Dear sweet friend,

Fever on and off all week. Forgive the structure.

Oh, here comes my cat. She takes a seat on a pile of magazines, and won't break her stare with me.

In between pages on the typewriter, I go downstairs and spritz myself. To spritz is to feel like you want to be somewhere else. The act of spritzing takes you. Now back at my desk, where the nearly suffocating scent of homemade incense billows next to me. God, he doesn't want to be here today, does he? Ambient drones in my ears. A grey world pulsing at the edges. Feeling somewhat energized.

Raw dog. Raw oyster. Raw peanuts. Raw almonds. Raw milk. Raw nerve. Real and raw. Really raw girls. Girls, girls, girls.

When you drive across Wyoming, something you do every weekend for your sister’s volleyball games, stand-alone buildings appear in the middle of the emptiness. One moment nothing. The next, a building. Then nothing again. There was one I waited for, Northern Dreams, a tiny red building miles outside of Casper. A hand-painted sign affixed to the side with bubble letters and balloons: Girls Girls Girls.

I knew when it was coming, too. A mile marker. Just a few more until Casper. I'd brace for it, and then the moment she was in view, I'd open my mouth and scream, "GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!" I'd relish every sound of the word, the guttural ‘guh’, the wrenching lips forming the middle ‘eeerrl’, the snaking ‘sss’ at the end. My voice getting higher and more ecstatic with each repetition. The Delight! The Disgust! The Devil! My mom would whip her head around, scandalized – every time. (She'd find gay porn on her internet history soon enough.) We'd fly by in our forest green Dodge Caravan. A mirage, swallowed up by the dry land. Was anyone ever inside? No time to stop. Onto Casper. Not a good looking city but at least there’s a mall.

How do I set a margin on my typewriter, I google. Oh, this button, then this button. Typing again: Oh, boy. Boiled. Boilette. Toilette. Damn, my words have been overwriting each other for lines now. I didn’t realize.

I squint at the solid black line of overlapping letters.

Oh, well. Back to something different.

For you: Facekini, a charming photo book by photographer Peng Yangjun. All kinds of facekinis! How chic!

Love!

—scotty

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