I used to write love letters to nobody in junior high. Addressed to nobody in particular (not even a fake recipient), they were samples of what I might say if I were ever in a position to say anything to anyone. I wonder if that’s just how horny I was or am I lying to myself about the intended recipients—maybe I was crushing on someone inappropriate or otherwise unnamable and in my memory all I have is the unidirectional epistolary with myself.

I shared some of these letters with my friends at Japanese Saturday school. These friends were made at the end of my term at Asahigakuen, which was an eternally miserable experience. My end-of-term friends and I shared only one thing in common: we preferred to speak English. This was a big deal at the government-sponsored campus within a campus, where speaking English was actually punishable. (Like I said, this was a miserable miserable school experience.)

Alice loved my letters. She asked to keep some so she could use them with her boyfriends. She thought I should sell them. Laura would say the same thing in high school by the time we got there and I was still writing these hypothetical verses in the notebook we passed back and forth in Algebra. I am scared to see what I might have been saying at that age. I wonder what she’s done with the notebooks. Reading english love letters in a Japanese vacuum was so exciting.

I rarely saw these friends outside campus, and all of what I knew about Laura was through our letters. I eventually got my first summer job working for Alice’s mom in Little Tokyo at a gift shop where I earned commission on sales of Nomo jerseys. I used to write so many letters.

These posts (pun intended) are letters, right? When do I hear back.