A Letter To Ned
by Bex Schwartz

This is what I want Ned
I want to come home and there's an envelope on my bed
and in this envelope is an airline ticket and a note
and the note says "Meet me here, I'm here already"
and he's drawn a picture of two pears
and I know by pears he means pairs of shoes
and pairs is an anagram for Paris
so that's where I need to go

Sometimes I lurch home at 3 a.m.
and I think maybe my roommate's moved out
and she left a note that says
"I'm moving in with my horrible boyfriend,
so I won't be around anymore"

On Saturday morning I'm trying to sleep
and at 8 a.m. I hear
"FUCKING MOUSE! FUCKING STONED MOUSE!"
and her horrible boyfriend was running around screaming
'cause one of our mice had eaten a hole in his pants pocket
to get to his pot cookies
they quit smoking together because she's on the pill
they have sex a lot when in he's in town from Vermont
I think in Vermont maybe the all sleep in bathtubs
because the two of them never seemed to have sex in bed
they always take these three hour baths together
to me the shower's clean--
it's the one place that's really clean
--and now I'm always worried that that's not really soapscum

It's like when I lived with these four boys--
and that's fine, because I was one of the boys
--and then I found out that boys like
to masturbate in the shower
there were my boys, I mean,
they were all really indie rock...that was cool
that was the year I discovered Top 40 music
I was listening to a lot of Mariah Carey
but they liked the fact that I lived with them because
they thought I was really punk rock
not punk rock like I sang punk rock or dressed all punk rock
but to them I was hot shit because I'd been
a dominatrix for a little while

And that's the thing Ned
it's only fun to play that game
but it's not like I was fucking anyone
I was a virgin
I was a virgin dominatrix the whole time
but I can yell at people
and I have an American accent thing going
and it was really funny sometimes
because all those rich British businessmen
liked some really weird shit
there was one guy Ned,
he liked us to cut his toenails till they bled
that was really weird

But I'm not really that tough Ned
I don't fantasize about whipping people,
or hurting people or trying to make anyone
feel like shit
it doesn't really do it for me Ned
and I'm not really all that kinky either
I like the missionary position just fine
in fact that's really what I want Ned
I want you to throw me down on the floor
and fuck me as hard as you can

See this tough chick thing Ned,
I don't really know
I was watching TV and this Dr. Pepper commercial came on
it was brand new, they were dancing, there was techno
and I got really sad 'cause I missed the days of that
"Give me a Dr. Pepper! We love it!"
and I started to cry
I was watching TV for a while
I watched five hours of figure skating today
I want to be a figure skater
I want to be a little bit thinner
I want to be Bob Dylan
"Mr. Jones says that he was someone just a little bit more
funky
Oh when everybody loves you,
Man, you're just about as funky as you can be"
I met the Counting Crows once
and then once I thought Adam Durwitz sat behind me
at the movies

Sometimes I like to go outside at work
and smoke on the fire escape
our fire escape forms part of the veritable column of fire escapes
that stretches out along 5th Avenue up Silicon Alley
and in this quiver of fire escapes along 5th Avenue,
sometimes I have this little dream
it's like I start singing at one point and I come out really quiet
and I say, "Lying beside you, here in your arms"
and then there would be someone on the top floor would come out
and say "Feeling your heart beat with mine"
and it would keep going on
and the rotund businessmen who run the Trump Management thing
three floors below us would com eout and sing the next line
and it would keep going on
and we'd have a really big open-arms sing-along
And I think about this all the time Ned
that's my open-arms fantasy

And as long as we're talking fantasies Ned
let me tell you what I really want
I really want to go to a bar on the Lower East Side
and find someone who doesn't actually know me
someone who's never seen me before
someone who's never seen my work
and I will talk about what I love
and he will nod and smile knowingly
and he will know what I'm talking about
and he won't say, "Oh you're so young"
and we will lean in closer, and closer, and closer together
and we'll know--
we'll feel it
--we'll know that we need to leave
we will have had too many margueritas and maybe have smoked some pot
and we will walk out into the rain
and find an alley somewhere in Rivington
and he will slam my back against a brick wall
while it's raining
and I will wrap my legs around his hips
and Ned will
-oops!-
I mean he will
fuck me in the rain 'till I cum.