Postcards from Rusty. No. 23

Rusty writes from Panic, Michegan. Frankly I do not believe that the image on the card is where he says it is.

He tells me that nurse Caz has left him for a snake oil salesman from Tupelo. He is returning to England.

Correct toothpaste procedure during courting.

She said, laughing, let's brush our teeth together and by the time I got to the bathroom candles were lit and the light sparkled in the many mirrors.

she watched with burgeoning affection as I squeezed the toothpaste from the middle of the tube while I thought to myself; 'how much time will pass before I am admonished for squeezing the toothpaste from the middle of the tube and nagged into squeezing from the end.

give me a cuddle, she said some time later, not a hard one but a long squeeze. so I squeezed her round the waist and told her that she would always be my toothpaste tube and that I would squeeze her for ever. All the while thinking to myself 'how long will this last.

And sure enough one day she pulls away and says: 'Dont squeeze me like that, if you squeeze me in the middle I'll be obliged to nag...

If only you were a foot fetishist, then you'd squeeze me right.

So I never squeezed her in the middle again and over the years the 'waist' which I had squeezed Into her dissapeared and she became tube shaped from all of my foot squeezing.

The only physical contact we have now is her monthly pedicure.

I noticed the other day that she squeezes the toothpaste from the middle of the tube and has always done so.

I daren't point this out to her.

Natural history.

Some time ago while watching a TV programme about the Humbolt current Nurse Caz pressed the pause button and said:

Jannie, I never had a teddy bear as a child. I had a sea lion.

I didn't have a teddy bear either. Or a sea lion... I had a rock, a black rock.

I found it in the shed by the kitchen door when I had first started to walk. I took it into the house and very quickly formed an attachment to that black rock but my mother took it from me and threw it on the fire.

I cried for a while at the loss of my only friend but soon returned to the shed near the kitchen door and found myself another 'friend' with which to play. my mother equally as speedily threw that friend on the fire.

This process continued for some weeks until I was fast enough on my feet to get ahead of the fire whereupon my mother started putting the black rocks into a basket beside the fire place. She called me 'Mummies clever little helper' although I could not see how it could be construed as clever to burn all of my friends.

Since then I have found it impossible to form lasting relationships.

but i am known for my splendid coal fires.