Messages to someone you don't know

The messages had started a few weeks ago. The first one began thusly,

Dear Tracy,

I know that we’ve never met. Oh God! Who starts a letter that way? You’re not religious are you? Because if so, I want you to change the above part to read, Oh gosh! Because that will probably help things go more smoothly.

I’ve noticed that you work in the men’s section of the JC Penny’s store at the mall. And you shouldn’t be too creeped out that I know your name because it’s right there on your name tag, and you helped me find a pair of jeans. The jeans fit moderately well, and I sort of wish you hadn’t been so disinterested in the buying process. It’s probably hard for you to be so pretty though. Like, what do you do with all that beauty? when beauty is ephemeral? I scored pretty highly on the verbal section of the PSAT, which may or may not impress you.

Tracy,
I went to the zoo yesterday and watched the panda bears for an hour. Maybe you thin think that’s strange, but did you know that they are sending one of them back? Who cares right? He’s just a stupid panda bear? Well, I don’t really know much about the intellect of pandas, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to say goodbye to him. I remember his birth as some seminal moment in my early childhood, long before I knew words like seminal. I jest sometimes. You’ll either grow to love or hate that about me, and that will probably determine the course of our (excised). I mean, if I write friendship, I’m sort of consigning myself to that role, and if I write, relationship, then I’m twice as weird as you already think.


She had started thinking about it while she was at the zoo. She just kind of letting her mind probe around the edges of the thing, like a blind person trying to make his way to the bathroom. It probably had something to do with reading that story about the tiger who jumped over the moat and mauled people. She held her hand against the iron railing, red with rust. It was cold, and flakes of rust fell from her hands like blood red snow.

Tracy stopped. The sun was near its zenith, and her friends were both wearing hats. She had a sinus headache. It was like a storage space that someone had rented and was now filling up with all the crap they had collected over the years. It hurt like hell.

Tracy,
I have a strange fear of the night sky. I know it’s kind of typical for a guy to step outside and gaze up, and just kind of sigh. And say, hey, that sky is so big my problems are real small in comparison. At least that’s what I’ve read in books. But you know what? When I step outside, it scares me shitless. I look at how far away the stars are, and I start to try and imagine how many light years there are between us, how much empty space. Then I think my way back to good old insignificant earth. And I wonder what the hell we’re doing here….Me neither. I was just testing to see how morbid you were.

Tracy,
I am the loneliest on Tuesdays. Does that make any sense? Do you have any particular day on which you feel the most alone? Also, have you ever been to Rome? I've never been anywhere, but exactly the place I'm from, which seems sad, but no sadder than anything else in this goddamn crazy world. I think the reason that Rome intrigues me, if you'll listen for a moment, is the juxtaposition of the living and the dead. From my understanding of the place, which is mainly through a television show I watched once on the History Channel, you can't dig down two feet without running into some large forum or column that belonged to some ancient Roman, and eventually you wind up with a lot of red tape and no one gets to build anything, but that's not the point. The point, Tracy, is that living in Rome means giving up that disconnect we like to keep between the living and the dead. In Rome, the dead are not on the outskirts of town, or tucked away behind some iron fence on grassy hills. In Rome, they live right below you, working ever so slowly at the business of decay. At night, if you listen closely enough, I think you can hear them brushing the floors of their old houses or putting one stone on top of another to build yet another damn tower.
In short, I miss you. Is it possible to miss someone you've never met? I suppose I miss the idea of you. Doesn't everyone miss the idea of someone they've never met? I hope so. The nights are getting long here, and it makes me feel less alone, like perhaps I still have time to do some things before I kick it. Not like discover America kind of things, but maybe something small and sacred.