An Open Letter To A Friend Who is Attractive

So, this is a real letter that I actually sent to a friend of mine who isn’t that close, but circles my orbit and has no idea how attractive she is (but somehow instinctively seems to think I am not attractive enough to be with her).  This friend was actually involved in a separate incident involving roller derby and an ex-girlfriend, as well as a tangential story from the same evening involving Tiffany and a near-accidental-menàge-a-trois with the wrong sister and her boyfriend.  That story will most likely find its way onto one of my other blogs at some point in the not-too-distant future.

I’d like to thank Tiffany for posting this letter, as this is the perfect forum for it, and it’s kind of nice to not post everything directly to my own blog, which gets the same visitors everyday.  Now that I am crossing over and invading Tiffany’s turf (and your eyeballs), maybe I will have captured you for good!

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An Open Letter to Alcoholics Anonymous

Dear AA,

I know this is what most people refer to you as, even those who don’t have a drinking problem, but I think at this point I truly know you well enough to feel justified in referring to you as such, rather than using your full, formal and somewhat clumsy name – Alcoholics Anonymous. That certainly doesn’t roll easily off the tongue. Especially when you’re drunk. The alliteration alone will kill you after you’ve knocked back a few.

An Open Letter to Port Jeff Village

Dear Port Jeff Village,

Is it just me, or am I getting super lame in my old age? (Or, as my friend Jon would say, lamesauce; Jess, on the other hand, would say Sir Lames-a-lot. Use whichever you prefer, or neither. It’s up to you.) I mean, just last week I had a 21-year-old call me old and I increasingly find myself opting to stay home in order to nap or watch American Idol because I’m simply too wiped out to leave the house.

And last night was the worst of all. I had plans to meet up with Jon at Tara’s, a pub, as you know, within your jurisdiction, where, he tells me, they sell burgers for $1. If you really feel like splurging, for an extra buck you can add cheese. As a vegan, none of this is appetizing to me at all. My point is, it was a quiet day at work and I should have wanted to meet up with one of my best friends for a couple of hours afterwards.

An Open Letter to Boston (the City, Not the Band)

Dear Boston,

With today being St. Patrick’s Day and one of the East End’s largest parades taking place last weekend, I got to thinking about my six-month, self-destructive stay in Cambridge – and not because your basketball team is called the Celtics or because of your large Irish-American population, and not even because of the many booze addled adventures I went on during my short stint in your fine city. No, St. Patrick’s Day makes me think of you because it actually marks exactly one year since I moved back to New York.

Boston, it’s not that I don’t love you – I’ve always loved you – but I moved there impulsively for all the wrong reasons. Mostly, the move north was a passive aggressive attempt to break up with a girl who I don’t think I really wanted to be dating in the first place.

An Open Letter to God

Dear God,

I wasn’t sure if you knew this or not, but there’s a church out by me, on the eastern end of Long Island, that’s been advertising its new web site, itpaystoquestiongod.com. I’ve heard the ads on local radio stations while driving and seen pieces written about it in local papers.

The whole concept is this: You go to the site, you type in some big, huge, burning question you’ve been meaning to ask God (well, you), and then the church donates $5 to one of four, pre-selected, local charities. Now, even to an atheist such as myself, this sounds all well and good. I was even contemplating going on and plugging in the question “What’s the difference between supper and dinner?” just so a local charity could get five bucks. Then I figured I’d just write to you directly, bypass the middleman, and use the money on cat food.

An Open Letter to Linens ‘n’ Things

Dear Linens ‘n’ Things,

This past weekend, rather than a wild night out in Manhattan and Brooklyn, I stayed on Long Island and grabbed some tea with a couple of my friends. Don’t let how low-key that sounds fool you. It was a good time.

First, we tried to go to a café in St. James. However, when we got there, we discovered it was open mic night. It’s a pretty tiny place and every seat was taken, so we decided to go elsewhere.

Besides, letting me watch an open mic night is usually a pretty bad idea, since 99.99% of the performers are fairly cringe-worthy (at least on Long Island) and I have a bad habit of saying anything that pops into my head without thinking. It’s a terrible, but often hilarious, combination. Once I went to an open mic at a coffeehouse in Wantagh where this skinny, nerdy dude with an acoustic guitar, calling himself My Mother’s Boyfriend, or some other egregiously emo name, took the stage. He was awful. I can’t recall what I said exactly, but I mocked him to my friends the entire night, unaware that he could hear me up on stage. He gave me the dirtiest look when I left. And in high school, my best friend worked at a bakery with a cafe attached, where they’d often host open mic nights for music and sometimes comedy. That’s where I learned that musicians don’t like it when you yell “American Pie!” or “Free Bird!” at them from the back of the room.

An Open Letter to Napoleon

Note: The following letter is actually about six or seven years old. I wrote it for a creative non-fiction class when I was in college. The professor asked us to write a letter to a family member or an historical figure. The result was a lot of weepy letters to dead relatives or angry tirades at estranged parents. I, however, wrote a letter to Napoleon.

Dear Napoleon,

I know next to nothing about you. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. I do know some very general information about you, such as a few specifics about your quest for world domination. But still, it’s not much (my scary high school global history teacher, S. Pat, would probably not be happy to know that I didn’t walk out of her class retaining more information. Then again, I did skip her class every few days.) Still, for some reason, your name comes up in conversation fairly often.

An Open Letter to Stephen King

Dear Mr. King,

I’m writing this letter to you as I am 1/3 of the way through your book On Writing. Being that I’m only 1/3 of the way through the book and have never read anything else you’ve written, I did question the logic of writing to you. But then again, I’ve never been one to subscribe to logic.

The truth is the only reason I’ve never read any of your books is no fault of your own nor is it because I’m a literature snob. The issue is simply that I’m a big wuss. My overactive imagination and anxiety disorder (I have a long list of fears that sometimes keep me awake at night, including the possibility of being abducted by aliens and the possible existence of God) means I wouldn’t be able to handle reading them.

I did see the “It” TV movie when it first aired, though, because my mom wanted to watch it. I was about 8-years-old at the time and seeing that movie, along with catching the campy, but nonetheless frightening, Killer Clownz from Outer Space on cable when my parents weren’t around one afternoon, instilled in me a sort of fear of clowns.  I call it a sort of fear because I’m not afraid of all clowns, only select clowns. I could go to the circus and not get freaked out, but the second I saw a clown that seemed ominous in anyway – anything from weird looking teeth or a threatening look in his eyes could make a clown seem ominous – I immediately heard “We all float down here.” I still do. I’ll probably dream about clowns tonight.