There. I said it.

I said it knowing too well that asking you not to do something...it's like waving a checkered flag at the Indy 500. A goad; challenge; a dare. I'm trying to understand this. I'm trying to understand you. Why this struggle? Why do you so often oppose me? We were raised by the same parents, in the same environment, with the same packet of genes. So how...

I know it's tough. Christ: look at them. Even a scowling Pilgrim magistrate of lethal piety would do a telescoping eye-bulge of a cartoon leer at the equipment on those Paffenholz women, and I say that with all due respect to the spiritual properties of the feminine gender. Slobs like you too often worship breasts (not that all four pairs in question aren't quite blindingly nice) as THE index of female mammalian attractiveness. But I know it's in the fragility of a jawline, and the ratio of the diameter of the waist to the circumference of the hips...which is accentuated when they wear those jodhpurs...which...

Sometimes I want to shake you by the shoulders and scream GET A GRIP ON YOURSELF but that would be redundant.

I'm thinking...I'm wondering. I'm wondering, now, if it wasn't you who put the advert in the paper in the first place. All along I've been assuming it was me. But that's your game, isn't it? An irrational act that appears, at first glance, to make perfect sense. So I drop my guard. So I think I'm responsible.

EMERGENCY SINGING LESSONS! ARE YOU EVERY BIT AS CUTE AS BRITNEY SPEARS, BUT A SOUND LIKE PARROTS BEING BOILED ALIVE COMES OUT OF YOUR PRETTY MOUTH EVERY TIME YOU OPEN IT TO SING? DO THE NEIGHBORS COMPLAIN TO THE LANDLORD ABOUT YOUR TIME IN THE SHOWER EACH MORNING? HAVE YOU BEEN BANNED FROM EVERY KARAOKE BAR IN THE CITY? NOW THERE'S HOPE! ENABLE YOUR INNER POPSTAR IN A DOZEN PAINLESS SESSIONS WITH AN EXPERIENCED AND CHARISMATIC TEACHER!*

CALL TONIGHT AND I'LL HAVE YOU SINGING BY TOMORROW MORNING!

*TERMS OF PAYMENT NEGOTIABLE! ASK ABOUT MY SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM!

Clever me: I thought it was simply a good way to pick up some supplementary cash (income for a department store pianist can be erratic; but simply dreaming of being a rockstar won't put food on the table, now, will it?).But I wasn't the one who placed that ad in THE CORRECTIONAL WORKERS GAZETTE at all. And what Byzantine thought process inspired you to buy that rag in the first place? The handcuffs on the cover?

Something else from Kant (rhymes with 'runt') to think about.

'Always recognize that human individuals are ends, and do not use them as means to your end.'

Think. Which one of us answered the phone when Lieutenant Paffenholz (with the compressed baritone and intensity of phrasing of a 56 year old three-hundred-pounder cheated by astronomical living expenses out of an early retirement) called about having us teach his youngest (but by no means prettiest) daughter to sing? I'm still foggy on that one. Dead certain, however, on which of us drove out to the Paffenholz 'compound' at noon the next day, heart beating like a rabbit's. What's a brutal slob like this doing with such a beautiful wife is what went through your mind when Mr. and Mrs. Paffenholz greeted you at the door...but what should have been going through it was something about self-preservation. About survival. You've got a sixth sense...a special antenna...you're ever-vigilant to the delicious possibility of fucking us up, aren't you? Big time.

But this is different. Even you can tell.

Please don't fuck with the Paffenholzes.