Jenny

Sept 28, 1988
Dear Jenny,

Its been five days since I last saw you. Well actually its been like a five days since I saw you first, I mean, well, since I saw you for the first time. I’m sure someday I will look back at that moment and remember it fondly, but right now I am pretty embarrassed.

I realize I don’t know too much, but I really thought it was great the way did your presentation. I never knew anything about Cuba, except that they had illegal cigars, but you made it sound like a place I would like to visit. It was very exotic to hear you talk about it, it was like you had just been there. I tell you, if I wasn’t a republican, I would be a communist, just for all the hemp clothes and the what did you call them, moheetos.
You made it sound really great.

Well anyway, I just wanted to write you a letter because I think you are cool and I hope that you won’t let me being a republican stop us from getting to hang out.

Your friend?

Henry
(third row, one seat behind you)

Oct 14, 1988
Dear Jenny,

I realize that I shouldn’t have said what I said in the cafeteria, but I guess it just slipped out. I didn’t mean for you to hear me say that you have a great butt. I mean, I didn’t mean to say that you have a great butt. I meant to say that you’ve got a great body, but I didn’t get to the other parts.

I guess that wasn’t the best way to have you remember my name for the first time, but if it means that I get to talk to you more, I would say all kinds of things about you, just so you would tell me to stop. That’s not what I meant either, I’m not very good trying to write to you, which is funny, cause at least in paper I can get a sentence out to you before I break out in a sweat.

Anyway, I’m sorry you’ve got a great butt... I mean I’m sorry I said it in the café, I’m not sorry you’ve got a great butt. From now on I promise to only talk about you in appropriate ways and places, like the locker room.

Sincerely,

Henry

October 30, 1988
Dear Jenny,

What are you going to be for the Halloween Party?

I am going as a cave man. Me and the guys are going to get together before hand and TP some houses. It should be cool. I hope you will dance with me at the party. I am an OK dancer, as long as they play something slow, like She’s Like the Wind or I Get Weak. Who do you think has better hair Patrick Swayze or Belinda Carlise? Sike- its gotta be Jon Bon Jovi.

See you at the dance. I’ll be the one wearing the sheet.

Henry

Nov 1, 1988
Dear Jenny,

Sorry about the TP all over your yard. I didn’t know that was where you lived. Guess I won’t be coming over to hang out anytime soon. Also sorry about what happened at the dance. I didn’t know that your cousin was epileptic or I wouldn’t have danced like that. I wasn’t making fun of him, I just thought that was how you danced to UB40.

Henry

Dec 20, 1988
Dear Jenny,

I hope you got the Christmas Carnation I sent you, but then I saw it on the table in the café and I figured you just forgot it, so I figured I would write you a Christmas letter to say Merry Christmas. So Merry Christmas.

I’m gonna sign up for the ski trip with SADD, so I’ll see you over the break

Henry

Jan 3, 1989
Jenny,

Well I guess it gonna be a rough year. I shouldn’t be upset, I suppose that Brian must be a really great guy for you to make out with him the whole weekend. I mean you guys barely even got up on the mountain to do any skiing. From what I heard he spent most of the time ploughing you instead of the slopes.

I really thought that we were gonna be cool. Especially after the Truth or Dare when we went in the closet. I thought it was gonna be our secret that I was too nervous and farted. But I guess that was just your way of getting me back for the Halloween incident, so I wasn’t too mad, but geez, Brian. I mean, sure, he’s on the football team and he’s pretty big, but he isn’t exactly a rocket scientist. (I guess I’m not either, according to Mr. Hanson, but that’s beside the point.)

But do me a favor. When he breaks your heart or worse yet your hips, from what I hear is an enormous wang, just remember how funny it was when I farted and how much fun we could have if we were ever more than just friends.

Henry

March 15, 1989
Dear Jenny,

We learned about the Ides of March today in English today when Julius Caesar gets stabbed by all his guys. And it got me thinking. It really sucks when you think you know what your friends are talking about and them all of the sudden your getting the business end of a knife.

I hadn’t written to you since new years and the whole ski trip deal and figured that after last month when you said that if I didn’t stop sending you Valentine Carnations, that you would tell Brian that I touched your boobs. I was thinking, was that a good thing or a bad thing? Cause I would like to touch your boobs, and I don’t think anybody doesn’t know that, so I thought that maybe you wanted me to touch them, and that way you could see if I was any good at it and then decide if you thought I was better at it than Brian, but you told me in the middle of Spanish class and since you said it in Spanish I wasn’t really sure which tense you used for the verb. I never could conjugate. So anyway, which is it?

If its yes, just don’t say anything and I’ll just brush into you in the hall and pretend to fall and you’ll know. If not, I’ll think of something less obvious.

Adios

Henry

PS.
I heard Brian has VD, which they said has to do with some kind of burning in his wang, so be careful.

April 20,1989


Dear Jenny,

Before I go any further, I want to say I am sorry for saying that Brian has VD. I did hear that his wang was swollen, but it turns out that he’s just uncircumcised, which is weird, but not a disease, (It usually means you don’t love Jesus, because my dad says that if you are a Christian you get circumcised, and he should know, he went to Vietnam.)

Anyway, I guess I’m not sorry you guys broke up. I thought he was a jerk, not just cause he always shoved me in my locker when he saw me, or because he was the one who started to call be Hanker the Wanker, (which is cool anyway, because before nobody knew who I was and now everyone knows me), its not even because he told Mr Hanson that I was making out with one of the fetal pigs and got me sent down to remedial science. But because I think you are better than him.

I really think you are really great. Every time I hear that Richard Marx song I think of you, that and Def Leppard, (they rock). I wish I could tell you this stuff, but aside from not sweating so much when your around I still get sick in my stomach like I’m gonna puke and its all I can do to just stay cool. That’s why I always say such dumb stuff. Just a brain fart, which is better than it used to be, at least now its just my brain that’s farting.

Anyway, If you don’t have a date yet I was wondering if you would want to go to the Spring Fling with me?

Shot through the Heart

Henry

June 9, 1989
Dear Jenny,

Well, summer is upon us, just two more periods and than freshman year is over. I can’t believe we made it. I thought that was great when Mr. K said that our lass was the best new class ever, I bet he doesn’t say that every year, I bet we really are the best. I know at least one person is.

I hope we can hang out over the summer. My dad doesn’t let me hang out much with girls outside of school, he says that they are the devils tools to lead us to sin and then we’ll be just as bad as the heathen Vietcong.

So I have to go away for a couple of weeks to camp for drama, but I will write you while I am gone and tell you all about it. This year, I will be one of the oldest kids at camps so I get to direct a play, no more being the prop guy again. But when we get back maybe I can show you my awesome collection of Star Wars action figures. I’ve even got Han Solo with the big head, it’s really rare.

Anyway, stay cool.


Henry

July 6, 1989
Dear Jenny,

Camp stinks. Well mostly it stinks cause the cabins are just smelly, what with no A/C and the seventh graders are so gross. There is this one kid, Tommy Seaver, he’s got some kind of nervous condition and just swears for no reason. He says he can’t help it, but I think he just likes to drop the F-bomb and not get in trouble.
I can’t believe that we were like that just two years ago. I mean how immature. I hadn’t really thought how queer they are, I always thought we were cool back then, it makes me worry that I’m not that cool now, but I just don’t know it yet.

Anyway, I have been working real hard on our play. Guess who got stuck being in charge of props again. We’re doing a play by Shakespeare called “A Mid Summer Nights Dream”. Its kind of an adaptation, cause the seventh graders can’t get the language. Its funny in parts, but mostly I think its silly, lots of fairies and junk. But I’ve been doing some reading on my own and I found a poem that he wrote that I liked and made me think of you. Here it is, it’s called a sonnet, that’s they kind of poem he wrote a bunch, but this one is number 29

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,--and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
That then I scorn to change my state with kings'

It basically says that no matter how bad things get, that he guy in the poem just thinks about his girl and things are allright. I think about that when the seventh graders come back from the mess hall after chili dog night.

Hope your summer is good.

Henry

July 23, 1989
Dear Jenny,

I hope you won’t be mad when you find out. I figured it would be better for you to hear it from me before it gets back to you. I just want you to know it was completely professional and that being said, it wasn’t personal. Not at first anyway.

So I was the prop guy for our play, but the kid that was gonna be Lysander, that’s one of the main parts, got poison sumac and had to go home, so they told be to learn the part. So I ended up in the play. Which was awesome, except that its harder to learn lines than just hand people cups and books. That’s not the part I wanted to tell you about, anyway, there is this scene at the end where I have to kiss this girl and we had to practice. Well, I hadn’t really kissed a girl in real life before, so I was pretty bad at it.
But this girl, Hermia, (her real name is Lisa, she’s from Hartford), decided that we needed more rehearsals. And I didn’t want to at first, but then, I kind of didn’t mind. So we’re kind of going out. She’s not as pretty as you, but like the song says, if you can’t be with the one you love…love the one that has to make out with you cause its in the script.
That was like two weeks ago, we have the performance this weekend.

I still like to think about you when I want to be away from here. But lately, I’ve been rehearsing so much that I don’t have time to want to be anywhere else or have had time to tell you. But I don’t want you to wait for me. I want you to be happy, maybe Brian’s thing has cleared up. Lisa says that I am over you, so I guess I am.

See you back in school in a month, (yuck)


Henry