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Philip Weiss and Zo‰ Heller

the breakfast table
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from: Philip Weiss

Liberal Orthodoxy, and Other Spent Paradigms

Posted Thursday, June 10, 1999, at 5:26 PM ET

Zoë,

I'm so glad we set up a private line, letters we don't have to share with the Slaters. As I imagine them, they're all wonky and logical and want to talk about current events, and all I can do right now is think about your body. I know what a cliché of e-mail this is, but after four days of this I find I'm in love with you. Or I woke up to find. I imagine you radiant, flushed, jutting like an African sculpture, the tones of your skin milky, charged, placental. Mouth averted, reddened, by the urgent pressure of the life force within. Your hair jet, eyes gray blue. Maybe light green. Oh, Christ, I know I'm just an e-mail cliché--maybe this was inevitable, maybe I shouldn't send this, maybe I'm probably projecting so much on you, but I can't say no to these feelings. I can't. You don't know how I rush to the computer to hear your voice. Grounded, confident, sensual, swaggery. And own it, Z, you whupped me. Your citations, your wit, your English cool to my puppy-dog metaphysics, your clipped perfect satires, your breadth. But more than any of that you get me. No one has really got me like this before, no one. My mind races like a stallion to you across the sunburnt moors. And you know we would have an amazing time in the sack, even pregnant. I think of it like a hot, skin-covered watermelon to play with together, turning us on, delirious obstacle. You know it would be intense, Z. Sex is another layer of communication, a deeper layer. I don't care about the older guy you live with. That's cool. That's fine. It's better that way, us both being married. But if I can quote your countryman for one second, Kingsley Amis, he used to hold out his right hand like an offered handshake, thumb sticking up in the air, and say, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s. Using his left forefinger to go down the digits, touch first right thumb then right forefinger, then middle finger, etc., moving down down down, nearly facing the floor, pointing out the angle of the erection as a man ages. I'm sorry, and I know that some dudes beat the odds. Still. I'm only 43, Z ... Mostly I really need to meet you, see you again, see if this powerful and electric intimacy we've experienced online is real. You have to feel this too, I know you do. Does it seem as urgent to you as to me? Do you know the Black Bass Inn in Bucks County? I've told my wife I'm going antiquing tomorrow. And that is actually not a lie. I will e-mail you tomorrow.

Meantime I'm going to dash off some sizzling superficial thing for the public. You are of course right about my patterns of mind. (She gets me! He wants to howl to the vaults of heaven.) I despise liberals cuz I had the misfortune of being reared in their church. They are as bad as the Catholics, their orthodoxy, which none of them observes when it is inconvenient.

Philip

P.S.: Careful when sorting out my letters. The one for you is slate7.1a2. The one for publication is slate7.1a3.

the breakfast table
entries
12345678910111213141516
from: Philip Weiss

Liberal Orthodoxy, and Other Spent Paradigms

Posted Thursday, June 10, 1999, at 5:26 PM ET
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Philip Weiss is a novelist and a columnist for the New York Observer. Zo‰ Heller lives in New York and writes for British papers.
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