Dear Agent,

Would you be gay if the price were right? Ever wonder how you'd pull it off? And would you tell your wife about your outside arrangement? Would it upset you (the lying, the cheating) and if so, would you tell your therapist about it? Have you ever had a crush on your therapist? Would you discuss this crush with your new gay sex partner? And don't you find it interesting that you pay your therapist to find you interesting, and your gay fling pays you to desire him, and your wife doesn't get paid or pay you anything, at least not in direct exchange, but most likely pays a lot in other ways?

THE BUYING AND SELLING OF LOVE contains the answers to these questions and more. It explains how to lie to your wife without getting caught (easy, if you know how) and how to be real with your therapist without having a crush (made simple with three handy steps) and how to engage successfully in a gay sex partnership without feeling any attraction (easier when the gay is paying you, and a great side job), through helpful, clear guidance in easily read language.

Fred Smith pairs up with gay prostitute Bud Burstingly (stage name) and Celia Coves, MSW, in this excellent advice book with the best tips for all of us who have been, or soon will be, in these kinds of common situations. The book also features an internal spread of color photographs of the authors who are all ex-models, so this is a really great read even for those readers who are single.

If you are interested in seeing some or all of this 84,000 word manuscript, we'll be in New York City next week, so please give a call. Looking forward,

Lovingly,
The Writers (3)

Dear Brother,

The light in the café is dimly yellow and the kind that simply doesn't cast shadows—how do they do that? And why? Is there a fear, somehow, of seeing the connection from lamp to wall, from foot to earth?

Well, to answer your earlier question, yes, I've been extremely anxious lately. I can't figure out if it's family stress (it was hardest to breathe, suddenly, when Marsha told her parents we're getting married) or job stress at The Agency (but I've for the most part accepted as fact this job's eccentricities which, as fact, form a pre-existing condition and are therefore not due to my own personal failings) or stress over my own personal failings, which are? Oh, I forget. That's the other symptom of my stress: I keep forgetting things.

Sleep now,
Your sister

Dear Writer,

Thank you for your query but we are quite unfortunately not taking any new clients at this time though we do wish you all the best luck and success in your writing endeavors.

Sincerely,
Assistant Agent
The Agency, LLC

Dear Sister,

Ok, so... wow! Did her god fearing folks flip out? They're evangelical, right? Or are they druids—I always forget the difference. And is it legal in your state yet? Are you renegade enough that you don't care? I say if it's not legal you should elope to the Netherlands. Mei and I would have eloped, but her father thought that would be an even greater embarrassment than her marrying me at all. The rest is history.

And I'm sorry about your anxiety. I'm now imagining you huddled in the corner of your apartment, hugging your knees, sweating profusely and swearing at unexplained noises from the neighbor's clunky stove, wishing you had properly prescribed Xanax. Do you? If not, I can mail you buckets of the stuff, which I have but try not to touch. Remind me what you do at The Agency again? Why is it stressful there?

Last weekend, after Mei and I actually bought (yes, we did it!) a used Cadillac—quite the showpiece here in rural Taiwan, where the roads are lined with flat rice paddy fields and the passersby are usually gangs of randomly crowing roosters—which has rusty-hinged doors and a fallen passenger's seat. After we bought the car we began getting relentless phone-calls from family members Mei hasn't seen in years, asking us for rides to innocuous places, like the fruit stand, or the incense shop. Mei and I actually drove her father, who suddenly now finds me a neat guy, out to the live animal museum. They had dogs in cages, just to look at, and chickens, and whatnot, but most amazingly and startlingly: a two-headed turtle, which is no joke—the thing has two heads, and seems to use them both, resourcefully.

OK I have to go: Mei wants to dust that unreachable spot behind the toilet and I want to make sure she doesn't lose an arm.

Love and tranquilizers,
Your brother.

Hello,
It looks like you are writing a letter. Would you like help?

* get help writing the letter
* just type the letter without help, thanks

Dear Agent,

I have no personal connection to you; I know you only by your reputation. I'm writing with the hope that my first novel, DREAMS OF WAKING, will hook you. The novel is about a boy who dreams nightly of a small rabbit who dreams nightly of another rabbit who dreams daily of something else, squirrels usually. It's better than it sounds! I have an MFA in creative writing, and have spent every spare hour for the past three years writing this novel. I write it on the subway; I write it while in the bathroom on scraps of toilet paper; I write it even when my pen has run dry and then I just scratch into the page and hope for the best. I'll be in New York in June and if you have even one iota of time to meet me, I'd be moved and delighted beyond words. Truly.

Sincerely,
Writer

Dear Writer,

Thank you for the chance to represent your work, but we are quite unfortunately inundated with queries and not taking on any new clients at this time. We do wish you all the best luck and success in your writing endeavors.

Sincerely,
Assistant Agent
The Agency, LLC

Dear Brother,

Well, it is finally legal! But I worry that won't make it legal in Marsha's parents' minds. If anything it might be more blasphemous, kind of like how saying "Gosh Darn" is just a euphemistic variation on "God Damn" and therefore just as crude. You can change the wrapping paper, but sin is sin, you know? Personally, I am hoping the force of our marriage instantly divorces thousands of straight marriages simultaneously, like a fierce and chilling wind of queer destruction. As a proud member of the Gay Agenda, I am hoping to ruin the lives of straight people everywhere, from the comfortable vantage point of my bedroom. Except for your marriage of course.

Perhaps my anxiety stems from an unsettling similarity in my Work Life and my Personal Life? Marsha's mom asked me to sleep in the tool shed the last time we visited. Over the phone last night Mom told me I'm wasting my brain at The Agency, that she would be prouder of me if I were a banker, like Dad. Is that Oedipal, when she says that, or Euripidean? My cat bites my ankles when I walk by him. Then, at The Agency, I spend two stagnant hours a day writing rejection letters to perfect strangers who have spent years earnestly crafting their hundreds of pages of unpublishable words with such poignant hope it makes my gums ache to contemplate. Who am I to smash their hopes? Maybe their hopes need to be smashed. What are hopes? At night, teeth-gritting sleep.

Must go, Marsha is making farm animals out of melted candle wax again, and I'm afraid she'll burn her fingers.

Besty best,
Your sister

Dear Agent,

Please represent my work PENIS: A MEMOIR, an unsettling portrayal of my own battles with erectile dysfunction and a painful upbringing as a Seventh Day Adventist.

This marriage should have never worked. My innocent sexual inexperience slammed up against my wife's grand span of decades of uninhibited sexual encounters with hundreds of one-night-fleeting- but-passionate-stands and scared me to my knees. But after years of counseling I learned to stand and embrace my wife's past and plunge beyond my penile fears and frustrations to ultimately enjoy a fulfilling and comforting partnership. PENIS: A MEMOIR tells the story of one man's battle with himself to achieve a truly rewarding sexual life.

I am the perfect person to write this book because I've been thinking about it for a long, long time. I had written the book a few times over in my mind before I finally put pen to paper, which means it needs almost no editing.

Sincerely,
Writer

Dear Sister,

Okay, so, once again: do you want my drugs? Or are you more into natural stress relievers? The last time I talked to Dad he told me he would be prouder of me if I were a nurse, like Mom, so there you go. Sometimes, I just hang up the phone and spend hours drawing perfectly rendered ants with bic pens on the refrigerator door.

Last week the school cut my teaching hours here from 5 days to 3 because the US bank who funds the Taiwanese bank who funds the...oh, I don't actually understand the global economic system. But Mei's father has determined that since I'm working less I'm less of a son in law, and Mei might as well move back in with them. You'd think getting married and becoming a Taiwanese citizen would have made me more part of the family, but apparently not.

Anyway, I should go because Mei wants to use the computer to look up x-ray technicians. She wants us to get full body x-rays so I can cut them up into sections and make lamps out of them. I am thinking of starting a home business, so I can support myself if my teaching gig fails. I'm going to hide crumpled bills under our mattress. I'm going to hang a shotgun next to the door-frame. I just keep telling myself at least I'm not trying to find an agent!

Self-armingly yours,
Your brother

Dear Writer,

Thank you for your query but we are quite unfortunately only accepting newest works by our oldest clients, whose thoughts we are accustomed to, unlike yours, which alarm and excite us in turns, though at this time the alarm feeling seems to be winning. We do wish you all the best luck and success in your writing endeavors.

Sincerely,
Assistant Agent
The Agency, LLC

Dear Brother,

Ahhhhh! I keep trying to sound my barbaric yawp but it comes out more like the cheep of a chipmunk when I do it. Maybe it's because I'm standing on a trash can, not a rooftop.

Each morning on my way to work I seem to encounter the same set of characters. A slender, young man—I think he's perhaps Mexican—often sits across from me in the subway. He gets on at 14th street, sits down, then crosses his legs tightly at the knee and extricates from his bag a delicately wrapped set of tiny drawing pencils and carefully looks them over. He has, without a doubt, the most extravangent mustache I've ever seen, and on the smallest face. How did he grow such a mustache? It's thick and bushy; it's curls up slightly at the ends. I find him so intruiging I can't help but wonder if I feel an attraction or a form of jealousy. Then, once I near the streets of my office, I tend to see an elderly couple dressed to the nines in antique outfits I imagine are from the twenties. She wears a fabulous hat, always, and he wears a soft and light colored suit. They each clutch at the other's arms as they walk, as though there is a howling wind storm brewing and they'd hate to be blown away. And then, just as I round the corner to my building, every morning I pass by a woman either approaching or already stooped over a tray of free muffin samples outside the bakery. The woman wears a faded denim jacket tightly wrapped around her shoulders, and I often seem to spot her in the same position, her one hand clutching at her walker while the other hovers, uncertainly, over the plate. I imagine it being her best chance at a meal all day. She wears an achingly open expression as she contemplates her muffin-sample options—this deeply engaged calculation, like she knows she can only take one slice and which is best?

Aren't we all constantly issuing heartfelt, needy queries to the world, when you think about it? We're all rejecting, we're all being rejected—and I am a Professional Rejection Letter Writer! That said, if I read one more manuscript featuring a sad man and his penis I might torch my office.

Must go—Marsha just texted to say she's washing out white wine stains with red wine and... a tragedy looms.

Sighs punctuated by screams,
Your Sister

Dear Sister,

I think I blew it! Last night Mei and I went out for hotpot with her father, and I inadvertently committed a massive faux pas by spooning out the yolk from my egg (I'm cutting down on cholesterol, something a doctor suggested off-hand while I was having a full-body x-ray) and dropping the white in my soup. There was a massive explosion of whispering from the other side of the table, and frantically Mei's father called over the waiter, said something in hushed tones, and then, as quick as a breath of air (an exhalation, the kind you really don't notice) a new soup appeared, along with a new egg. At this point I felt scared to crack the damn thing. I sat there, eyeing my perfectly intact egg, until Mei and her father both constructed their elaborate soup concoctions and, once Mei nodded exasperatedly at me, I brought the egg to the edge of the bowl.

Listen, some brotherly advice: what if you simply quit your job? I know, highly against the grain, irresponsibly sudden, but quite in line with the climactic scenes in many movies. You could go for a lunch break one day and not come back. Or, scream at your boss, and then storm off in a blaze of glory. There must be something you feel like saying to her in a shrill and trembling voice at the top of your lungs. It would feel better than a yawp. It would surprise everyone who knows you. It would make for an entertaining story, which you could tell at dinner parties for years to come. Your boss may feel differently, but I would support this method entirely.

Must go now—Mei is spraying bees with honeywine, which I'm compelled to think will only make them swarm more mightily.

Sagely,
Your brother

Dear Brother,

Thank you for your advice but I am quite unfortunately not taking any advice at this time though I do wish you all the best luck and success in your advice-giving to others. I would write more about this, but I seem to have lost my right arm while cleaning that unreachable spot behind the toilet, and I'm not as proficient with my left.

Basically just shrieks now,
Your sister

Dear Agent,

After careful consideration, I would like to withdraw any previously rejected ideas I may have sent you over the years, because I have this feeling deep in my spleen that these rejections keep you up at night, and that you'll consider unrejecting them soon. I want to cut you off at the pass—you can't have them. I've sent all my rejected ideas on to a different agent for her rejection. Her rejection letters are better than yours.

Sincerely,
Writer

Hello,
It looks like you are writing a rejection letter.
Would you like help?
* get help writing the rejection
* just reject this person without help, thanks

Dear Writer,

No, I reject! I reject the ideas you didn't send me. I rejected the thought of your manuscript long before it formed in your mind! I don't care when you're in New York next. How's that for a rejection letter?

Best,
Assistant Agent, and so on and so forth,
The Agency, LLC

Dear Sister,

This is awkward, but I would like some help in writing a rejection letter to you, since you seem to have rejected my previous email for entirely unrejectable reasons. Several email-writing professionals have reviewed my previous letter, and while they did find a few flaws, most noted that it was "passable" and "should have gone over at least lukewarmly." My emails contain all the elements any sister could want from an email: I tell you an offbeat story, I offer helpful support in response to your endless woes, and my sign-offs always capture my state of mind perfectly. I asked Mei's father and he has knowingly suggested to me that since you are a professional in the business, perhaps you're the best rejection letter writer I can find. Can you please draft a rejection letter written out to you, which I'll then sign and return? I hope you accept my idea, which I feel I am the best person to explain to you, since I thought of it before you did.

I can't properly discern what Mei is doing right now; that's how annoyed I am.

Taking the Xanax myself now, thanks for nothing,
Your brother

Dear Brother,

I would like to withdraw my previous rejection letter to you, which was of course a mistake. Sigh. It's weird, but I think writing these rejections is giving me brain cancer. Who are these people? I've barely been helping our clients at work at all now, and have been spending the entire eight-hour day writing rejections. I thought that if I took the time I'd get rid of them all, and I could move on to more meaningful work. But the opposite has happened: the more rejections I write, the more queries I get, like an ever-expanding geyser of vapid need. It's spreading to everything—when I go to the grocery store, I reject the grocer's offer to help carry my bags. In bars, I reject everyone's attempts at telling me how beautiful my eyes are. Mom's been calling, but damn if I'm answering the phone: my voicemail states quite clearly that I'm never getting an MBA. Even Marsha: she tries to hug me when I come home from work, but I keep shrugging her off without thinking about it. Can she love me when her family can't? Maybe she can.

On the way home from work today I watched a woman fall, quite suddenly, onto the pavement. She didn't catch herself—it seems she lost her balance so suddenly she didn't think to pull her arms from her sides. She landed on her side, and seemed okay, and then dozens of people swarmed around her to help so I lost view of her. I'm ashamed to say I couldn't move when she fell. I just stood there staring, thinking, how does it happen that one minute you're young and can bound from the floor to the counter to grab the cookies off the top shelf and the next you can't catch yourself when you fall?

I hope you accept my apology,
Your sister

Dear Writer,

I would like to unreject your query letter, which I previously rejected, but would like to now represent. I stand by my assistant's conviction that your manuscript sounds terrible, and I still do not wish to read it, but your query letter, on further reflection, is a thing of beauty.

With proper positioning, I am certain I can place your query letter in a top-notch publication. Once we've placed around 6 or 7 of your query letters in magazines, we'll shop around your 84,000 words of attempts at finding an agent at the various houses.

I think we'll make a great team. If you happen to be in New York next week, please stop by.

Best,
The Agent,
The Agency, LLC

Dear Sister,

Yes, of course, I accept your apology. I've been thinking, perhaps you should consider one of those Zen retreats I keep hearing about: you don't speak at all, which might help you considerably, and the only thoughts you reject are your own. Simultaneously, you come to accept yourself—it's hard to explain. But I would like to point out that your grocer is a really nice guy and, as I recall, much stronger than you. As is Marsha.

Love from your brother,
who accepts even those traits of yours I'd prefer to think are not genetic.

Dear Agent,

I accept!

I'll be in NY tomorrow.

Best,
Writer

Dear Brother,

I guess it's been a few weeks, but I have loads of exciting news for you. After my Zen retreat I quit my job and am writing this email from a cafe, watching my shadow blend into the floor in a satisfyingly gauzy ooze. I've taken to hand-knitting woolen scarves from the fur Marsha shears off our newly purchased flock of yaks. The neighbors love the scarves, which I present as gifts in appreciation of how quiet their clunky stove has been this past week. Marsha keeps cleaning all the red wine stains from our tablecloths with white wine, and I've been refashioning the old tablecloths into shirts with the sewing machine I picked up at the FreeCycle station I visited last Wednesday. Wednesday: because I wasn't working.

With my last paycheck, we plan to buy a used Cadillac and tour Middle America until we grow tired of corn, which could take weeks. I've always loved that game: "hey, cow." Marsha and I are getting married whether anyone likes it or not; we'll tie tin cans to the back of the Cadillac and blaze off into the unknown, waving at cows as we go. And then after that I think we'll sell that piece of shit car and come visit you and Mei in Taiwan, though you may not even recognize us anymore, not at all.

Yours,
Your sister