Historical Artifacts: Emails From Beyond (Part Deux)

Hi, Professor X!

Once again, it’s that time of the year… I need to consult with you sometime this week and get your signature on the LAST pre-registration form I EVER have to fill out because I’m a SENIOR now and I’m going to GRADUATE in May and move to a desert island where I will NEVER EVER have to deal with paperwork again because it makes me INSANE, and also, there will be no E-MAIL, so the Career Development Office can’t find me and send me TEN THOUSAND MESSAGES a DAY reminding me of all the important deadlines that I already missed and that while my classmates move to WALL STREET I won’t even be able to find a job as a MIGRANT WORKER because I have NO qualifications and NO résumé and NOT A CLUE what I’m going to do after college except move to the island and live off of COCONUTS.
Also, it’s 5:00 AM and my thesis, which was supposed to be an astonishing accomplishment that reveals my genius to the world and establishes me as one of the greatest contemporary young playwrights in America, is TERRIBLE and making me very CRANKY.

That aside, however, when can we meet this week? I’ll see Professor Y tomorrow at 3:00 to discuss this abomination that I’m creating, so I’ll be around. I can also do Wednesday before 1:30 and after 2:45, or Thursday between 12:30 and 1:30. Friday, I intend to be recovering from the previous night’s hangover and so I won’t be available until about 7:00 PM, following the post-alcohol guilt and preceding the time that my friends convince me I want to go to Xanadu and dance to misogynistic pop-rap with all the other white kids. So, Friday wouldn’t work (unless you’ll be at Xanadu?). Let me know if any of these times work for you.

Thanks Very Much – TailFeather the Formal

 

Historical Artifacts: Emails From Beyond, Circa 2003

Why is it that you can sometimes feel the reality of people more keenly through a letter than face to face?

Anne Morrow Linbergh, Bring Me a Unicorn (1971)

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Dear Mama –

Hi!  I’m writing from the tiki bar at a Caribbean resort, where a cool ocean breeze is blowing gently over the crystal-clear water and pure white sand to kiss my suntanned brow, as tropical island boys in tiny loincloths serve me fresh shellfish and coconut milk.  I can’t wait for tonight’s disco, followed by the bonfire, when I’ll stroll beneath the shining stars hand-in-hand with Pierre, my exotic new French lover of Swedish/Jamaican/Japanese/Brazilian descent.  Tomorrow we’ll take Pierre’s yacht out to scuba-dive by the coral reef and swim with the dolphins, after which the private helicopter will fly us over a dormant volcano.  I only hope I don’t miss my calypso and wine-tasting lessons back at the five-star hotel!

Just kidding.  I’m in my dorm room in New York, wearing boxers and a bra because it’s about 95 degrees in here with no air conditioning, and I’m mainlining soda so I can read a three-hundred page book and write an intelligent paper on it.  My glasses keep slipping down my nose from the sweat, my back is killing me from hunching over on the floor because I don’t have a desk, and I think there’s fur growing on my tongue.  Also, the overhead light blinks on and off in a weird way and I keep thinking I’m hallucinating from fatigue, but I’m pretty sure it’s really happening.  But it’s all worth it, because I’m getting the best liberal arts education that $120,000 can buy.

I miss you and daddy like crazy.  I hope everything’s okay there, and that the animals are behaving.  I can’t wait to get Home.

Love and Kisses – Tailfeather