Dear Miss Wendy-
I am very pleased to make your akwaintence. A gentleman friend of mine by the name of Mr. Eisman is always interested in having me become more educated. He heard about your club called the Fictional Characters From Real Life Social Change and he thought that it might improve my brain to attend to one of your meetings. I mean as I always tell my friend Dorothy, brains are really everything. Personally I don’t really understand how one can be a “Fictional Character” and be from “Real Life”, but I have met so many unique persons since I moved to New York that I suppose anything is possible. I am just hoping that your meetings are not of the literary sort where there are a lot of discussions of “kunst” and other such topics of the European variety. I like to be as cultured as the next person, but after a certain point, there is only so much kunst that a girl like I can stomach.
I was peroosing the list of names of the members of your group and I noticed that you seem to have a lot of members of the feminine variety but not as many of the male sort. From my experience I have learned that many gentlemen like to have a friendly girl like I to hold a conversation with when they are in social sichuations such as the meetings that you hold. So I thought perhaps it would be nice if I could be seated next to one of these gentlemen, perhaps one such as Prince Andrei. I have been hoping for some time to meet a gentleman such as a prince in order to become more broadened. I thought that it might also be nice to invite some other gentlemen who I have heard about in some of the better circles:
King Midas
Mr. Ali Baba
King Solomon (Not the old man who wanted to cut that poor little baby in half, but the one who owns some mines. Maybe it’s his brother)
Mr. Thurston Howell III
Lootenant General Oliver Warbucks (I think he likes to be called “Daddy”, which I think is awfully cute)
Mr. Jed Clampett
Mr. Jiggs
Mr. Scrooge McDuck
Mr. Gomez Addams
Mr. Moneybags or Mr. Gotrocks (I have not personally met these gentlemen, but one hears their names mentioned so often in conversations that they must be quite active in social circles)
Let me know what you think of my sugjestions. I look forward to attending your next meeting, and meeting another professional lady like I.
Yours sincerely,
Lorelei Lee
Dear Lorelei:
You almost had me there. I was nearly rendered speechless, a state I don’t believe Ask Wendy has found herself anywhere near in the past. For that, I must salute you. You have definitely got something, girlfriend, and on reflection, I think that je ne sai quoi is just what we need here at EAP World Headquarters.
Let me explain. Sure, on reading your letter, there was the initial shock of thinking of the Fictional Characters for Real Life Social Change as a kind of gold digger’s dating service. But once I sat down and had another tumbler of cooking sherry, this all appeared to me in a new light.
For what is the Fictional Characters for Real Life Social Change Working Group but a group that builds bridges? Bridges between fiction and reality. Between comic books and high art. Between…well, you get the idea.
Rosie the Riveter and Wonder Woman and I have been getting together for some time now, at the wine bar down the street from EAP (very conveniently located), to discuss how to tweak of our boring do-gooder image to get our message across to a wider audience. I mean, even if we are boring do-gooders, it doesn’t follow that we have to dress like them. I, for example, have been trying to figure out a look for myself that doesn’t involve Lanz nightgowns.
You, Lorelei, are just what we need. We need you at our next meeting. I can tell from reading your letter that you will have many insightful things to say about accessing an audience just hasn’t been available to us up till now.
So I invite you, on behalf of the FCFRLSC Working Group, not just to join our group, but also to work with us as a consultant on how to get our message across to the kind of people who, up till now, we thought were impossible for us to reach. You know. Hedge fund managers. International arms merchants. Politicians. Those kind of guys.
By the way, Prince Andrei looks forward to meeting you. He apparently has a whole bunch of war stories he thinks you’ll love.
Welcome, welcome, “A Girl Like I.”
In solidarity (that means we’re on your side, girlfriend),
Ask Wendy