12-11-06

On the day my sister went to college, I started writing letters to people I wanted to meet. First, I wrote a letter to Hanson, the washed-out teen band I think I once had a sex dream about. I woke up with my hands dug into my underwear and felt so ashamed, I took two showers in a row, then went outside and dirtied my hands with dirt from the backyard and went back and took another shower. I started off the letter like this:
Dear Hansen brothers!
Dear Hansen trio!
A trio of brothers!
Hansen bros!
Trio of bros!
Tro bros!

I’m writing to you today in hopes that I will sound crazy enough that whoever sorts through your mail, (probably someone who looks like me, is the same age as me and is in your immediate family, in which case, it would not actually look like me since I’m not blond, blue-eyed, or a white girl!) will find me interesting and startling enough that they will pass this letter on to you.

I don’t normally like to look back at my diary entries once I’ve written them. I especially would not like to look back at my seventh and eighth grade diary entries, but if I did, I would probably find a few entries that try to be all deep and pose the question, “Can you love someone you never met before?” Obviously, what I was really getting at was: is it weird that I want to have mad wild sex with Taylor Hansen, and if not Taylor, well okay I’ll take Ike because he’s got a good name and I could do with an older man, and if not Taylor or Ike, then fine, I’ll take Zach even though he sings like my brother and I’d rather not be thinking of my brother while boning a Hansen brother.

I also wrote letters to Denzel Washington, Devon Sawa, Posh Spice, the English teacher who left my school when I was tenth grade, who I thought once touched my arm and lingered there and another time, I thought maybe he was giving me the once over during exam week when it was hotter than a baked turkey and I wore my old green shorts that were too small for me. I thought for sure when he asked me to stay behind at the end of class, he was going to shut the door, pull down the blinds, and whip out his dick, and I had it all figured out: I would confidently say, “I wore a special bra today. I was hoping you’d get to see it,” and he would rip off my bra, (because he could care less about what I was wearing compared to the wild passionate fucking we were about to engage in), but it turned out in the end, that he just wanted to congratulate me on my excellent scores and performance this year and that I should feel free to call him or write him next year when I was a junior and he was teaching a bunch of private school fuckheads Hemingway’s imperialist ambitions in Southern California. I kept his address in a box along with the mini-pack of Kleenex pack the video store clerk gave me when I first moved into this town.
The letter I wrote my English teacher went like this:

Dear Mr. Clarke,
Hi, do you remember me? I used to sit way up in the front and the girls behind me sometimes threw thing at me, like shipping peanuts. Sometimes, I would walk into class with glassy eyes. I had long straight black hair, and no matter summer or winter, I would always wear a skirt to class. If you remember me then you might not want to keep reading this letter.
I wanted you to notice me when I crossed my legs at the front of the class, and I wanted you to notice me when I raised my hands and waited an extra second before speaking because I had seen my older sister do that, and boys go wild for her. I practiced lowering my voice at home by reading Daisy’s lines from The Great Gatbsy, which you said was the greatest book ever written, and to be honest, I read it and didn’t think much of it except what an exciting life Daisy led, and how Fitzgerald wrote her character with such disdain and admiration, and how spoiled she seemed through and through, and how I didn’t want to read another book about rich people who think they have it hard in their head. You taught us not to use clichés, and isn’t it a cliché—the whole idea that just because you are rich in material wealth does not mean you are rich in emotional wealth. The only reason they make shows like Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 90210 is because they want people who would otherwise feel pissed off about being poor have some illusion that being rich isn’t all that, and actually it’s quite tough to have a million bucks at your disposal because your daddy don’t love you, your mommy only loves jewels, etc, whatever.
I didn’t mean to get into a tangent (another thing you told us to not do, in our manner of speaking, or in our essays, and I had raised my hand, do you remember, and I asked, “Then how come when Joyce or Jane Austen does it, it’s considered wonderful and intriguing, and important to the development of the English canon,” and you had said, “Well, there is an overused saying that goes, you have to know the rules to break them,” and I was not satisfied with your answer but I was sort of aroused and excited and I wanted you to see that, to see the fire and vigor I had for you and for your class.) The whole time you were teaching us I wanted so badly for you want me and think about me, and I dreamed of you during the day, sometimes inadvertently at night. During the day, I had strange daydreams about you because I didn’t dream about being with you, or being kissed by you as much as I dreamed about you dreaming of me, and of you fantasizing about me, so I guess in a way you could call me really narcissist or a special form of lesbian (does that turn you on by the way?)

I don’t know what I was trying to accomplish with these letters, but I kept writing them. I included my real return address, and felt absolutely petrified when I licked shut the letter to Mr. Clarke. I covered my eyes with one hand like I did during horror films as I dropped his letter into the post office box. I nearly screamed as I slammed the handle shut and heard the sound of my envelope sliding down onto the other letters and packages.