Wicked Game

Dear Gwyneth Paltrow,

The day we spent together was totally the bee’s knees. When I saw you at the Country Cousins Country Feed and Gasoline Outlet I couldn’t believe it. I forgot what I was doing and overfilled my gas can. It got all over my crotch. You made a joke about piss and “petrol”. I asked you if you always pretended to be English. You laughed and I got a little faint. It could’ve just been the fumes. I’m not really sure how the conversation went after that. I just remember something about four wheelers and you giving me a ride on yours. And we were off.

I have to tell you that I was impressed by your ATV skills. The way you would take those hills reminded me of the feeling you get when you drive over hills really fast in a car, or on a rollercoaster. Only we were on a four-wheeler. You drove us through that giant mud puddle and I named it Lake Gwyneth. We stopped there and you shared your bag of Trolli Mini Brite Crawlers Sour Gummy Worms and Mountain Dew Code Red with me. It was the best worst lunch I’ve ever had. I never wanted the day to end.

I appreciated you giving me your itinerary for the next six months. I especially liked how you customized it for me by writing my name on the top. There’s a lot of contact information in there. I could seriously get in touch with you almost anywhere you’d be in the whole world, and at any time that was not in the past or the future. But then something terrible happened. I woke up, and I couldn’t find it.

It only got worse. I couldn’t find it because I’d dreamed the whole thing. It hit me hard. Suddenly I understood what Chris Issak was singing about back when I was 9 years old.



It really was a wicked thing to do. It all seemed so real. I even thought I remembered your mother’s phone number from the contact list. I called but got Emily’s Pet Taxidermy in Keamy, Arizona. They had no Blythe Danner there. I had to face the reality. My brain had taken drugs behind my body’s back. There was no other explanation for how real it seemed when you laughed at my sub-par jokes. Actually, that should’ve been my first clue. Needless to say, I only had one quarter-pounder with cheese meal that day and I didn’t even large size it. All of the colors drained from the sky, the trees and the grass. It was really cloudy outside.

Regardless, I wanted to thank you for our time together, short lived as it was. You helped me acknowledge all of the things I want and might not ever have since in reality you’ve now been tainted by Cold Play’s bold spray and given birth to several fruit flavored children. I’ll always hold a special place in my heart for you, and I’ll try really hard not to hope for your marriage to end in divorce.

Love,
J. Ham