I flip back to the letters page where somebody refers to Hamlet as “a coward, a backstabber, and a moe.”
The theory of Hamlet as homosexual, which
I’ve never heard before, literally
stays with me through several different
dreams, in which I mention it to various people. In one, Me and my
friends are hanging out with Brad Pitt, and I mention the theory to him.
He rolls his eyes.
*****
I stop by my dad’s house and pick up mail
that has been waiting for me. One envelope is beaten and greasy and
I open it hesitantly. There’s some newspaper clippings, a handwritten
letter on tiny sheets of paper that are greasy, crumpled. I flip
to find the signature;it’s a letter from Trish. Trish who?
Trish Strickland? I have trouble believing that she would send me
a letter. I keep flipping through the letter for clues, but I can’t
find anything that specifically gives away the identity of the person writing
the letter.
Later, someone puts on a videotape that I think came with the letter. It’s a movie with Sean Penn and Nicolas Cage riding their bicycles around Los Angeles. I’m completely captivated with the backgrounds, which totally catch all the gaudy color of the cheap crackerbox apartment buildings of West Hollywood. “Look at those beautiful backgrounds!” I yell as Nicolas Cage pedals past my old apartment building (the Shannon Arms?) “That’s who sent me this letter. It was Trish Strickland! I told her that I was missing the old streets of L.A.!” I rewind the movie to look at the backgrounds again, but I rewind it too far, to a point where all the backgrounds are animated. I sit there and wait to get to the moment I just saw. It never comes again.