Dear Maria,

I write you this at a dark time. Netflix didn’t deliver what they promised and your baby Derrick piddled on my favorite tennis shoes.  He’s here staring at me with those damn beady eyes.  I don’t know why you insist in keeping a ferret.  It’s meant to be worn as a necklace not kept as some foppish guard rat. So anyway, not only was I in a state because of that, but once I sat down to awful reruns of “According to Jim” while you were off at your “night classes,” I realized that I have not one friend. No posse. No buddies or pals.

I was just sitting there in your robe with the clicker in my hand.  I realized you were the only one I have and everyone else thinks something else of me.  That’s a very sobering thought.  Or, it would have been if I wasn’t as blitzed as I was.

Now darling, please don’t hold this against me, as I admit that I am weak right now and this fact would break anyone’s heart if they weren’t as strong as I am.  I’m like a python.  A very handsome python.  With a wallet.  And pockets for said wallet.

But why bother, right? Who else will appreciate my routine as much as I do?  If they don’t like “Fawlty Towers” and key parties, who needs them?  Just kidding, darling.  No one has ever taken up my offer for a key party no matter how hard I try, and you’re the only one who will admit to liking John Cleese.

It would be so much easier if my parents hadn’t adopted a second child and instead gave me a real brother. How am I supposed to relate to someone who grew up for the first six months of his life in an orphanage?  There’s just something that connects two people together when they squirt out the same birth canal. No orphanage can provide that type of bond.  But orphans can’t help it.  It’s the diet of gruel and singing while mopping with brushes strapped to their feet.  They’re doomed from the beginning.  An amazing pseudo-brother like me can only help the little tike so much.

I just want to know when this happened.  I think I used to have friends, didn’t I?  A whole lot of them, really.  They would all gather to drink swill with me and march me around on their shoulders.  We’d go to Vegas and have adventures, great ones at that.  We blacked out due to accidentally ingesting rohypnol on the roof of our hotel… Then we found Mike Tyson’s tiger in our room… And my friend lost a tooth, but we made it back for the wedding in time… And the car we wrecked, it was okay that we wrecked it because it was actually a wedding gift… We gave back a baby too.  Oh, those guys.  We had some good times.

But where are they now?  What about my personality has driven everyone away?  I find myself wondering if I’m just a sad sod of a sack nowadays.  Have people made up their mind about me and I can’t get it back?  That’s enough to drive a man to drink if he hadn’t drinked all the booze in the house already.  That reminds me, dear.  I drank your Zima thinking it was tooth paste, so you’ll have to pick up some more on the way home.  Why don’t people like me anymore?

I’ll ask you not to remind me of this tomorrow, as I’m sure these feelings will pass.  I am comfortable in my skin, who I was, (awesome), who I’ve become, (probably more awesomer), and what jerks the company I used to hold have also become (opposite awesomest).  What’s that phrase, “It’s not you, it’s me”?  I agree 100% with that statement if say, you were saying that to me, and then replacing “me” with them, so we could just say, “It’s them, not me.” And I would agree with you agreeing with me about them.  I sincerely believe that you are right to support me, Maria, no matter how much the “Thems” of the world dispute it.  If it’s not me, then it must be them, right?  Or you, I guess.

I’m glad I could express to you these feelings.  If I’ve fallen asleep on the couch, please don’t wake me and just keep my side of the bed warm, darling.

Yours,

Charles