Letter by Leif

Here's an email I recevied from a fellow who had gotten a t-shirt from a ladyfriend at APE.  Anyhow, he had to write something with multiple perspectives for his writing class.  It's awesome so check it out.

Dear Michael,

I saw you at APE. I especially like your Man Carrying A Fancy Bird drawing. It truly speaks to the John James Audubon in every child's heart. I am bad with favors so I'll just get straight to it. I would like to commission you to apply a suit of paint to my child's body everyday for the rest of his life. We just adopted him, his name is Marshall and he's 18. He complains about how boring his daily regimen of community college and sowing is for him and if there's something that 6 years with the Surrealists in Sao Paulo and 15 years building model train libraries taught me, it's that a paint brush to the penis will wake you up in the morning! You seemed jolly and creative. Your outgoingness and large Bavarian mustache hinted that you might be a fan of “The Metal” and if so I would sincerely ask you to temporarily stop your thrash-riddled jamboree pagan love-affair while you apply liquid body suits to my sons tender skin. Thanks!
Larry (Capricorn :))


Dear Michael,
On behalf of Edward Salzaar, Jonathan Smalls, and Ergot Simplesmith, I, Attorney John Hammer, am informing you of a lawsuit filed against you in accordance with the Metrosexual Brethren and Free Spirit Act of 1976. My clients feel that your "art" piece, Amigo, was an unlawful reproduction of their sun-soaked Orange-County afternoon in which they enjoyed the warm embrace of each other and several large Jasmine Bobo Teas. Your painting depicts them as they shared a triple-traveler longboard on their way down a freshly paved suburban street. Yes, Jonathan clearly had a firm grip on Edward's glutes but that in no way, NO WAY, makes the scene funny or hip or whatever you pipe-smoking anarchists call entertainment. In your childish reproduction the longboard faintly resembles a penis and Ergot has bristling chest hair where he clearly has none (I know this because all of my clients are invited to a monthly swim & barbecue cookout at my apartment complex. I'd invite you but you'd probably dose the pool with Happy Tabs.) For defamation and artistic imprisonment my clients demand a painting done by you in which they are clearly shown slapping fives, preferably by a large, rugged body of water like Lake Michigan, with several pigskins, cold ones, some hiking gear in the foreground, etc. I will be at my office all week. You can call me but I will probably not answer because I can tell I won't like you.
Spite and malice,
Johnny Ham

Michael, Michael, the stache I laud
For it a pirate would be proud
Stand forth and cast thy will anew
And bed thine virgins beneath thy pews
Kangaroo boxing a striped-pants scrapper?
Beats my opium dreams from atop the crapper
So until we meet again
Press on with pen, my friend
Press on, press on


Michael C. Hsiung. A Love Story. Act I.
[Black. One pink light shines down from a streetlamp,
casting a glow of soft pink on a young artist we'll
call Manuel. Pantomimes with mullets and suits
made from bottlecaps motion out Manuel's
speech behind him.]



Manuel

Pink is the color of eternity. Of ages. Pink is the silence after the snap. The last drop of color to dry on a freshly printed Cosmo. It's this, Michael, it's this pink that defines your corporeal canvas as it gently juts into the bush of your DE-SIRE.

[Fade to black. A dimly-lit, small comicbook
convention comes into view. Michael C. Hsiung
is passing out business cards and jiggers of sparkling
apple cider. A young man approaches. Michael greets
the young lads eyes.]

Michael
I'm Michael

Young man
I'm yours

Fin