An advice letter from Holly's boyfriend in Breakfast at Tiffany's

 Dear Prudence [I imagine him writing],

I've been dating a woman for a few months now. We prefer not to use labels. When it's great, it's great. Shoplifting together, shared interests (we're both poor and good looking) and lots of sexual tension. We're both sex workers so I don't need to hide that aspect of myself from her. But I'm beginning to have some little niggling doubts. 

For example, she wakes up in late afternoon and spends her days chain smoking in a sawn off bathtub. Sometimes she wears bedsheets in public and most of the time she doesn't even wear pants. And occasionally she breaks into my apartment through the window and watches me sleep. Should I be worried? I find myself embarrassed night after night when she wakes up the whole apartment building because she can't be bothered to keep up with a key. Am I crazy or is that kind of an a**hole move? And then there's the monologue-ing. She is... an interrupter, for sure. I feel very unheard. Her scattered conversations are nearly impossible to follow. I feel bad because she must have some undiagnosed attention disorder which she's obviously trying to self-medicate with alcohol, but it's the 1960s and we don't know about attention disorders yet. That could explain why she doesn't properly feed and care for the cat she keeps. She jokes that she doesn't feel responsible for it, but surely she would never actually harm or abandon it? She also has a side gig helping the mafia organize crimes, though she reassures me that that's nothing to worry about. 

But my question is mainly about the other men in her life. I found out she walked out on her husband and stepchildren, but that's understandable because she was like fourteen. And this one's a doozie: whenever the sexual tension mounts she tells me I remind her of... her little brother?! She even calls me by his name. And one more thing-- I just found out she's engaged to a Brazilian millionaire, but it's just for the money. It seems a little unfair, since I broke it off with my sugar-mamma to be with her. I simply assumed, without asking, that she wanted to take things to that level. Why doesn't she wordlessly understand that she belongs to me and we're dating now?

Do you think we can make this work? I sure hope so because she's gorgeous, super quirky, and she's a regular Mozart on the ukulele.

-Nervous in New York

 

Characters Paul Varjack and Holly Golightly in Breakfast at Tiffany's.