Letter to D.C.

I hate when people talk (or write) about how great things once were. It’s boring. In the interest of doing the opposite, I would like to mention how much better things are for me at this time. Here goes:

D.C., my good friend currently residing in Taipei, sent me an email the other day which expressed slight discontent with my having a blog. It appears I am the last of his friends to claim a strand of the web. It made him happy to think of me as something of a Luddite. As embarrassed as this vanity page often makes me, I feel doubly so now that D.C. has reminded me of the man I once was.

D.C. likes to remember me as the guy who slept on a couch every single night. He even took it a step further and once wrote a story about me, on the couch, using newspaper as my blanket. It would have delighted him if this were true. He recalls fondly the time we scrounged the floors and couch cushions of our apartment for enough pocket change to buy a pack of generic cigarettes. He sees me as some kind of bohemian, which I suppose I was.

Once upon a time: I drank every night, smoked a pack-and-a-half of cigarettes every day, quit jobs as often as people change their socks and ate bloody red meat for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I borrowed money, didn’t pay it back and lived in fear of the telephone’s ring. I lied to everyone and tried to see the angle in every social setting. I practiced a crude form of short con to get my rent paid and my stomach filled. When the short cons didn’t pan out, I begged. When one set of roommates got fed up, I moved on to whomever would have me.

Today: I no longer sleep on a couch. I share a big bed with my beautiful girlfriend and my cat in a nice loft-style apartment. I work and go to school and have not dropped a single class since returning to academia. I get my teeth cleaned and I wear clean clothing. I change the oil in my car with regularity and update my bank records daily. You can set your clock to my daily routine. I have brand new handmade furniture from Mexico, an abundance of books of and compact discs and spend my paychecks on comfort and leisure instead of vice. I exercise. I have not eaten meat in nearly four years. I no longer dream of being a writer, I write.

So, D.C., if you still come to this web site, please forgive me for changing. My mother had to get used to me not being her little curly haired baby; you’ll have to accept that the bohemian you once knew is dead.

I love you, brother.

V.