5.11.2009

Every Letter Tells A Story

There are a million stories in the naked city, and every so often, we brush across the edges of one of them. Last night, I brushed across two. First, there was a letter in my mail from an inmate in a local jail, written to a Mrs. N. something-or-other, a different last name than his own. Scrawled across the address in large rough letters was "Return To Sender" and written in the same hand below the return address was the salutation, "You can kiss your own ass yourself." I wondered if that was written by Mrs. N. something-or-other, or by her husband. The hand wasn't feminine (indeed, the man writing from jail had much nicer handwriting), but that really doesn't tell us anything, does it?

Well, I thought that little mini-drama would be the highlight of the night, until I went back to pick up mail at another machine and one of the women standing there showed me something even more bizarre: A letter with a slice of cheese in it, with the return address being only a mysterious "Cheese Woman." The oils in the cheese had saturated the paper of the envelope, rendering it translucent and making plain the orange slice of American cheese within. All I could do was laugh and wonder, "What the hell?!"