Kyle hops a plane back to Paris

Kylie, what's up. How you doing, hon. Hope this letter reaches you before you've hopped a plane to Paris to be with that Frog boy.


Olivier and Kyle, Spring '93

I am writing to you because I didn't want you to miss out on your chance to win ten million dollars. Don't forget to return the winning entry before September 3rd.


Kyle got one like this, too.

Jay and Lydia tell me that tricks with you are good, that you've had a good summer and all of that. I am so disappointed that we all didn't get to go to Block Island together, but hey, it'll happen someday. That Monday, Jenny and I got up around noon and both felt really sick. We decided to stay home and rest all day instead of coming to Watch Hill, because we were driving back South the next day. So hope everybody didn't worry about us being buried somewhere.

It was a fun visit in Rhode Island, though. Jenny got to know my family much better, and we did things together like going to a Native American musuem in Bristol, visiting friends in Boston, clubbing at Club Babyhead in Providence, going out to the Cape, and attending this fundraiser for Save The Bay at Senator Pell's summer house in Newport.


Jenny at Pink House, Spring '93.

That was fun. Totally catered, free drinks and food, hobnobbing with the politically active high society crowd and having power chats with all four of my congressional representatives before the night was through. We even sneaked into a cocktail party thrown for donors who had given $10,000 or more. Mike Wallace and his wife were the guests of honor. He looked like an old motherfucker.

So, anyway, hope that you drop the Pink House a line from Paris every once in awhile. N'Gai will be in New York next year, as will Dana, and Rashmi, and this friend of mine John Hamilton Palmer, who is up there working for Hearst magazines again. We met him when he was on an internship for Vogue in Paris, right after you had left town. Thus, I will have many reasons to visit the city, and perhaps our schedules will coincide at some point when you fly back in for the weekend to buy bagels. That ten million you've got coming will probably lead to many life changes for you, I have a feeling.


Jay and Olivier, Spring '93

Say hello to Olivier for me, and take care of yourself, hon. Be especially careful of old men who sit muttering to themselves wearing long, dark coats. These men are chronic masturbators and are probably lying in wait for you.

- Letter to Kyle

Winter '92 semi-formal

Let me tell you again how psyched I am for you to be back in Chapel Hill and living with us all in...The Pink House! Just this past month we threw a semi-formal party for only our close friends, and it was a big success. There were about seventy-five guests all of us housemates knew really well, and another seventy-five or so who were friends of those friends. We were so scared that word had gotten out about the party and the whole town was going to show up, but they didn't!

The living room was the "cocktail" area, suitable for small talk and assorted deep conversations. The dining room and kitchen were converted into le area de discotheque, complete with flashing strobelights and other essential visual effects, plus booming stereo with lots of authentic techno and disco music for the masses to amuse themselves to. The bedrooms were private hideaways and cool chill-out rooms open only to a few, such as the infamous "Club Caroline," where Ms. C. Rivers Hall played hostess to a steady stream of elite guests. A party within a party, if you will.

Sorry I didn't find much time to write to you this fall while you were in Prague. Did I tell you I was taking this past semester off in order to work on voter registration? Ohmigod, and the last time we talked was probably before the election! Isn't it great that Clinton won? He narrowly lost North Carolina, by about 26,000 votes. But it didn't matter.

...

Today, Chris Pedigo and I were re-admitted to UNC-CH for the spring semester. He eventually returned home last month, after drinking most of his scholarship money over a period of several months, never leaving Paris, and eventually falling sick. He was living in a fucking chateau with all of these rich Parisians who he met somehow, hanging out with Russian poets and princes, formerly exiled types who saw no reason to go home even now that they could. Then he came down with some awful disease that you usually get from drinking feces-contaminated water, and spent the next three weeks in the American Hospital there, in Paris.

He's in Chapel Hill and over at the Pink House right now, in fact. He says he's really sorry he never made it to Prague, and is looking forward to working on our magazine for the sheesy set.

Guess who else will be hanging out for a week or so at the beginning of the semester? Dana Lumsden, the man, the myth, the legend! Did I tell you he was accepted at Columbia Law School? Well, he's still seeing Erika, and is coming down from the 9th til the 19th to see her and also to hang out with me, N'Gai, and other friends.

Speaking of Dana, I'm going to be driving him back to New York from Boston over the holidays, probably on December 26th. This is before we leave to come back to Chapel Hill the first week of January. He's got exams right around New Year's. Then, I'm going to be staying with him and going out clubbing a couple nights, maybe the 26th and 27th. If you'll be around, you have to come out with us!

(Note from 2009 - on one of those nights, we hung with Kyle at various spots around Manhattan, and ended up at Nell's in the early hours, where the ladies were almost as decadent-looking as the ornate, gilded decor and expensive antique furnishings.)

Also, I need to mail our landlord the rent check for January around the 1st of the month, so if you could send me $215.00 I can have it deposited before the rent check clears. Caroline and N'Gai have already paid me for January, but Jay and Lydia are both sending me money over break.

...

Can't wait to see you, chicky baby! Au revoir, and as the froggy disco patrons say, "Que tes chausseurs de "boogie" continue a dancer."

p.s...there was an article in the Times last week about how the seventies craze is over and now the rage is early 80s parties. And it's true, they are...but only among trendy buzzkills who are desperately looking for something new to do. The really hip set are into ultra nineties techno music right now. Just thought you'd like to know!

- Letter to Kyle

A famous landmark, and very pink

How's life with you at the University of Iowa? Is Iowa City treating you well? My old roommate Clint, who's from Iowa, no longer lives with me and my other housemates in our Pink House. (I did tell you about the house I stay in here in Chapel Hill, and how it's a famous landmark, and very pink, right...?) But he's still in town. I was trying to call him tonight so he could tell me about some cool places in Iowa City to let you know about, but he's not around. On the other hand, Iowa City is so small that you've probably found them all by now anyway. Clint's Dad is a professor at your school...his name is Tom Curtis, but I can't remember what department he teaches in.

Yeah, anyway, so you ran into Kyle in Prague, huh? She ended up working at the Prague Post not only throughout the summer, but also all this past semester. In fact, she's still there now, but definitely plans on returning to New York by Christmas time. Then she's coming back to Chapel Hill next semester to live with us. I really wish that I could have made it to Prague while we were over there, but there's always next time.

She wasn't the only one who ended up staying in Europe longer than planned, either. I guess she told you that Jared didn't come home with me when I left Paris! He essentially decided that because we'd spent three whole weeks there, he had been thoroughly gypped. So he figured he'd hang around and see more of Europe. I left on schedule, and one of his friends decided to fly there and travel around with him for awhile. They went to Amsterdam, then to Milan, and finally to London. I think it was just after you left that we met this really cool guy named John Hamilton Palmer, who worked for Vogue magazine. He took us out with him to all these clubs, including two amazing ones, Club D'Etoile and Le Bains (Douche). Anyway, John was also traveling with Jared and his friend for a while.

Jared finally returned home about a month after I did, to our parents' immense relief.

Get this...you remember our other friend Chris Pedigo? The one we went out to dinner with at Troy's restaurant on the last day you were in Paris? Well, his whole rationale for being in France was that he had won a scholarship to travel to the former Soviet Union all summer long. He originally planned to stop in Paris only on his way there, staying only for a couple of weeks. He ended up drinking all of his scholarship money and staying in Paris for six months, living outside of the city in a chateau. The closest he got to the former Soviet Union was being introduced by his wealthy hosts to the aristocracy of the exiled Russian community - poets, princes and princesses - going to balls with them and getting smashed, drinking coffee in cafes, that sort of thing.

Pedigo fell enormously into debt on his American Express account when he loaned these supposedly wealthy hosts of his an amazing $20,000...! This is money that as of today, they still aren't supposed to be sending him here in the U.S. "until next week." Pretty wild, crazy stuff. I feel like I'm the only one who missed out, though. Everybody else got to have fun in Paris and the rest of Europe for much longer than I did...you included!

If you have any desire to take a roadtrip next semester and come South, feel free to come and stay with me in Chapel Hill. It's a lot like both Iowa City and Champaign-Urbana, only better.

- Letter to Susan Campbell

Mandated to be Painted Pink

Dearest Kyle, whassup wit you? Super Clint and DJ Erik here, profilin' and stylin', hanging out with a posse of Pink House miscreants. We got your letter months ago, but our general slackness is totally to blame for not having written back to you sooner. Ohmigod, Kyle, you would most definitely have loved going to school with us in Chapel Hill this past year! There's been such a panoply of craziness and coolness that's followed our every move, Clint and me. Yo, check out this latest issue of the DTH, in four color bold type, five column headines, it reads, "Erik and Clint assume titles of Supremely Cool Beings ruling Campus Life in all respects!"

Did you hear about that in Paris? We totally took over the entire town and made it over in our likenesses. Now, everybody's houses and even the campus dorms are mandated to be painted pink, and for fun on Saturday nights, you get to do one of two things in thousand-seat assembly halls we've constructed on Franklin Street - either go register to vote, or attend a poetry reading!

Kyle, you sounded like you were having a great time in your letter. And we read your article that was published in the Raleigh N&O, which was most informative. Our eyes got all misty and our souls grew heartsick, thinking about our little Kyle, all by herself and bravely conquering the land of "the Eiffel Tower, escargot, and Bridgette Bardot."

Seriously, g, are you still down for the cause that involves you and Caroline living with us next year in the Pink House? You guys could split the very spacious room that Clint and I have been sharing all year, with one of you sleeping on a futon, and the other on this beautiful, woodgrained single loft that I will let you use. There's a ten-foot high painting of the Mona Lisa in your room, closet space, high
ceilings, the works.

- Letter to Kyle in Paris