On feeling around

From: Laurence Shandy
To: Christopher Hitchens, Vanity Fair contributor
Re: Waxed junk

Dear Hitch,

Congratulations on your efforts at self improvement. Maybe you're only turning your life around as fodder for your columns, but the deed is done regardless. Hopefully you'll tack a few more days onto the end of your golden years, but it'll be strange seeing the new you. Were we ever to cross paths covering the war-torn ravages of Eastern Europe, I'll be taken aback if I don't find you trolling the ruins of a bombed-out restaurant, locking your lips to the head chef's corpse and sucking away for any taste of semi-absorbed alcohol. If we stumble upon a gang of molotov-throwing anarcho-communists and you don't offer them sexual favors in exchange for a few cigarettes, I'll be shocked. And, of course, I probably won't recognize you if you drop below 180 pounds.

But good for you, and good for your lovely wife. Judging by our rendezvous at the National Book Awards last week, I can already notice an improvement. Sure, you still pilfered the wine glasses from all those who momentarily turned the other direction, but you did it with a kind of youthful vigor I've never seen from you before. And your pride in your newly waxed sack, back, and crack was well-deserved. Those editors and publishers who felt of your baby-soft genitals that evening were correct in dubbing them as smooth as summer cherries. It's an engineering feat in itself that so much scrotal skin could have been pulled so taut.

However, I must tell you that my own phalangial wanderings painted a less than healthy picture. I can't argue with their relative hairlessness, but I must say I felt a few worrisome bumps along the way from your urethra to your taint. Maybe they were only gooseflesh. After all, the non-fiction winner was about to be announced. (Sorry about the loss, by the way.) But with all my training in the fine arts of phrenology and reflexology, I feel I'd be amiss if I didn't warn you that the raised ridge along your life vein doesn't at all jive with the fact that Jupiter was in its western house that night. In other words, I think you have the herp.

If I were you, I'd get on the phone with anyone who left your company only to partake of a few pigs-in-a-blanket. We might have an outbreak on our hands. Literally.

Best wishes,
Laurence Shandy, gentleman