Veronica

February 8, 1993

Dear Veronica,

Please stop calling me & breathing on the phone. I would have simply called you to tell you this, but then I would have been stuck on the phone with you for well over an hour while you just sat on the other end, not talking and refusing to hang up. I am scared that if I hang up you will go all fatal attraction on me. (I knew we should not have seen that movie at the campus cinema, even if it was only 50¢).

I think you are probably a really swell gal, and someday make a fella really happy, but it has to start with not scaring them.

And I am scared. The other day when I called to check my messages from Dave’s room I got your voicemail, you had rerouted my phone to your campus line, I’m not even sure how you did that.

I haven’t been out of my room in days, for fear of running into you, (first time I have ever been happy about gender specific dorms). My roommate has been sneaking humdinger chicken back from the café all week, and let me tell you after the third day, its not very humdingery.

Please stop sending me broken pieces of what I assume the heart you made in ceramics. I get it, you are way serious and I may or may not have commitment issues, I’d rather not say right now for fear of the result. I didn’t know that when we had sex it was the first and only time for you and that you assumed that meant a lifelong vow. I just thought it meant that you liked fooling around.

My professors will no longer excuse my not being in class because I have a crazy girlfriend. No I didn’t mean crazy, I meant ultra-dedicated. I realize that this may be the dumbest thing I have done in my college career, (surely my attempt at a spontaneous campus rave at 3 am by pulling all the fire alarms may rank higher)

I realize that Valentine’s Day is right around the corner and think its best if we cut things clean before then and by cut things clean, I don’t mean any actual cutting. But something about your psycho-obsession kind of turns me on, so maybe, just maybe we can fool around one more time, if you promise to stop leaving dead things outside my window.

Yours, (not exactly)

Henry