By Carl Wyant
Dear Cottontail,
Since I last wrote everything has become unbearably complex.
But first let me say how nice it was to get your last letter, and of course, the 8 by 10 glossies of your recent photo shoot for Pet Of The Month.
I’d been thinking about you before your letter arrived, which isn’t too surprising considering that you drenched my dictionary in perfume so that every time I used it I’d be reminded of you.
Of course the sensible thing to do would be to throw it away and get a new dictionary. But I can’t bring myself to do it. I’m not sure if this is romantic or just perverse, but in any case I feel destined to use that dictionary for the rest of my life, which is a nuisance because I really need a new dictionary, or at least a newer one than mine, which was made back when bushels and pecks were the standard units of measurement and biplanes had just been invented.
But now things are even worse. At least with the dictionary I would only have to think about you for the rest of my life; but now that I have these photos it seems probable that I’ll be thinking of you forever,
incarnation after incarnation, through millions of yuga cycles as reckoned on the Indian calendar… and still I’ll be out there, mournful under the heavens, crying, “Cottontail, where are you?”
But will you care? Fat chance. You’ll be out there with Chet or Chip or Tab or whatever his name is; the blonde chiselled hunk with the washboard stomach and two porsche house on the hill. How is good old Chip these days? Still going around with a mirror fastened to his face so he can gloat over himself every waking minute of the day and night?
But to scrub Chet out of the picture for a minute, you have to admit that we had some good times while it lasted.
The penthouse in San Francisco; sunsets over the Golden Gate; the roses and wine: the whisky and fairy dust and those mysterious blue pills that made work on Monday not only possible but enjoyable; your roll-on glow-in-the-dark glitter; the candle light upon your neo-gothic face paint; the way your green eyes shone like cold fires; how I used to handcuff you to the…
I can’t take it Cottontail. You’re driving me crazy. I can’t go on like this. It has to end. I must never think of you again. I herein vow to never….
Hang on. I just found a post script on the back of your letter. You say here that you have been a bad, bad, girl, and that you want to meet me in Honolulu for two weeks in June so that I can chastise you severely for your wicked behaviour.
Golly, I’ll have to think about this. Sure. I’ll have to think about it for a whole second or so while I phone the travel agent. I don’t know where I’ll get the money but I’ll get it. Hell will freeze over before this situation slips through my fingers. I can always rob a jewellery store or carry out a “hit.” Surely someone needs someone knocked off. I’ll embezzle from the Foundation for the Blind if necessary.
How strange and wonderful life is. One minute you’re down in the pits of misery and despair, and the next minute you’ skipping around like a corn-fed dingbat.
You move me Cottontail. I don’t know why. It’s beyond analysis. No one moves me; no one, that is, but you. Sure, Flopsy and Mopsy might look good on the trampoline in a fleeting sort of way, but there will never be another Cottontail.
Oh no. Here comes the Chief Reporter. The poor blighter thinks I’ve been working on a news story. I must go now. The Chief is now reaching for the Off button on my computer. So many things I wanted to say, such as, I love…
( Whangarei Report – 1999 )