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From: Zachary Gordon Straus <veryimportantwriter83@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jan 17, 2017 at 2:06 PM
Subject: (no subject)
To: Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner <macrobioticyogi51@fieldsofgold.com>

 

Dear Sting,

Salutations and Happy New Year! I hope this message finds you well.

You may have heard that I was recently the recipient of yet another artistic award: The Prompt Magazine’s 2016 Writer of the Year.

As you know, it’s always an honor to be recognized for the quality of your work. Whether it’s my 1996 National History Day 9th Place media project, my sweep of the 2001 Topeka High School Art AND English Awards, or the 2005 University of Kansas Student Housing Hourly Employee of the Year, I treasure each and every one of my accolades, dedicating them equally to my parents, my former teachers, whatever Jew I have for a publicist at the time, and of course, privately, the Dark Amphibian God Qtr-Uhrhghu-Qtr (Continuously may he breed!) you, me, and all other true artists worship in our secret-temple-mansion-churches.

By the way, I hope to see you the Qtr-Uhrhghu-Qtr Qtr-ly Meeting in Sandals, Jamaica in March. Kind of a “sandy” theme all around, it seems. Sandra Bullock giving the keynote, and Sandra Bernhard is performing the blood sacrifice… with one of her own children! As her surviving kids might say, “It’s gonna be lit.”

Thanks to this newest award, I’ve been in high demand of late. I had to purchase a fifth phone in order to keep up with all the emails, texts, calls, and inquiries! Just last night, I was gchatting with Amy Tan, composing an email to Gloria Steinem, AND sexting Larry Bird, all while FaceTiming with Sade. Being a woman of equal accolade and import, she understood my situation implicitly, and wasn’t annoyed by the frayed strands of my attention. God bless her neo-soulful soul.

Sade wants me to help her rewrite some of her songs to give them a more modern, buttsexier vibe, kind of similar to how you helped her with the 58 minute-long Tantric Remix of “No Ordinary Love” last year. Timing-wise, it makes total sense, given the stuff that’s been trending on the Famous Gays group text I keep up with some other homosexuals of note (yes, the one Travolta keeps adding you to as a joke).

But that’s not why I’m writing this afternoon.

In a small break between discussing analingual-related slant rhymes, Sade mentioned running into you after her Thursday cryotherapy yoga session in the members-only salt caves underneath Malibu. She said you looked hale, and that you spoke for a few minutes, mostly about your recent tour with Peter Gabriel, but a bit about her social calendar, as well.

This is how I learned you plan on attending the small, celebratory dinner party I am hosting next Saturday with featured guests Shaquille O’Neal, Malala Yousafzai, and Daryl Hannah.

Despite not receiving the Evite.

Perhaps you assumed the invitation didn’t reach you due to a classic case of Sting Confusion. Sharing a pseudonym with another famous person must be extremely difficult. I do not envy how much back and forth forwarding must go on between you and Mr. Borden, who I had the pleasure of meeting after his retirement from the WWE in April. You’re both giants of your industries and talents of world renown, so I can only hope that this connection has served to bring you worlds closer together, instead of creating an open war between your respective Stingdoms.

You may have also assumed that I sent the invite to your old thebassgod@hotmail.com account (as if I wasn’t included with Cate Blanchett, Art Monk, Julian Schnabel, Lou Bega, Leandra Lululemon, and countless others on the 30+ messages you sent this past October regarding its cancellation). Once again, I do not envy the high volume of forwarding that must have been going on between you and rapper Lil B’s thebasedgod@hotmail.com address, which precipitated the necessary change. I applaud you for showing maturity, deference, and respect for this up-and-coming artist.

No, Gordon. Regretfully, neither these understandable assumptions is the case.

The truth of the matter is this: You were not included on the Evite because you simply were not invited.

I’m sorry. Someone has to say this. Having dinner with you is absolutely dreadful. No one wants to invite you anymore. Not me, not Victoria Beckham, not Bishop Desmond Tutu. You might think it’s the antics. It’s really not. It’s understood by now that if you’re coming to dinner, you’re going to do something uncouth.

Like the time you went to Sur by Lisa Vanderpump with Mark Ruffalo and chewed a single spoonful of polenta for six hours, then immediately and accurately shot semen onto Mark’s shirt in the shape of a peace sign upon swallowing the bite. Or the time you and Denise Richards had reservations at Papa John’s by Papa John and you went on a hunger strike until you were allowed to meet Head Chef Peyton Manning. Or three weeks ago at Yves St. Laurent’s annual New Year’s Yves bash, where you kept changing Sheryl Sandberg and Sheryl Swoopes’ name cards.

Look. We’re all celebrities and artists. We understand and accept that we are inherently different, nearly beyond reproach. Our artistic brains, in order to work at this high of an order, must be free to offend, to stretch the boundaries of acceptable behavior. I mean, for Qtr-Uhrhghu-Qtr’s sake: When your Jewish lawyers make you sign this many contracts, the social contract’s just not something to which you can be held anymore.

This is about something different than that. Something beyond Grammy awards and life-size, bronze Writer of the Year statues.

This is about dinner, Sting. Dinner.

You are many things. A wonderful musician, a good father, a philanthropist, and I’ve been told, a tip-top lovemaker. You’ve brought joy to the world with your work and your loins for decades, which is more than most artists can ever claim. I respect you on so many levels.

But you’re still a vegetarian. And that’s a level of useless, self-important, overbearing bullshit that we, your contemporary creative community, just can’t handle.

At least, not at our tables.

In Qtr-Uhrhghu-Qtr’s name,
Zachary Gordon Straus

1993 Lightning Soccer U-10 MVP
1996 Best Bowl Cut
2000 Topeka High School Most Truant
2003 Least Emotionally Available – Worldwide
2006 Wing King – Lawrence, KS
2009 Federal Triangles Soccer Club Newcomer of the Year
2011 Stormiest Thyroid – National Institute of Health
2016 The Prompt Magazine Writer of the Year

 

P.S. – As a precaution, I was also forced to disinvite Flea. You see, I can’t be entirely sure that you and Flea aren’t the same person. You both are balding, short, play the bass, enjoy nudity, speak incomprehensibly, and I have never seen you in the same place at the same time.

Gordon St. Raus

Gordon St. Raus peaked at 15 and is mostly held together by masking tape.

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