Two Kinds of Happiness

Dear Jimmy-
News of you still filters through.  Just because it didn’t work out between us doesn’t mean I don’t care about you.
I stopped by earlier-why didn’t you answer the door? I could hear you in there, singing to the Strokes and coughing up a lung.
Avril said she came over last week and you just sat there, not saying anything.
Hope you’re ok.
xoSybil

Sybil-
I can never change what’s been.  By the end of last summer I was in serious debt and bad trouble with the law.  The state sent me a letter saying they’d have to collect $1,680 in overpayment of Unemployment Compensation and I wrecked my car at the 360 turnoff on Mopac South.
They closed the pool and I got depressed.  I sat in a green overstuffed chair for 3months until Avril came over and snapped me out of it.
Now I got a job at the campus bookstore.  I sulk down the drag with Charles Whitman’s blues.  Nightimes are silent and the phone doesn’t ring.  It’s nice to hear you think of me.
Nights on your bed drinking wine and reading the Yoga Sutras were subtle and precious.  When we tried to fuck I couldn’t stop thinking about all the men you had, all the men I heard you talk about on your radio show.
I suffer bad withdrawal from all the drama and venom that swirled around that old life.   Its ok I knew what I was getting into when I met you and I’m not perfect either.
In fact, if you look inside yourself you will find that I was just practice for you.  Practice jettisoning neurotic, self-involved liars from your life.  Follow your senses and be led through the eye of the needle.  For me, that path only leads to more suffering and I’m out for something more lasting and true than carnal pleasure.
I came down to Austin with $160 and two guitars. My first house was $500 a month but it wasn’t insulated. That first terrible summer down here, when I was donating plasma and peddling lunchmeat in the supermarkets, all my money went to Austin Energy. The AC just went through the fucking walls. Also, my first night on 6th street cost me $400. I was charged with “leaving the scene of an accident” but I got it deferred.
Those were the good old days compared to the blues&Trouble that’s crouching down at Bat Manor now.  Spring is here but I don’t care. I’m moving across the river.  Fuck this place.
Hope you’re getting some good use out of the old type.  I miss you, too.

And they sacrifice their lives, and they’re lying about those odds.  So long, my adversary and friend.
-The Strokes

Jim