Ronald Rabbit Is a Dirty Old Man (16 page)

Merry Cat wants to tell you the rest of it, so I’ll say
au revoir. “Au revoir.”
There, I said it. Your turn now, Mary Katherine.

B.J.

This is Mary Katherine O’Shea speaking. Talk about insatiable dykes! She was here for a week and wouldn’t leave us alone. She ate all her meals between our legs. I’m not kidding, Larry. It’s the truth.

Do you remember the other letter you wrote us? Telling us not to worry that we were lesbians? I think we may have been ready to do a wee bit of worrying in spite of what you said, but the week with your spouse really set us straight. Ooops! Sorry about that.

But it did. That woman is a dyke and she’s as different from us as, oh, night and day, since I can’t think of anything more original just at the moment. She has this hangup where all she can talk about is how rotten men are. By the time she was ready to leave, it really got to me. I felt like going out and fucking one of the horses.

I’ll bet she never fucks a man again as long as she lives.

She talked about Steve quite a bit, and also about you, and it was slightly weird pretending we never heard of any of you people before, but she never caught on, even when B.J. slipped and told her what school we were from. It didn’t even register. She didn’t say much that was interesting, except one time she said, “Larry knew about me all along. He used to pester me to find out if I ever made it with a girl. I guess it was always obvious to him.”

Oh, one other thing. She’s going to divorce you, but she’s into this Women’s Lib thing to such a degree that she won’t accept alimony because it destroys a woman’s dignity. I don’t suppose that will make you shed tears!

Send us more assignments from time to time. We love our work, and we love you.

Sister Mary Katherine, S.J.

39

Cuernavaca

Mr. Laurence Clarke

c/o Gumbino

311½ West 20
^th
Street

New York, New York

Lorenzo, mi amigo—

You’re not going to believe this. Damn it all, you are simply not going to believe this.

I’m getting married in the morning. Here, in glorious Cuernavaca. Me. Steve. Your old buddy, the permanent bachelor.

And it’s all your fault, you sweet old sonofabitch.

That’s not the part you’re not going to believe, although God knows it’s unbelievable enough. The capper is that I’m getting married to Lisa. Your ex-wife.
That
Lisa.

Well, in this case you can’t be pissed, can you? I mean, I waited until you were done with her before I picked up on her. You can’t be pissed this time.

As far as I’m concerned, you’re Thomas Edison and Marconi and all those cats rolled into one. Because I took your advice again, Larry, and this time I made it work. Turned her on but good, flipped her over, rammed it halfway to her small intestine, and pinned her steady while I pumped it to her.

Screamed her head off. I thought we would have Mex cops all over the bed. But I kept it up just the way you said, and lo and goddam behold, Larry, if it didn’t work like a charm.

Fantastic. She’s got big tits and a rich father and she worships the fucking ground I walk on. Keeps telling me I’m the only genuine man in a world full of faggots. All I have to do is look at her and she melts.

Now I know how God feels.

Your pal forever,

Steve

40

Cuernavaca

Dear old Larry,

I’ll bet when you got a letter with all these flashy Mexican stamps on it, the last thing you expected was a letter from your ex. But that’s what this is.

And that’s not the greatest surprise, either.

Lover, you’re not going to believe this. You’re just not going to believe it. But every word of it is true.

I’m not just your ex-wife anymore. I’m also the wife of your best friend. Just five hours ago as I write this, I was married to Steve Adel in a tacky little church a few blocks from where we’re staying.

It’s your fault, of course. That letter you sent me put a bee in little Lisa’s bonnet. I had to find out if Steve was everything you said he was. Kiddo, you didn’t half do him justice! I suppose it’s the height of something or other to praise your husband to your ex-husband, but I have trouble restraining myself, I’m just all bubbly inside.

If I were the type to write obscene letters, like a certain former husband of mine, I could write a scene that would burn out your retinae. But that’s a memory I want to keep to myself. I won’t share it with you or anyone else.

Consider yourself richer to the tune of $850 a month. And consider yourself thanked—without even meaning to, you did me the greatest favor of my life.

Now and forever,

Mrs. Stephen Joel Adel

41

c/o Gumbino

311½ West 20
^th
St.

New York 10011

August 15

Mr. Roland Davis Caulder, Esq.

Muggsworth, Caulder, Travis & Beale

437 Piper Blvd.

Richmond, Va.

Dear Mr. Caulder:

Permit me to congratulate you on having one less bloodhound in your kennel!

I refer, in my usual chatty way, to the marriage of your daughter Lisa Beth Caulder Clarke to the estimable Stephen Joel Adel of Centre Street, New York. I can honestly say that the news came as no surprise to me, for it seems to me that the union of these two fortunate lovers is not a mere happenstance but the manifestation of some Master Plan.

I’m happy, of course, and my happiness goes beyond the cessation of my obligation to keep your little bloodhound bitch in Alpo. And I trust you too are happy to see the Davis and Caulder lines enriched by that of the famous name of Adel. Surely you, as a breeder of fine dogs, can appreciate the need to introduce an outside bloodline from time to time, and God knows the Davises and Caulders have inbred of late to the point of idiocy.

Look at the bright side, sir. You haven’t gained a son-in-law, you’ve unloaded a daughter.

Unfortunately, this means the end of our personal correspondence. I’m sure this grieves you as much as it grieves me. I trust, though, that we will be able to renew our acquaintance at blessed occasions. For my part, I look forward to seeing you at your grandson’s birth, and, God willing, at his bar mitzvah.

Very truly mine,

Laurence Clarke

42

WHITESTONE PUBLICATIONS, INC.

67 West 44
^th
Street

New York 10036

From the desk of Clayton Finch, President

August 21

Mr. Clayton Finch, Pres.

Whitestone Publications, Inc.

67 West 44
^th
St.

New York 10036

Dear Mr. Finch:

Please forgive my using your stationery. I was going to employ some of my remaining
Ronald Rabbit’s
stock, but since the business I have at hand is more that of Whitestone than of the lamented magazine, I felt this would be more appropriate. Also, and I say this not to turn your head, it was my feeling that your own personal letterhead might carry more weight with you.

Just yesterday I was reading through a stack of correspondence written over the past couple of months. Old habits never die, or so they say, and my editorial eye quickly realized that there ought to be a market for this material. My first impulse was to offer it for serialization in the forthcoming
Rachel Rabbit’s Magazine for Girls and Boys
, but I felt the nature of certain passages might prove objectionable in certain backward areas of the country.

At that point, a girl I know suggested that this file might make an extraordinary book. I thought it over and decided she was absolutely right. Of course we would have to change names and addresses around somewhat, but that should present only a minor problem. With that exception, we could present the material exactly as written and call it a novel.

I thought at once of you. My loyalties have never faded despite our periodic differences, Mr. Finch, and we all know that Whitestone’s paperback division, Hardin Books, needs all the help it can get.

I am thus enclosing copies of all correspondence herewith. You will no doubt be familiar with some of this material—indeed, you are the author of some of it—and for that reason, plus my reluctance to deal with underlings, I thought I would submit directly to you rather than to the Hardin editorial department.

I’ll look forward to hearing from you.

With every good wish,

Laurence Clarke

LC/rg

Enc.

43

WHITESTONE PUBLICATIONS, INC.

67 West 44
^th
Street

New York 10036

From the desk of Clayton Finch, President

August 25

Mr. Laurence Clarke

c/o Gumbino

311½ West 20
^th
Street

New York 10011

Dear Mr. Clarke:

You win. I give up. Contracts follow.

Clayton Finch

CF/jrp

44

c/o Gumbino

311½ West 20
^th
St.

New York 10011

August 28

Secretary to the President

Whitestone Publications, Inc.

67 West 44
^th
St.

New York 10036

Dear jrp:

You don’t know me, jrp, but there’s something about the way you type a letter that intrigues me. I was wondering if you would possibly be interested…

A New, Epistolary Afterword by the Author

James T. Seels

ASAP Press

Mission Viejo CA

Dear Jim,

First, I want to tell you how enthusiastic I am about your publication of
Ronald Rabbit is a Dirty Old Man
. It’s been out of print in all editions forever, as you know. As a matter of fact, it was barely in print to begin with.

I know I promised you an introduction for the new edition, and I wouldn’t mind taking a trip down Memory Lane and filling a few pages with the sort of nattering typical of aging writers as they recall their presumably carefree youth. (Mine, actually, was not so much carefree as it was careless.) I’ve written a slew of intros and afterwords in the past few years as various youthful indiscretions of mine have been reissued by specialty publishers, and I think I’ve got the knack of it by now.

In the present instance, though, I’ve had trouble getting a grip on it, perhaps because I’ve got all too many demands on my time and energy. I just got back a scant week ago from a book tour, I’m having lunch tomorrow to plan another tour three months from now, I’m working away on a new book with a deadline that’s not all that far off, I have to revise a two hour teleplay with an even closer deadline, and the next three months are peppered with speaking dates and interviews and conferences. Along with everything else, I’m on the StairMonster every day trying heroically to climb out of the Pit of Doom, and I’m wasting no end of time *on-line*, and how am I going to find the time to write this intro and make it interesting?

Damned if I know. Maybe if I just write my thoughts to you in this letter, I’ll get some clarity on the whole thing.

So here goes. In 1969 I moved to a country place near Lambertville, New Jersey, with my then-wife and still-daughters. We’d bought a rambling farmhouse that contained everything but a place to write. Besides, I couldn’t seem to get any writing done there. There was a goat to milk and a garden to tend and growing things to look at. The first six months I lived there I couldn’t get a word written. Then I came into the city and took a hotel room on West Forty-Fourth Street, and I wrote a book in a week.

Hmmmm, I thought.

So for the rest of my sojourn in the country, that’s how I worked it. When it was time to write, I would come to town. At first I used the hotel, and then I shared a pied-à-terre with Brian Garfield, who was also living in Jersey with his then-wife. Finally, I moved to an apartment on West Thirty-Fifth Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues. It was on the top floor of a small building, four flights up from Drum’s Restaurant. (Drum owned the building. He’s gone now, and so’s his restaurant. The building’s still there.)

I didn’t have the apartment that long, but it seems to me I wrote a lot of books there. The second Chip Harrison novel,
Chip Harrison Scores Again
. A political thriller,
The Triumph of Evil
, which was my second book under the pen name Paul Kavanagh. A couple of books of nonfiction, sexual case histories published under a pen name you don’t really need to know.

And
Ronald Rabbit
.

It’s not much of a secret that I wrote a lot of adult novels early in my career. (God knows why they call them that. It’s the ultimate euphemism, isn’t it? An adult novel is one no genuine adult would bother with.) They were mostly pretty tame by contemporary standards, and they certainly weren’t very good. I started writing them in 1958, and kept at it for five years.

In the late sixties, though, I was struck by the urge to explore the form again, if you want to call it that. But I didn’t want to grind out monthly trash the way I’d done earlier. I wanted to write some frankly erotic books that would be fun to write and might even be interesting to a reader with a three-figure IQ. My agent found an enthusiastic publisher, and I did three books in all, publishing them under a female pen name, one I’d used earlier on a pair of lesbian novels.

Ronald Rabbit
was initially intended as a pseudonymous paperback original. I wanted to write an epistolary novel but not the traditional series of narrative letters from a single character in the manner of Samuel Richardson’s
Pamela
. Instead I was inspired by Mark Harris’s brilliant comic soufflé
Wake Up, Stupid
, and my good friend Hal Dresner’s hilarious
The Man Who Wrote Dirty Books
. Each tells its story through the medium of the collected correspondence of the protagonist, letters written to him as well as letters written by him, and that’s what I wanted to do in
Ronald Rabbit
.

Beyond that, what did I know about
Ronald Rabbit
when I sat down to begin it? Well, I had for inspiration the example of a fellow I knew from a poker game I played in once a week. He had of late been let go (with generous severance pay and continuing medical coverage) six months after the magazine he edited had ceased publication. Like Laurence Clarke, he managed to stay so long because nobody noticed he was there. And I drew additional inspiration from the example of another fellow who played in that same game, a married writer who got drunk one night on MacDougal Street and wound up riding clear back to Noroton, Connecticut, in a station wagon full of girls from a very prestigious convent school.