Johnny America

 

Dear Liv­er

by

I’m writ­ing to apol­o­gize for the last forty-some (fifty?) hours. You’re an in­ter­nal or­gan so I re­al­ize you have cer­tain phe­nom­e­no­log­i­cal con­straints — no eye­balls, no ear canals to call your own, etc. — so what I’m about to de­scribe might not ful­ly re­solve with your ex­pe­ri­ence. Imag­ine that you could see; I’m not sure this will work, but roll with me.

Any­way, the way I pic­ture you feel­ing now, I’ve seen it be­fore. I was stand­ing on 51st Street, near Broad­way. I was halfway through a smoke break when it start­ed. I no­ticed a woman in the dri­ver’s seat of a ma­roon Hyundai with Arkansas plates, stopped cold on the as­phalt like a high­way-strolling deer. Horns blared and the dri­ver be­hind her kept revving his en­gine, but she did­n’t ac­cel­er­ate or turn on her emer­gency blink­ers or budge. She just gripped the wheel, freaked out. I took my Camel to its fil­ter, then wait­ed, watch­ing, un­til she got her nerve back; it took her three min­utes at least. The look on her face, lost, pan­ic-strick­en, that’s what I imag­ine your face would look like if you had one. Your fleshy folds are prob­a­bly clenched tight with disgust.

I’m not sure why I went on that ben­der — no good rea­son, re­al­ly. Mon­day I felt like drink­ing, a lot. Then there was all the Tylenol the next day; my head hurt so bad­ly I felt I had to take dou­ble the dose, every three hours. An ex­tra pil­l’s as bad for you as a glass of Old Crow I heard. Then there was the bot­tle of Old Crow. It could­n’t have helped your re­cov­er; nor could’ve the var­ied drugs, whose ef­fects on you I’m un­sure of, but I’ll play it con­ser­v­a­tive and pre­sume neg­a­tive. Then, this morn­ing, more pain killers and a tum­bler of whiskey for good measure.

I’m sober now, and re­gret­ful for my mis­treat­ment. I know I’m a jerk some­times, but tru­ly I care.

Yours,

Derek

Filed under Letters on May 27th, 2004

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Reader Comments

Jethro wrote:

en­joyed me visit !!!
Jethro (blog read­er extraordinair)

Anonymous wrote:

my liv­er feels your liv­er’s pain and was won­der­ing if they can meet up some time?
kats and her liver

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