Dear Colin,
I have never in my young life felt the way I do when I’m around you. My body tingles and my senses come alive. My hands want to feel your skin; my fingers long to graze your lips. The scent of your hair makes me unravel. When I see you change into your soccer uniform, I am left to wildly imagine what you’re hiding inside those shorts. I cannot help but think about what I would do to you if given the chance. I promise you, it would be nothing short of exhilarating.
Love,
Your Faithful Secret Admirer
The letters kept coming, sometimes even twice a day, and each one got more and more raunchy than the next. Eventually, they were pages long, depicting entire scenes of me and this mystery girl in bed together, and I realized that either my teammates were amazing writers with ample time on their hands to craft dirty stories, or maybe, just maybe, there was a real-lifegirlbehind all of it.
I kept the letters in a shoebox that I hid under my bed containing a bottle of Jergens hand lotion and a lonePlayboymagazine I’d found in the trunk of my dad’s car. Even though they were weird, they were also kind of hot.
One day, right around Thanksgiving if I remember correctly, I got a letter that was four pages long. I was in the cafeteria with my brown bag lunch and the bell just rang to change periods, but since I had a double period off, I was sitting at the soccer table by myself for a few minutes while kids came and went. I slipped the note out of my bag, thinking I would just read the first few lines.
Dear Colin,
I’m lying in bed and I can’t stop thinking about you. I’m wearing a red lace bra and matching panties, picturing you beside me in only your underwear.
With an opener like that though, I couldn’t bring myself to just abandon ship, so I kept reading. A few minutes later, my fourteen-year-old dong was hard as a rock when a bunch of guys from the team sat down. I couldn’t return the note to the safety of my backpack fast enough. Gus grabbed it and read it aloud for the entire cafeteria to hear. I tried to object at first, but I knew that would only make things worse, so I sat in embarrassment while they had their way with my precious reading material. I didn’t look up; I was too mortified.
The seniors on the team decided to find my admirer in a mission they dubbed “Operation Hot Pocket.” The following day, the note had been copied (and collated and stapled, courtesy of Justin’s dad being a manager at Kinko’s) what felt like a thousand times. It was circulated everywhere: hanging from bulletin boards, duct-taped to trees on campus, hanging from the walls of every boys’ bathroom in school. My friend Joey Jukovic (a sophomore goalie) told me not to sweat it. The notes were doing wonders for my street cred, he said. Evenseniorgirls were talking about me.
To my great relief, Principal Nieman shut down “Operation Hot Pocket” after two days. I never received another letter again after that. In fact, I never got my original of that last note back either. I had to take down a copy from one of the bathroom walls so the collection under my bed would be complete.
I thoughtthatwas what it meant to be a “ghostwriter.”
Apparently, I was wrong. Wikipedia tells me that a ghostwriter is“someone who is hired to write literary or journalistic works, speeches, or other texts that are officially credited to another person as the author.”
Well. That sounds way more boring, if you ask me.
Gracie
TO:Grace Landing ([email protected])
FROM:Colin Yarmouth ([email protected])
RE:Spanish class
A ghostwriter, huh? That seems like a pretty cool job. I’d be interested to hear more. (Of course, I’m not trying to have youkillme.) What kinds of projects are you working on?
No suburbs for me either. I live in a co-op in Astoria. I did live on Long Island for a little while, but I moved back to Queens about six months ago. Where do you live? Are you still local?
Yes—I’m with you on the whole world’s expectation that everyone should be married with children by age thirty. I’m an attorney running a successful practice! Shouldn’t that count for something?
So, what is the schedule of a ghostwriter? Do you have an office or do you work from home?
Write back,
C.
Colin’s email arrived well before 9:00 a.m. Can’t a girl even finish her breakfast before being inundated?
Who am I kidding? I’m intrigued. He sounds alarmingly…available.
TO:Colin Yarmouth ([email protected])
FROM:Grace Landing ([email protected])
SUBJECT:Good morning
