Darling Doodlepuss,

So much time has passed since my last correspondence. So much has happened in this time and yet.... nothing really stands out. Everything's the same except the cast, plot & setting. I'm still moving, slowly but surely, out of the same small University town that thrust us both into the so called "real world." Although, I suspect we'd agree that mine is more "real" than your extended stay in the inclusive realm of illusory allusion we know as academia.

I hate to be the bad news bearer, but the silence that has been keeping you warm all this time was nothing more than an misleading outlier. Your assumptions could have been accurate, but I like to think you have higher expectations for my life than what's actually been happening. While I still have high standards for this new life, it hasn't yet yielded anything more glamourous or ground-breaking than I had hoped.

Surprisingly, I don't have any more time now than I did in school... not that I ever really hit the books like I should have. I've been struggling through a book of E. White's short stories here lately. And by struggling, I mean between moving/working and cultivating a new love interest, I've been stuck on the second story for weeks now because there's always something more appealing winking at me from across the bar. On the side, I'm working my way through a book of Ginsberg's poems.

I don't feel much more grown-up than I did mooching off the government to get through school, but at least now it feels less like I'm running from something and a bit more like I'm running towards something. Something like a new identity as a part of the working class. The more time I spend around my fellow clerks, I realize how vastly different our paths have been yet there is remarkable similarity in where we are now. I find comfort in knowing I don't have nor am I a "baby mama," unlike most of my coworkers. (Note that "baby mamas" are a distinct category to wives & spouses, as there is often some combination of these.) More than anything, I enjoy the fleeting banter with the regulars who come in for beer, gas, and/or cigarettes. Some real characters come in and I rather like imagining what their lives have been like and are. It always makes them more interesting than I'm sure they would be, actually.

I just worked the graveyard shift for the first time, 10pm - 6am. It wasn't as bad as I'd suspected and I got a lot done. Surely in the next week of 10-6's I'll get better at it and love it right before I hate it and wish for a normal cycle again. It was interesting though to be getting off work as the sun was coming up, then getting home to have a beer and play catch-up. Fortunately, there's no one in the world I'd rather be catching up with over a cold brewsky than yourself. Luckily, we keep this 24-hour-emergency-blog up and running so that access to one another is as possible and necessary as the internet itself.

Despite all the flux in the content of my life, I'm glad you're still a constant confidant to keep me grounded by reflecting back to me who I have been/who I am with a keen eye on who I could be. He's closer than ever and I'm looking forward to meeting him, finally.

Sincerely,

Your Biggest Fan, Lex Luther