An Open Letter To The Man Who Stole My Catalytic Converter
May he choke. Unless he really needed it idk.
An Open Letter To The Man (Because You Know It Was A Man) Who Stole My Catalytic Converter On Or About August 12th Between The Hours Of 5:00 PM August 11 And 1:00 PM August 13th Central Daylight Time In Chicago, Illinois, United States.
Dear Travis, because obviously your name is Travis because dudes like you are always named Travis and by dudes like you I mean men who are up to no good. You’re all named fucking Travis, or sometimes Austin. Luke is another one! Never met a Luke who wasn’t a full-tilt monster or at best a Travis in disguise, walking around masquerading as, say, a cool Nick or an innocuous golden retriever of a Jason but all the while little more than a wolf in Travis’s clothing.
I dated an Oliver once and hoo boy, there’s a piece of shit, although that’s a more intellectual piece of shit, a literary piece of shit, the sort of piece of shit who reads The New Republic and voted for Ralph Nader and, in the case of my Oliver, who baits you into chuckling awkwardly along with weird anti-semitic jokes on dates because you don’t know what else to do cuz he’s Jewish himself so you’re like “this is very uncomfortable but he is Jewish so I guess it’s ok am I supposed to laugh I should laugh he is staring at me like a clown waiting for a laugh he is going to poison me and eat my kidneys I think should I just chuckle along for safety what is going on in this restaurant on this day???” and then once you give your chuckle he immediately stops laughing and accuses you, in the most dulcet, plain-spoken Miranda Priestley voice you’ve ever heard this side of Miranda Priestley, of being an anti-Semite who’s only dating him for his Jewish money because you laughed at the joke he made. Which is really a shame because he was extremely sexy and built like a brick shithouse and in retrospect looked pretty much exactly like that one Italian gay from White Lotus who does the Carrie Bradshaw impressions on TikTok.
My point is an Oliver is a piece of shit but not the sort who’s shimmying underneath 14-year-old Honda CR-Vs and sawing off car parts. No, no, you’re definitely not an Oliver, and you may have others fooled into thinking you’re a LUKE, but I am onto you and you are at best an Austin and almost assuredly a fucking Travis.
I digress.
Dear TravisAustinLuke,
My dearly departed Aunt Kris used to tell people to “eat shit and live” because she felt this was what anyone who warranted an “eat shit and die” actually deserved, a more fitting punishment, you see, than eating excrement and then simply shuffling off this mortal coil to be rewarded with the verdant pastures of the afterlife. (Despite her misanthropy Aunt Kris believed in universal salvation, but that of course is the subject of a different open letter.)
No, no, Aunt Kris wished people would eat shit and then suffer the consequences, which WebMD says include an array of bacterial and parasitic infections with the usual gastrointestinal side effects you can probably gather.
Disappointingly and surprisingly, however, WebMD also says that doing as my dear Aunt Kris instructed is “minimally toxic,” but this is also the site that once told me I had full-blown AIDS when what I actually had was Swine Flu, so I think we should all give these results a grain of salt and assume that eating the shit in question will, in fact, be an exercise in terror and torment whether WebMD says so or not, and I just hope the rare earth minerals inside my catalytic converter were worth it, TravisAustinLuke. I just really hope so!
I’m inching ever closer to the dark side of 40 which means I am transforming at dizzying Dorian Grey-like velocity directly into my father, and as such it is incumbent upon me to bellow the things at you he might were he given the chance, like “why don’t you get a real job?!” and “look at this reprobate, out here taking up good space, breathing good air!”
But of course we live in hell so I already know why you don’t have a “real job,” it’s because for someone still sufficiently in the bloom of youth to be able to shimmy under a Honda CR-V with a Black & Decker Handisaw in the first place decent jobs basically no longer exist, nor do living wages, and even if they did the climate is collapsing anyway! A goddamn hurrikin was hurtling toward LOS ANGELES as I began writing this—and then they had an earthquake on the same day! And sure, plate tectonics isn’t related to the climate (THAT WE KNOW OF) but irregardless and nunthuless what difference does it make?! What difference does anything make anymore?!
Why slave away at an honest 40-hour a week job paying whatever the hell FICA is when the ENTIRE NATION OF CANADA IS ON FIRE and everything is so bad we don’t even CARE that there are aliens?! Might as WELL just wriggle under the SUV of some rapidly decaying middle-aged neurotic with a back full of suspicious moles and an A1C his doctor calls “concerning but not worrisome” which what the hell does that even mean?! Am I coming down with the diabeetus or not, speak English! See this is why people don’t trust doctors and fall into conspiracy theories, am I the only one unsettled by this?!
And see?! Now you’ve scrambled my brain because here we are talking about fucking BLOOD SUGAR and I don’t have a shred of a clue how we got here! I’m like Julianne Moore in Still Alice, I have wandered into a liminal kitchen and have utterly forgotten the reason for which I came! Please hold while I scroll up to regain my bearings, right ok rapidly decaying middle-aged neurotic get a job full-blown AIDS eat shit and live CATALYTIC CONVERTER RIGHT! Might as well pilfer car parts and make some quick cash off the books for tomorrow we die, right?! I get it! As the great Jewel Kilcher said there are addictions to feed and there are mouths to pay and I suppose if I were still of an age where I was virile of spirit and robust of body I’d simply turn to a life of crime too! We’re about a week and a Trump conviction away from armed militias rolling through the streets in the back of pick-ups like the goddamn Taliban anyway! (Too real?)
See?! I can’t even in good conscience bellow at you to get a real job! Do you see what you’ve taken from me, TravisAustinLuke?! This is about so much more than a car part. You have DEBASED me, because NOW as a traumatized middle-aged American progressive I am larcened of my sense of moral rectitude and forced to EMPATHIZE with someone I want to call a CRIMINAL but is more likely a modern day Jean Valjean! You’ve stolen the catalytic converter of both my automobile AND my dignity, TravisAustinLuke! J’accuse!
And this injury, this grievance, this transfixion is geometrically multiplied by the fact that given the aforementioned economic conditions I did not have any money with which to rectify your malfeasance! Do you know how humbling it is to have to call your little brother and beg him for alms, TravisAustinLuke?! I used to watch that dipshit pick his nose and eat it in the back of our father’s Chevrolet Caprice station wagon and now I owe him $1200! Why are you like this, TravisAustinLuke?! I implore you and all the cherubim and seraphim of God’s celestial kingdom why are you like this?
But then I’ve already answered that question, haven’t I? And THIS is the curse of being an Enneagram 4 Sagittarius with an Aquarius moon and a Scorpio rising, we see through everything, we empathize with everyone, and we are too aware of all the hidden truths for our own good.
You have robbed me of my catalytic converter, you have swindled me of my probity, and you have BURGLED ME of my ability to morally and ethically hate your guts. And THAT is the real crime here, TravisAustinLuke. I may one day forgive. But I will NEVER forget.
You know what? Fuck it, I’m back where I started. Eat! Shit! And LIVE, TravisAustinLuke! Not really though because ultimately you’re probably just a victim of a system you had no hand in creating and I’m sorry for yelling Jesus Christ next time have some mercy and just run me over with the car and then take the whole thing.
Cordially yours,
John, whose catalytic converter you stole on or about August 12th between the hours of 5:00 PM August 11 and 1:00 PM August 13th Central Daylight Time In Chicago, Illinois, United States.