TERMINAL LAUGHTER

I don’t want to wake you from slumber, sweetie, so let me simply whisper all manner of nice in the direction of your pale, awesome face. Chamomile Rosary McDinah, I’ve gotta tell you, this has been, without a doubt, the best relationship I’ve ever been in. I know this must sound trite, and that I’ve only been with two other girls, but you’re so different…and I mean that in my heart. You just do your own thing! You’re constantly wearing those beautiful satin party dresses, regardless of the occasion, and I love that wonderful shade of, like, really dark green, your eyes take on right before you start crying. I mean, it’s even kind of cool that you see the visage of your overbearing Scottish father in the lake where he drowned every so often. So many girls at my school just kind of pretend to be weird and troubled because they shop at Value Village and listen to Blur and stuff. Not you, though.

And of course, I don’t give one good damn about the age difference! Hell, I think it’s kind of cool! Call me old-fashioned, and I guess you’d know what that stuff’s all about more than I would, but I’m pretty sure there was a time when the perfect woman was a frail bourgeois-in-decline who struggles in vain against the ravages of her late thirties, and honey, you’re strugglin’ in vain like a real champ! We reeaallllly don’t even need to install those dimmer switches at my dorm, truuust me.

Besides, with age comes wisdom, and you, my – m’lady, have taught me so much. And like, I dunno, this is kind of weird I guess, but thanks for opening me up, you know, sex-wise. I didn’t really date a lot in high school or whatever, and I mean well – sheesh man, lets just say I’d never done it in a remote New England infirmary before! Frig, when you were done with my thirteenth distinct encounter with sex, let’s just say I wasn’t much more mentally prepped to leave that place than you were! And hey, kinda crass, but I’m throwing it out there: If you don’t count tears, that’s the most W-E-T I’ve ever seen you!

Sorry. Sorry I said that. That was…

Plus I mean it’s such a riot when we’re just chilling out in the common room and having a few drinks, y’know? God, I mean, finally, a girl who doesn’t mind reverting to literal childhood, in her mind, once in a while! It’s really been hella cool, sharing tumbler after tumbler of bourbon with you, watching the condensation drip from your glass as it shakes violently in your tiny, like, good-looking hands.

And I know you’ve been jerked around by a lot of your boyfriends in the past, but I’d like you to think that maybe I could be a fresh start for you. I think I’m just as good as any of those guys, anyhow. I mean, come on, I think I can compete with the business guy with syphallis, probably any of those sightless African-American stable boys, and even that Polish merchant marine you’re always shuddering involuntarily about. That dude sounded like this one bro-ey jock from my high school, Freddy something. I mean I guess sometimes I worry you’ve still got feelings for that Finnegan guy, his name taking up as it does nearly every single word you say when you’re sleeping with your eyes open. But dude’s been your half-brother for something like, what, 40 years? Why not let the new kid step up to the plate? Just saying is all.

Shit, man, it’s a little early to say so, but I kind of think we’re kind of, well, wicked for each other. I certainly won’t let fate intervene with me having a found a girl like you, no sir, not if this here fellah has anything to say about fate! Not money; not your hysteria; not my parents; not those decorative pistols on your mantle over there, loaded as they may be with symbolism and bullets. Nothing will separate us, not even, like, tons of morphine. No, there is no amount of soothing, self-administered morphine that could ever numb this love, is there, my sweet little Chamomile?