Dear AVA,
Were I asked at any point in my life where I saw myself at the age of 51, the answer would invariably have been: Dead. Not from any romantic notion about leaving a good-looking corpse (that ship has sailed) or being just too good for this earth (ha!) or the awareness that the weight of my despair would ultimately crush me (I'm actually a fairly happy guy), but the realistic presumption of early mortality for a fella who actively, persistently and gleefully engages in the practice of willful self-destruction. It stands to reason that a life defined by drug abuse, alcoholism, violence, criminality, indiscriminate sexuality, across the broad profligacy, and just general wise- and jack-assery would get one struck down along about the first few decades, if not in one stupidly glorious stroke, then through attrition.
But no. Instead of occupying my rightful place in an urn, boneyard, or (more likely) as an unclaimed cadaver in a third-rate medical school being tsk-ed at by future abortionists and pill hustlers over the condition of my liver, I'm moldering in moldy old San Quentin after having suffered that most base of ignominies: being made sport of by a rural rabble-rounsing rag whose revolutionary rhetoric has doubtless galvanized several dozen parakeets into political or at least peristaltic action. Having thus been made a figure of fun by you, I don't think I'm displaying undue cheek in requesting a free subscription at least temporarily. I'll see about shooting some feria your way once my resources have fleshed out a bit. Thank you.
Signed, the scourge of banks, bookstores and trendy Little River spas,
Flynn Washburne, # V79663
SQSP, San Quentin, CA 94974
Ed note: Flynn old boy, you sure can write. If you'd come to me before you got into bank robbing I would have put you on as roving correspondent. Subscription coming right up.
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