Correspondence June 26, 1987 (letter - part 2)

This is the second part of a scan and transcript of a 5-page letter that I wrote to T from my workplace. The first two pages can be read here.  

In retrospect, some of what I say and how I say it is a little embarrassing, especially the typos and misspellings, but those were days when checking a word's spelling meant finding a book that may or may not have included that word. Things like "meniscus" weren't exactly something that you'd necessarily find in an abridged version of Webster's Dictionary and I'm not even sure a dictionary was kept in the office that I worked in at that time. 

Page 3 (of 5):

Page 4 (of 5):

Page 5 (of 5):

 Transcript:

...most of my pen pals was that he was able to write about things other than KISS. This was about as common as a rabbit giving birth to an only child when it comes to the pen pal world. Even rarer yet was intelligent male pen pals... perhaps one of the reasons I had low expectations of you as a pen pal was that the track record with males was quite bad. I say "the" and not "my" track record because so many females will concur with me on this. If that were one of my, admittedly, sexist reasons then it was totally unconscious.

By the way, this is all being typed on the back of an instruction form for re-application for welfare funds. We are pretty into conservation of almost everything here. Not a scrap of paper escapes this office without it being written on as much as it possibly can. Just think of paper as a glass of water whose meniscus (spelling?) doesn't fall below the lip of the glass and you'll understand the degree to which a scrap must be utilized before we're supposed to dispose of it. If Webster does a new edition in the near future, he'll put "T.L." after the word "thrifty."

At this point, I have realized the true limitations of taping over writing... that is that you can write almost anywhere under almost any circumstances. After all, Francis Scott Key composed by the rockets red glare, Watson wrote in the sterility of his lab, Freud scrawled in the comfort of his office as one of his hysterical females (hysterical, of course, because of their "wandering uterurses"), and one can only ponder under what conditions Kinsey got in the mood to discuss his subject matter (or for that matter, how many Chippendales playing cares Shere Hite had to have on her desk for any edition of the Hite report). The circumstances under which one writes tend to filter into subject matter and therefore create new points to ponder. In my case, the surroundings tend to permeate all I say. Maybe one of the reasons why I'm incapable of spontaneous conversational babbling is that I need certain stimuli to help me think of certain topics. I guess you can file that under one of those things you might think about if it were more interesting, but you probably won't because it's not all that interesting. 

My sister called me and told me that the plural of uterus is "uteri"... that sounds very, very odd to me, but you can't fight Mr. Webster. That reminds me of a resident we once had here. She was involved in the program for the first two months of my employment here. This woman actually had two sets of reproductive organs. I kid you not! That is, two vaginas, two uteri, two sets of fallopian tubes, etc. I guess she could have been in a pornographic Doublemint gum commercial if Playboy had been interested. "Double your pleasure, double your fun...| I supposed that someone her age (she was in her fifties) wouldn't have made a great model and it would have been too early for an appearance on the Playboy channel when she was of a more photogenic age.

Let me tell you about my plans for tomorrow... I am going to meet a pregnant girl and take her shopping at the most pedestrian of shopping centers. We have discount stores here called "Big Lots". the name says it all ("quality" through size). They get in huge crates of products that won't sell anywhere else and sell them to yobbos here that someone on a $1 a week allowance could afford. The products are far from being famous name brands so you're always "at risk" (of your health) when you buy. Mainly, they deal in polyester fashions, irregular linens, and junk food of dubious origin. For instance, there's a type of chip that tastes like seasoned sawdust called "De-Lites". Any product that touts lower calories and uses the word "lite" in any way, shape or form should be AVOIDED). They have "75% fewer calories per bite than conventional chips." They neglect to say that they also have 75% less taste and 75% more carcinogens. I must admit that I can get some of the more mundane products for daily life there for fewer greenbacks... like makeup remover, shampoo, and cleaning products for the household (I'm big into cleaning products, sort of a pseudo-Joan-Crawford complex). However, one should truly avoid sampling too many of their hair care products since there are such things as "curl removers" and shampoos with idiotic French-sounding names that make your head feel like a hundred lice are loose partying it up on your scalp. Such products smell like the water closet of a brothel.

It's 10:00 p.m. and high time that I make up my bed for the night. I don't anticipate sleep in the near future (as I've already stated), but the closer I get to Mr. Sandman, the easier my transition to sleep waves will be. There's nothing worse than being dead tired and having to make the bed, brush my teeth, and clean my contacts so I try to do these things as early as possible. I might as well explain the work area to you. There's a big desk in the middle of the left side of the room and a set of ugly light grey file cabinets against the right wall. There's a day bed at the end of the far left side and a dresser behind the desk where I am now seated. The typewriter this is being done on was lifted from the secretary's office. I hope that no one will be perturbed that I brought it up here for the weekend (I'll carry it back down to the office it came from when I return on Monday). The "day bed" is where I sleep. It's got an ugly blue and white cover on it that's about as soft as a rose stem and would leave a print like a waffle iron on your body if you decided to sleep on top of it. Actually, the room itself, though rather small, has potential. There's a lovely mantle with a marble (white) hearth beneath an old boarded -up fireplace in here. In fact, the house is quite old and has several old fireplaces. The entire office was remodeled by one of the staff (former coworker's name... I spoke of her on tape) less than 2 months ago. She papered, scrubbed, and begged to have it the way she wanted and did a great job. The "begging" was to get the marble hearth unearthed. She cleaned it with a toothbrush in order to convince them to cut the new carpet around the marble.

Anyway, if sleeping in a house with 8 crazy people weren't enough to spook the average person out of getting sleep, the fact that this place was a funeral parlor before we (Transitional Living, Inc. aka T.L.) inhabited it 15 years ago would do the trick. Believe me, it has the look for it! At least I know this room was too small to be a showing place... it was probably an embalming room. 

This is the end for I have lack of sleep to achieve (rather than "no sleep at all"). Excuse the typos, tape soon!

Cheers,

S

Correspondence June 26, 1987 (letter - part 1)

I sometimes wrote to my pen pals from my office. This was back in the days when PCs were not common and I had to use a typewriter. When I look back at such letters, I cringe at the typing mistakes and skipped words, but such was the risk when you could not go back and change something here or there in a message. My writing has, hopefully, gotten a bit better over the years, but I was still a fairly good writer for my age (22) at the time.

Though I taped to T, I chose to write on occasion because I couldn't easily tape to him from work. This allowed me to be in touch with him any time he was on my mind. By the time this letter was written, I was spending no small amount of time thinking about him.

Note: If you click on the pictures, a larger version will load that should be at a readable size.

 Page 1 (of 5):

Page 2 (of 5):

Transcription:

Dear T,

Since you have never been graced with the undeniable wit of my written word, and because I have an incredible urge to communicate with someone intelligent, I am typing to you live from my place of employment. How's that for a long sentence?

I'm not sincerely bored... merely tired and unable to go to sleep. You see (or "ya see", as Bill Cosby says), it's only 8:15 and all of the natives are quietly restless, but not the least bit tired. I had a substantial amount of insomnia last night so I'm already beat and I know these lovely individuals are going to keep me up until 1:00 a.m. (which is their Friday night curfew).

Let me attempt to entertain you with my musings of the evening. This is a day that began with a makeup kit that cost $8.40. We (the illustrious staff here at T.L.) put on of the clients on a true behavior modification program (that means there was a specific target behavior, a monitoring mechanism, and a tangible reward). We wanted to see if behaviorism was as lovely in practice as in theory. The subject was a 42-year-old white female with the I.Q. of a throat lozenge. To give you some idea of how this woman functions, I'll give you a brief case history. 

Norma flunked 1st grade 6 times. At that point, her family and the American educational system called it a day and let her stay at home with Mommy for the rest of her mother's days. When tested for functional level, Norma hit the 6th month of 1st grade as her level. When Norma entered our program, she drew her eyebrows on with a blue liner pencil, wore more base make-up than all 4 KISS members combined, took speed (aka diet pills), ate prunes to help her "lose weight", and would not drink water because it would make her gain weight. If the crystal beauty of Behaviorism's principles can work on her, they can work on almost anyone who comes into the program.

The target behavior was taking medications without reminder. She takes an antipsychotic drug called Trilafon. It is meant to help organize her thoughts. She needs a low dosage because there isn't a Hell of a lot to be organized. Anyway, the monitoring mechanism was a calendar that we put stickers on when she took the medication each day without reminder. By the way, she chose her own reward from a list that included a wallet, dinner with a staff member, a makeup kit, and going to a movie with a staff person. We were quite flattered that she picked makeup over us.

The pristine qualities of Behaviorism worked like a charm for Norma. She is now happily taking her medicine and can go back to painting on her eyebrows in a wide assortment of colors. Actually, I broke her of the blue brows... they're now brown. The one thing I can't seem to break her of is completely shaving her entire face (!).

I wonder what you would have thought about me had we written before we had taped. I am much more fond of writing to people than talking to them for the most part and feel that it is a better form of communication for me. When I'm sharp at it, I'm pretty good. However, I'm not nearly at sarcastic wit as I used to be because of disuse. I had a pen pal in Canada named Clifford to whom I used to compose 10-page novellas rife with cynicism, sarcasm, and innuendo of the rudest sort. He was equally good at returning such types of letters. For reasons unknown to me, he quit writing to me entirely around August of last year. This was after I had sent the dear boy an "Asylum"* promo poster for his birthday. I never even received an acknowledgment that it reached his P.O. box, despite a few attempts on my part to re-open communication after his silence. It also happened after I sent him a picture of my (newer) self. Talk about a blow to the ego... I think I was angrier at the lack of acknowledgement of the gift.

Oddly enough, Clifford was one of the few male pen pals I had ever come to admire enough to even consider some sort of long distance relationship with. He wasn't educated, but he was bright. In fact, he worked in a butcher shop and liked to splatter fake blood on the walls of his house and spray fake cobwebs around his Gene Simmons pictures. Maybe he never wrote back because he ended up getting committed... one can only ponder.

Another thing Dear Clifford (capital "D" intended) had over...

*****

*Asylum was an album made by KISS in 1985.

The second part of this letter is posted here.