From the Archives: A Letter to the Gorilla

I haven’t liked anything I’ve written lately (some of you readerfolk may have noticed that I've posted a couple times and then immediately taken the posts down)  But I want to post something so I unearthed a letter from the archives.  In the summer of 2010, after about 6 months of on again off again dating Inmate 12004 and I had stopped talking for about a month.  In that time he decided he was going to move back home to the East Coast.  We reconciled before he left and I wrote him this letter shortly after he moved:

                                                                                   

August 19^th 2010

Dear Gorilla,

             It was very nice to chat with you today.  I’m glad things are looking up and that NY feels right.  I have to say though that the idea of you living there worries me.  When I asked about your moat [the Gorilla says he likes to have some kind of buffer to help him stay away from alcohol and partying] you said you don’t know anyone but I suspect that you will meet people.  There are lots of people to meet in that gigantic city.  So, I’ve been giving this some thought and I think I may have come up with a solution. 

            There is a lake in Central Park.  Go there in the dark, or ‘under the cover of night’ if you’re feeling poetic.  This way everyone will be sleeping except maybe the meth people and boy people having sex in the bushes.  But they probably won’t care what you’re doing.  They probably won’t even introduce themselves.

            So, you bring your friends and their dumptrucks.  Boypeople have friends with dumptrucks, yes?  K.  The dumptrucks should be full of sand, gravel, jellybeans, or whatever you have lying around.  I’ll leave that bit to you, you know much more about these things than I do. 

            Then you dump the sand/gravel/jellybeans in the middle of the lake to make a small island.  I’m not sure how big this lake is so you might need a giant crane or two to lift the dumptrucks so they can reach the center of the lake to dump their loads.  Again, these details are your responsibility.

            Next step, build stuff on the pile of sand/gravel/jellybeans.  And Voie La!  You have a cozy home with a moat.  You’re welcome.  Oh, you should probably bring a very large sheet (parachute?) to drape over the giant brass toadstool Alice in Wonderland statue.  That shits creepy.  I know I couldn’t sleep with that little lady staring at me.

            Then in the morning when you emerge from your new home there will be lots of people around but they will be happy because they are in a park and not a skyscraper.  So you will be centrally located (I’m assuming, since its called Central Park) but you will have a nice buffer of water and happy park goers between you and the big scary city.  Otherwise, there are lakes and dumptrucks in Oregon as well.  Just sayin. 

Oh!  And I’ve finally found a ridiculously hardcore nailpolish that I suspect could hold up to that irritating thing you like to do to my nails.  So if you come back, I’m ready.

In other news, Bootface [a lady the Gorilla was seeing briefly] and I are Facebook friends.  She’s a strange bird.  She sat down inches from me on a crowded couch at Penguin’s party and didn’t acknowledge me at all so I asked her how she was healing from her bike accident and then over the course of the afternoon we would drift into other conversations and other rooms and then she would silently appear beside me again and I would feel awkward for a second and then try to talk to her again.  This happened several times.  She never actually engaged me directly but she Facebook friended me the next day so I guess it’s official.  And we never talked about you.  I’m not sure if that raises or lowers the weirdness quotient.  

The other night Cosette, my Co-Puppy*, Co-Puppy’s Boyfriend and I went out to the Boyfriend’s family’s amazing home out in the middle of nowhere.  It’s so far out the mosquitoes haven’t even found it yet.  We sang, drank rye whiskey and fell asleep in the woods under the stars.  It was very nice.  But the best part really (aside from the stars and tent-less-ness) was the 2 wonderful dogs.  You would have loved them.  The first was a small brindle boxer with a grumpy old-manish underbite and jowls named Willie.  And the other was a caramel colored dog named Janey who looks like a pitbull/lab mix.  I remembered their names by calling them Janey sadface and Willie madface.  Janey sadface was very sweet and mellow and cuddly.  She was my favorite and should make babies with Rusty.  Says I.  Then in the morning I went to work and altered a suit

v---e---r---y------s---l---o---w---l---y. 

On NPR the other day there was a story called “From Grunting to Gabbing: Why Humans Can Talk” on All Things Considered.  It focused on the physical reasons humans can talk and other primates can’t.  They said that being able to control the air pressure in you lungs as you speak or sing is uniquely human and that if we didn’t have this ability we would explode our vocal chords.  That’s why chimps can only take shallow breaths and can’t make sustained sounds.  And that same change in the shape and length of our airway which allows us to speak and sing also makes it easier for us to choke to death.  I just had to share that because I think it’s cool that (in this case at least) it seems that we adapted to create art and communicate rather than survive.  Woah.  Though I suppose communication is related to survival.  Anyway, it’s an interesting factoid. 

That’s all the news from my side of the country!  I hope you’re safe and well.

Love,

Bunny

*Co-Puppy (noun): A close friend you love and respect and can be brutally honest with.  You both sometimes do dumb shit and you trust them to let you know when you've mucked up and to help you fix it and vice versa.  This very special person is called a co-puppy because two friends navigating their 20's together is like the blind leading the blind or two puppies trying to raise each other.