twenty-one

Shortly after I was formally dubbed Tim, Lou gave me an unsealed envelope with a folded piece of paper inside. The envelope was addressed to a man in care of a music magazine located in Los Angeles. He told me to keep the letter until he was ready to send it and that I was welcome to read it but might be better off if I didn’t.

“Be sure to wash your hands after, if you do read it.” He laughed. “Better yet, wear gloves.”

He explained that he was afraid of the force contained within the envelope and that once unleashed on its target, some of its destructive powers could leak out into the world. This energy had the capability to alter the angle of the earth’s axis, so he wasn’t sure if he was ever going to send it. I was to keep it in a safe place and await further instructions from him.

I, of course, read the letter despite the warnings. It was handwritten in a manic, rabid print, each word tightly compacted and compressed though the spaces between were generous. He had done things to the page itself. I’d rather not say what I imagine he did (it involved bodily fluids) but nevertheless I’m glad I listened to him and wore the suggested gloves, which in my case were mittens.

Before reading the letter, however, I asked Lou what had prompted him to write it. He said the intended recipient had published some extremely cruel and inhumane things about Rachel in a magazine article about Lou’s last record.

The following was Lou’s defense of his lady’s honor:

 

January 15, 1977

446 East 52nd Street

New York, NY 10022

 

Dear Unesteemed Journalistic Scum Slash Shallow Size Queen:

I hereby supplicate: through truest intent, purest pledge, duly sworn oath, and most high prayer; all the gods and demons who lit the fires, dropped the frogs, and pissed the blood, who sent the swarms of locusts, malarial fleas, and poxéd lice upon the house of Rameses.

I beseech them to dump the turds of a million infectious buzzards upon your head; the feces infused with the syphilitic pus and madness of all the dead whores of Babylon and Baghdad.

May the facsimile of manhood that lies between your legs wither, fester, and decay like the corpses that filled the pits of Buchenwald and Birkenau.

May your manqué genitalia become a faucet and font of the most fetid and diseased sewage ever to seep quiet through the veins of Calcutta and black-plagued London.

And all the evils of the Aztec Heart Eaters, the thousand and one Arabian Sahars, the most abhorrent, obscene, defiling, and profane spells and incantations in the entire canon of Haddo’s left-handed path, the Yamas, Yantras, Maras, and Mataris, the second face of Mordrake, the 107 adventitious stains, the 909 untimely Turkish deaths, the 51 omens of Jephthah, the hex of the 66 hairs: may they ceaselessly bear their malevolent and wicked fruit upon you and your house for generation upon generation uninterrupted.

GET THE PICTURE, MOTHERFUCKER?

From this day forth I strictly and explicitly forbid you to hear any sound I have ever uttered, created, or recorded, either spoken word or musical note, whether voice my own or instrument born.

For you and yours I now render and infuse every note, riff, vibration, every syllable, with the potentiality described above.

YOU ARE FOREWARNED.

BEWARE.

DON’T SAY I DIDN’T TELL YOU.

YOU WILL REAP TEARS FROM THE FILTH YOU HAVE SOWN.

And happier I could not be.

 

Yours in Hate,

(here he scrawled his indecipherable signature)

 

Lou never mentioned the letter after he gave it to me that day. It remains in my possession but is now sealed.