Dear Lil Wayne,

I have been sat here at a desk for hours. More accur­ately, it is an adjustable table which I have by the side of my bed and I am sat on my bed with the table in front of me. My back hurts a little and I read some­where that this is not the best way to sit. Don’t worry, I’ll live.

I am try­ing to work on a story which I have been writ­ing for many months. It is auto­bi­o­graph­ical, though not expli­citly. I mean, the char­ac­ter has the same job as me and has some of the same feel­ings as me, but we dif­fer in the way we react to things. The char­ac­ter in the story shoplifts and stops on the street to drink and talk with home­less people, things I would prob­ably never do. There is a part of the story where the char­ac­ter stays in bed for a week rather than going in to work. In one para­graph he pushes an old lady over in the street. I am not sure whether or not these are fantas­ies I have and am act­ing out in my writ­ing. Do you think this is pos­sible? Is this what you do?

Wayne—of course, you don’t mind me call­ing you Wayne—like you I find myself apo­lo­gising a lot in my writ­ing. You say sorry for your lan­guage and your bad beha­viour, whilst I apo­lo­gise for how seem­ingly dull or point­less the actions of my char­ac­ters are, or at least how dull my descrip­tions of those actions are, and like you I feel like these apo­lo­gies are mostly insin­cere. We have noth­ing to be sorry for, you and I; we are doing what we feel like doing, and that is more import­ant than the opin­ions of other people. Maybe you have a little more to apo­lo­gise for than I do, but only if you feel bad for say­ing some of the things you say about women or other rap­pers, but if you don’t then that is fine too.

Now I am listen­ing more to ‘The Drought 3′ and I am start­ing to think that you are just mak­ing this stuff up as you go along. Don’t worry, I am doing exactly the same thing. Maybe I should just turn every other line into rhyme and then we would have more in com­mon? I feel like I should write a story about Macho Man Randy Sav­age and send it to you, and then you could tell me whether you like it or not. Maybe you could write a rap about it. You don’t have to though. Just a suggestion.

Any­way. Thanks Lil Wayne. Thanks for tak­ing the time out to read this. I know you’re a big star and everything so I really appre­ci­ate it. If you have a chance to respond then that would be great, but I will under­stand if you don’t have the time.

Yours
Chris East

Chris East writes a blog at Late Night Taxi Driver Bad­min­ton and runs Bur­eau De Books, but in real life he works in a theatre box office selling music­als to the elderly.