Lawrence Block - Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man

What I regret most of all is the things I wrote to you and the way I misinterpreted what you wrote to me.

What’s really ironic is that the thing that finally killed our relationship was me trying to take your advice. I mean the advice in your last letter about doing it to her the way you did to Rozanne Gumbino. I mean, in the ass. Of course things had slipped to a pretty low state by then and maybe the end was inevitable, but taking your advice certainly brought things to a head.

The hell of it is that I honestly think your advice would have worked if I just could have brought it off properly. You just may have come up with the greatest discovery since the wheel. But I couldn’t hang in there long enough. I gave her about a half a dozen strokes and shot my bolt, and at that stage all she was doing was screaming and trying to get away.

Well, that sure as hell tore it, fella. She lashed into me like I was the Markee de Sade, what a horrible man I was, how my true nature was now emerging, and all that crap. I didn’t even try to explain. I thought, well, that’s the end of it, and I guess deep down inside I was relieved. At least there would be no more of that off-again-on-again shit. At least it was over and done with and I could go out and get drunk, which is what I did. That tequila gives you a hangover that doesn’t quit, and the only thing to do is go out and get drunk again.

I’m sober now, and I guess I’ll stay that way because I can’t afford much heavy drinking, even at Mexican prices. Wouldn’t you know that she took every centavo with her, except for what I had in my wallet. Which is enough for me to live on, but for how long is anybody’s guess. I can’t afford to buy film, and if I don’t have film I can’t do any magazine assignments, so I may be stuck in this fucking hole for the rest of my life, and I guess I don’t deserve much better than that.

Damn it all, it would have worked. What I’m going to do is wait here until I find a nice rich girl with big tits who’s really looking for it, and then I’m going to fuck her in the ass until she can’t see straight. No more six strokes and over. If it takes self-hypnosis, I’ll try that.

Well, now you know how things are with your old pal. For what it’s worth, thanks for trying to help. It’s not your fault things went the way they did.

Mr. Laurence Clarke

c/o Gumbino

311½ West 20 thStreet

New York 10011

Lovable Laurence,

CANNOT HACK HICKSVILLE. WISH VISIT YOU FRIDAY. ADVISE SOONEST IF POSSIBLE. WILL BRING DYNAMITE EROTIC PAINTING FOR YOUR APARTMENT. IF THIS REALLY TELEGRAM INSTD LETTER IMPOSSIBLE TELL YOU LOVE YOUR GREAT BIG PENIS. LOVE YOUR GREAT BIG PENIS.

Miss Alison Keller

c/o General Delivery

Hicksville, Long Island, N.Y.

Dear Alison,

COME AS SOON AS YOU CAN. ALL PUNS INTENDED.

Mr. Laurence Clarke

c/o Gumbino

311½ West 20 thSt.

New York 10011

Dear Ex,

You make a mistake, lover. Up to a certain point, your letters really were getting to me. So I thought I might drop in on you and see if we couldn’t have fun in an old-friend-type way.

But you loused it up, because I guess you really don’t understand little Lisa at all. You never understood me when we were married, so how you could understand me now is a good question.

Maybe orgies and switcheroos are what you and Miss Fettuccine and your little schoolgirls enjoy. Maybe that’s very much where it’s at, and maybe my generation gap is showing. Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a shit, as Rhett Butler really said.

Lisa is just an old-fashioned girl. I’m afraid. All I want is one man who knows he’s a man and who’s man enough to make me know it.

For a while there, even though I should have known better, I actually thought you might turn out to be that man after all. Maybe that’s because you’re a writer and tend to come across better on paper than you do in person. I don’t know. But it was a mistake on my part, just as every man I meet turns out to be a mistake on my part, although I honestly sometimes think they’re all really a mistake on God’s part and not mine.

I know you think of me as a ballbreaker. You’ve made that perfectly clear often enough. Well, you’re not the only man who ever came to that conclusion, and maybe I am a ballbreaker, but if so, it’s only because every man I meet has unbelievably fragile balls. Hit a high note and they shatter to bits.

What I am, and all I am, is a woman. And what I want, and all I want, is a man who knows what to do with a woman when he finds one. A strong man, Larry. A man with real balls on him. A man that I can’t break. A man that would break me instead, and put the pieces back together so that I could feel whole and complete for the first time in my life.

I don’t know if Daddy read the letter before passing it on to me. A cute little game on your part but I’m afraid I’m not playing, because I really don’t care. I’m sick of Richmond, it was a mistake to come here, but where the hell else would it be any better? I’d go to the moon if I thought it would do me any good.

I’m afraid you and Miss Arrivederci won’t have the pleasure of eating fried rice out of my cunt, or whatever it is you’re doing these days.

Dear Larry,

Perhaps this is old news to you, but I have left Steve. I must have been insane to have anything to do with him in the first place. I guess I built him up in my mind as some kind of perfect person because I needed an excuse to get out of our marriage, which had turned bad for both of us. Talk about out of the frying pan and into the fire.

I won’t go into details. I was already beginning to realize that he was not the person I thought he was, and then one night he did something absolutely inhuman. I can’t even tell you what he did. I don’t want to think about it, let alone put it on paper. Let me just say that it was horribly painful for me and that he went right on with it in spite of all my pleas.

I would ask you to take me back, but what is the point of it? We are no good for each other. In fact, the last thing I want is to look at a man. I always thought Women’s Liberation was silly, but they really have got something. Men exploit women constantly, in and out of bed. It’s a natural law of nature, though. All the picketing in the world isn’t going to change it, but that doesn’t mean a woman has to like it.

Sometimes I think I should have become a nun.

I’m staying with an aunt of mine. Patricia Kettleman. I don’t think you ever met her. She was widowed three or four years ago. One of these days, if I get up the courage, I just might tell her how lucky she is.

Aha!

Mrs. Lisa Clarke

219 Maple Rd.

Richmond, Va.

Dear Lisa:

I apologize. For what? For everything.

Lisa, your letter was an eye-opener. I wish you had said what you did years ago. Things might not have worked out any differently between us — you’re absolutely correct in your estimate of the unbridgeable gap between us — but at least I might have understood you better. Although perhaps it’s true that the only way we can learn things is to be told them at the proper time.