Dear Exorbitant Sum,

Go away.

OK, come back.

You can stay, but not until we discuss some matters pertaining to your girth and provenance. First things first: Where did you find yourself? I mean, to be perfectly blunt about it, you are fucking huge. Oh, sure, I knew that Pappy dabbled in the market—you, however, are not the fruit of a dabbler. You are more like the fruit of an intricate blackmail scheme devised by a bitter Park Avenue spouse. My mother says—and my grandmother agrees with solemn affirmation—that Pappy was hiding you all along. She says that he birthed you long ago when he was involved with those no-good goyim and hams and that he stashed you away all his life, only to surprise everyone at the reading of his will to say one last “fuck you” to his wife and daughter of 50 years, the bastard. For this I salute you. But really, Great Sum, what am I going to do with you? Your greatness makes me tremble and wet myself, slightly. I am trying to imagine what you look like, and yet it proves impossible. Will you come to me in neatly stacked rows packed into a generic black briefcase? Or will you be left at my doorstep in an oversize potato sack with a dollar sign crudely painted onto the side? Will you come in twenties or hundreds or not at all, forever an intangible number taunting me from the digital end of a computer screen? The very thought of you teases me, tickles me so, and it is making me nervous. I am not used to such greatness. A girlfriend once told me that to be large I had to think large. What did that mean, Great Sum?

You see, I am not privy to your kind. I am a writer. I do not associate with your ilk, because I am a Hipster and a Bohemian and you are the filthy grub of The Man. You represent everything that is wrong with this Mammon-hungry world, and for that, I pee on you. I pee all over you and then I throw you to the open-mouthed chicks fawning for you from the nest of Corporate America. Wait, no. I’m sorry. You can stay. It’s just that, well, I get nervous when I’m around new and exciting people. You’re going to change my life, Sum, you really are. I don’t know what to do with you, baby. I’m afraid that I will squander you on a lifelong supply of baseball cards or a Rolls-Royce. But you’re power—it tickles my sex. Let’s do this.

Forever and Always,
Josh Cohen