Missive Bonding
I’m not in high school, so I may be stepping outside the limits of my expertise to defend the lasting practicality of the “love note” in an era when the quickest way to someone’s heart is through port 22. I’m talking about the kind of correspondence that’s scribbled on a piece of scrap paper or cardboard without self-examination or regard for the follies of subtext and delivered quickly, either by drop, by messenger, or by direct hand off from point A to point B. These notes usually solicit attention or involvement; we’re not talking about the kind of note your girlfriend or boyfriend might send you in the mail or slip into your lunch pail or the tabloid you read every morning on the train. We’re talking about the kind that speaks to your lack of inhibition and your ability to lay your pretensions down early into the game and accept the potentially ego-smashing consequences of self-sacrifice (even if you don’t have the confidence to look someone directly in the eye and lay your dick down). It’s kind of cute, like when the Senator from the State of Maine passes a note that says “Will you vote with me on the Cummings-Oliver Bill?” to the Senator from the State of New Hampshire, who with a self-satisfied smile circles yes. It’s still, in our time, okay to be cute. Just back it up with a damn good bill.
Lucky for you, I’ve kept record of many love-type notes I’ve been privy to in times both recent and past:
1) Sometimes it doesn’t matter whether you have the balls or not—though if you had the biggest balls it might make a difference—you’d like to talk to her, and, though you’ve been grilling one another all night, she’s with a guy who’s standing pretty close, but not close enough for you to be sure he’s her boyfriend.
On Spring and Lafayette last Thursday night, there was a holiday party; the kind where everyone’s pretty hot but mostly unavailable and a girl who hasn’t found herself in a place like this that often might allow an earnest guy some Christmas cheer early into the evening without thinking about who might turn up later. My friend Dave arrived around midnight, coming from a similar affair—they’re stacked like flapjacks these days—and he and a girl began assessing one another immediately. She didn’t seem too concerned with the man by her side, and the tension sustained itself throughout the night, coming to a head when, in the coat claim line, she gave the guy a half-assed kiss on the lips and then looked immediately over her shoulder for one final and surely longing digestion of my friend. Dave decided that to let her leave without advancing some sort of introduction and investigation into their involvement would leave him forever wondering, and, more importantly, deprive her of a shot at the best.
The coat check took just enough time for Dave to create this ink-on-business-card masterwork using a card he’d taken from someone at the previous party:
Tactful and fool-proof; respectful of any latent romantic engagement the girl may actually hold dear, flattering, and at the very least a great way to avoid confrontation and still walk away thinking “at least I tried.” But while Dave drew up the card, I, thanks to my own self-confidence and to the special ripple coming off an open martini bar, was able to briefly distract the lady from her sidekick. Dave introduced himself a minute later, and she introduced the guy as her boyfriend. Dave and I exchanged unsettled glances and he folded the card in half twice and put it in his pocket. We said goodbye and the couple called the elevator.
Five minutes later, the two returned, and Girlfriend looked short-of-stoked. Boyfriend was on some sort of rampage toward the gracious staff of the gracious host who’d invited him, and I asked Girlfriend what was wrong. “Same old bullshit.” So while she tugged at Boyfriend’s sleeve to draw him out of his ridiculous argument, Dave asked me to draw up this new card because my handwriting is better than his and probably better than Boyfriend’s:
And he handed it off.
2) Just as text messaging and e-mail now often stand-in for the note left on the pillow, Craigslist personals and the dating dot coms have usurped the space of adult solicitation. But in the City of Light, there’s always a glimmer of class.
My friend CK and I encountered this note in a telephone booth in Paris two Summers ago:
Translation:
[phone number]
kind man - nice
1 m 76 cm - brown hair - serious
athletic - i’m looking for a
woman for marriage
[phone number]
Yeah, lay it down! An eighth of the world’s population is welcome to reply to this note, and on Craigslist it would probably attract a few hundred responses from within the city. On first consideration, it may sound desperate—I’ll take anyone, as long as she’s into guys who aren’t morbidly obese, and she’s not a lesbian, not a man, and not afraid of commitment—but the medium is the message. By placing the note inside a telephone booth, the fellow sets his aim on a few women in the neighborhood who are still as lo-fi as he is—lovely women who choose to stick to the local booths rather than to buy into the whole mobile hands-free phone scam and compromise against quaint and archaic modes of communication. Like face-to-face introduction.
3) Sometimes I drop a note on a minor acquaintance who might deserve some sort of explanation for a slight transgression, though I’m not entirely sure, or who I think might punch me if I don’t explain myself. These notes especially come in handy during dance parties and in other loud situations.
I was too embarrassed to deliver this note after I realized James had been looking over my shoulder as I wrote it.
4) I’m no longer in possession of the first double-entendred note I ever came across, but I’ve re-created it below, asking a friend with bad handwriting to help me to make it feel authentic.
It was the first day of Heights Sports Camp, housed during the Summer within Heights High School, and the first day of camp immediately followed the last day of school. “Shawn,” who had apparently occupied my locker for the school year, had accidentally left this behind:
I was only nine, and didn’t “get it.” What object could be transformed in such a manner as described, save for frozen pizzas and sticks of gum? Nonetheless, I thought the wording and layout to be fairly clever, so I brought it home to my mom, who always gets a rise out of the clever. (“Oh, you must hear the new Cole Porter! His lyrics are just so clever!”) She told me it could actually mean something else. With latex gloves on her hands, she collected the document, took it out to the garage, and placed it in the biohazardous waste receptacle for the next day’s pickup, commenting that it may have been soiled in some way.
Oh, Tashiana, did you ever get your gum?
photographs and words by Yr. Fancy, a Special Friday Treat
