Dear tortured southern author,Last weekend I got totally blitzed at Sig Ep and made out with some random chick whose name I can’t even remember. This is a problem, as I already have a girlfriend. Alyson (my girl) found out about it from my buddy Kelso, who was also drunk as hell at the time, and now my ass is toast. I’ve tried calling her like, a million times a day, but she won’t even talk to me. I even brought flowers over to her room but she just totally slammed the door on my face. How can I apologize if she won’t even pick up the phone? Should I just forget about Alyson and try to hook it back up with the random chick, or what?
—Sorry in Sage
Dear Sorry,
henry was about the best ole hound dog i ever seen. or ever had ever would have for that matter. he he he was about the noblest of all hounds (weren’t you ole boy? yes you was that time when i shot the rabbit lickety split in the dark in the night in the rain but i was out there. i was out there and you were out there nevertheless then the sheriff and his boys came and thought they could take us in for what we might have done but did not do could not ever do and you found that rabbit (and not him, the old man) for them for me and they knew. they knew i was not the one they wanted because of you because you were the noblest of all hounds) and we found that body out in the grove of sweet smelling georgia pine. sweet smelling sickly sweet of pine (hush!) and rot and green and fresh sweat death humming flies buzzing and you poking your nose around in it. poking your nose and rooting around in the flesh and we not knowing who it be (were) or where to run to scream to (for help? for help? for hell?). but you had found it and we had to do something or nothing so we left it (it being him, him being old man cranshaw) left it good left it ripe though you protested and whined and sighed. but you were the best ole hound dog i ever seen, and that was why. no human man could gaze upon that sight those eyes, agape, and turn away with no more than a whimper a sigh i had to leave it because i couldn’t i just couldn’t shh, good boy. good boy, good boy.
—a tortured southern author
Dear tortured southern author,
I thought that rooming with “Anna,” my best friend from Appleton North, would be an awesome way to make the transition from high school to college. But since about six weeks into last term, she’s been driving me absolutely crazy! Her hours are totally different than mine—she usually comes home around 3 a.m., on weekdays—and she just leaves the room a complete mess. I’m no neat-freak myself, but could it kill her to make that rat’s nest of a bed at least once a term? In addition, she doesn’t wake up to her alarm clock, spends most of the weekend getting completely trashed, and is forever borrowing my stuff (clothes, toothpaste) without asking. Don’t even get me started on how many times I’ve walked in on her and her idiot boyfriend, “Chad.” I really want a single, but I feel guilty because I keep on remembering what a great friendship “Anna” and I used to have. I heard that people change at college, but is there anyway that I could get the old “Anna” back? I just don’t know what to do anymore.
—Krushed at Kohler
Dear Krushed,
i done told carothers to stay away from ellamae’s cabin that night, but he dint lissen none. just shortly the black dusty dead night afore ellamae’d told me cirrus lissen herself that she dint want to see none of him not tonight not tomorrow not ever again but he was a stubborn ole cuss never one to lissen to any reason, and this was specially true when he’d had the drink in him (which was most nights. afterwhich he would carry into the cabin with such a ruckuss and take his and then she’d and there’d be a scream so loud piercing right through ancient ghosts of righteous indignation and hellfire)
so I had to do it.
no cirrus help i had to set him down, make him cirrus understand. make him understand that if he gone over to that cabin yet one more time i’d be much obliged to go in after him and if he done touched but one hair on that poor girls head why then don’t you think i’d cirrus
if i have to so i had to do it. i had to take off after that old man into the night into those deep woods. and i had to pick up that rock and beat it down down down…
—A tortured southern author