The Best of Me(13)
Dear President Clinton: I read in the Sentinel that, thanks to some belt tightening by the likes of yours truly, we can expect a budget surplus by the year 1999. Seeing as you and your penny-pinching gang of thugs have succeeded in destroying the N.E.A., I strongly urge you to take that budget surplus and use it to sponsor a series of important public art works. The most costly and, I believe, energetic of these projects is my enclosed proposal to carpet the state of New Mexico. This piece calls for the hiring of no fewer than fourteen thousand Native Americans. Outfitted in government-issue sun visors and kneepads, these people will work nine hours a day for an estimated period of twelve years. The carpet can be bought wholesale through an uncle of mine in Staten Island, and my boyfriend knows where we can get some tacks. Having lost my grant money to tar and feather the Statue of Liberty, I must take the position that you owe not just me but all creative Americans seeking enlightenment through the majesty of art.
Amanda Savage
Brooklyn, N.Y.
Dear President Clinton: I don’t know how much of a surplus you’re expecting, but I think the first thing you should do is put some stores on your so-called Washington Mall. My family and I visited last summer and were disappointed to find nothing but grass and statues. Since Washington is the capital of our country, shouldn’t its mall be world-class? You’ve got a fountain and plenty of room for parking. Let’s bring on the food court.
Just a suggestion.
The Taylor Gang Turf Haven, Mich.
Dear Mr. President:
I hear you’re looking for ways to spend our budget surplus and thought my little story might inspire you. When I was young, my father would take half of my weekly allowance and put it into a fish tank for my sister’s college education. He did this because he liked her the best and I myself had never expressed any interest in higher education. When, at the age of twenty, my sister left college to become a performance poet, my father returned the balance of my money. It came to two hundred and thirty-eight dollars in coins, and I spent it all on records and submarine sandwiches.
Brian Teetsel
Lake Janet, Fla.
Dear President Pothead: If I remember correctly, the last time we had a surplus, in 1969, you were deseeding a bag of reefer in some cushy college dormitory while I was living in a bamboo cage, eating spiders and dung beetles in an effort to stay alive. Sound fair?
Sooner or later, you’ll have to lay down your bong and do some serious thinking about this surplus situation. While you are no doubt tempted to spend the money on Thai stick or new grow lights for the White House basement, I urge you to take your head out of the clouds and try thinking of someone besides yourself.
Though it probably comes as news to you, wars are fought by men, not by slabs of polished granite. This country deserves a war memorial that resembles a hero, not a retaining wall! As a tax-paying veteran, I demand a monument that looks like me. (See enclosed photograph.) It’s time you set aside your roach clip and found yourself a drug-free American sculptor with a degree in art rather than spelling. Do you want to be remembered as the president who rolled the tightest joints or as the statesman who slept around (a lot!) but still gave the American people something we can all appreciate?
Mull it over, Stoney.
Anthony Primo
Cherry Point, Neb.
You Can’t Kill the Rooster
When I was young, my father was transferred and our family moved from western New York State to Raleigh, North Carolina. IBM had relocated a great many northerners, and together we made relentless fun of our new neighbors and their poky, backward way of life. Rumors circulated that the locals ran stills out of their toolsheds and referred to their house cats as “good eatin’.” Our parents discouraged us from using the titles “ma’am” or “sir” when addressing a teacher or shopkeeper. Tobacco was acceptable in the form of a cigarette, but should any of us experiment with plug or snuff, we would automatically be disinherited. Mountain Dew was forbidden, and our speech was monitored for the slightest hint of a Raleigh accent. Use the word “y’all,” and before you knew it, you’d find yourself in a haystack French-kissing an underage goat. Along with grits and hush puppies, the abbreviated form of you all was a dangerous step on an insidious path leading straight to the doors of the Baptist church.
We might not have been the wealthiest people in town, but at least we weren’t one of them.
Our family remained free from outside influence until 1968, when my mother gave birth to my brother, Paul, a North Carolina native who has since grown to become both my father’s best ally and worst nightmare. Here was a child who, by the time he had reached the second grade, spoke much like the toothless fishermen casting their nets into Albemarle Sound. This is the grown man who now phones his father to say, “Motherfucker, I ain’t seen pussy in so long, I’d throw stones at it.”
My brother’s voice, like my own, is high-pitched and girlish. Telephone solicitors frequently ask to speak to our husbands or request that we put our mommies on the line. The Raleigh accent is soft and beautifully cadenced, but my brother’s is a more complex hybrid, informed by his professional relationships with marble-mouthed, deep-country work crews and his abiding love of hard-core rap music. He talks so fast that even his friends have a hard time understanding him. It’s like listening to a foreigner and deciphering only shit, motherfucker, bitch, and the single phrase You can’t kill the Rooster.