Multi-parted, like Tin Cowboy.
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This is my suicide note. This is my swan song. Those of you reading it are about to be entreated to one of greatest deceptions ever pulled on me, ever, and if you were expecting something else – perhaps an allegory, perhaps a morality play, then please leave now. Close this volume, walk away, and forget you ever picked it up again. This is no land of morality, this is no land of justice. This is the land of my death.
After talking to Marlene, I finally figured out where it all started. What sparked the entire mess, and that was Julie Cunningham. Julie Cunningham is a cute girl with burned out eyes and a friendly smile. She had soft hands – very soft hands – and came from rich parents. Julie Cunningham was my first girlfriend, in the fifth grade, but that didn’t last. Not many things last in the fifth grade.
Julie Cunningham, the girl with soft hands and dead eyes, loved cocaine beyond all reason. She loved it more than she loved me, she loved it more than she loved her friends, and she loved it more than she loved loyalty. Julie’s nose was best friends with cocaine. Her nerves were roommates with the powerful feeling that only the white powder can deliver. Her soft, subtle frame that could easily trick you onto your knees had only one weakness.
She could get you off without even touching you, she was that good, and that was all thanks to the coke. You had to be creative if you wanted to keep up with the inflationary prices. You had to be WITH IT, even if you came from money, to keep up such an expensive habit, boyfriend, mistress, blow-job.
Julie was nothing short of amazing. She had soft brown hair, long tapered fingers, a laugh that you would kill for and a smile that you would die for, but she didn’t keep anyone. She didn’t keep anyone other than white powder. She was a loner, and if you didn’t know that, you were as good as kidnapped.
I was not engaged to Julie Cunningham. I did not have sex with her, she never got me off without using her hands. I knew about her – people got to talking – and I stayed away. I stared at her with contemptuous eyes.
I didn’t come from money. I didn’t come from poverty, either, but I did come from the lower middle class. And in a city like this, if you came from lower middle class, you knew to hate the rich kids. They could and would make your life a living hell with the drop of a top-hat and cane.
So, I was not engaged to Julie Cunningham, moreover, I loathed her. I wished her to un-exist, and I wanted nothing more to do with her life than what transgressed in fifth grade (which by all standards of dating today ‘wasn’t much to speak of.’) and the eventual breakup.
And I did not know the role Julie Cunningham would come to play into this until much later, until it was already too late.
I’m staring at the pill bottle pretty hard. Maybe if I concentrate, the number will double and it can be a sure thing. I hope so. Marlene doesn’t even know what I’m about to do, and I trust her with everything… Despite the fact that – Well, despite her stature. She doesn’t come from money, but she comes for money.
Now you know about Julie.
Let me tell you about another girl. One who was infinitely more important to me than Julie, one who meant the world and a half, if that was possible. I would have lassoed the moon (Thanks, James Stewart) and given it to her in a heartbeat.
Wendy Millan. Such an average name for such an above average – I won’t say woman, no, because I want you to be as enamored with her as I used to be – angel. Long, red hair, milky white skin, green eyes, and quite frankly, a body that wouldn’t quit. A good girl. A girl that went to Church every Sunday and made sure to pray.
I met Wendy – well, the devil is in the details, suffice to say I met her and she met me and within a week we were holding hands, I was carrying her books, we were kissing before class and stealing away to the theatre to cuddle. She was perfect – and when she won Prom Queen of Westing High, I was proud, despite not even getting a kingly nomination.
She invited me up on stage. The Prom King was furious, sure, but she always had a way with words.
Prom night, we had sex for the first time.
When we finished, she rolled over and spilled a couplet into my ear before passing out.
“You were a wet dream for the prom queen.”
Any case of the shakes or inadequacy I had before that moment were long gone with the simple utterance of that phrase, such a simple phrase that melted me. I was hers and she was mine and we were together.
We had even planned on going to the same colleges, see? There’s a nice local one, cheap, but if you survive there, you can survive anywhere. The brochure makes it look much nicer than it actually is, but getting accepted to Westing is much more difficult than you would think.
But we both got it.
We did it, her and I, we got accepted to the same college. The day we got the letters, she cried and I held her. It was Norman Rockwell, minus the parents.
Mine had died in an avalanche.
Her’s had passed on a cruise.
We had each other and not a lot of money. We emancipated ourselves from our Godparents the second we got our acceptance letters. I took a job flipping burgers and boiling fries, and she – Well, I thought she worked in a Saks.
I know there wasn’t enough time for you to fall as completely in love with her as I had, but time is running short, I fear. Someone will notice their pills are gone, someone will notice the bathroom door is shut, and that’d be the end of it.
So, let’s delve, shall we?
Take a look at this standard hotel on the corner of Wilmouth Avenue. Kind of a shady area to be sure, but not bad. Twenty stories high, and in every window you can see the same unenthusiastic ****ing, girls with dead eyes like Julie hopping up and down like they were on a super bounce, the only variable in each window is bra on, or off.
The only reason it’s really appealing would have to be the spacious front door and friendly desk clerk.
If you stood on the corner across from the hotel, you could see many, many things. Nice Christian girls going in with rosaries on, coming out with their rosaries off. Priests, preaches, upstanding members of society, the rich, the poor – they would all congregate at the Wilmouth Suites for the simple pleasure in life of soliciting a prostitute.
I myself have never been to the Wilmouth Suites, but Marlene has told me about them.
Lawyers, virgins, teen lovers – it was a place to get off and get away.
And if you were standing on the corner on the night of May Fifth, you would have seen Wendy Milan tentatively enter the hotel. You would wonder, “Well, what exactly is an angel like that doing in a seedy place like the Wilmouth Suites?”
There are a thousand answers, but only one of them is right.
She could be going there, trying to drum up business for Saks, but Wendy didn’t really work at Saks. She could have been going there, trying to get directions on how to get away from there, but that’s not the case either.
No, the real answer to “What exactly is angel like that doing in a seedy place like the Wilmouth Suites,” is, “Paying off a debt.”
But the answer, as simple as I would like it to be, isn’t really that simple at all.
Enter Julie Cunningham, ex-angel, coke fiend extrordinaire.
Now were going to flash back a few weeks before the Wilmouth Suites.
And we’re going to watch a scene unfold between two very smart people.
Wendy and Julie.
-
-
This is my suicide note. This is my swan song. Those of you reading it are about to be entreated to one of greatest deceptions ever pulled on me, ever, and if you were expecting something else – perhaps an allegory, perhaps a morality play, then please leave now. Close this volume, walk away, and forget you ever picked it up again. This is no land of morality, this is no land of justice. This is the land of my death.
After talking to Marlene, I finally figured out where it all started. What sparked the entire mess, and that was Julie Cunningham. Julie Cunningham is a cute girl with burned out eyes and a friendly smile. She had soft hands – very soft hands – and came from rich parents. Julie Cunningham was my first girlfriend, in the fifth grade, but that didn’t last. Not many things last in the fifth grade.
Julie Cunningham, the girl with soft hands and dead eyes, loved cocaine beyond all reason. She loved it more than she loved me, she loved it more than she loved her friends, and she loved it more than she loved loyalty. Julie’s nose was best friends with cocaine. Her nerves were roommates with the powerful feeling that only the white powder can deliver. Her soft, subtle frame that could easily trick you onto your knees had only one weakness.
She could get you off without even touching you, she was that good, and that was all thanks to the coke. You had to be creative if you wanted to keep up with the inflationary prices. You had to be WITH IT, even if you came from money, to keep up such an expensive habit, boyfriend, mistress, blow-job.
Julie was nothing short of amazing. She had soft brown hair, long tapered fingers, a laugh that you would kill for and a smile that you would die for, but she didn’t keep anyone. She didn’t keep anyone other than white powder. She was a loner, and if you didn’t know that, you were as good as kidnapped.
I was not engaged to Julie Cunningham. I did not have sex with her, she never got me off without using her hands. I knew about her – people got to talking – and I stayed away. I stared at her with contemptuous eyes.
I didn’t come from money. I didn’t come from poverty, either, but I did come from the lower middle class. And in a city like this, if you came from lower middle class, you knew to hate the rich kids. They could and would make your life a living hell with the drop of a top-hat and cane.
So, I was not engaged to Julie Cunningham, moreover, I loathed her. I wished her to un-exist, and I wanted nothing more to do with her life than what transgressed in fifth grade (which by all standards of dating today ‘wasn’t much to speak of.’) and the eventual breakup.
And I did not know the role Julie Cunningham would come to play into this until much later, until it was already too late.
I’m staring at the pill bottle pretty hard. Maybe if I concentrate, the number will double and it can be a sure thing. I hope so. Marlene doesn’t even know what I’m about to do, and I trust her with everything… Despite the fact that – Well, despite her stature. She doesn’t come from money, but she comes for money.
Now you know about Julie.
Let me tell you about another girl. One who was infinitely more important to me than Julie, one who meant the world and a half, if that was possible. I would have lassoed the moon (Thanks, James Stewart) and given it to her in a heartbeat.
Wendy Millan. Such an average name for such an above average – I won’t say woman, no, because I want you to be as enamored with her as I used to be – angel. Long, red hair, milky white skin, green eyes, and quite frankly, a body that wouldn’t quit. A good girl. A girl that went to Church every Sunday and made sure to pray.
I met Wendy – well, the devil is in the details, suffice to say I met her and she met me and within a week we were holding hands, I was carrying her books, we were kissing before class and stealing away to the theatre to cuddle. She was perfect – and when she won Prom Queen of Westing High, I was proud, despite not even getting a kingly nomination.
She invited me up on stage. The Prom King was furious, sure, but she always had a way with words.
Prom night, we had sex for the first time.
When we finished, she rolled over and spilled a couplet into my ear before passing out.
“You were a wet dream for the prom queen.”
Any case of the shakes or inadequacy I had before that moment were long gone with the simple utterance of that phrase, such a simple phrase that melted me. I was hers and she was mine and we were together.
We had even planned on going to the same colleges, see? There’s a nice local one, cheap, but if you survive there, you can survive anywhere. The brochure makes it look much nicer than it actually is, but getting accepted to Westing is much more difficult than you would think.
But we both got it.
We did it, her and I, we got accepted to the same college. The day we got the letters, she cried and I held her. It was Norman Rockwell, minus the parents.
Mine had died in an avalanche.
Her’s had passed on a cruise.
We had each other and not a lot of money. We emancipated ourselves from our Godparents the second we got our acceptance letters. I took a job flipping burgers and boiling fries, and she – Well, I thought she worked in a Saks.
I know there wasn’t enough time for you to fall as completely in love with her as I had, but time is running short, I fear. Someone will notice their pills are gone, someone will notice the bathroom door is shut, and that’d be the end of it.
So, let’s delve, shall we?
Take a look at this standard hotel on the corner of Wilmouth Avenue. Kind of a shady area to be sure, but not bad. Twenty stories high, and in every window you can see the same unenthusiastic ****ing, girls with dead eyes like Julie hopping up and down like they were on a super bounce, the only variable in each window is bra on, or off.
The only reason it’s really appealing would have to be the spacious front door and friendly desk clerk.
If you stood on the corner across from the hotel, you could see many, many things. Nice Christian girls going in with rosaries on, coming out with their rosaries off. Priests, preaches, upstanding members of society, the rich, the poor – they would all congregate at the Wilmouth Suites for the simple pleasure in life of soliciting a prostitute.
I myself have never been to the Wilmouth Suites, but Marlene has told me about them.
Lawyers, virgins, teen lovers – it was a place to get off and get away.
And if you were standing on the corner on the night of May Fifth, you would have seen Wendy Milan tentatively enter the hotel. You would wonder, “Well, what exactly is an angel like that doing in a seedy place like the Wilmouth Suites?”
There are a thousand answers, but only one of them is right.
She could be going there, trying to drum up business for Saks, but Wendy didn’t really work at Saks. She could have been going there, trying to get directions on how to get away from there, but that’s not the case either.
No, the real answer to “What exactly is angel like that doing in a seedy place like the Wilmouth Suites,” is, “Paying off a debt.”
But the answer, as simple as I would like it to be, isn’t really that simple at all.
Enter Julie Cunningham, ex-angel, coke fiend extrordinaire.
Now were going to flash back a few weeks before the Wilmouth Suites.
And we’re going to watch a scene unfold between two very smart people.
Wendy and Julie.
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