Dear Naomi,
The woman who sells bootlegs never has a copy of Marat/Sade. I’d press the issue, but then I would be the asshole. People here crave a bete noire like Theresa of Avila pictured a tiny Christ living in her heart. Usually, I’m happy to oblige. Daddy said you don’t get to pick your penance, just like you don’t get to pick your nickname, which sounds stupid, but it’s his laconic code for “things don’t get any better from here.” The self-pity is bottomless. I spent a quarter-hour staring at my reflection in the coffee like some character from beatnik mythology. The voice on the radio says this is Water Music by Handel as opposed to Water Music by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, I guess, and the stick figures in the restroom will turn absolutely carnal by midday. This is the third poem I’ve read this morning where I’ve found the alcoholism insincere. If I read stuff like this when I was young, I would have been afraid to ever fall in love. It’s all backyards and tearful birds and phony salvation. I wish you best of luck in your art. I aspire to be the Olive Garden of Letters, where the portions are so overwhelming, the low quality is beside the point. Please keep writing. You’re the only person that I miss. I can see the last pay phone on Williams Blvd. from here. One day, I’ll light a candle there in memory of our conversations.
Dear Naomi
It’s not Mardi Gras where you live and probably too cold for parades anyhow. I’m up to it with pacification disguised as noblesse oblige, though maybe I’m looking at it wrong, maybe every year the streets fill with fulmination and portent, and I just miss it. I’m far from the brightest and the best. In the new photos of you by the bead curtain, your house looks ghostly, by which I mean, it feels like there’s someone else with you in the photo who doesn’t make their presence known. It’s as if the image of you now is superimposed on the image I had of you then, plus all the times I must have missed, yet, on the surface, the picture looks uncrowded. It speaks to your elegance, a burden you wield well. Someone at work said prima nocte is all made up. Is that true? That sounds like something you would know. We had an early and intense spring, but now the cold’s returned. When it gets dark, I like to imagine I’m wounded and a little edgy out on the streets of large rodents and bicycle thieves, serving some obscure principle that, if it has a face, keeps it hid behind layers of transparency, and any residual nobility comes from never knowing if you’re actually being noble. Your letters give me a spit of land to stand on. Thank you. There’s no cheering section out here for the ruminative soul; you’re right to stay away. I should be more hard-boiled by these little life lessons. I shouldn’t be afraid to stop writing.
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Justin Lacour lives in New Orleans. His work has appeared or is forthcoming from Susan / The Journal, New Orleans Review (Web Features), and other journals.