Dear Person of Arguable Importance,
You’re a man of taste and sophistication. Well, ok, not really. Actually, you’re the sort of self-promoting bourgeois douche whose indefatigable ability to spew semi-intelligent bullshit guarantees a certain degree of regrettable success in this business. But as repulsive as I might find you on a personal level, I can at least respect your ability to make it in the proverbial jungle. And what I mean is, you’re not exactly completely inept vis a vis the basic living skills of the modern human. You’ve litigated on three continents for over 30 years, and I think most people would agree that you have more than a passing familiarity with the body of law in which you practice.
Which is why I cannot understand why the fuck you stink so goddamn badly. Listen to me right now: the other day I walked into someone’s office, sniffed a cloud of solid vile reek lingering in the air, and then I said you’d just been there. Not in the form of a question, do you understand? An observation. Your recent departure was as clear and undeniable to me as a burning fucking bush in the dark of night. I smelled that you had been there, Pigpen. If we were in the wilderness, I now know that I could track you by scent alone. I would just follow whatever smelled most like a a handful of rotten meat after it’s been raped by a skunk.
There have been days that your entire corner of this office building has reeked with the stench of whatever fucking odor you are managing, in violation of all the laws of what is pure and right, to produce. I think the wallpaper is coming off. Does it come from your mouth? Your skin? Your clothes? I don’t know, no one knows. I do know that I’ve offered associates two hundred dollars cash to leave a can of beribboned Right Guard on your desk. I’ve watched the mail girl actually stagger when passing your office door, each time she looks like Hong Kong Phooey just karate chopped the back of her neck.
How does a man at your level of social functionality get to this point, hygienically speaking? Aversion to soap? You and bathing just decided to part ways? Did someone drive an iron spike through your olfactory bulb on the way to cleaving your forebrain in two? For fuck’s sake, you are married. You go home to your wife, and she doesn’t say anything? If I was fuckin married to you and you came home smelling even remotely the way you do today, I would turn the hose on you and call the police. I would be convinced that my husband had been killed and had his clothes stolen by a hobo who was now assaulting my home with handfuls of his own feces, because nothing else could smell so goddamned horrible. If you left home smelling that way I’d commit seppuku from the wifely shame of it. What the fuck is going on in that house?
Do you remember when I drove you to the airport last year, and I suddenly swerved a little ways onto the shoulder of the road? And I said whoa, almost hit that turtle? I lied, there was no turtle. I blacked out for a second from the exposure to your body odor. After I dropped you off, I seriously considered setting my car on fire and going for the insurance money. The stench lingered a week, I drove around with Vicks VapoRub smeared into my nostrils.
We’ve tried being subtle, and you don’t get it. I have openly discussed the virtues of soap with other while you are in the room. Not because I find soap interesting, but because I am hoping against hope that you might begin to recognize that little white bar the hangs out in the bathroom. You think in moments of calm, me and the other guys sit around talking about Listerine because we just love it that much? No. All for your benefit, chief.
So on behalf of all those who have suffered and continue to suffer under the noisome stench of whatever toxins your body has taken upon itself to secrete, I say: bathe. Oh dead sweet christ, take a bath, maybe even two a day. Eat properly and brush your fucking teeth. Floss. Eat properly. Do these things and rejoin the human race. We all beg you.
Regards,
GB
