Dear Johnna

It’s been a minute, so I wanted to remind everyone that for now, I’m picking prompts from the book 642 Things to Write about, and I’m…writing about. Them.

I hate introducing this concept, probably because this feels like me doing a writing exercise in public, and as we all know, exercising in public is fuckin’ embarrassing.

On the other hand, my last newsletter featured prominently, in the title in fact, that I’m leaking from my rectum, so WHAT PRIDE DO I HAVE LEFT!? WHAT DIGNITY AM I TRYING TO PRESERVE HERE? It’s like I got a pizza and have become super protective of the leftovers which consist only of one crust and most of a congealed cup of garlic dippin’ butter.

With all that said, here’s today’s thing:

Write a “Dear John” letter, breaking up with your high-school sweetheart who’s in the army.

Dear John,

Did I blow it by starting the letter this way? Are you supposed to address a breakup letter with “Dear John” even if the person’s name isn’t John, that way they have context going in? I mean, it’s not like a letter should work the way a novel does where some of the joy is in the discovery of the world and its characters. It should probably minimize the mystery and make with the point-stery.

Well, let me dawdle just a bit and start off by saying that I’m very proud of you for joining the army. In this post-9/11 era, it’s the right thing to do, for sure, and I’m betting we’ll find those weapons of mass destruction in no time with smart, capable people like you on the case. I considered joining myself, but I decided against it because I guess I wanted to continue to be alive and have all my limbs, and not joining the army seemed like a good way to make those outcomes more likely. Not that I think any of those bad things will happen to you, just, you know, if there are two paths, one army and one not-army, and if you really like having life and limbs, one of those two paths is probably better-suited to getting what you want.

For now, I do still want to be alive. Maybe that’ll change when I’m, I don’t know, 42 or so, but, hey, maybe we’ll also elect a real bonkerz prezident and then they’ll raise the enlistment age to 42 and I’ll still have my shot at pursuing a premature death. That seems like too much of a coincidence though, right? That I’d be the exact upper age and also maybe not doing so hot emotionally at the same time? But that’s a problem for future me, let’s focus on a problem for current me, which is our relationship.

I thought it might be kind of fun to have a girlfriend in the army. I thought, I don’t know, you’d get ripped like GI Jane, and you’d look pretty smokin’ with a shaved head, like GI Jane, and you’d come in and out of my life every so often, like my thoughts of GI Jane.

I did wonder if I’d get made fun of for having a “butch” girlfriend, but that didn’t bother me because I could take it in stride, especially because when you came home on leave, you could beat the shit out of all the guys who made fun of me. Which would kind of prove their point, but I think I’d still win the MORAL victory in that case. That’s what moral victories are like, right?

What I didn’t anticipate is that people would make fun of me for having “a girlfriend, but she’s not here right now, she’s in the army,” sort of like the classic, “I have a girlfriend, she goes to a different school. In Canada. A FRENCH-speaking school in Canada, so you can’t even try to look it up online unless you know French." But trust me, je suis very much in love!”

Nobody believes I have a girlfriend. And nobody believes I have a girlfriend who’s going to take the exploding stuff out of a missile and write a love note on it and then shoot the missile into my backyard. Which is something I kind of said you’d do, I meant to talk to you about that…of course, you don’t have to do that now that we’re breaking up. I mean, you COULD, to be a pal, but I can no longer force you to by withholding my excellent dry humping skills.

I’m afraid we’ll have to break up so that I can pursue a relationship that I can shove in other peoples’ faces.

In conclusion (by the way, thank you for tutoring me in English and telling me to end essays and stuff with “In Conclusion!), thank you for being my girlfriend for lo these past 4 months. It felt like forever, in a good way.

And we’ll always have Austin Powers. Whenever you’re feeling sad and probably tears are dropping on this letter, just remember me saying, in an Austin Powers voice, “Oh, behave!”

-Pete