Most Fridays I send out a real love letter that I’ve transcribed from a stack I bought at the flea market. Missed one? Check the chronological list.
October 10, 1961
10 days
Note: He’s taken to numbering each letter so that they basically form a book. This letter is numbered 47-50.
Darling Kay,
Pages 42-46 were too depressing and morbid, and I didn’t think it right to send them to you.
Just IMAGINE how bleak those must be given how upbeat he usually is.
Sending you something to make you feel worse is not fair. Besides, those “moods,” so to speak come and go and just writing it down seemed to cure the problem.
Russ accidentally discovered self-help.
I’d rather cheer you up naturally, but not being in anything but a rather indifferent frame of mind myself, I can’t turn that trick. It’s because I miss you so much that I can’t be quite so happy. You know, I just sort of exist. When I think of going out and enjoying myself, I think of you, and when I think of you, I am brought to the reality of knowing you’re 125 miles away, and as a result just discard the whole train of thought.
I can’t decide if this is sweet or maybe a bit of a guilt trip he’s putting on her for going to college without him.
Q.E.D.: 10 days better pass pretty quick and we’d better get together again. The cold I have does not help my disposition either.
I can’t explain why this song was a clear reference point for me at this moment, but it was. As an aside, when I was googling to find this song, I discovered a website dedicated to having a sneezing fetish. And I didn’t want to know that existed but I had to. For you. You’re welcome.
However, it seems to be going away. I showed definite signs of improvement today and slight signs yesterday. My head still felt like dropping off and rolling away all day today — and leaving the rest of my body standing there sucking my thumb with no head, which when you come right down to it is a neat trick and pretty funny at that if you look at it objectively, which, ironically enough, is easy to do if your head is rolling down the hall, although the sight of any one particular object would tend to come in spurts, which is not conducive to pleasant viewing and if you can say all this in one breath you’re not suffering from “Why go on with it all” mania yet, which is something students often contract after a very short time in school and which can have quite serious side effects and of which I’m sure you’re not suffering because you’re too sweet, wonderful and intelligent, and you’ve got to admit that everything I’ve just said is tied together in one fashion or another. (Grammatical errors and misspelled words expected.)
Oof, that gave me a lot of anxiety to type.
So like my run-on sentence has run me down (ridiculous), and mainly has run down the clock, and I’d better go to sleep or my clock will really run down and I’ll be fixed. And I love you, love you, love you, love you.
Sweet dreams, Darling. Sleep tight, and take real good care of yourself. I’ll see you soon.
Love, love, love, ad infinitum,
Tiger
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