Well, hello there, ladies and possible gent or two. Just a few quick notes before we see what Jasper has to say - you'll bear with me, right? Oh, good. Thank you. :)
Quick Notes:
1) Still not Stephenie Meyer, and damn glad, because I have 100 Monkeys tickets for this Sunday and I'm thinking she doesn't.
2) Go Ask Alice is up for a couple Everything's Bigger in Texas Awards! Best Southern Charm Fic and Best Original Storyline - can you believe it?! I'm eighty shades of thrilled, not even gonna lie. Voting runs through 12 April 2010 (see also, this coming Monday) and I swear I will love you for all eternity if you vote for this story. Well, you're reading, so I already love you, but you know what I mean. Here's the link to vote, in case you feel the story deserves it: .... Okay, correction. The link doesn't want to freakin' post right (*kicks FFn*), but it can be found in the next point. *grumbles*
3) I have me a blog, in case you missed the memo. http://makkitotosimew(dot)blogspot(dot)com And I really think you might want to drop in... We've been playing hotseat, and this session's victim just so happens to be the young man responsible for this letter. Ask him anything! And I do mean anything. hehe
Alright, no more ado - have at him, ladies. ;)
July 11, 1969
Dear Alice,
I'm glad you're not mad at me. I won't lie, I was worried, but I'm glad to know sticking to my roots finally got me something other than made fun of.
You'll be happy to know Lee-lee wrote me back – apparently foolishness is a recessive trait and she missed out on it. She's still not happy with me, but she appreciated the apology and promised to stop ignoring me. It's not perfect, but it's a step in the right direction, and I have you to thank for it. You were right to chastise me, as you put it, Alice. It was wrong of me to just let things go on like that. I was wrong (don't ever tell Lee-lee I admitted that).
Trust me, I've moved on from the years of belt buckles the size of my head. I do have a Stetson lying around somewhere though, and if you promise not to call me Twinkie the Kid again, I might just be willing to wear it again sometime. And there is nothing I'd like more than to take my girl home and show her what Texas is really like. I think you'd like it, even if you didn't get to see a twister. Wimberley is so different from Chicago. In Chicago, you're always surrounded by bricks and metal and people in a hurry. Wimberley is green and natural and relaxed. Something tells me you'd love it like I do. I'll take you there soon as things calm down and I come home. I promise.
Alice, has anyone ever told you that you ramble when you're nervous? Because you do, even on paper. And even on paper, it's one of the most adorable things I've ever seen. I'm glad you didn't throw your letter away. If you'd rewritten it, it would have been rehearsed and filtered and not your honest thoughts and feelings. I like your honest thoughts and feelings. I like how straight-forward you are with me. Most of all, I like that you let me be the luckiest man over here and call you my girl. If that guy comes back to the shop, you let him know you're taken and if he doesn't stop asking after you, your soldier's going to come back and find him. And your soldier's got a mean streak when necessary.
I'm trying to picture you leading a protest and I just can't. Sure, you're a little spitfire – no doubt about that – and I'd follow you into metaphorical battle, but I just can't see you being a hippie pied piper. I can't see you marching and carrying signs and leading a poorly rhymed chant. Actually, try as I might, I can't see you at all. The only time I can is when I'm lying down to go to sleep at night, tacky as that sounds. I can hear you and I can taste you, but I can't see you, and that is unimaginably frustrating. I almost hate to ask, but is there any chance of remedying that? It'd be nice to have a picture of my girl to keep with me, a pretty little reminder of what I get to come home to.
I know you want me to come home early, Alice, but there's only one way that's going to happen and neither of us wants to see that. Believe me, I have faith in you and what you can do with your friends, but a few dozen angry people with picket signs aren't going to bring us home. We're going to have to end this the old-fashioned way. And I know I'm going to be here a good, long time, but did you really have to enumerate each second, baby? It makes it seem longer than it really is, and I don't want to be away from you a second more than necessary. No more crazy math until I get home, okay? Not that I don't love your brain… I'm just hoping you might use it for good instead of evil and stop making me feel so damn lonely with your second counting. Though, I do appreciate that you didn't break the seconds down into nanoseconds or anything like that. I don't think I'd want to see how long that number would be.
I miss you too.
Your soldier,
Jasper