by Jeff ENSLEY

To the cocky, over-con­fi­dent, and ob­vi­ous­ly in­se­cure “gen­tle­man” who spent the bet­ter part of an hour try­ing at any cost to im­press the del­i­cate young nu­bile sit­ting on the couch at the cof­fee house last Thurs­day night:

I thought it might in­ter­est you to know that I was privy to the bulk of your con­ver­sa­tion as you tried so gal­lant­ly to woo the young la­dy who had been, up un­til your un­couth in­ter­rup­tion, qui­et­ly writ­ing po­et­ry. I over­heard the ma­jor­i­ty of your vi­va­cious claims and man­ly boasts. Yes, thanks to your bal­ly­hoo­ing, I now know that you have an $18,000 car. I al­so know that you paid much less than stick­er price for it be­cause your par­ents are re­peat cus­tomers of said deal­er and there was no need for any sort of ne­go­ti­a­tion re­gard­ing the price. “Just like buy­ing a fuck­ing re­frig­er­a­tor.” Some of the oth­er girls sit­ting in the vicin­i­ty seemed im­pressed, but our del­i­cate young nu­bile (Her name is Ash­ley. I don’t know if you caught that. Per­haps you did in your on­slaught of in­quis­i­tive­ness.) seemed rather in­dif­fer­ent at best. I al­so learned that you’re a high-school dropout and that you pre­fer work to school. Yes, you seemed to rel­ish ex­tolling the sit­u­a­tion of not fin­ish­ing high school and still be­ing able to own “a car of year that we’re not even in yet.” No, our young Ash­ley was not im­pressed with your reper­toire of achieve­ments or even your 2‑year war­ran­ty; her sub­lime face re­mained con­sis­tent­ly sto­ic through­out the or­deal. You might not have seen that from atop your soap­box. But I did. The lon­er sip­ping silent­ly from a cup of cof­fee one ta­ble over. I imag­ine she must have been re­lieved, to say the least, when you left mo­men­tar­i­ly to pro­cure an­oth­er pack of cig­a­rettes from the Kwik Shop at the end of the block. I can on­ly imag­ine what you thought when you re­turned to find her gone, her emp­ty cup the on­ly ev­i­dence re­main­ing. My ab­sence, much like my pres­ence, I as­sume, was not like­ly no­ticed ei­ther. Nev­er­the­less, for the sake of sat­ing your in­evitable cu­rios­i­ty, I thought it might in­ter­est you to know of her where­abouts. In your ab­sence, as brief as it was, I took a no­tion to in­tro­duce my­self to her with a sense of sub­tle­ty you clear­ly have nev­er known. She ac­cept­ed my of­fer of a ride home, most gra­cious­ly and most read­i­ly, and, as I write this let­ter, is deep in a post-coital slum­ber. I hope this clears up any con­fu­sion you may have en­coun­tered last Thurs­day night.

Sin­cere­ly,

Your friend.

Filed under Letters on November 7th, 2004

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