Hello and thank you for the email. I am currently out of my mind and will be slow to respond. I will get back to you as soon as possible, which is probably sometime between never and the moment I decide to stop throwing darts at an 8x10 glossy of you. I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that you’re Satan, and don’t try to wriggle out of it. Because you inhabit my dreams, not all of which are necessarily dry.
Whenever I do return to some version of sanity, which will be utterly faked for the sole purpose of ordering in Chinese takeout, I might email you but it will more likely be an Instagram of me hanging either you or a close relative of yours in effigy. In the meantime I’ll be right here, in a fetal position in the corner of the spare bedroom in a state of primal fear soaking patiently in a puddle of my own excrement and tightly clutching a slightly worn 1961 Topps baseball card of Yankees first baseman Bill “Moose” Skowron. I have as of early this morning chosen not to snail mail you my severed ear. However, other body parts are distinct possibilities. Thank you for understanding.
Life wasn’t always this way. There was a time when I took time out of the day—several times a day, in fact—to answer each and every email landing in my inbox. Whether from a friend genuinely in need or a bot sending me the 14th pitch of the week to donate $5 to MoveOn.org, I dealt with each communiqué, missive, or spam on its own terms and replied thoughtfully and thoroughly, at times even tapping a longstanding literary affinity for the likes of such luminaries as Virginia Woolf, Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and Dear Abby.
Well, I think you already know the rest of the story. This noble but in some sense middling effort to be polite, responsible and live up to the moral standards set for me long ago by my third grade teacher Mrs. Bluestone ultimately robbed me of the time normally set aside to eat, earn a living, socialize, and hygienically manage my own defecation. It crept up on me pretty slowly, but eventually I found I myself spending more and more time archiving Alignable solicitations from random upholstery cleaner services and less and less time taking out the recycling. Please know that I’m thinking of you and your critical eighth request for my W-9 as I hallucinate about werewolves in the hallway closet and gingerly sample cuisine from the cat’s food bowl. Have a nice day.