Joshua Cohen - Book of Numbers

Are you in Berlin? And in the Dhabi? If so, why? If not, why was Rach’s Amex? And beyond that how can you justify doing that to her again, that extra insult of taking out another card for the account at the time you did,

in case you went broke alone and decided she’d underwrite you forever My character costarring in “The Pryers” (Lincoln Center) is about an “experienced,” which is how I describe any character described as “old,” “gentleman” who worked all his life in the pits of Virginia or West Virginia so he would be able to give his son the best, education, opportunities, and the son who’s my costar is a major respected congressional leader, a friend of the poor and downtrodden like his father, which everyone is after to run for president, the son, but he won’t run, the son, or won’t decide not to until the accusations emerge of sexual improperties with a missing intern, and the media surrounds, and then fiscal improperties relating to the sexual and the media becomes unbearable. His wife has left him and taken the children just as he resigns at the press conference. Then with everyone trespassing his home in the capitol he has only once place to go, back home to the coal pits and father, and all throughout he has been unflappable but now he is flappable because he has to confront his father, which he intends will refuse to forgive him. He doesn’t care about the constitutionts or about his fellow congress, just his father because his mother is dead. I am working like him on the forgiveness. You have to work on getting in touch about your office tomorrow (Sat) or at the very latest after tomorrow (Sun), because I have already getting varying quotes from different trash removers and DON’T DO NOT INTEND to make two trips. The voice of Pixar’s “The Fireplace” I’ve created is an impersonation of Rach’s impersonation of you. “Coming next spring to a theater near you.” Rach does you like a vary enthic “nutty” “professor” liar who talks to everyone like talking to himself and the fireplace doesn’t need logs, it doesn’t need kindling, it burns on its own. I’m going to do that with the stutter you had, which time we met in the park.

Yours during this holiday season that absolves us from sins,

shanah tovah,

Adam

\

From: madamimadam@tetmail.com

To: jcomphen@aol.com

Mon, Oct 3

Re: RidgeWood, 9:36 PM

Besides you know what (you KNOW), the main contention Rach ever counted against you was your lack of a job and now that you’re through living off her sponsorship and have to get one let me recommend to you the trash business. It’s a wracket whose worse aspect is that if the customer has any decency I can’t help but help out, I’m too sensitive having had such jobs before, even though I’m paying through the nose not to. I couldn’t restrain myself and lifted. I wish either of us could feel my spine.

You fouled up and today was the consequence. Fouled! Up! With Rach too emotionally busy to deal with this, because I would do anything to allevate her suffering. Today they and I (Bob Onders from Vanderende, management, and the assistant from your agency, Daniel Maleksen) were scheduled to meet at 10 to let me in, the Refuseniks — which I found online on the recommendaton of theater props and set design friends and for which I should now instead of this should be writing a testimonial to get a rebate — would come at 12, giving me ample time to go through your possessions before the Reuseniks would come, in case there was anything of Rach’s property strictly. YOU CANNOT BE SVADE FROM YOURSELF!1!1 Having never been there before so how could I have known that the time was not ample, in fact, I could not have. Rach printed me a list of what she knew would be hers and have made an exhausting list of your own items also that struck me and will retain them as collaterals (both attached, items to be disposed of pending what the courts will now determine).

(final reciept attached too)

I’m trying to write this in your style …

Or I’ll be honest, truthful’s not your style: besides the airports and an event at the botanical gardens and I think another event on the QM2 at the cruise terminal I don’t think I’dhave been to an outerborough since 1968, the very year I left my parent’s house, which was only according to the tetmap about 2 miles from where you office. Still I’m Brooklyn and you’re Queens I suppose, as if all that out of the way and distitute zoning laws or mileage still matter. I’ll admit to the tepidaton I felt about the neighborhood. My parents moved down to Ocala (Florida) soon after I left and died soon after I hadn’t been back but you recall the 60s through the Koch administration, or you don’t because you’re too young or to quote myself “inexperienced” from Jersey. (“Not from the “neighborhood.”) Anyway it was a good place to live when my parents moved in but became bad when the — I was going to — but I guess it’s a matter of educatin and opportunitie.s

The subway was off for the weekend. “they” always called it the BMT. The 10, the 16, Canarsie Line, Jamaica Line, I remember our phone number began with EV, Evergreen, then ST, which, don’t get me started, and everyone was Jewish not like in books. Most not just small businesspeople like my parents but big strong men like barrels who used to labor in breweries, the women stuffed sausages. Germans toward you but Polish and Yiddish toward us, all Jews. But nowadays I had to get off seven stops out of Manhattan but the subway stopped at five and so I had to take a bus, because of a disruption in service. Everyone on the train was either “inexperienced” and white or “experienced” and not white and you didn’t even have to look at them to tell which you just had to hear who do you supposed was grumbling at the service disruption announcement? the whites!! If it is a matter of education and oppoptunities that make priviledged “the gentrifiers,” then no thank you. Originally “hipster” just meant anyone who was exempt from fighting the Nazis, the psychological and gay. We got out of the station and they handed us free transfers to the bus. Free? But we paid for it already! (when you expect service and when you don’t get the service you expected and so are offer an alternative they can’t call it “free” but whats stopping them).

News to me subway service is always off on weekends. But the bus was a bus bus not a shuttle bus so the stops it made were in between the stations. Though without a display the driver didn’t announce any stops so I went to check but he pretended ignore me. This is the status of public servants nowadays except I’m convinced the MtA is private, like once on a bus from a director’s house in Monticello, NY, which will remain nameless broke down and the driver wouldn’t let us off as we waited for a new bus because of liability issues, and also on the subway every time no one gets up for the PREGNANT! A Mex lady with a full cart between her legs got off at the next stop and the driver drove away before she’d gotten off fully. But this would all have been entertaining if it was research for a role. I’m not sure who to contact about the driver, whether the city or his union.

I had because it was not a shuttle to keep track of the subway and I tried to find and count the stops out the window but lost them and we turned and got found them again and I knew it was my stop. I pressed the strip. I was sure I wouldn’t recognize it but then I did and it was like the experience you know of finding a woman with another man, which I don’t mean to be cheap about it but both of us can be direct that you are happier now. That happened even to me once, Barrow Street, a girlfriend “making out” with Ian Johnson who to me will always be Isaac Jacoby, his parents were on the last Yiddish radio, WARD, WBBC, which despite the broadcasts being over by our age got him “connections,” for showing his paintings and strumming mandolin and doing antiwar pantomime blackbox down in the Village. He went on to host TV gameshows but only after he got his heartattack did they get married, Sonya Tubalsky, the girlfriend, which they inherited her paren’ts SROs and moved out to the Hamptons. I have never been married but would like to change, Josh. You are a bad person but if you too would like “to make a change,” unless the more bad you are makes you the more happier and if that’s the case, go ahead.