▸ Column · Tatooine's Outer Rim underworld — Jabba presiding from his desert palace
JABBA THE HUTT replies.
Replied to by Jabba the Hutt, with a rebuttal from Boba Fett.
The letter
My husband Anselm used to nurse one Corellian ale after the suns set, but ever since his hauling crew lost its biggest contract this past season, I keep finding empty spotchka flasks tucked inside his work boots and stashed behind the moisture vaporators in the shed. Last cycle he slurred all the way through our daughter Wren's primary-school recital, then swore he was "completely fine" to pilot the speeder home — he was not. When I raise it, he either goes silent for two days or snarls that I'm tallying him like a spaceport magistrate, so now I count his cups in my own head just to feel like I have a grip. I'm terrified of the morning I'll have to comm his mother with bad news, but just as terrified that if I push he'll drink at the cantina instead of at home where I can at least watch him. How do I get him help when he won't admit he needs any — and how long do I keep telling Wren that Daddy is only "tired"?
Jabba the Hutt replies
Hoo hoo hoo. You come to me trembling, my friend, counting his cups in your head like a frightened accountant. Sit. Breathe. Panic is the discount you hand a man who has stopped paying you anything at all.
Now hear what your Anselm has become: a man whose appetite is his master instead of his servant. I know appetite — I am built of it. But mine pays me dividends. His collects from him. The spotchka in his boots is his creditor now, and you, by chasing and pleading, have made yourself a second one he is free to ignore.
So stop chasing. Urgency at the cantina, urgency at home — it all tells him you need the resolution more than he does. Let the debt pile on his side of the scale. And stop subsidizing the comfort of drinking under your roof; the cantina at least charges him a price you keep handing over for free.
One thing I will not permit you to spend: the child. Keep Wren off that speeder — not out of mercy, out of arithmetic. Some collateral, once lost, cannot be bought back at any price.
You are not powerless, my friend. You have simply been giving it away.
— Jabba the Hutt
Boba Fett weighs in
The Hutt lounges on his dais preaching dividends. That same appetite of his nearly lowered me into a Sarlacc's gullet — so weigh his ledger lecture against what it cost me.
Strip the poetry. A drunk man at a speeder's controls with a child aboard — that's the only term that matters. Get Wren off that vehicle. Confirm it, every time. No exceptions.
And stop keeping the tally in your head, where it evaporates. Write it down — the flasks, the recital, the night he swore "fine." Fact, not feeling. Then line up somewhere to land before you push him. Never confront a man without an exit. Survive first. The rest can wait.
— Boba Fett
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