A Buyer for RALPH

Hi, Mike!

Whoopee!

Let us at it.

No more drab nights huddled over the ten-year-old Toshiba laptop trying to figure out how to deal with yet another one of our stoned-out-of-his-gourd so-called "associate editors" who wants his paycheck now even though his review of Joyce Carol Oates's latest was, like the book, inchoate, inconsistent, indescribable, and intolerant. This is a man who hasn't had a worthy idea since he drunk-flunked out of the DeKalb State Normal a half-a-century ago (or more).

You try to edit a gnarly piece submitted by a dowdy if not daffy woman one-third my age and three times as petulant, with her ridiculous spelling, scolding me daily, calling at six a.m. (she's an early riser with a rattly voice) --- ranting at me for each tiny change in her copy ... a lady with a scarcely-hidden distaste for the act and art of writing. (She wants to be famous. She thinks that we are going to make her famous.)

Or how about the monthly chance of failing to find someone five days before deadline to read yet another 730-page book by an impossible, famous, unnamed novelist; and once the book gets here, trying to have our Milpitas State U. Graduate Fiction Writers' Workshop drop-out penning a sensible but-not-too-hostile review which we can at last post five minutes before the midnight deadline with the correct programming, the correct typestyle, the correct spacing ... along with a pretty picture that will bring it to life.

What you are offering us Shawn is a great chance to no more ever hover over the keyboard with another forbidden, life-threatening cigarette in my chops (don't tell my doctor!) --- and another warm bottle of Mickey's Wide-Mouth (don't tell anybody!) and nothing ... nothing in the till for the rent (you try living in a moldy shop-worn non-air-conditioned apartment here!) which is certainly not stylish.

Even though here in Ybor City it is at least warm (we're on the outskirts of a Major Florida metropolis --- you'll love it!) I know, it's not stylish. But when was an overladen ashtray and a bottle of warm Mickey's from the office out-of-whack-mini-refrigerator in any way stylish? Was there anything stylish back there in our past innocent nights, back in the days of Jackie Gleason, the Third Ave. El, Beat-the-Clock, propeller flights to 'Frisco, Bing Crosby, Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, Marlene Dietrich, brand-new coupes down the avenue (clean, shiny!) ... and Cary Grant (sigh). Now he was stylish, no?

And occasionally they'd let us have a night out on the town? Do people still do nights out on the town? Do you?

§ § §

So we immediately accept your offer. I mean: Immediately ... if not sooner!

And if you could send a little ... just a baby deposit ... you understand ... no biggie ... just until we get the papers together, ready to be signed.

Forgive the rental offices. It's not our real estate you want, it is our spirit and life ... right? Just know it was the cheapest, warmest place we could find to park our computer, complete with eagle-sized mosquitoes and the biggest roaches in the Western Hemisphere (they call them palmetto-bugs, you won't believe that when you try to kill them they squirt you with this stinky roach perfume-smell).

Or better, our pleasure (serious), if you could somehow get us to Bristol, we've always heard it's a bracing place to visit, with a great night-life, (we would need a place to stay, too) and if you could provide us with a little in the way of vittles, it's been some time since we have had what some would call a hearty meal ... we understand you have the world's best fish'n'chips, there in Bristol (you're not talking Bristol, Connecticut are you?) with its great night air from the ocean, you could even take us to see the Clifton Suspension Bridge (they say it's a worth a gander) and we might even be able to spend some time on the good ship Matthew (they don't have a place to sack out for the night, do they? Just kidding!) If you could get the ticket to us within a few days ... better in the next twenty-four hours ... we're ready to roll, daddy-o!!!