endure. You'll go blind. You'll go insane. Your hair will fall out and your palms grow hairy. You know all that. A riddle, Willy: What is both desperate and absurd? I had a dream the other day. A daydream. I saw the earth, our great planet of basalt, granite and iron, as a kind of spherical altar on which we sacrifice, generation after generation, for a million and one years, the lives of all humanity. And this terrible ball was draped with blood, like a Sherwin-Williams paint ad. We cover the earth. Draped with blood and soaked with tears. And what keeps it all going? We know, don't we, compadre? We know. That guilty stealth of lovers, as they sneak into the dark behind the bushes to do their dirty work. And the post coitum tristus, eh? But who can fight it, man? A poem, Willy, for you: Breathes there the man with balls so dead Who never to himself hath said, "You know, by christ, come to think of it, I could use some strange ass in my bed." Well, just a thought. So write, you bastard. You owe me three letters. Four now. At least a picture postcard maybe? You and a sunset canyon scene, with one drunk Hopi in foreground and the sky beyond all lushed up in gorgeous reds and yellows like one of Gawd's own celestial pizza pies. This lyf so short, the Art so hard to lerne. -Art (Ph.D.) |