j'ai trouvé benjamin rodger - en cachette!

ce matin, in our mailbox. stuffed into a standard number ten wearing gaudy white glasses and a button-down print shirt. he didn't smile, hasn't been sleeping well. neither have i. tells me things have been hard at work. gossip. i can relate. this side of the atlantic, his letter finds me sick with anger, nails bitten to the quick, wondering what i could've done differently. envisioning, the gavel having silenced the whispering room, a procession of preachy syllables emerging from the judge's mouth: "tem-pest-u-ous, but not en-ti-re-ly un-sym-pa-the-tic, en-ig-ma-tic some might say... ." i resist a full accounting of our crooked days and ways, remembering instead the hours we painted, cried, were naked, broken, beautiful, reckless, drunk. details enough, i say. details enough. what's that i hear? you'd like something more? a confession, so as to properly condemn me before my peers? have it, then: i am unabashedly promiscuous, incorrigibly filthy, an unapologetic lush. i dominate conversations, leave dishes unwashed, fall asleep without undressing. i am fat, unworthy of sympathy, arrogant but easily wounded. more? i am incapable of frugality, essentially unreachable by phone, prone to rants and sudden changes in mood. i am not and have never been an honest vegetarian. or an honest socialist. i am weak-willed and easily flustered. i am completely out of touch with popular culture. i have yet to recover from childhood. satisfied? shall i go on?