Jared, I'm Yours, But Not Sure For How Much Longer

Dear Jared,

I hope this note finds you well! I truly do, and I also hope that you believe me with all of your heart when I say that I am rooting for you- always!

There is a yellowed horoscope that I clipped from the newspaper years ago, shortly after we lost all that weight together, you eating a six inch turkey with no cheese or condiments for eleven months, and me doing the exact same thing, except without the celebrity and role model to our nation’s obese tweens status that you’ve achieved as I’ve stayed in the same place, eating the same food, and getting larger, and larger because I top my six inch turkey off with exactly one half of a California Pizza Kitchen Margarita pizza, and two packages of Nutter Butters.

If you must know, Jared, I always save the other half of the CPK pizza for you, just like the Jewish people that eat unleavened flatbreads at Passover, and set a place setting for the prophet Elijah whom is also too good to show his mug at the dinner table.

Yikes, I’m SO sorry for being SO snotty, and it’s not you—really-it’s ME! I’m just not my usual peppy self lately and I’m tired from not moving my body anywhere in particular for days, which have turned into weeks since my unfortunate unemployment that I wrote to you about last month, but which I don’t recall you having ever responded to my letter. It’s possible you did, there are days I cannot muster the strength to open my mailbox overflowing with final notice bills, save –the-date cards, and local coupon mailers that Subway never seems to advertise in, which is both a bitch, and a darned sock hole shame.

But, I digress. Now that I’ve been released from my data entry-sales duties, and on a fixed-income, I’ve been paying closer attention to my budgeting. It was not cheap to tuck three-dozen of my pre-driven unmentionables into an envelope, take the bus to China Town to get a new package of Hello Kitty stickers so I could decorate it just how I bet you like it, and then rub it between my thighs for good luck before sending the very private package off via priority mail to Subway headquarters, which I am not even sure if you are affiliated with these days.

Though I cannot speak for what’s happening inside other Subways, the one I visit has removed the cardboard cutout of you with your outstretched arm proudly holding your pants, in celebration of 10 years of keeping the weight off- our weight off. Your face and body with the buttoned up shirt buttoned to the last button with just a hint of chest hair showing is now replaced with what the marketing Devils at Subway corporate figured was the next best thing, which is window decals of an African American male named Tony Parker, whom I’m guessing is some sort of professional basketball player.

Tony looks nothing like you. I suppose his mulatto skin like a coffee coolatta is more like that of our new President who just passed a stimulus that adds an extra $25 to each of my weekly unemployment checks, an amount that can buy me five extra foot-longs each month IF I do my budgeting right, so yes, I am VERY grateful to President Obama, and I’m sure over time I might warm to Tony Parker, to, but he simply IS-NOT-YOU.

Speaking of you, are you honestly and completely 100% A-OK? I have my sources, it is a Saran-wrapped gloved pockmarked trainee who says “uh huh” after each ingredient I order on my sub, which can get annoying as we go down the line together and I order ALL toppings because I’ve said to hell with my rapidly increasing weight, my Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and yes, even my damn hula hoop that I was practicing with in anticipation for a day when we would be naked together.

My source and I are no longer sure if that day will come when you and I will be together forever, and ever. I have yet to confirm our suspicion with my therapist because I can no longer afford to visit her, but it doesn’t take an oat bran surgeon to know that the Chicken Florentine has been discontinued, and the economy is so bad that not everyone can afford Subway, and even people like myself have started selling their plasma to buy Subway, cutting out stuff like instant grits, and choosing between dish soap and body-wash, but not both, never both!

Do you think that I do not know that you’ve stopped touring, too?

I’m sorry! I should not be making you feel bad, or worse, not now, when times might be difficult for both of us, toughing it out in our separate silos. I wasn’t going to tell you this, but I did meet a fine gentleman at the unemployment office, and he grew up in Indianapolis. He told me that he went back home to pawn his father’s flat screen television & he ran into you at a bar, and that when you walked into the bar he shouted, “Hey! It’s Jared Fogel the Subway Guy. How are you?”

This gentleman told me that your reply to him was, “I’d be a lot better if you bought me a drink.”

Really, Jared, how pompous, and rude is that? When I heard this information from this gentleman—whom I believe is trustworthy, he too was released from his duties in a similar fashion as I was—my heart near felled to the floor right there in the office, and later when I was home, and felt comfortable enough to sob while watching Antiques Roadshow to try and distract myself from you my heat felled again and rolled around in all the cat litter and bread crumbs I never seem to have the energy to clean up these days.

I have faith, though, faith that maybe you too were having a bad day, and that you are not a pretty boy celebrity accustomed to everyone under the sun buying you drinks whenever you damn well please. My horoscope Scotch taped to my refrigerator next to my Pet Poison Hotline magnet says, “When you believe in someone, do it all the way. Relationships thrive when there is not an ounce of doubt in your heart, or a critical word on your lips. Stand proudly behind your love.”

I am proud, Jared. Are you?

Yours Always, but Not Sure For How Much Longer,
Aly Louise Hensler