Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man - Lawrence Block [39]
(1) Your mother must not find out. This means that you must avoid discovery. It also means that you must be sure Ralph will not, through some misguided impulse, tell her himself. He could do this out of guilt, or he could throw it in her face out of sheer shitfulness. If there’s the slightest chance he might do this, stay the hell away from him.
(2) Neither of you can fall in love with the other. I think you’re sharp enough not to fall in love with Ralph. It would be a natural mistake for you to make, but fortunately you’re sufficiently self-analytical enough to be forewarned. And if you make it sufficiently obvious that the whole thing is inconsequential to you, male pride should keep Ralph from falling in love with you. Unless he’s a hopeless loser, in which case you ought to stay away from him in the first place.
End of lecture.
Things have been generally good for me lately. As you can see from the return address, I’ve moved slightly uptown and am living with Rozanne Gumbino. I think you read some of my letters about her during your defloration. Well, not during. Before or after.
Have a good summer, kid. I envy you all that fresh air and sunshine. But New York does have its compensations, as you know.
Do you ever get a chance to get away? If you can ever make it to New York, please do. You can always stay overnight at our place. Rozanne is anxious to meet you.
Madly and poetically,
Larry
22
c/o Gumbino
311½ West 20th St.
New York 10011
July 12
Miss Mary Katherine O’Shea
and Miss Barbara Judith Castle
Bar-Bison Dude Ranch
Altamont, New Mexico
Dear Merry Cat and B.J.:
By now I trust you are both settled in for the summer, riding spirited bays and roans and mucking out the stables. When I think of you on the horses, I wish I were your saddles. When I think of the stables, I am reminded of that furnished room in Darien.
May I offer some unsolicited advice? It is, after all, one of the prerogatives of old age. If you’re not in the mood, just skip the following paragraph.
Here goes. The thing is, the two of you are very much involved with one another. As I’m sure you have already come to realize. This never constituted any enormous hangup while you were at school, because the other four daughters of Lancaster were around, and there were various males, myself not (I fondly hope) the least among them.
Now you’re out in God’s country with nothing much around but squares on vacation and cowboys on horseback. You may dig some of the cowboys—anything’s possible—in which case there’s no problem. You may even dig some of the squares, as far as that goes, in which case again there’s no problem.
But it’s also possible that you won’t, and that there won’t be any other interesting females around either, and that you’ll have only each other.
If so, there’s nothing to worry about. That’s the whole point, there’s nothing to worry about. The only worry is worry, to paraphrase FDR. Because you might start brooding that you’re lesbians and that that’s bad and all the rest of it. If you wind up spending the entire summer just balling each other, that’s perfectly fine. It’s much better than balling someone else whom you don’t like, just to convince yourself you’re straight. End of lecture.
Things have been generally good for me lately. As you can see from the return address, I’ve moved slightly uptown and am living with Rozanne Gumbino. I think you read some of my letters about her.
Have a good summer, kids. I envy you all that fresh air and sunshine. But New York does have its compensations, as you know.
I don’t suppose you’ll ever get a chance to get away? But if the summer is a bummer and you quit early, please make it to New York if possible. You can always stay overnight at our place. Rozanne is anxious to meet you.
Madly and poetically,
Larry
23
c/o Gumbino
311½ West 20th St.
New York 10011
July 13
Miss Alison Keller
c/o General Delivery
Hicksville, Long Island, N.Y.
Dear Alison: