A History of the African-American People (Proposed) by Strom Thurmond (34 page)

I know you’re busy but I just hoped you’d be interested in my little proposition.

Juniper, I gather, is really working so hard these days, he must be exhausted. Now, that’s one reason I step into the breech, though my motives are really not that unselfish. Mostly I want to be with you. But Juniper is working now also on that CLASS ASS project (the accounts from the gritty, liquidy world of pimps and prostitutes by one SEPTIC, whose no-holds-barred account will tell it like it’s never been told before.) I know this is Vendetti’s project, coarse as it is, but it must rip Juniper in two directions at once.

I, on the other hand, am whole.

Badda-Bing,

Barton

March 24, 2003

Dear Juniper,

I just hit on a scheme for putting up a shield between you and Martin. I hope.

I wrote to him offering my very self for waltzing under the stars and fornicating in fountains. Of course I trust it won’t come to that. I am an old hand at avoiding anything intimate, whether I mean to or not.

Also, I let him know how busy you are, what with that project on whores you’re doing with Vendetti.

Are there stars out tonight? I don’t know if it’s cloudy or bright. Cause I only have eyes for YOOOOOOUUUUUUU.

Cheers,

Barton

S
IMON
& S
CHUSTER
, I
NC
.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

March 27, 2003

Dear B—

Just a note to thank you for the shield. You cannot know how much I need one. Snell found out about CLASS ASS and seems to be fixated on Vendetti. It scares me. Could he be worried that Vendetti is stealing me from him? What a grotesque idea—which makes it all the more likely in old Marty’s case.

Whoooee. Martin is possessed, that’s for sure.

Thanks!!

Juniper

Vendetti, you puss-pricked Sicilian yellow bastard,

I have my eye on you, you swarthy pig fucker. I fucked your mama, you know, me and all the other 11th graders at P.S. 122. She kept saying, “Give me more, give me more!” “Oh Ralphie!” she’d sometimes say, the senile old cunt. Or “Oh Rover, give me your raw red cock.”

I hope you die, you cocksucker. I wrote your name all over the Grand Central toilets: “For a good dick-slurper call A. Vendetti (A. is short for assfuck).”

You aren’t worth a pile of cowshit as an editor, you know that? Anybody’s a better editor than you. That’s why they give you all those books aimed at fairies and stupid women. You have a lot in common with them, right? You can only fuck your old stinking cow of a mother and the boys in the toilets. That’s why they give you those books. And the ones on pimps and whores.

I may just run you down with my car, I’d have to back over you thirty times to get all the glop out of your fat body, all blood and loose cartilage and fat and no brain matter on the street.

I know where you work, Sicilian shitface fuck. Just keep that in mind. I don’t know where you live, but I can find out.

A. Frend

Memo: McCloud to Snell

March 28, 2003

Dear Martin,

I typed up that note to Vendetti, but do you think it’s wise? Don’t you think he’ll suppose it’s internal? Maybe you should follow your first instinct and send the pencilled note. It’s well disguised.

Anyhow, I did use the font you suggested—that comic Chinesey font. Are you sure you haven’t used it before? It’s so odd that if you have used it before, it’d be like attaching a picture of yourself to the letter—not so anonymous as you’re hoping, I’d say.

Also, and above all, would you leave out that allusion to the pimps and whores project? Vendetti’s been fine with me, but he might think I wrote the note. I mean, who else knows about it, except Barton? Well, you. But don’t make me sorry I told you.

Juniper

Memo: Snell to McCloud

March 28, 2003

Jun—Send it exactly as it is, exactly, every word. I resent your phrase “anonymous as you’re hoping.” You think I’m afraid of that bloated Wop? Jesus, what a fuck you are sometimes (luckily, not always)! I’m keeping it anonymous just to preserve company dignity and also to vex him even more, that shit-eating Sicilian son of a diseased whore!

Mar

S
IMON
& S
CHUSTER
, I
NC
.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

March 28, 2003

Dear Barton,

Our contacts until now have been entirely epistolary. Nothing in the flesh, I mean. Only paper has connected us (along with electrons, I guess; I refer to our phone calls and however it is phone messages are transmitted, electrons I think, though I was never good in science. Were you? I have found I seldom get along well with those who were good in science. I use the past tense because I know no one whose acquaintance with science is not in the past. i.e., I know no scientists, unless you want to call physicians and pharmacists by that term, which I don’t.) I have never much liked talking on the phone, which is something of a disadvantage in my line, where phone schmoozing means a lot to some. But if it means that much, I always say, why don’t our books come out with receivers attached?

The reason I mention our not having met in the flesh is that your letters have often made me quite afraid of you. Just to ante up and stay in the game, cards on the table though not face up, I will say that I can’t tell if you are colorful, uninhibited, witty, or sociopathic. Now, that issue may not matter to you, but it does to me.

Let me be plain. I will not pretend that I am so busy I have no time for anybody in my life. I’d love to get to know you if you won’t hurt me. By “hurt me” I don’t mean anything remote or obscure. I don’t mean break my heart; I mean break my arm.

I am, Barton, very lonely, and I am aware that such loneliness makes me act in ways I sometimes, afterwards, wish I hadn’t. But I am not so lonely that I want to be abused—physically. Emotionally, I can take.

I know very well that Juniper has never liked me at all. He’s an extremely kind boy is all it is. That and being pretty indifferent to his lovely, lovely body. I have never fooled myself that he was eager to do anything sexually with me. What little went on he just allowed and was nice about it. I almost let him get away, I guess because I was so humiliated by what I was doing to him. And I am so afraid of losing him, though I don’t really HAVE him either.

Why am I saying all this? Usually I am not so introspective, you may be glad to find out. To swing to the conclusion: I would love to do things with you—you mention dancing and rollerblading—so long as you don’t beat me up. Say when you’re free. I am free any time except work hours, and often then.

Badda-Boo,

Martin

S
IMON
& S
CHUSTER
, I
NC
.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

March 30, 2003

Dear Percival and James,

I trust things are going very well. I gather they are. Barton Wilkes tells me they are, and I am inclined to believe him. He said you were shifting from a strict history to something more enjoyable and more within the Senator’s compass and your own. That sounds good to us, provided (a) it gets done soon and (b) it still connects the two key terms in the project, Strom and blacks. Abandon either term and the project has lost its moorings, become something else, something very good it may be but not what it was, not what we signed on for.