Dear Batman,
You probably don’t know me. But I know you—very well. It was a cool evening last Sunday, at about 6 p.m., when you crashed my head through the bank teller’s window and yelled, “Justice never sleeps!” in that idiotically gruff voice of yours. Moments before, I had been in the process of demanding—no, begging—the teller to hand over just $20 (of the money they got from their government bailout, I might add), just enough to make it through the week and feed my family until I got my unemployment check. I didn’t want to take too much. I knew that’d be greedy, and I really only needed enough for food. It’s just been tough since some asshole blew up the skytrain I was helping to build, putting me out of a job.
But you didn’t listen, did you. You just swooped down, crashed my head through the window, yelled in my face, and got the fuck out of there to do whatever the fuck you do. I had to get stitches for that, did you know that? Do you know where I got stitches? Not at my normal doctor’s place, the only one in Gotham that accepts Medicare. Nope, you threw the Riddler through his window on Saturday, and he’s still cleaning up the shards of glass from his waiting room. I had to go to the creepy doctor, the one that always mutters to himself about finally getting his revenge on Batman. You know what happened, Batman? You know what happened? I woke up 3 days later with no recollection of how I got there, and a tattoo of a gun on my forehead. Or, as I like to call it, my permanently unemployed stamp.
So, Dork Knight, I’d like to ask you a question. You once branded yourself the hero that Gotham needed, not the hero it wanted. You’re right about the latter part, but I’m not sure about the former. Did we have a shortage of unbroken windows in the city? A desperate need for people to be thrown through them?
And what is this “Gotham” you’re speaking of? It’s certainly not the Gotham I know. The Gotham I know is really poor and living day-to-day. We don’t have custom bat-cars, or custom bat-motorbikes, or custom bat-attack-helicopters. We don’t have bulletproof clothing or strangely rigid capes. And we certainly don’t have the apparently limitless amount of money that you throw around to build your stupid devices. I heard that you even have shark repellent in your toolbelt. Shark repellent? Really? Gotham’s not even near shark territory.
Couldn’t you donate the money you spent on all your goddamn toys and batarangs to build a children’s hospital or something? Or, better yet, couldn’t you just spend it on a plane ticket to anywhere but here? I hear Superman’s Fortress of Solitude is very nice this time of year. Maybe you could visit it for a while, like maybe 40 years or so while I try to put the shattered fragments of my life back together. Or maybe you could also just keep being an asshole and wrecking Gotham and the lives of everyone in it. Your call.
Go fuck yourself with a batarang,
Tommy Elliott
-TK ’15
