One New Voicemail

“Oh, Jeff…I love you, too…but…your credit score is low, your income is modest, your cholesterol is elevated and your sperm count is laughable. You are genetically predisposed to a number of lethal diseases, and your relationship with your family is acrimonious at best. You hate your job and therefore do it with grudging spite.

"You are going bald, and you have gingivitis and myopia with astigmatism. You have a gloomy, misanthropic sense of humor that often produces icy sarcasm which my friends and family find uncomfortable. You frequently cite books I haven’t read, which I find pedantic and condescending. Your teeth confirm your fondness for coffee and you sneak cigarettes when you think I’m not looking. Your politics are outmoded and idealistic and you vote erratically if at all.

"You misgendered my friend Pat at a cocktail party last month, causing a scandal from which I have yet to recover. My cat obviously dislikes you. You’re a Leo, and I’m a Capricorn, which my astrologer compares to trying to kindle a romance between a friendly goat and a depressed lion.

"Your diet is often reprehensible. Cheese is not a solution to anything. Tequila is just an unorthodox way of summoning the police. Your aversion to leafy greens is incomprehensible. You claim to be a lapsed Catholic, but I think you are just lapsed in general. Your emails never include your preferred pronouns. You are not an especially cunning linguist, and I find myself imagining that you are Channing Tatum more often than I care to admit. Tediously summarizing some inane article you read while waiting to defecate does not count as foreplay.

"My sister is convinced that you are a pathological narcissist, and she takes great pride in her knowledge of the DSM Five. You have baffled my father and mortified my mother each time you have encountered either one or both together. When someone says or does something awkward and inept, my father nudges me and whispers, ‘They pulled a real Jeff there, eh?’

"The novel you have been ‘tinkering with’ since we met three years ago now consists of a single sentence: ‘He was quite sure something was wrong with him,’ with a footnote attached that is now more than seven thousand words in length. When you dance, I wish you hadn’t. Your various attempts to grow a beard have shown that you are not the sort of person who ought to grow a beard.

"Sure, we have had a few laughs, and there is no one I would rather mock a bad film with. You can be very sweet, and you cook a mean pasta aglio e olio. No one else has ever commiserated with me about life and the other humans as compassionately and wittily as you have. You helped me to get over my instinctive aversion to jazz, and you are an accomplished and generous hugger.

"All of that notwithstanding, though, I'm just not sure we ought to carry on. I mean, only yesterday, I looked at the wispy hairs on your left ear and almost retched. I am suspicious that what hair you have is slowly abandoning your head and establishing beachheads elsewhere on your body.

"I’m sorry, Jeff. If you can’t address all of these issues before the new year, it’s over. Please remember that we are having dinner with my astrologer on Wednesday. Please bring your birth certificate and the means to pay her fee and our bill. Jacques, who is bound to be our waiter, always expects a handsome tip.”

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This is an entry for Raymond G. Taylor's ingenious challenge, the details of which can be found below: