Give Me That Body (Oneshots)

Quit Your Evil (Laurent, letter to Mini, 2002)

Dear Little Dove,

We were most pleased to receive your recent letter, here at our house in California. Here, I will write to you in English, which is your favorite.

Some words you write, I don't understand, and there is no one to explain them to me. Please, you will write in French or please write more simply. We are not so well educated as you.

It has been some time that I have seen you, dove. Why will you not come and bed with us? It would be the most pleasant in the world.

You asked me in your letter to tell you a little about my life before you, and I am most happy to talk a little about it. Will you not come in person? I would like to put my head together with yours, and speak about it. We have been in the past bosom friends. It is hard for me to understand your absence. Do you think me angry with you? I am not angry, dove.

You will know, having studied much, that in the centuries before you there was much pestilence in France, as was God in much displeasure. Then too, there were not much for the French crown or Her little people, and Her plagues brought to me much terror and anxiety.

I lived a quiet life of little luxury, though I kept myself well clean. It does bring no grief to say that the pestilence brought me to retire from a public life which theretofore had brought me much pleasure. In those times, the people drew quite tribal, and looking for common cause stretched their fingers toward any beautiful face or uncommon behavior. Syphilis, also, brought about great harm to cavorting, and pushed me toward Paris, where I might live a more anonymous life, though it was not yet the city you know.

There were young men whom I liked, but we were all of us quite jumpy then, and the blood so often tainted that I felt quite put off by it, and its often making me quite ill. So I fell horrible weak and lonely then, and longed for those of my own like, who were as now a rarity. There were then some young suckling ones in Paris who were starving for fear of drawing of tainted blood, and some worthy who died. This is as always happens when some new plague sucks its own blood of Man. Whensoever as there was summer, there was the miasma of great disease, and the smell of putrid flesh, which carts there were not enough to collect.

I kept low and fearful of the panic inherent in such times, terrified to be grabbed up and drowned as of a witch again or other harridan, as even then with little lovers there was known of my vicissitudes. I lived among ailing young men for whom I felt sympathy, in a common house by the stinking, unmoving river. In the summer, the city smelled of filth and Her waters choked upon it. I went from there to Lorraine, laid low by the death of some lovers, as you will smile at, I am sure. How funny I am, never to learn of love's hurts. Well, I am insincere regarding that you may mock it. Do not smile at me about it ever.

So for many years, I lived in Lorraine. You have guessed this. Mini, come, and ask me as you would. There is much lonely here. If you would only quit your evil, and leave to themselves young boys, the love between us would bloom much repaired.

Return to me my diamond necklace or I shall set the devil upon your heels. I shall not sit idle. You are a thief.

Do write to me again many times. Please use little words, for my head is terrible tired as of late.

Yours,

Laurent

P.S. If it is that you like this necklace very much, do write to me of your affection for it and it is yours, dear heart. I am only wounded by your slipping it from my neck and secreting it away. If you are my child, I should say this to you. Do not be an imp. I have enclosed a photograph for you to keep inside your shirt, near your heart. Say that you will keep it there and send affection from afar. I will weak to you and tell you that I have need of it. I love you as ever, and you are so smart as I am doubly proud. Oh, write again.