Letter to Laetitia:
Love Call.


2ba_john_rah_part_05

Laetitia. I’m sitting in front of the Stove. A gas stove. I don’t like turning the heat on before I have to. If I’m sitting in the kitchen for an hour then a little flame on the stove or in the oven takes the chill off. We had a wood stove on Am Homburg for one winter. Or half a winter. It smoked too much. The oil oven smoked too much as well. I’m not a big fan of oil ovens. There are still quite a few houses using it in Saarbrücken. The city used to be black, before I got here, from coal heating. Coal heating stinks like some kind of omen.

Another meeting here tomorrow and umsehen by Richy today. I will likely finish this book today. Maybe tomorrow.

Through I’m somewhat whipped form my lack of sleep this morning – I can’t remember what. It would have been important.

By the way, if you are looking for my number in Saarbrücken, it’s still under my wife’s name and here last name isn’t Snell. SS and WW.

I eat breakfast or lunch and then lay down till U go help Richy. We will get Stan out of bed today as well. He has to get up to take Pig for his walk in the park. And there’s Lisa. the nice girl that may have a roll or not. I don’t know. It’s her decision. The more I think about it, the more I’m wanting to change – no somehow, Barbaralba has to be Barbaralba and not Connie. Maybe her name is Constanze Barbaralba Baker.

In case we don’t get to her, don’t worry, we pick her up again in the letter to Eva what is also waiting to be finished and I’m going to finish it as a divorce present for my wife. I don’t mean to be flip. She wanted me to write something more like this, not the Letter to Laetitia, none of the women want that, the Barbaralba, or anything in the here and now with, I’ll have to ask her if she likes it.

If you will allow it, I’ll dedicate the novel that will come out sooner than one thinks, especially me, to you. You don’t have to marry me and have my children to have the novel dedicated to you, you only have to tell me you would be flattered if I did so. Otherwise, it likely will go undedicated.

Yes this is all mad, but the whole lot of us are mad. We can decide how we want to make our way through the madness. I want you to want to do it with me and I want you to make it clear so I can believe it, as soon as possible. If I can find an address, which can’t be so impossible for a part time detective, I’ll send you a copy strait away. if that happens, I still will be an unpublished writer.

And have only my heart to offer you.

_bunnie stop_


Stan woke up many times and thought he was still dreaming and each time he woke up he thought it was closer to when the real awakening would reach him.

When he managed to focus on his surroundings, he remembered that he was awake. There was no Nikki to be seen or heard but he could still smell her faintly. He took her pillow and breathed it in.

"Nikki.”

He didn’t call out to her. He knew she wasn’t there. She would have left for work. He would know where to find her. He knew he wouldn’t go there to look for her though. She was a suspect in his case. If she wasn’t, he had not been earning Connie’s money. If he hadn’t already used most of it for bills and a few groceries and food for Pig, he could have given it back.

"No. I start on Mr. Baker. I think we can forget about Nikki.”

Stan found his clothes on the balcony and got dressed. His notebook was on the table as was a squeezed orange juice. He drank the orange juice and opened his notebook. He wanted to go over what he had on Mr. Baker. He had nothing except a hunch. Which meant he would have to go to the library or and Internet cafe. He could take Pig to a cafe if there weren’t many people there. The library wouldn’t want him. Understandable.

‘Call Nikki.’ was written at the top of the next blank page. She had failed to write her number. Maybe she thought if he already knew where she lived and had pictures of her ass, he should have her number. he fund the phone and noted the number.

He thought to wash up but Nikki had a dishwasher. Most people had such things, he remembered.

Before anymore distracting, he flew down the stairs and jumped into his car and drove home. The traffic reminded him that he didn’t want to see his car today. He parked it in the first free spot he saw in his neighborhood and walked the rest of the way.

The church bell reminded him it was noontime. He grabbed his camera and the leash for Pig and didn’t bother to sit down or busy about anything. Lisa would be waiting and Pig’s bladder would be full.

As if to say he wasn’t so upset, Pig waited till the park to start his pissing.

"Are you happy to see me?”

Pig licked his face.

Stan looked up and saw the woman approaching. He put the leash on Pig and smiled at the woman as they passed.

"Moin,” Stan told her.

She wasn’t sure is she was to respond, so she just dragged her screaming rat farther on.


_bunnie stop_


Porko Troy. Or whatever they say. I think I go to bed and no write tonight. Me tired. Me not enough sleep. Go bed. Can Sleep.

Sleep, perchance to dream.
Ay, there’s the rub.

Said he. One limerick for my sweet.

There was a fair maiden from France
Who did live in a world of glance.
One day she did learn
Ein Mann hat sie gern.
Ay, the man with the stories and rants.

Can I use German in a Limerick?


_bunnie stop_


Laetitia. I have one chapter left in Eva Ibbotson’s book, ‘A song for Summer.’ It is brutal. A brutal love story really.

It takes part during the second world war. I actually cried through 3 chapters. So I give her that. I’ve been reading like a madman the last couple months. Almost all words from women. I don’t know if it’s cheating or what it might be. I had the plan to learn a bit more how women write. I’ve always had a few female writer favorites. No one would dare say these days that a man could write better than a woman but I will dare to say that a woman will write differently than a man. Which may very well be because everyone writes differently. I mean, one man and one other, one woman and.

"Point!”

The point is, Laetitia, I want to be in love. I’m a fantasy man; it is true. That is a problem that I have been trying to make into an advantage. I always try to turn things to my advantage. I mean, why not. What’s the sense of using anything to your disadvantage.

I could list you a few but I’ll make it short, this letter is almost done. I would love to write you another 30 but I have to know you want me to. You would have to tell me you would love me to write for you.

I would have to still write if you didn’t decide in my favor, I don’t want to make you think I’m begging you to help me. I’m only trying to use my slowly developing writing skills to impress on you that I am a master of fantasy and that’s how I can see reality as something different. I as in your eyes a woman that has

"She’s unbelievable beautiful.”

"No, exactly not. She is believably beautiful. That’s the thing. It’s the only thing that matters.”

I’ve convinced myself of this, perhaps I’m mad. But I know I will likely never marry again if I don’t find this. The world is quickly filling with fantasy. I am becoming better at it and will take a course to learn more tricks.

"Lucky they gave you two extra months to write.”

"That’s one of those acts of providence that even atheists are entitled to.”

I will read and write until then. I will meet friends, but I won’t go out. If I can’t write, I will read a novel by a good writer.

Perhaps, for one as me, it is better not to proclaim love on the innocent. I may be too bitter. And if I told you that my goal in writing is to make people take a look at our grim reality, someone may call me on it, but like Mother Teresa says, you gotta do what ya gotta do.

She said it better, but that’s the gist.

One thing I have to do is proclaim my love to you. I’ve got no explanation for it except that I’m convinced you are real. And that’s not it either. There isn’t really why.

"Why you want to try keep ‘splaining it?”

"Don’t know.”

I’ve tried to show you me a little in this letter. The letter is a little too short to fit it in properly to come to any point, so you will have to decipher this, or burn it.

I’d be honored to know you’ve read this. It’s taken me months of long hours, I can’t say work because I’ve not written with such furry in the last 8 years.

When people find out I’ve been writing a love letter to someone I’ve only seen the eyes of in pictures, they’ll send the men in white coats. And when they say, the doctors, ‘if you admit to us that this was just a marketing trick to get Laetitia on the cover of a letter’, I’ll tell ‘em:

I won’t tell them anything. They are the madmen if they don’t believe that a man can believe in love. The world can think what it wants.

As long as it thinks.


_bunnie stop_


That was a long 2-minute break. Someone comes to look at the car tomorrow. If he buys it. I will be out of debt and can play the poor artist writer working on his first inspired novel since 8 years, role. I love this role. I can play it best. It is my part. I have absolutely no doubt that I am a writer. I know I won’t be loved by all but I also know that I’ve yet to write my greatest works. I have full intention of being a great writer. Great because I dare to rip open my wretched heart to try to get a raise out of people. I want people to think twice about what I write, even if they don’t like it, as long as they read it and even if they agree with nothing I say, just as long as they think about it.

I know that thinking alone won’t change much, there has to be love and beauty. There has to be simple wisdom. There has to be so much that the world has seemed to have forgotten about. I’m not really the one to do it, my satiric jaded loneliness isn’t the best picture to share hope.

"This is getting a bit much.”

"Maybe.”

It’s a honest effort though, Laetitia, expressing myself has been very important to me. Writing is how I seem to best do it. I mean, I’ll paint you a masterpiece for a wedding present but I want to write.

And I’ll build you a bird house.
And I’ll hold your hand and be sensitive and watchful and listen.
And I’ll get up in the middle of the night and write till morning.
And I’ll wash the dishes.
And I’ll take you on a canoe trip in Canada.
And I’ll take you to visit my parents in small town Nova Scotia.

"Good job you ain’t a salesman.”

"Why?”

"Who wants a painting from her husband for a wedding present and a bird house?”

"Any woman with any sense.”

"Good luck to you.”

"Thanks, Jose.”


_bunnie stop_


It’s 06:00 and I finished Eva’s book. Not Eva’s letter, which I took a pause from to write this, the novel. It has a bit of the English poetic justice kind of cheesyness that Charlie Dickenson so liked. I sometimes like it. I sometimes even like to believe in such things. That was the purpose of this letter. To show that I still believe in love.

I’m going to try to remember that as I write the rest of Barbaralba. Allow me the honour of dedicating it to you when it’s finally finished. I can’t promise a masterpiece, but I’m going to give it an honest attempt.

And an honest attempt, no matter how cluttered by lies and illusions, is the best one can offer. I hope you have given this book an honest attempt. I would be happy to have an honest reply.

"Your letter would be better stuck up your ass of a burnt offering.”

"They don’t do burnt offerings anymore.”

"They will, they are going backwards now.”

"Backwards.”

"Holding onto the past because the future demands to much. Holding onto old creeds and worn out beliefs.”

"Believing what they are told.”

"Follow the path.”

"Do as the rest do.”

"Just don’t think.”

"No, just obey.”

Laetitia, I won’t drag it on. I’ll see if I can’t get Stan, the man who suddenly has adventure in his life, and a woman, no three at once, this could be a great sex book.

But alas, the Stan isn’t cut out for it. He’s old fashioned, no just realistic, or no, he’s far from that, but I’m going to try keep him honest. We’ll see what the world does with him.

I admit that my wife’s things that she left haven’t moved. Gustav Klimt is still over my bed, the sleeping women picture, in a frame I made, very simple but fitting. Fits the picture and the orange wall.

"The Lora Croft Picture would fit better.”

"Not really.”

It’s the only picture in my bedroom.

I have a few of my bunny pictures in the living room.

Here’s something else. I was very extremely in love with my wife. I likely was –

I’m not sure Laetitia, thing is, it was a reckless marriage. I tried to become someone I couldn’t be for the sake of this woman I loved. It was wrong of me to do it. It might have even been mean to make her love me when I hadn’t

"No. Wrong. Don’t talk about a marriage that lasted 4 years.”

"All right, you’re write.”

Some things that are beautiful don’t stay beautiful. Everything and everyone changes.

"Fish live in the water.”

"Cows eat the grass.”

"Laetitia, I love you.”

"Finish the letter tomorrow.”

Okay, the big ending comes tomorrow, Laetitia.

The Barbaralba story, I’ll get back to with my letter to Eva and I may finish it in a letter to Wiebke. She wanted me to write something in the here time or something, maybe not like that but I think it’s my decision to write a friendly letter to her. I still like her and hope she can have fond memories of me. I like that. I don’t like people I like to stop liking me. She hasn’t and she won’t.

I’m a writer and I write what gotta be writ.


_bunnie stop_


by Joanne B. Washington

read on. 2ba_john_rah_part_06



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