In Honor of Valentine’s Day, A Love Letter

Dear Nick,

It’s Valentine’s Day, my love, and the distance between us feels like taking a wide swig of beer and realizing that it’s not your beer, it’s your friend’s beer, the friend who ashes her Camels into half-empty bottles.

I know we’ve never met, my love, but each time I come across your face while Googling “lesbian celebrities” I feel as though I’m looking at myself. Yes, you have a dark complexion and an afro while I am opalescent and and mulleted, but look lower. No, not that low. It’s the chin, Nick Jonas, and the smile—serious but full of life—which you possess naturally and I cultivate by practicing in the mirror. Do you see it? Yes? Also, do you have strangely-angled ears that make hoop earrings hit the side of your face even when you’re not turning your head? Of course you do.

I know there are differences, Nick. You, for instance, were born during the Clinton administration whereas I can purchase pornography and Swisher Sweets without the butterflies one often experiences when using a blond 30-year-old Canadian’s ID that you found at a strip club. You have a penis, which I find the most repugnant food that I’ve never tried. You wear a purity ring and I will sleep with anyone who buys me a drink and remembers my name. And there’s the religious difference—you believe in a giant bearded man who lives in the sky and has some issue with those of my ilk (I’m just gonna say it, Nick: gays) but thinks it’s cool to hang his disturbingly thin son from a splittery T-shaped thing, and I believe in Santa Claus. But still, Nick, look at the chin!

In honor of you, Nick Jonas, on this special day, I’m going to illegally download your album just to hear that beautiful voice because I’m pretty sure you’re a singer. Is that right, my love? A singer? I knew it.

Love always,

Katie

Child Abuse

When Betsy and I were about seven, our dad walked into the kitchen while we were enjoying buckwheat pancakes one summer morning and yelled, “Guess what?  There’s no Santa!  And there’s no Jesus!”

The magic ended right there.

Thank you…

• North Carolina taxpayers for giving me the opportunity to fail out of one of the finest public institutions in the country as well as bankrolling my boyfriend Tyler Hansbrough’s NBA dreams

• Hugh Grant’s hair for its stunning performance in such classic films as Notting Hill (luvz it) and that one with Claudia Schiffer

• Hard working minorities for providing my eggs Benedict every Sunday

• Lesbian celebrities with the exception of Rosie O’Donnell and Condolezza Rice

• Google (Chat mostly, but also Reader. Both are excellent distractions from higher education)

• Baby polar bears

• Weaver St. hula hoopers for providing the community with a collective object of scorn

• Wikipedia, which recently schooled me in the overwhelming theme of Mariah Carey’s collected albums, Or Mimi Can Haz a Noun: Emotions (1991), Music Box (1993), Daydream (1995), Butterfly (1997), Rainbow (1999), Glitter (2001), and Charmbracelet (2002)

• My new divinely-inspired diet: More of Jesus, Less of Me
• This: