Aldous wrote this letter to Beatriz after the incident at the tree lighting. He was too afraid to give it to her in person and left it in the black box theater in a place that he hoped she would find it. Beatriz never read it.
Dear Beatriz,
All I can do is thank you immensely for what you have done for me, helping me grow and become a better person. I think back on all the conversations we had and I know that the time we spent together was much more valuable than any of the shit I learning in my stupid classes. You know the world the way I do. It was never nice to you and you do not trust any of it. Part of me is sad that things have been so hard for you, but another part is happy that our winding roads crossed and I realize that without you I would be something very different today.
When I met you I was still the bitter child who felt the rejection of everyone who was supposed to love him. And the world we live in perpetuates the belief that family is somehow wholesome and important to our growth. As far as family goes, I know only savage beatings and misunderstanding. But such is the plight of the genius, his life is never in any state of comfort. Where most sleep blissfully on clouds of deceit formed by the amassing of society’s lies as vaporous gases seeping in to inoculate the vain of reason that holds: everything is not perfect as it ought to be, I was busy smelling that odorous stench of untruth and woke with a start, sat upright in what, at first glance seemed to be a nightmare, but proved instead to be the very marker by which people grow to understand a truly hellish state.
Maybe life as we know it happens retrograde, maybe we experience the afterlife before true life can begin and I have just emerged from my hell to this place called Earth where I was to meet you and lose you. Time on Earth, I believe is a mix of the wondrous joy and unfathomable wretch of heaven and hell respectively and sadly I will not be able to run that gamut with you. We had a wild time together, yes; at times our love was volatile and we could quickly forget the disputes in our passions. But imagine if we had a lifetime together?
There have been few women in my life who have had a true impact on me; other than you I can only think of my mother whose animosity towards me made me extremely cynical. You are nothing like my mother. She was a simple lady who gave everything to God when it was too hard for her to comprehend and while her imagined deity ‘worked’ out her problems on whatever golden throne he sat upon way up in the heavens, things continued dreary and flat for her here on earth with a job she never liked and two mouths to feed. I think sometimes that my removal from the household was the best thing for her, she wanted less responsibility more than she wanted to prove herself responsible and I can not be bitter at that. She was not built to shoulder the burden of child rearing.
I wonder often about my brother. And you too are a single mother, but you are doing a much better job than my mother ever did. Your children seemed to be well behaved in the brief moment that I shared their air and they were definitely very nicely groomed, like children from a rich household. I wish that I could have been the biological father of your children, that they were my own flesh and blood. If they were, maybe I would have stayed longer, but the thought of raising another man’s children is impossible I’ve learned. Sure, over time, your children could come to call me Dad, and maybe even hold me in a higher regard than they do their actual father, but I will never be able to call them my children. And they are a constant reminder to me of a life you enjoyed before, the passions you shared with another man. Maybe I am extremely jealous, but I look at it more as a scathing practicality. It is harsh, but I need my own fruits of my own loins. And I do not want to make you my mother, to have multiple fathers of your children. Apparently it makes a woman unstable and unlovable to have children by multiple men. I can’t for the life of me comprehend it, but it is a thought that seems based in the reality of my mother’s situation. Luckily she stopped trying after failing with the second man, or else I’d have a slew of half-siblings running around with no real supervision because my mother could hardly take care of herself and she would no doubt have driven the men away. It should be the fate of single mothers to stay that way, to devote their energies to raising up the kids they have before attempting romance. And once their children have reached a young adulthood, she can be free to start her life again where it was left off when the child was born.
Do that, Beatriz. Raise your fine children to adulthood, and then maybe we can be together again, if you will have me. I hope that you are not too cross at my abrupt exit and I vow to one day find you again and hold you in my arms. I will never love another woman the way that I love you. I still see you in my dreams and I miss the way you kiss me. Please, please do not forget about me; please do not hate me.
Yours truly,
Aldous
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