All is well now, though. Miss Naughty Nastiness and I have connected with the camp’s three stone-freaks, and if we don’t all get fired it should be a dynamite summer. Three skinny guys with long hair and scraggly beards, but do they ever know where it’s at!! They’re also into each other, so the five of us get together for total group gropes now and then, which is fun.
Love ya,
Dawn
Hello, there, you Mad Poet you! This is Miss Hall speaking. I’m afraid we can’t accept your invitation, as us slaves is not allowed to leave the ole plantation until the end of the season. Until the cotton is harvested, I mean.
You are our freaky Mad Poet and we love you. Kiss Rozanne for me.
Miss Hall
Me too!!!
Dawn
Hi! Just wanted to get the last word in edgewise…
NNN
29
Cuernavaca
Mr. Laurence Clarke
c/o Gumbino
311½ West 20th Street
New York, New York
Dear Larry—
Greetings from the biggest horse’s ass in Mexico.
You guessed it. Fran took off and left me, and I’ve spent the past few days in a drunken stupor. Tequila can really wipe a person out.
Now that she’s gone and it’s all over, I can see what a complete bastard I was. I went and fucked up the greatest friendship of my life for one month of kinging it in Mexico, and now where the hell am I?
Larry, I can’t undo what I did, and what the hell is the point of saying I’m sorry? Especially when you already went ahead and forgave me. The best I can do is plead temporary insanity. That’s what it was. I was literally out of my mind.
And so was Fran. I’m not putting any blame on her. We both managed to convince ourselves and each other that we were Romeo and Juliet all over again. Everything was at such a constant fever peak that of course it was all artificial and we couldn’t stay at the peak all the time and when we fell it took forever to touch bottom because we started so high off the ground.
What I regret most of all is the things I wrote to you and the way I misinterpreted what you wrote to me.
What’s really ironic is that the thing that finally killed our relationship was me trying to take your advice. I mean the advice in your last letter about doing it to her the way you did to Rozanne Gumbino. I mean, in the ass. Of course things had slipped to a pretty low state by then and maybe the end was inevitable, but taking your advice certainly brought things to a head.
The hell of it is that I honestly think your advice would have worked if I just could have brought it off properly. You just may have come up with the greatest discovery since the wheel. But I couldn’t hang in there long enough. I gave her about a half a dozen strokes and shot my bolt, and at that stage all she was doing was screaming and trying to get away.
Well, that sure as hell tore it, fella. She lashed into me like I was the Markee de Sade, what a horrible man I was, how my true nature was now emerging, and all that crap. I didn’t even try to explain. I thought, well, that’s the end of it, and I guess deep down inside I was relieved. At least there would be no more of that off-again-on-again shit. At least it was over and done with and I could go out and get drunk, which is what I did. That tequila gives you a hangover that doesn’t quit, and the only thing to do is go out and get drunk again.
I’m sober now, and I guess I’ll stay that way because I can’t afford much heavy drinking, even at Mexican prices. Wouldn’t you know that she took every centavo with her, except for what I had in my wallet. Which is enough for me to live on, but for how long is anybody’s guess. I can’t afford to buy film, and if I don’t have film I can’t do any magazine assignments, so I may be stuck in this fucking hole for the rest of my life, and I guess I don’t deserve much better than that.
Damn it all, it would have worked. What I’m going to do is wait here until I find a nice rich girl with big tits who’s really looking for it, and then I’m going to fuck her in the ass until she can’t see straight. No more six strokes and over. If it takes self-hypnosis, I’ll try that.
Well, now you know how things are with your old pal. For what it’s worth, thanks for trying to help. It’s not your fault things went the way they did.
Adios, motherfucker,
Steve
30
Hicksville
July 22nd
Mr. Laurence Clarke
c/o Gumbino
311½ West 20th Street
New York 10011
Lovable Laurence,
CANNOT HACK HICKSVILLE. WISH VISIT YOU FRIDAY. ADVISE SOONEST IF POSSIBLE. WILL BRING DYNAMITE EROTIC PAINTING FOR YOUR APARTMENT. IF THIS REALLY TELEGRAM INSTD LETTER IMPOSSIBLE TELL YOU LOVE YOUR GREAT BIG PENIS. LOVE YOUR GREAT BIG PENIS.
Alison
31
c/o Gumbino
311½ West 20th St.
New York 10011
July 24
Miss Alison Keller
c/o General Delivery
Hicksville, Long Island, N.Y.
Dear Alison,
COME AS SOON AS YOU CAN. ALL PUNS INTENDED.
Sexual & Western Union
32
219 Maple Road
Richmond, Va.
July 23rd
Mr. Laurence Clarke
c/o Gumbino
311½ West 20th St.
New York 10011
Dear Ex,
You make a mistake, lover. Up to a certain point, your letters really were getting to me. So I thought I might drop in on you and see if we couldn’t have fun in an old-friend-type way.
But you loused it up, because I guess you really don’t understand little Lisa at all. You never understood me when we were married, so how you could understand me now is a good question.
Maybe orgies and switcheroos are what you and Miss Fettuccine and your little schoolgirls enjoy. Maybe that’s very much where it’s at, and maybe my generation gap is showing. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a shit, as Rhett Butler really said.
Lisa is just an old-fashioned girl. I’m afraid. All I want is one man who knows he’s a man and who’s man enough to make me know it.
For a while there, even though I should have known better, I actually thought you might turn out to be that man after all. Maybe that’s because you’re a writer and tend to come across better on paper than you do in person. I don’t know. But it was a mistake on my part, just as every man I meet turns out to be a mistake on my part, although I honestly sometimes think they’re all really a mistake on God’s part and not mine.
I know you think of me as a ballbreaker. You’ve made that perfectly clear often enough. Well, you’re not the only man who ever came to that conclusion, and maybe I am a ballbreaker, but if so, it’s only because every man I meet has unbelievably fragile balls. Hit a high note and they shatter to bits.
What I am, and all I am, is a woman. And what I want, and all I want, is a man who knows what to do with a woman when he finds one. A strong man, Larry. A man with real balls on him. A man that I can’t break. A man that would break me instead, and put the pieces back together so that I could feel whole and complete for the first time in my life.
I don’t know if Daddy read the letter before passing it on to me. A cute little game on your part but I’m afraid I’m not playing, because I really don’t care. I’m sick of Richmond, it was a mistake to come here, but where the hell else would it be any better? I’d go to the moon if I thought it would do me any good.
I’m afraid you and Miss Arrivederci won’t have the pleasure of eating fried rice out of my cunt, or whatever it is you’re doing these days.
Ciao,
Lisa
33
c/o Patricia Kettleman
14 Fairfax
Albuquerque, New Mexico
July 23rd
Dear Larry,
Perhaps this is old news to you, but I have left Steve. I must have been insane to have anything to do with hi
m in the first place. I guess I built him up in my mind as some kind of perfect person because I needed an excuse to get out of our marriage, which had turned bad for both of us. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire.
I won’t go into details. I was already beginning to realize that he was not the person I thought he was, and then one night he did something absolutely inhuman. I can’t even tell you what he did. I don’t want to think about it, let alone put it on paper. Let me just say that it was horribly painful for me and that he went right on with it in spite of all my pleas.
I would ask you to take me back, but what is the point of it? We are no good for each other. In fact, the last thing I want is to look at a man. I always thought Women’s Liberation was silly, but they really have got something. Men exploit women constantly, in and out of bed. It’s a natural law of nature, though. All the picketing in the world isn’t going to change it, but that doesn’t mean a woman has to like it.
Sometimes I think I should have become a nun.
I’m staying with an aunt of mine. Patricia Kettleman. I don’t think you ever met her. She was widowed three or four years ago. One of these days, if I get up the courage, I just might tell her how lucky she is.
Fran
34
MEMORANDUM
From: Laurence Clarke
To: Laurence Clarke
Date: 26 July
Subject: Various subjects
Aha!
L.C.
35
c/o Gumbino
311½ West 20th St.
New York 10011
July 26
Mrs. Lisa Clarke
219 Maple Rd.
Richmond, Va.
Dear Lisa:
I apologize. For what? For everything.
Lisa, your letter was an eye-opener. I wish you had said what you did years ago. Things might not have worked out any differently between us—you’re absolutely correct in your estimate of the unbridgeable gap between us—but at least I might have understood you better. Although perhaps it’s true that the only way we can learn things is to be told them at the proper time.
I’m glad, though, that you finally let go and told me things about yourself I should have known years ago. You are a fine person, Lisa, and I can only say that I hope you someday meet a man who is man enough for you.
The world is a hell of a mess, isn’t it? It’s the damnedest thing, the way things never work out right for people. People keep falling in love with each other, or thinking they’ve fallen in love with each other, or at the very least, falling in bed with each other, and they keep turning out to be wrong for each other and all they really do is fuck up one another’s lives.
I’m not speaking for myself at the moment, as my present situation is ideal. Rozanne and I are perfect for each other, although I can certainly see how either of us would be quite impossible for any other human being.
As a matter of fact, what brings on this miasma is word I’ve just had from Steve and Fran. Despite the tone I may have taken in my letters to them—a callow sort of sniping I now see was quite unworthy of me—I really thought Steve and Fran would be right for one another.
You see, Fran left me because I wasn’t man enough for her. I knew that at the time, whether or not I wanted to admit it to anyone, myself included. And I knew she certainly wouldn’t have that problem with Steve Adel. I don’t know how much you know about Steve, but the one thing that was always a sore point in our otherwise ideal friendship was that I envied him his manhood. There’s an inner strength about him, not always evident at first glance, that is really awesome.
Few women notice this right away. Of course, Steve’s not the typical make-out artist. It takes a special sort of woman, a strong sure-of-herself woman, to attract him in the first place. He was never the type to bother with round-heeled pushovers. Mattress girls, he would call them, though not without a certain degree of sympathy.
I thought Fran had met her match in Steve, and while I may have begrudged them their happiness, I also envied them.
What I never stopped to realize was that, this time, it was Fran who was overmatched.
He turned out to be literally too much for her.
Isn’t that irony of the most bitter sort? Fran’s in New Mexico now, living with a widowed aunt and thinking of entering a convent. Thinks all men are beasts because she finally experienced a real man. And Steve’s stuck in Cuernavaca because she ran off with all his money, and anyway he has no place to go. From his letter, he sounded pretty miserable. I gather he hasn’t met anybody interesting. All sorts of available broads, but he was never the type to waste his time on available broads.
Who would have thought it would end this way?
Well, enough of this outpour of melancholy. Once again, I’m glad I’ve taken the time to work it all out on the old typewriter. I owe the Messrs. Smith and Corona a monumental debt. I’ve shaken the mood, and I only hope the result won’t be to shove you down into a depression. I still believe that there’s a right person for every person, and though it may seem Pollyannaish to say it, I’m sure the day will come when you’ll find the man that’s right for you. And perhaps one day even Steve will find a woman equal to him.
Got to cut this short. Jennifer’s coming over for dinner à trois, and I want to get this in the mail before she arrives.
In haste,
Larry
36
c/o Gumbino
311½ West 20th St.
New York 10011
July 26
Mrs. Laurence Clarke
c/o Kettleman
14 Fairfax
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Dear Fran:
I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am for you. Yet, in a way, I’m glad that things turned out as they did, because you know now that life with Steve would have been utterly impossible for you. In that sense, Fran, it’s a damned good thing you found out as soon as you did. Imagine if you had married him. Imagine, if you will, if you had had children by him!
You know, I almost blame myself. Steve was my friend, and I have this loyalty thing that renders me blind to a friend’s faults. Even when I’m aware of them, I don’t let on to others.
If not for this, you never would have started an affair with Steve. I could have told you, for example, that the guy has a Nietzschean attitude toward women. You know the passage in Zarathustra about women being like dogs? The more you beat them, the more they love you? He used to walk around quoting that in college.
To put it bluntly, the man is a sadist. I don’t know what the brute did to you, but I can make a pretty good guess. If I’m right, you would never have had to worry about getting pregnant.
Well, let’s not dwell on unpleasant things. Although you’re absolutely right that our marriage is over—and was over, in many respects, well before you first started sleeping with Steve—I still feel responsible for your welfare. Maybe responsible is the wrong word for it. I care for you, Fran, and I’d like to see you get yourself back on the right track. An affair right now would be the worst thing for you, you’re dead right about that, but at the same time it’s not going to do you any good moping around with some old aunt in Albuquerque.
May I make a suggestion? I think what you need is some time in the open air, time to think, time to relax, time to reactivate your old interest in horseback riding under a clear and unpolluted sky. And, coincidentally enough, there’s a place right near where you are now that I happen to know of, and I can’t think of any spot in the world that would be better for you.
It’s the Bar-Bison Dude Ranch, and the mailing address is Altamont, New Mexico. Unlike so many resorts where you would have men constantly chasing after you, this is a genuinely relaxing place. Do me a favor. Hell, do yourself a favor. The minute you put down this letter, pick up the phone and call Bar-Bison and make a reservation. And go there right away.
I promise you it’ll do you a world of good.
Larry
37
c/o Gumbino
311½ West 20th St.
New York 10011
July 26
Miss Mary Katherine O’Shea
and Miss Barbara Judith Castle
Bar-Bison Dude Ranch
Altamont, New Mexico
Toothsome Merry Cat and Succulent B.J.:
I am enclosing some correspondence from and to my wife, Fran. I think these letters are self-explanatory. Perhaps the summer will turn out to be more entertaining than you may have guessed.
Ellen was here recently and sends you both her love. Alison is due shortly with what she describes as an erotic painting for our apartment. And I had a letter the other day from Dawn and Naughty Nasty Nancy. It looks as though Camp Whatchamacallit is working out well, although Dawn had a fairly hysterical scene with a lifeguard. But rather than spoil it, I’ll let her tell you herself when she sees you.