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Dear Jon; Love, Jon
In which a young Romeo pens verses of true love -- to himself.

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By Jonathan Poletti

Feb. 14, 2000 | Recently, it occurred to me that I've never written a love letter. It being Valentine's Day and all, I thought that perhaps I should, if only to say that I've done so. The love letter is one of the great literary genres, I reasoned, and a budding writer like myself ought to have at least one to his name. The problem, as with many literary endeavors, turned out to be defining my target audience.

A fellow on the bus recently asked me if there's "anyone special" in my life. "Just me," I chortled.

That's when I hatched my brilliant plan.

Subway love Gone is the stench of urine. Into its void rushes a whiff of pheromones. By Jori Finkel

My mother was naturally aghast. Having a son who writes a love letter to himself is, of course, not a mother's dream come true. Her fondest hope -- not an entirely original one, but deeply held nonetheless -- is to see me "settled down" with a wife and assorted progeny who, she maintains, she'll extravagantly indulge. This latest development in my romantic life didn't seem to further her admittedly admirable goals. My subsequent attempts to elicit help from her in composing my love letter -- effective phrasing, sensitive pacing, etc. -- were pointedly rejected. I asked to see the letters that my father had written to her. She refused.

So I set about to compose my words of love to myself by myself. Intense self-absorption, I've observed, is a virtue in letters of love. This, of course, I have in abundance. Nevertheless, the first drafts of my love letter were disasters. Witness this aborted mess:

Dear Jon,

I can't live without you.

I was coming on too strong. This letter lacked that tone of joyful abandon, that certain joie de vivre that makes love so appealing in its nascent stages. One should save obsessiveness for after you've gotten to know each other better. Relationships take time. Romeo, after all, didn't kill himself at the beginning of the play; he had to work up to it. It's called dramatic tension. Finally I hit on my new opening line:

Dear Jon,

How are you?

This seemed far superior in every way. I come across as interested without being clingy. And just in case I ever decide to rewrite this love letter as a musical, note how easily "How are you?" converts into lyrics, rhyming as it does with a wide variety of courtship behaviors and romantic passions -- woo, coo, rue, blue. (Not to mention certain legal actions -- sue, due -- that, regrettably but frequently, follow romances in the modern world.)

I relayed this promising first sentence to my mother, adding that it, of course, needed to be developed further, but she should feel free to comment.

When I didn't hear back from her, I continued to my third revision on my own.

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