I don’t even know why I’m writing you this letter. I had to write something, I suppose, and you were on my mind, so I’m writing you. But if I come out, there’s no point in this letter, because I’ll tell you all this stuff in person, which will be better, and if I don’t come out, then there still isn’t any point, because I don’t expect a letter back from you and there really isn’t anything you could possibly say in reply to all this crazy stuff.
So maybe I’m not writing you a letter at all, maybe I’m just making believe to. Maybe what I’m doing is, I’m making believe to tell you the situation so I can try to visualize what your attitude is toward it all. For instance, if you were me right now, what would you do? Would you go to the police? Would you go to Betsy? Would you go to Hester in San Francisco?
Yes, the police. I’m wanted for a statutory rape I didn’t commit, and wouldn’t you just know I’d get the name without the game? Yes, it is funny, but it isn’t just funny, it’s also very serious. Betsy has left me and the cops are after me and I’m not writing the dirty books any more.
I just changed typewriters. Can you tell? This is also a Smith-Corona, just like the one I did the first two pages of this letter on, except this one is beige and the one in Macy’s was blue.
I’m in Gimbels now. See, what happened, I signed in at the YMCA as Dirk Smuff, that’s my dirty-book pen name, and I guess when the cops sent out their man-wanted thing on me they listed Dirk Smuff as an alias of mine — meaning Rod or Samuel or somebody really finked on me — and by God if the Y didn’t suddenly swarm with cops last night. Literally swarm with cops.
Luckily, I wasn’t in my room, I was down the hall in this dumpling’s room, this faggot that picked me up in the shower. For Christ’s sake, don’t get the wrong idea, I haven’t turned queer or anything. I was just not acclimated to being absolutely alone, that’s all, and after dinner, sitting around with a lot of ketchup and greasy hamburger smeared around inside my stomach, looking at the four walls, I began to get miserable, really miserable.
I didn’t even have my typewriter. I’ve been having a thing about the typewriter lately, a sort of minor neurotic problem (that’s the reason for the numbers), so what I did when I went out for dinner, I donated it to the Y.
Well, it was driving me crazy, it was like an evil spirit in an old fairytale, forcing me to write write write, fifteen pages at a time, five thousand words at a time, it wouldn’t let me stop, it kept getting me in trouble and making me say things I didn’t particularly want to hear, so I finally decided, Let somebody else inherit the curse. So I left it at the desk on the way out, a donation, no don’t thank me, I want to be anonymous, just a little token of my esteem, a little acknowledgment of my appreciation of the good work you boys are doing here. So when I came back and the silence set in, the emptiness set in, I couldn’t concentrate on reading, there was nothing to do, I didn’t even have the lousy typewriter to save me.
Then I remembered the dumpling saying he had a television set, and I figured I could handle myself in the situation okay, forgive the sexual reference, so I went down to his room to watch television for a while. And there wasn’t any trouble or anything, he didn’t try any physical pass at all. I think he’s just lonely, too, the faggot business is simply because he figures in order to get companionship he should pay for it somehow.
Anyway, I was in there watching television with the dumpling when we heard this racket out in the hall. There was a Bob Hope special on, from UCLA, it made me think of you, that’s what we were watching. One of those groups of plastic clean youths was singing, I think they honest to God call themselves The Kids Next Door, it was that kind of show. But later on the late show on Channel 2 was going to be Look Back in Anger, I was kind of looking forward to that.
Only I didn’t get to see it. When the ruckus started in the hall, the dumpling got a kind of prissy expression on his face, the busybody look, you know, and went out to see what people were doing in his hall. He was gone a couple minutes, and when he came back he was pale. He shut the door and whispered, “It’s the police.”
I knew right then. I didn’t say anything, didn’t ask questions, I just looked at him.
He whispered, “They’re in your room.”
“They must know I’m in the building,” I said. “The clerk must have told them.”
He was popeyed, in a muted way. He whispered, “What did you do?”
“You wouldn’t believe me,” I said. I got wearily to my feet. In a way, I was glad the decision had been taken out of my hands. I was prepared to go out and meet my unmakers.
But the dumpling rushed forward to close both hands around my forearm, whispering, “I’ll hide you! I’m sure you couldn’t have done anything really bad, I’ll hide you!”
“They’ll look in all the rooms up here,” I told him. “You’ll just get yourself in trouble.”
He looked around, trying to find a hiding place. He wanted to repay me for my silent companionship in front of the TV, I suppose. Also, he was apparently a fan of the kind of television show where people hide each other from the police all the time — Run for Your Life was going to be on after Bob Hope, a fact he’d announced with an expectant sparkle in his eye — so I guess it was a big moment for him, participating in the same kind of plot in real life.
I know I’m being snotty about the poor guy, but who else do I have to feel superior to?
Anyway, his eye finally lit on the window, and he cried, “The fire escape!” When I pointed out this was the front of the building, and the street below was well traveled, he quick told me to go up to the roof and down the fire escape on the back of the building.
I’m turning this goddam letter into a chapter, complete with action and dialogue. I tell you, I’m cracking up. And the clerks here are beginning to give me the fish eye. The typewriters are here for prospective customers to type on, and here I am on my third page, and they’re beginning to think maybe I’m not a prospective customer after all. I only lasted two pages at Macy’s, but they weren’t as busy over there.
All right, let me rush this. I did like he said, up and over the roof, and I felt like a nut. Particularly with that slight fear of heights I have, you know about that. Remember the time I was a kid and I couldn’t get down from Mr. Armbreiter’s garage roof? And they had to call the fire department? That’s all I kept thinking about, up there on that roof in the dark. Here I am a grown man, and I’m running around on a YMCA roof in the middle of the night — actually, it was about twenty to ten — with policemen under my feet, searching for me, my wife gone, my livelihood gone, and now my typewriter gone.
I am now at Stern’s. These tiny ironies keep tweaking my nose. I typed the phrase “my typewriter gone,” and just as I finished, a snotty clerk came over and asked me if I was considering a purchase. So I left Gimbels and walked up 6th Avenue to 42nd Street, and here I am at Stern’s. I’ve got to finish this letter soon. It can’t be fifteen pages long, it just can’t.
I don’t want to tell you any more about last night. I got away from the Y, I slept in an all-night movie on 42nd Street, the gunfights kept waking me up, and today I just wandered around not knowing what to do with myself. They’ve got my car now, of course. And my manuscript, pages and pages of insanity I’ve been typing for the last ten days. And my clean underwear, I’m walking around in dirty underwear.
Everything’s getting stripped away, everything. I’ll be naked before I know it. And here I am going from department store to department store writing you a letter I probably won’t mail to tell you that I don’t know whether or not I’m coming out to see you.
Hester, I don’t think I am. The more I think about you, the more convinced I am that you’re a figment of my imagination, in real life you’re probably just a kooky girl on a spree, you don’t have any more answers than anybody else, and it would only baffle and confuse you to have your older brother pop up out of nowhere trailing a whole soap opera full of complications in his wake.
I can imagine your life. You’re probably on pot and LSD, your sex life has surely grown more complicated since last we met, you’re probably engaged in anti-Vietnam demonstrations and all that hippie business, and in its own way that’s as much conformism as any other army.
Or am I being unfair? Having made you my one hope, the finest thing on earth, here I am debunking you, guarding myself against disappointment.
Hell, I don’t know who you are, and I don’t suppose you know who I am or much care. I may come out to see you, but probably not. And I definitely won’t send this letter, so there’s no point going on with it.
Thanks, anyway,
Ed