Good evening. I babble when I write on the net, because I yawn. Don't let my own OFFTOPIC things squiggle you into thinking the main thrust aint real. It's all REAL. I am a damn glum real person. ANYWAY: I bought a crappy house in upstate ny a few years ago. And the thing is...recent storms made me find out NOW that I have an actual named river running under my yard in a sppoky ye olde time tunnel. It was built in the 1920's and i don't feel like telling you where it is.

Hapi Phace pointed out these boards to me but he is way too into grampa formulating persona to ever go down in the tunnel, anyway he knows it's real. He's stood right above it in the same ignorance of it as me me me, and the fact that it supported both of our bodies at once PROVES it is pretty safe.

Seriously I have a tunnel...it goes for several miles. Is it fabulous? Well, it has it's troubles...it holds a small bubbling and gurgling brook, so one must always be up to ankles or sometimes knees in water when in it. I have only known about it since right around thanksgiving so i can not say for sure if there is ever a DRY time of year, but I doubt it.

Is it clean? Well it's a storm sewer. I have spent about 3 hours in it so far and havn't seen anything that made me shriek in terror, but then again I used to be a mortician and end up with so much corpse goo on my tie at the end of a day that I am not sure I am SANE on the subject of what is DISGUSTING. Well, unless it were to be in a position to see hapi phace and hattie (hatches) hathaway naked at the same time, hugging, clutching, fondling, and finger-inserting...I am SURE that is disgusting by all standards, and there are many laws that must cover that situation.

ANYWAY...the tunnel the tunnel. i have been down it twice...and each time i saw ONE living thing. Both were crustaceans...the larger one actually looked "cute" in a cartoonish way caught in flashlite beam. The smaller was prolly a crawdad, but I was a glum tv watching boy who only got motivated to get out of the suburban colorado house when the age of 15, pot, liqour came about, so I never had no such thing as looking at crawdads before..so I dont know. Just saying...saw no rats...nor corpses of such, or pigoens or anything.

If you are still reading this all I can say is I didnt go OFF my TOPIC as much as i meant to..but it's the holidays and one can't even predict oneself. All i am saying is...the tunnel, she's a beauty. Oh it goes under an outrageously spooky cemetery a few blocks away, and the water before being tunneled starts on a hill by an equally sppoky cemetery.

The worst thing about it is the SILT on the floor...like walking just under the lip of the water on the beach. A foot of silt. Not convenient at ALL. However it is very fine and seems TIDY somehow in it's fine-grainedness. But, there being a foot of it, it help raise one's fat old bending body even higher which then exascerbates the second big flaw of the tunnel...it Often shrinks to a size where one has to bend way too much way too long. At least there is the relief every now and again of coming to a spot under a manhole where one can stand erect and pant a little. I still havnt even smoked a cig down there, and THAT is a miracle, especially considering my last trip was about 2 hours. I dare anyone to say they smoke more than me.

Anyway...it's a tunnel... and so much of it is still unexplored. And with all it's inconveniences I am INDEED going back many times. it's worth it. it actually seems theraputic down there...it's scary BUT it is relaxing at the same time. it's very Munster/Adams of me to have this manhole to another world in my yard, and i am grateful that NONE of you have such. I thank the heavens for my tunnel.

It gets me off the couch. there is nothing like the thrill of arriving back home and coming up your own manhole in the yard, seeing your house up the hill. One can then rip off thier army boots and hop in premade bath, and marvel at one's idiocy even though one also tells self, it is a GOOD thing you didnt just sit and drink tonight online, it's like a SPORT. (sorry...please dont kick me out for saying that...I take it back.)

In other news...I really did start the ramsey house on fire a long time ago for all kinds of messy reasons,,,but jesus h. christ has given me a tunnel now, so I dont care about that anymore.

The tunnel is hours from nyc...not close enough to sanely come to it...use it...and go back to nyc. Just saying....i am an aging kook... who lives alone in his own greyish brown garden so I would consider access to someone who wants to take kooky/nutty/zany/wacky art fotos or films down there. I am researching the HELL out of it, and spending WAY too much time on it, so I don't want it BLOWN before I can finish some sort of writing project about it. Not saying I want raging teen party down there....ok...yes i do...and naked, but I am realistic. Some nice non too fabulous slut of a queen wants rare fotos of herself sloshing in a tunnel...'hit me up'...we'll see. Shirtless, underwear showing over top of jeans ROCK BANDS move to head of line.

anyway...i am dead serious I have an odd and long tunnel... so if anyone has interesting need for such...let me know.

frankly i would be satisfied during my endless library research period if hattie (hatches) hathaway would let me be connected to nyc by letting me have a little box in her cafe wherein flotsom about my progress on exploring the tunnel could be thrown, so people could look at it like a little art project. I emailed her and she didnt answer. I guess she's busy.

My battered mind keeps striving for ways in which I could alleviate the back breaking bend problem of some long segments of the tunnel so I can get all the way to the end, and see if there are any amazing sites along the way. I was considering some sort of small raft with 2 liter bottles under it, but now that hattie has snubbed me, I am thinking I could just ride HER like wet soaking doll down to the river. Let her damn dowdy apron drag against the silt.

I would trick hapi face into pushing me thru the rough spots by dangling a plate of nachos JUST in front of him, but frankly,..he aint gonna fit in the tunnel anyway.

I am sorry i didnt say more HELLO type things in general here. Sorry I didnt ask what i should do. Just launched into having a tunnel.

One time I made a coworker STEAMING mad by mistakingly thinking it would be within his realm of humor by saying, "hey dave, how's that rape case of yours coming along."

I love the tunnel. And I have a manhole to it in my yard. Could an ugly old queen get filmed down there sitting at a dressing table putting on liptick and lamenting about having to go underground...SURE...theres enuf room...i mean you couldnt have the GRAND table of your queeny dreams...but all that sort of stuff...SURE...

has to be done at nite...but whats the difference...it is ALWAYS nite in the tunnel. But shoving a queens ransom of props, and queens down the hole cant be seen by neighbors. Nopey nope no.

Why in the name of gawd doesnt somebody offer me two million dollars to film in my hole. WHY...oh why. But really..if someone has kooky ideas....I'm listening.

I can vouch for the fact that he does indeed have a manhole in his backyard, here is a pic of his "man hole," literally:

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Hapi Phace,

A very warm welcome to Mr JT Colfax to the MBs and may you post often and continually. I love hearing about your tunnel.

Wow...JTColfax! What a great diatribe for me to wake up to instead of actually doing work work work this morning at the cafe. Love reading about you and your manhole in the morning. Welcome to the Motherboards.

Thank you for the warm welcomes,..i wish I could say that I really appreciated it, but the fact is that it's xmas eve and I woke up with that condition wherein one feels like there is a big turd caught a few inches up in the olde arse, and even though farts and diarhea are making it past the turd, the turd remains. that gives me the RIGHT to grind a cigarette out in any of your eyes no matter how nice you are. also i think my alchoholism is making me tremble a little bit today. i would slash any one of you across the throat if i could just get into the same underwear with a young wrestler and go back to bed.

and furthermore, since you are all alone at christmas due to your immorrality and hateful quirks i knew very well you have the TIME to make up a horrible vision of something bad happening to Chevy Chase. It would amuse me, so DO IT.

Jt - we all loved your "Letters to Clarksburg" night at Grey Gardens . . . I think Bobby was there. You and Joe have something in common - as you both live(d) in the same buidling as me. So you both know some of the same KOOKS who live in this building, besides me.

oh lordy do i recognize so many names around here. i went to a play once in the east village and was introduced to Sweetie out of drag by Taboo, and if memory serves she was giving me the gay googly eyes whilst all I was thinking was Oh No not going down this queen road again. So many other names of people I knew of or barely met. But what in the name of jesus H. christ IS an andrea biscotti?

but more importantly, can someone explain to me why when one get's ON in years and then takes something like vicidin one can FEEL the presence of such a drug IN one's back hair in the most annoying cloying way.

I like my dick and would feel no need to trade it for any other size or shape if it was offered. I don't like noodly Jazz music. I have a tunnel. I don't like wearing my glasses because they got a little bent. I don't like making appointments. I am sure that I am TEEMING with cancer and should do something about it. I do not like it when people have noises in thier songs that make one feel like the phone is ringing. I got a little HARD once when as a mortician I had to slap togther for viewing the corpse of a young THUG who was shot by the police in Dallas. I was frustrated for WORK REASONS...as in: why didnt somebody get this corpse dressed last nite if the family was promised they could see him first thing this morning...etc,..so with the thug family bitching at me, and no other workers around to help, there I was in FIT of caustic anger sliding the fresh out of the pack underwear up the legs of this THUG who would have killed a fruitcake JUST LIKE THAT if he was still alive,..and my crotch area was right against the embalming table so the rubbing, the anger, and the looks of the thug got me a little hard. But, NO, i didnt DO anything to him. Whats funny is it's now 20 years later and I still recall his name. Should I look his family up in texas and give them an xmas day call tomorrow with my memory of thier loved one?
Or should I read Biscotti posts? I never got into FINGERING myself, but I could try that today. So many possibilities,..and yet the day is piddling away.

quote:

I woke up with that condition wherein one feels like there is a big turd caught a few inches up in the olde arse, and even though farts and diarhea are making it past the turd, the turd remains.

Priceless.

WELCOME to the Boards.... the manhole sounds marvelous! Keep posting!

JT is this one of the CRUSTACEANS that you found in your tunnel?

Hey JT,
Daddy here aka Johnny Dynell.

I'm not sure if we've met.
I used to do "Grey Gardens" with Hattie.
The night we did "Letters to Clarksburg" there was legendary.
Thank you.

Welcome to the Motherboards.
I can't wait for you to meet S'tan.
In fact, I would blow Chevy Chase in a second to be a virtual fly on the wall in a private chat room with you and S'tan.
I'm sure it will happen.
Do I smell herstory in the making?
Or is it just that troublesome turd again?
Time will tell.

I tried to dig a tunnel once when I was about 12. (I'm from upstate New York)
It's very hard to do. It just ended up a big hole and filled up with water. I found a turtle on the railroad tracks (about a mile away) and put it in the hole. The next day there was another turtle in there with him.
True turtle love story.
And speaking of turtles (and turtle-ing)
Hapi,
I saw your skulls in The RAPTURE CAFE.
Gorgeous!
Love the red ones.

I love 'sploring tunnels.
You could call me a splunker.

JT, I wish I could adopt you!

PS Did you say that your tunnel is always wet? That's hot!

Messy Rosie - leave JT alone. Don't be dragging your dyke drama into this thread.

that said . . .

Speaking of "The Letters" Here is waht some people wrote in to the Wshington Post to say about the "Letters to Clarksburg Project"

July 01, 1995, Saturday, Final Edition

Your article "Mail Aggression" [Style, June 25] is one of the worst ones I've seen your paper do. Why you chose to give huge publicity to some weird man sending awful letters to Clarksburg, W.Va., I don't understand. You feed this man's self-importance, almost giving him a pat on the back. He will certainly conclude that he should continue some of the same activities or worse.

Second, you play into all the nasty stereotypes of gay people. I am a straight woman with three kids, but I know some very nice gay people, and no one I know acts so stupidly. I think an article like that just promotes gay hatred. Maybe that's what you intend.

This certainly also would encourage other nuts to do this kind of thing, thinking they too will receive a nice publicity page in your paper.

I can think of a lot of other really deserving artists who could use some publicity about real art.

-- Joan G. Wolfe

I read the extensive article by Frank Ahrens on the antics of James Thompson (a k a J. T. Colfax).

Why was it not called sexual harassment of selected people in a town unfortunately chosen by Thompson? Is he not as sick as the college president who a few years ago was charged with phone harassment of a young woman?

Frankly, I'm wondering why your paper would even give space to the story. Must we celebrate the lowest common denominator?

-- Wanda Gardner

I am puzzled as to why you devoted more than a page and a half in your June 25 edition to the sociopathic homosexual engaged in writing dirty letters to the citizens of Clarksburg, W.Va.

Certainly, the story is not newsworthy as that term is usually understood. Given that it appeared in your Style section, I gather your editors found something artistic in this man's actions, although it appears his principal claim to artistry is a vague future commitment to write a book describing the outcome of his harassment campaign. Even the Robert Mapplethorpe definition of art would not admit this as a true accomplishment.

It seems the only possible justification for including this pointless piece would be for its value as a psychiatric case study -- or as evidence of the need for a moral revival among certain elements of our society.

I think the real reason you ran this story is the same reason that underlies so much of the banality in today's media: the cheap voyeuristic thrill that comes from talking about or portraying perverted sex acts under the guise of "news" or "art" or "current affairs."

What we have here is the journalistic equivalent of kids scrawling dirty words on bathroom walls.

-- William D. Rossiter Jr.

Here is the Washington Post article that sparked the Letters to the Editor

NAME: J.T. Colfax

SECTION: STYLE; Pg. F01

LENGTH: 4588 words

HEADLINE: MAIL AGGRESSION; What J.T. Colfax, gay provocateur, is doing to the town of Clarksburg, W. Va., is vicious, hostile and downright rude. But is it art?

BYLINE: Frank Ahrens, Washington Post Staff Writer

BODY:
It's 6:30 a.m. on a Monday at the Greyhound bus station near First and L streets NE. The early June sun blazes, and the inside of the dim station smells of bodies. It steams like steerage, filled with families and young couples and old people and sad human detritus strewn underfoot.

J.T. Colfax lugs a stuffed olive-drab Army duffel bag over his right shoulder and parts the crowd with the sort of urgent politeness that tells you he's in his element. He pulls a $ 50 bill from a dirty wad and pays for a one-way ticket to Clarksburg, W.Va.

Other people are going to Clarksburg today. But none carries this man's baggage.

Colfax has appointed himself Clarksburg's grand inquisitor. Each day since Dec. 21 of last year, Colfax has picked residents of Clarksburg at random from a city directory and sent them one-page, typewritten letters telling them about his fetid rooming house and violent neighbors, his never-ending ennui, his musings on the news, and what manner of excruciatingly detailed, anonymous homosexual sex he's just had.

These letters -- nearly 400 of them -- have no return address. They contain occasional misspellings and mangled syntax. They all begin, "Dear Clarksburg."

As it happens, he does not know Clarksburg. Has never seen it. Picked it almost at random out of an almanac. Yet his letters are indiscriminately hostile, feasting on caustic assumptions. He has informed the populace that they are "bucktoothed, overall-wearing, inbreeding clowns."

Colfax says he is an artist, and that this is art. Whatever it may be -- art or terrorism, or something in between -- his project has had impact. The town is talking. Colfax has been written about in newspapers large and small. He will keep mailing his letters, he says, until New Year's Eve; then he wants to turn them into a book.

Clarksburg is a city of 18,059 in north-central West Virginia. It is a mostly white, mostly homogeneous community full of folks whose great-grandparents came from Europe to work in the factories or coal mines or gas fields. The source of Clarksburg's prosperity was crystal-clear: It was once a major glassworks center, the leading producer of children's marbles -- aggies, mostly. Now, its biggest business is more solemn but no less American. It is home to an FBI fingerprint identification center.

Now enters Colfax, puncturing Clarksburg's skin like a hypodermic needle full of disease. Or an antidote to the provincialism that stunts it. Take your pick.

City and artist have collided in ways he had hoped for. It has created a stir, and public discussion. His letters invite a debate about value and self-worth and responsibility, and the nature of art. They ask the questions: What do you believe in? What makes you feel safe? What terrifies you?

He is 31, a self-described gay former prostitute who has been steeped in misery since his first homosexual experience in junior high in a Denver suburb. "I invented embarrassment," he often says, and he wears it like a hair shirt.

"J.T. Colfax" is a pen name. Colfax Street is the main drag in Denver -- part of which is known as a cruising strip -- where Colfax learned to make money by performing sexual acts on other men. "J.T." are his real initials. He has used it for stories he's written for gay publications. He picked a pen name, he says, because there is a writer who shares his name. Also, there is the distance that a false identity affords.

He doesn't fit in anywhere. Not in the hetero community, even though he couldn't look more Regular Guy -- he resembles a slightly disheveled truck driver for a second-tier delivery company. When he leaves the squalor of his Staten Island rooming house -- which isn't often -- he spends most of his time in New York's flamboyantly gay community. He lives a feral life on a recently received $ 15,000 inheritance, and on jobs cleaning people's apartments.

So today is the day he has decided to go to Clarksburg to see the place he's vilified for seven months. The place whose map hangs on his wall. The place that he's adopted in little ways, such as using the last three digits of the city's Zip code (301) as the identification for his most recent HIV test, which came back negative. He goes with a mixture of fear and hope. So far, he has had only an abstract idea of what Clarksburgers are like. What are they like in the flesh? He has invited this newspaper along to chronicle the moment, for the sake of art.

At the very least, this will be something to fill his time productively. Thank God.

Hello

"Well, for one thing . . . I have not had anal sex in ages. . . . the whole condom thing has just caused that to sort of faze out. I don't really work, therefore it's possible for me to go for many days without speaking to anyone at all. Hey, Christmas is approaching fast. . . . I totally dreaded it until a few days ago when I finally got some plans made to have Christmas dinner at, Odessa, in the East Village with Hapi, Hattie and Elaine . . . all of whom are men who wear dresses, for work."

So began the first grenade Colfax lobbed. This one exploded last December in the mailboxes of Bernard E. Yerkey, Ed Toompas and Hair by Cindy & Judy.

Colfax targeted Clarksburg haphazardly, its only qualifications being that it is small enough to have only one Zip code -- he figured folks will talk to each other about the letters -- and that gay guides to America list no gay bars there. But at the beginning, at least, no one in Clarksburg knew any of this. All they knew was they were getting letters from a New York stranger who seemed to delight in describing things that were as alien to them as he said contentment was to him.

He has been careful not to include obscenities in the letters, for fear of prosecution. But if he has considered what other effect the letters may have, it has not impeded him. He's tossing rocks in the lake from New York -- what ripples are caused in Clarksburg? Who cares? After all, isn't the very point of radical art expression without repression? Action without accountability?

He spent the '80s crisscrossing the country on Greyhound buses, surviving by turning tricks and holding itinerant jobs. Which is why it's symmetrical that he's on this Greyhound today, which rattles with snoring as it strains free of the District.

Colfax stares straight ahead. The early morning light, so harsh, streaks in the window at a low angle and fires through his eyes from the right, changing their gunmetal blue to blazing amber. His salt-and-pepper face stubble shows auburn highlights. Sometimes his hands shake. Sometimes he rocks back and forth, like an impatient child. The creases around his eyes and the jut of his cleft chin mark the years like rings inside a tree. He is handsome, but he is no longer fresh. And in his former line of work, fresh is what counts. He wonders aloud: How many years until I'm a troll? It is the derogatory term for an old cruising homosexual and it means the end of the line. He looks down at his paunch.

"Maybe I am already."

Despite his ever-present, sarcastic sideways smile, despite the hardness of his old days, there is something meek, even timorous, about him. Like a whipped dog.

He has been through West Virginia only once, on a vacation with his parents and five older brothers and sisters when he was 11. His gay friends in New York have warned him that he might be bashed. They've imitated West Virginia accents with a campy lisp. They've even had a Clarksburg Night at a gay bar, where parts of his letters were read aloud and snips of John Denver's "Take Me Home, Country Roads" were played. The whole thing was recorded. An occasional "yee-haw" can be heard in the background.

In less than five hours, an unsuspecting Clarksburg will meet Colfax. Will this be a mixture of matter and antimatter? To look more inconspicuous, more like them, he thinks, he has shaved off his Vandyke beard.

Nowheresville, but Nice

The bus rolls west along Interstate 68, and the Maryland farms and hills near Hagerstown spread out on all sides. Colfax has lived in New York for four years. Nice countryside out here.

"After New York, any countryside is nice countryside," he says, staring out the window. He extracts from his duffel bag some New York newspapers, which he has marked with margin notes. He wants to leave them around Clarksburg like animal spoor, to show he was there.

Inside his New York Post is a political cartoon that shows President Clinton riding a bomb down to the ground, which is labled "Bosnia." Colfax has scratched out "Clinton" and replaced it with "Colfax" and scratched out "Bosnia" and replaced it with "Clarksburg, West Virginia."

"Can you imagine this turning up on someone's doorstep in Clarksburg?" he snickers.

He knows mischief. He used to drive a hearse. If a certain song, such as AC/DC's "Highway to Hell," came on the radio, he'd slowly roll down the window as the procession moved somberly past people on the sidewalk. Sometimes he'd sing: "Goin' to the chapel/ And we're gonna get buried."

Once he wrote the Fuji film company that it frightened him when the company's blimp flew over Manhattan. He received several solicitous letters from Fuji, assuring him of his safety. He wasn't really scared; he just wanted to write a letter and see what happened.

The stop to change buses in Hagerstown is brief, but long enough for Colfax to light up. He smokes filtered Marlboros. Hard pack. He stares out grimly at Hagerstown. Nowheresville, U.S.A.

Welcome to Clarksburg

"Somewhere in Clarksburg, right now, there is a young man who wishes desperately that he could kiss, touch, and feel akin to another young man from school. He hears his parents and other townsfolk speak of gays as the most evil people on earth . . . You are making him hate himself. Meanwhile, on the other side of town there is another boy who feels the same way. They know each other but are too young to recognize each other. Maybe they'll just kill themselves when it get's unbearable. Is that what you want, you selfish, judgemental people?"

Eighty-six percent of Clarksburg's residents were born in West Virginia, 96 percent are white, and 98 percent live in households. Half of those houses were built before World War II. The median mortgage payment is $ 491 and only 1 percent of the homes lack "complete plumbing facilities."

Each fall the city shuts down its streets for three days and puts on a huge Italian Heritage Festival. The art deco courthouse rises behind a statue dedicated to "The Immigrants," its doors flanked with twin tablets of the Ten Commandments. You almost never hear sirens, and folks are home in the evening when you call. The woman in the Hardee's drive-through window asks: "Want ketchup with that, hon?"

Charley Hively is the reference librarian in the Clarksburg-Harrison Public Library. He is 33 and a lifelong West Virginian. When the first letter wended its way to the library, as a lot of things do, Hively knew he had something.

"We got a December letter on January 9; actually, one of the clerks got it and went 'Eeuuww, what do we do with this?' I immediately knew what was going to happen. I thought, 'This guy, if he can sustain this, this is a book.' At the end of the year, he's going to go, 'Hey, look, Mr. Publisher -- here's my book. Publish my book.' "

Hively is something of a town archivist. Those people who don't throw away the letters, or take them to the police or postal inspector, bring them to Hively.

Hively is pursuing his PhD in literature and analyzes Colfax's letters with the clear eye of a semiotician. He thinks they have literary merit, though they lack discipline.

Hively believes the few dozen letters he has constitute local history and deserve protection. Sometimes, on a slow Saturday afternoon in the library, he rereads the letters, plucks out a thought, takes it home and turns it over while he feeds his cats or before he goes to sleep.

"I was very frightened at the beginning," he says. "I saw, psychologically, a person who was really, really in trouble. I really identified with him. Here we are in the heart of West Virginia . . ." He holds up his right hand with his forefinger and thumb extended, as if he's forming a gun. Except, pointing upward, it looks like West Virginia with its characteristic panhandles. With his left hand, he points to his palm. " . . . And as part of the culture of Appalachia, who better to understand the concepts of isolation, desperation, loneliness and poverty?

"He's saying: 'Dear Clarksburg, throw me a life preserver. I've grabbed onto you and, just like a drowning victim, I'm not letting go. I'm either going to pull you down with me or you're going to save me. Now, which is it?' "

Hively has shown the letters to gay friends, who authenticate the experiences contained therein. There are many references to public masturbation in the Staten Island ferry men's room. When Hively was in his high school choir, he sang on the Staten Island ferry. Afterward he had to use the restroom. He believes Colfax.

On a break in the library's snack room, Hively smokes filtered Marlboro Lights. Hard pack.

Staking a Solitary Claim

Clarksburg is bigger than Colfax expected. Its muscular brick buildings rise out of the verdant hills.

"I'm going to have to increase the dosage," he says, which means more letters. It is also a self-conscious allusion to the project, which he regards as his therapy.

It's a perfect 75 degrees and sunny when Colfax finally steps on Clarksburg soil at 12:45 p.m. He has been nervous since he crossed the state line an hour ago, after which he looked at a small house and said, "All right. I've seen a shack now." His hands shake more frequently and he talks a little faster.

He launches himself toward downtown, with a mission. He carries a plastic bag in his left hand and has a slight bounce in his step. He crosses a bridge.

"Is that the West Fork River?" he wonders aloud.

"No, that's Elk Creek," answers a woman, unsolicited, as she passes by without breaking stride while carrying groceries. She smiles over her shoulder.

Colfax shakes his head, unbelievingly. "She was way too nice."

He comes to the library and stops in front of the two-story brown brick building. "I didn't think it would be that modern," he says.

He mails some letters from the mailbox out front, under a generous shade tree. "Watch them get there in about an hour."

He points to different businesses. "I did them, and them, and them. Wow. I didn't think it'd be so easy to see so many of them. There's Mr. B's Big and Tall Men's store. I did them."

"Did" them.

At the courthouse, he'd like to take a picture of the statue of Stonewall Jackson, Clarksburg's most famous son, but won't. "It's too close to people. I don't want to get too close to people."

Whaaa?

Here is the disquieting truth about Colfax's visit: He has decided not to meet human beings. Especially not anyone he has written to. He has ridden a bus from New York. He has ridden another from Washington. The next day, he will ride still another back to New York. Hundreds of miles. To meet no one.

He won't meet Cindy and Judy, of Hair by Cindy & Judy. He won't meet Bernard E. Yerkey or Ed Toompas. He won't meet Hively. He won't meet anyone.

But why? This is your town. You own them.

"It would be horrifying," he says, with a shudder. "I want to be mesmerizing. If I were going to give a crystal-clear image of me, then art goes right out the window."

Meeting people, he says, "might infect me with responsibility."

His letters embody the perfect one-way relationship. Clarksburg is Colfax's captive audience. He can mete out whatever he wants, as much as he wants, as long as he wants. And, unlike a two-way relationship -- a human relationship -- Clarksburg cannot place demands on Colfax. Action without consequence. Pleasure without pain.

But if Hively is right and Colfax is drowning, how can he be saved if he will not surface?

Colfax strides purposefully along unthreatening streets, all but deserted. He alights at a place that seems right, an empty patch of dirt at a neglected construction site.

"Well, this is as good a place as any to plant the flag."

From his plastic shopping bag, Colfax extracts a car aerial and extends it to about three feet. At its end is affixed a two-foot stretch of Saran Wrap. This is the flag. It is transparent. It is Colfax's commentary on the current American political state of affairs.

It's his idea to plant this flag here in Clarksburg, to sort of claim it a bit, in the fashion of Old World conquerors.

The day before in Washington, while enduring the hell of touring the monuments with family members who had come to Washington for a get-together ("They've never tried to understand me"), he had them take a picture of him with his transparent flag in front of the Capitol.

In Clarksburg, he allows that he feels a little stupid with the flag, but that's only because his stupid family made him feel that way.

With the base of the antenna, he stakes a copy of his political manifesto -- a rambling exercise that is surprisingly devoid of the passion of his letters, which essentially says the government is stagnant and futile -- into the ground. It is overlaid with a hideous photocopied close-up head shot of a pop-eyed, tongue-lolling, "extreme" gay New York artist called Mr. Leonard.

He picked the picture of Mr. Leonard because it was "the most ridiculous thing I could think of." To him, it sums up his letter-writing project: "a serious political notion covered by idiocy."

The cellophane unfurls and rustles a little in the breeze. Mr. Leonard's mouth is impaled. Colfax's mission to Clarksburg is now complete. There is no ceremony. No one salutes. The sidewalks are empty. No one is there to see.

The Recipients

"Serious political notion" or even "idiocy" is not the first word that comes to the minds of Clarksburg residents who have received Colfax's letters.

"I didn't know what to think. It looked like he really needed someone to vent his frustration," said Ken Clutter, a middle-aged salesman who has lived in Clarksburg his whole life. "I kept it because I reported it to the police in case it was some kind of weirdness."

Even though many of the people received their letters months ago, all remembered them. The city police aren't investigating; the Postal Service wishes he'd stop but has nothing to prosecute yet.

Richard Ritter, 53, a real estate agent and lifelong Clarksburg resident, said, "I guess he figured we were running around here with teeth missing and shoes off." West Virginians not only know the outside world, they know exactly what the outside world thinks of them. That's okay, they say. We're just the poor, dumb hicks here in our spacious houses with nice yards and $ 491 mortgages and safe schools and friendly ladies at the Hardee's drive-through. Let 'em think what they want. While they're dodging drive-by shootings.

Three days after Christmas, Colfax mailed a letter to the Congregational Missionary Church.

" . . . every year, X puts up a tree and decorates it with paper ornaments bearing the names of all the people he's known that died. Lot's of 'em. Most of them died of AIDS. Some OD'd. And I think some killed themselves. X is 35 years old and should not know that many dead people. I wonder if the common thread of preaching in Clarksburg still goes along the lines that, 'AIDS is a sign from the Lord,' etc."

The Rev. Richard Settles is known around town as a fair, decent man. The Bible is quite clear on homosexuality, he said.

"I don't care what modern trends say, the Scripture is very adamant that [homosexuality] is a perversion," he said, in a soft voice more explanatory than accusatory. "I love people and I wouldn't throw rocks at them or holler at them and if 15 homosexuals walked in here right now I would talk to them, but there would be no way I could say to them, 'What you're doing is right.' "

He didn't share the letter with his congregation. He mentioned it to a few members afterward and they agreed it was best not to.

The absolute last person Colfax should have written to was Hattie Clovis, whose age is none of your business.

"I think the guy's nuts. I think it's crap."

Do you feel any sympathy for him?

"Sympathy? Heavens, no! He belongs in a nut house. He's off-center."

Clovis just canceled her subscription to Redbook magazine because of the "crap" it had been publishing. She thinks Colfax should be jailed. When it's pointed out he hasn't done anything illegal, she said: "Do we have to wait until he does something wrong? When is he going to do something violent? This is the sort of person who blows up buildings."

She has a warning for Colfax, which she repeated twice so there would be no mistake:

"If he shows up around here, I'm going to fill his ass full of buckshot."

A Sucker Punch

But there's been another reaction, one that Colfax probably never imagined.

Gayle Clary's husband was out of town and she was watching after her four children by herself when Colfax's letter to her household arrived in early March.

"When I was walking down Bay Street awhile ago with a full army duffle bag . . . two gorgeous teenage boys pulled up. The driver rolled down the window and said, "You going hiking FREAK!" Now see, I would love to catch someone like that and force them to do all manner of homosexual things. I hope he'd cry, yes, cry, with his deep homosexual fears blazing . . . and that he'd be ashamed of it for the rest of his life."

This letter arrived in her mailbox with no return address on it. It had her husband's name, their home address and phone number at the top of it. Gayle Clary was scared.

Later that evening, an unfamiliar van circled the neighborhood. Why did her husband have to be away this night? She called her neighbors and pleaded with them to watch the house. She thought about the two loaded guns she keeps.

She called the police and they came over. The officer said he didn't have time to read the letter but, after reading one line, sat down and read the rest. He took it with him. His concern made her more worried. She was almost shaking.

Now Clary can laugh about it because she's seen the stories about Colfax in the paper and on TV. She is a joyful woman. But it wasn't funny then.

"I have a teenage boy who's 13. [Colfax] talked about how he'd like to have sex with a young boy." Her son wasn't allowed out alone for two weeks after the letter arrived.

"I don't care what his sexual preference is. I don't go around saying, 'I sleep with a man every night.' Why didn't he leave out those [violent] parts? I'm the type of sucker who would have written to him if he didn't have that stuff in there."

Last Thanksgiving, an elderly man who sometimes walks around their neighborhood with an umbrella when it's not raining and insists God sent him from outer space knocked on the Clarys' door and offered to pay to eat Thanksgiving dinner with them. Standing at the front door, Don turned to Gayle and, before he could say anything, she nodded to the man, "C'mon in. No charge." She doesn't know his name, but calls him Beardy and sometimes gives him a sandwich.

"I think [Colfax] is so wrapped up in his grief and his despair that he's not feeling anything but his own feelings," she said. "He's crying out for help."

A Last Look

Colfax is trudging up East Main Street hill, which shoulders one after another beautiful, perfectly maintained Victorian house. One of them is boarded up, though some folks are working hard on it, putting on a new roof. Colfax whimsically offers his expertise on the seedy side of city planning and deems that it should be Clarksburg's crack house. He suggests a prostitution strip for another part of town.

The talk turns back to the letters. "I bet most of the people like them because at least they're something different," he says.

This may be Colfax's biggest miscalculation. Not everyone is as bored, as unhappy, as inwardly focused as he is. Some folks -- some folks in Clarksburg, W.Va., for instance -- find a great deal of fulfillment in lives that don't need to change a lot from day to day. They don't hate themselves so much that they feel compelled to pull down their pants in front of a city full of strangers every day.

"He's defining a culture that is very unseemly, very dangerous, very seedy, that most of [Clarksburg] has probably never been exposed to," says librarian Hively. "And I'm not necessarily sure that it serves any purpose for them to be exposed to it."

Clarksburg already knew the answers to Colfax's questions. They knew what they believe in. What keeps them safe. What terrifies them. They wonder if Colfax does.

What he has done, they say, is not about artistic expression. It is not about homosexuality or cultural tolerance or the breadth of one's horizons. It's about forced entry. It's rape. And it's just plain rude. By nightfall, the transparent flag will have been uprooted. The political screed and photo of Mr. Leonard will be gone.

Across from the Clarksburg Greyhound station, J.T. Colfax casts a shadow against a storefront, his duffel bag leaning against his right leg. His left fist is shoved in his jeans pocket, like a B-movie drifter. His right hand lifts a Marlboro to his lips and he takes a drag. He exhales, almost spitting the smoke out through that sad sarcastic smile -- a small, forlorn, furtive, fearful man, framed in his cowardice, alone in his impotent rage. Anyway, in 45 minutes, he will be gone.

Epilogue

Tormented lives yield no neat conclusions.

It turns out that J.T. Colfax left that simple, decent town -- and then turned around and headed back. Not all the way back, but as far as Hagerstown, the nondescript Maryland town he met on his way to Clarksburg. Nowheresville, U.S.A.

He's moving there. Into a rooming house in Hagerstown.

That's what he said when he telephoned late Wednesday afternoon, from his room on Staten Island. He said "something snapped." And so he packed up all his possessions (save his telephone and his alarm clock), got a rental car and drove away from New York. Away from the jaded friends, the casual meanness, the squalor. He stopped in Hagerstown because he'd liked the countryside there. He found a gay bar, where he met a nice-seeming guy.

J.T. Colfax is a manipulator and an embittered provocateur. So you can imagine him doing such a thing for a dozen twisted reasons: to create a dramatic ending for his book, to pluck a little sympathy from a writer, to make a diverting amusement for his friends in Manhattan. Or perhaps because something in Clarksburg touched his heart.

You can also imagine that he is making the whole thing up, so you check.

The rooming house in Hagerstown says it never heard of Colfax.

But wait. It does have a JXXXX TXXXXXXXX registered, which is the name he had as a baby, before he became one of the saddest men you'll ever meet. Yes, he's there, under his real name. He says he will continue writing letters to Clarksburg, but their tenor may change, who knows?

You can think the best of him, believe in his transformation and wish him luck, as the people of Clarksburg would probably do. Or you can smirk and walk away, as J.T. Colfax would probably do if he heard such a story.

The real question is, what would JXXXX TXXXXXXXX do?



GRAPHIC: Photo, mike boroff for The Washington Post; Photo, john m. bright for The Washington Post; Photo, frank ahrens; Illustration, j.t. colfax, J.T. Colfax, former prostitute, would-be performance artist, and postal terrorist, meets Clarksburg, W.Va., from top left: leaving the Clarksburg Mission, where he shopped; sending new missives; planting his "flag"; standing before the site he suggests would make a good crack house. Not on the tour are any actual human beings. "I want to be mesmerizing," he says. "If I were going to give a crystal-clear image of me, then art goes right out the window." Clarksburg, W.Va. as it looks from East Main Street, left, and how J.T. Colfax sees it, from one of his letter Gayle Clary got a letter, filled with a violent sexual fantasy: "I'm the type of sucker who would have written to him if he didn't have that stuff in there." Charley Hively, a reference librarian, considers the letters local history.

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