Regards

[Sure, we can always just say ‘sincerely’ and slap a comma behind it, but Joe and I feel that sometimes closings must needs convey mad admiration. The complimentary closings listed below were cut from recent emails. Joe’s last name shall remain anonymous, but know this: it’s Goodnight.]

With the most sincere regards,
Joe

With indisputable and paramount regards of the highest degree only limited by your infinite imagination,
Joe

With the sincerest regards possible, considering the state of things in general, and my highest respects, which are quite low, in your case,
Ben

With esteem and exaltation to all that is good and holy and at the apex of the most elevated of regards,
Joe

And so it is with galactic certainty that I bequeath to you my humblest allegiance and my new, longer-lasting devotion, the pinnacle of which cannot be seen without a telescope,
Ben

With lesser devotion that previously implied, to a degree with which you are comfortable, and all assurance that all ensuing regards are platonic and never ever exaggerated or in any way insincere—only pure, so pure you can drink them right off the mountain without fear of giardia,
Ben

With regards commensurate with your status in the social hierarchy of America and the world at large (considering globalization) and genuflecting esteem for your mastery of our English words, the spellings of which so vex me—leaving my website at the mercy of your mental dictionary,
Ben

My regards descend upon you from on high (in reference to all existence) without discrimination in relation to your inferior comprehension of the principal medium you have chosen in this matter.
Joe

The regards with which I regard you are regarded by many as too high; regardless, I shall continue regarding you as such, disregarding all that they say about you because that’s the kind of regard I have for you,
Ben

All the regards I can muster and all the courtesy I can find, the sum total of both occupying a volume roughly equivalent to your average cubicle,
Ben

My appreciation for your regards knows practically no bounds, and is only curbed by the boundaries of your average soccer pitch, however, on a miniature scale likened to that of “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids,” and, of course, with regards,
Joe

Regards to women nonetheless, for though they irk us they also love us up and have beautiful mammary glands and smell better than we do, and so we must exalt them like hosanna in the highest, whoever she may be,
Ben

With succinct but sincere regards,
Joe

My regards flap and dart across the sunrise, descending upon a steamy pond to suckle its bounty of scum, and just before these regards reach the water they are blasted from out of the air, and a crack rings through the wetlands and bespeaks triumph for a camouflaged huntress hiding near water’s edge, at which point the regards are fetched to you by a loyal dog and dropped, dripping and convulsing, at your boots,
Ben

With apologetic regards for the lack of regards attached to my previous correspondence, whose absence was so poetically slammed home by the inspired excellence of your present regards,
Joe

My regards are actually the only thing this message contains, so desperate am I to find diversion from the work currently on my desk this Friday afternoon that the very act of communicating my regards to you offers just enough sweetness, like the stamen of a honeysuckle flower—just barely enough honeyed sustenance—to get me through to quitting time,
Ben

With heartfelt regards,
Joe

The regards so blatantly absent from an earlier correspondence must be atoned for here, with the regards I now offer you from a place deep within my soul, near my pancreas,
Ben

Wit ful’ g-monie re-gizzle fo da’ truf, nizzle,
Joe

These regards, though perfunctory, glimmer nonetheless with admiration for you and all that you do to make this world of 6,446,131,399 people one person more populated,
Ben

Regards like the sweet, lazy release of Vicodin, which can be taken two at a time every four hours, not to exceed 8 in a 24 hour period, but even at half the dosage provide ample killing of the pain, ample killing,
Ben

With regards that rain down like 3-pointers from the hands of Nick,
Joe

Regards to your lightening quick grasp of life’s options and the succinctness with which you drill down to the real meat of the issue,
Ben

Regards to spittin’ on bugs,
Joe

Regards to you, for though you partake of freshies while I risk exposure to Dimethyl methylphosphonate, mercury, TNT, allyl alcohol, plastic explosives, tricholoroethylene and the bottomless hole that is the game, it would be remiss of me to overlook the veneration I feel for you, which like a Class 4 breaches the levies and floods me not with excrement, racism or bureaucracy, but with the muddled optimism found perhaps only at sunrise, after Mardi Gras, in a dumpster, buried in beads, high on jazz,
Ben