Shakespearean.
Below is a series of modern love letters I found. The writer's identity as well as of his ladylove is beyond my knowledge but needless to say, whatever he had for this so called "Queen" was surreal and heartwarming that it just melted my heart away.
Letter # 1
My Queen,
I promised I would write before I went to bed...I just didn't promise to go to bed at a decent time. I rarely do, and never could when I have a head as full of thoughts as I do today. Most of those thoughts are about you.
I feel like I have to be careful not let my feelings get ahead of themselves. I don't want to fall into the trap of wanting so much to be happy that I convince myself that I am. And I don't want to freak you out by feeling too much too quickly. But at the same time, I'm very smart about my emotions. When I'm full of shit, I'm the first person to figure it out.
So I'm just going to relax and enjoy the amazing, electrifying feeling of being with you. Of physically being in your presence, just looking at you and watching the way that you move. The way you shy away from me and that thrilling moment when you look directly at me. Interpreting your facial expressions like they're poetry written just for me. Listening to you tell me about yourself and marveling at the way you reflect on what you're saying even as you talk. Your beauty is not the only thing that attracts me to you.
It's worth noting, however, that you are the most beautiful woman I have ever been with, the sexiest woman I have ever met, and the most fascinating woman I could ever hope to meet. One effect of this is a pride I've never felt before. It's not quite the same as bragging about being out on a date with a hot girl; it's winning the interest of a rare woman. There have been moments when I've wondered what in the hell you're doing with me. And, before you get turned off by a loser's lack of confidence, let me tell you that I quickly answer my own doubts. Part of it is knowing that I'm a nice guy, not so bad looking, pretty damn smart and capable of making people laugh occasionally. The rest of it is the way that, when you tell me I'm cute or that I'm funny or that you enjoy my company, I believe you. Maybe I'm kidding myself, but there is something about the way you look at me that makes me believe you see something special in me. Which makes me feel pretty damn special.
It's hard not having you in this room with me right now, but, meanwhile, having you in my life feels pretty wonderful. I think I'll make it until Friday. I think. If I do, I will want to make up for lost time, so please don't make any other plans for the weekend. Don't plan to sleep or to eat or even to pee. I want you sleeping next to me. I want you eating at my table. And if you have to pee, I want to watch you walk away and wait for you to come back. I want as much of you as you are willing to give me, and I plan on making you feel very generous.
I will try to sleep now, and hope today's thoughts grow into tonight's dreams. This week will be very long, but it will end, and when it does I will show you what I dream about.
Your King,
X
Letter # 2
My Queen,
You aint seen nothin' yet. I have truly only begun trying to transform my feelings into words, and these early efforts feel like learning the alphabet. I am not sure the English language (the largest in the history of the world, if you didn't know) is big enough to contain the things I want to say to you.
To answer your question: no, this has not been a common tactic for getting girls into bed. Maybe you remember how I babbled to you about my poetry writing, that I had typically written about ideas; I would observe, analyze. I would try to speak truth, and would sometimes achieve insight and maybe even wisdom. But it was truth about things, abstract and detached. We talked about this in relation to the one poem I had ever written about myself, which was a stressful challenge and, in the end, something I intended do once, get right, and leave alone.
You have me eager to solve the puzzle of expressing the intense feelings you inspire. It's a challenge, but a very welcome one. I run into the maze hungry to find the exit, where an image of you in my arms awaits. The wrong turns and dead ends only deepen the anticipation. I feel like a poet again. Perhaps you've heard how Michelangelo once talked about his sculpting: "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free." He perceived the unique and beautiful form inside the anonymous stone and sought only to release it; it's the difference between wondering where you will end up and knowing exactly where you're going. I see what I want to reach, buried in this clumsy and complex language, and I gently use my crude tools to separate the rubble from the revelation.
But as I said, these are early efforts. Here I am talking about talking about it; I haven't even begun to describe how you affect my senses, including the new senses you have awakened. I'm going to thank you for the way you say my name. I'm going to make promises to your body. I'm going to write you actual poetry; the need to do so has never felt more urgent.
You should know, though, that some of what I will write you will not be safe to share with your family. You mentioned showing your mother some of my website messages ("Shakespeare")...yeah, you're not always going to be able to do that. There is a great deal of sweetness to what I feel for you, the sounds of flutes and strings, and even your grandmother could appreciate that innocent, affectionate music. But there is also an element of lust, desire free from restraint, and that rumbling bass and maddening percussion would, and should, drive all others from the room and leave us alone together in that near-dark where we can feel the walls shake.
Regarding more mundane matters: will I be able to keep you overnight on Friday? Not for the most obvious reasons: my apartment complex offers a monthly event at our pool house, and this Saturday is a Spa Day from 10am-1pm. I've signed us up for free massages. I'm fine with taking you home Friday night and coming to get you again on Saturday morning...well, not fine with it, but willing to do that if our reputations require it.
I am thinking I will take you out for a nice dinner on Friday, and then take you back to my place, because I need to. Then Saturday will start with massages, swimming, sunbathing, then maybe some more time at my place, then we'll get out and find some beauty to enjoy, then we'll check out some live music somewhere (I'm researching options). Then I'll take you home...perhaps.
It's Tuesday. That is three whole days from Friday. I am going to enjoy those days with L, and I will spend those nights turning my thoughts into words and imagining turning those words into actions. You will benefit from both, very soon.
Your King,
X
Letter # 3
My Queen,
I have failed you! I fell asleep after putting L down last night, just drifted off on my couch. I meant to write to you again before going to bed...so you're going to have to pretend that you received this message last night. And tonight, when I write again, you'll pretend that you have been aching for my words for a full 24 hours.
I'm glad you got to the doctor, and I hope your new medicine works. I hope you realize that that's not because I need you to be looking your very best. If you're reluctant to show yourself to me, then I'm going to respect your wishes, but it's not entirely because I am being a gentleman. I just don't want self-consciousness to play any part when I finally get to take all of you in. Low self-esteem does not seem like a natural part of you, so I want it gone. I want you to feel proud and beautiful.
Which I think you should feel anyway. What I feel when I look at you is not entirely, or even mostly, based on what I see. My mind is one that finds meaning in things. I can like a song with an original melody and amazing vocals, but it is still just music to me. When I hear my own heart described in the lyrics, it becomes art, and it earns my love. The beauty of women works in a similar way for me. I can see a woman whose body activates all of a man's animal instincts, and grunt my approval like I would a sumptuous meal. I can see a woman with a checklist of classically beautiful features, and sigh my appreciation of her like I would a museum exhibit. But neither makes me want to take a step closer or say a single word. It's just sensory perception, devoid of the association I require to turn an object into a person.
You have become very real to me, at a level that makes the rest of reality seem a bit unreal. If I look at your shoulder, I don't see a shoulder, I your shoulder, which is an entirely different thing than every other shoulder in the world. I get caught up in the subtle change of shape as your muscles move under your skin, the way light and shadow change places as you move through space. You think I'm exaggerating, but I really am not. There was a moment, a full minute actually, at that Mexican store on Sunday when I really lost myself looking at you. You were just standing and waiting, shifting in small ways...I felt like I was in the same room as an actual star, complete with blinding light, searing heat and irresistible gravity. When you turned and offered to buy me a drink, touching my elbow and meeting my eyes for just a second...I forgot how to talk. I forgot I could talk.
Your voice has a similar effect on me. Just as I have never seen anyone who looks and moves the way you do, neither have I heard a woman sound the way you do. It's strange to me that you feel any insecurity about your accent, since the quality of your thoughts quickly confirms you as a gifted conversationalist. There is an addictive element to hearing you speak, and that is that you are speaking to me, that this music I'm hearing was composed for my ears. I feel like I should be eavesdropping, and would be satisfied in doing so, but then you ask me a question or say my name and I realize I am an actual character in this captivating story. And, oh, how I love hearing you say my name. The composer Debussy once said that "Music is the space between the notes". There is a thing you do, where you look at me for a second, then say my name as if...I don't know, as if it was your new address. Like you're trying it out and liking the sound of it. And then you look at me for a second longer. Those silences on either side of the single syllable make that brief moment feel like having you pressed against me in my bed for an entire night.
Thinking about you like this is a kind of compulsive torture. I can summon these sensations from the memory of your presence, but in the end you are not here, and I want you so much to be. The world need only spin once more before I see you again, but it seems to be going far too slowly. Since the day refuses to get shorter, I hope you are enjoying every frustrating minute of it. And I will look forward to torturing myself a bit more tonight.
Your King,
X
Letter # 4
My Queen,
So this is the email you can never, ever share with your mother. This is the one where you might very well stop thinking of me as a gentleman.
I like so many things about you. And sometimes people say that to hide the fact that there's really only one part of the relationship that actually matters to them: the physical. Attraction, and ultimately Sex. If this were the only email I'd sent you, I'd look like that guy. But I hope I've helped you understand that you affect me on many levels. And I hope that it's okay that one of those levels is, in fact, the physical. I want you. I want you more than anyone I've ever wanted, which sounds like a cliche but it's literally true in this case. If the word "attracted" has any meaning at all, I have never been so attracted to a person.
But we have a few things to settle first. The first is terminology. You asked me what I called certain things that will soon become very relevant. Which got me thinking...probably to a level that I shouldn't think, but which is pretty typical of the level to which I think about anything. This ends up fitting pretty well with the other subject I want to address: our preferences. Which we could just as easily discover on our own, but a few honest words might let us get where we want to be a little more quickly.
Okay. So you know that I'm from Brooklyn. And in Brooklyn, fifth-graders curse like truck drivers. By the time you get to high school, there's almost nothing left in the world with any shock value at all. So dirty words aint so dirty to me. It probably won't surprise you that I eventually intellectualized this, by way of a Linguistics class I took in college. That class taught me that any word which other people understand is a legitimate word. Which freed me from the shame of using the word "aint" (which everyone on Earth understands to mean " is not"), but also removed the negative associations many people make with many words. As a foul-mouthed Brooklynite, I even felt a protectiveness and possessiveness of these words that suffer from a bad reputation. So the words I tend to use tend to be the most hated among the options people choose from.
Let's start with "sex". You clearly favor the euphemism "making love". And I'm not especially fond of euphemisms, which (since that might be a new English word to you) means "a polite or indirect word or phrase which lets people avoid talking about what they're really talking about". It's when women call the bathroom the "powder room", to draw attention away from the fact that they'e going to pee. I believe that language is there to describe the world, and I consider it obvious that that world should be the actual world, and not some world that some uptight prude would prefer. I call things what they are. So to me, sex is fucking. It can be slow and sensual, and with me it often is. But what we're doing is fucking. I think that the dirtiness our society associates with it is a bizarre denial of what nearly all of us greatly enjoy, because we were designed to enjoy it. Whether to God, or to Nature, or to the nameless universe, we all owe our gratitude to whatever gave us access to an experience that makes us utterly thrilled to be alive. It's a gift, and it insults the giver to hide it. So you and me, we're gonna fuck.
Did I lose you? Still there? I have to keep going as if you hadn't deleted this email and blocked me on Facebook.
So: about you. About that wonderful part of you that the whole world revolves around. We're definitely not going with the medical terms; I don't think I ever want to hear a voice as sexy as yours say the word "vagina" again. But it should not surprise you, after the last several paragraphs, that I consider "pussy" to be the domain of teenage kids. I call it a cunt. Which is probably the most reviled word in the English language. Very few woman enjoy having any part of them referred to as a cunt. But it is precisely because the worst word has become associated with the clearest definition of a woman that I am drawn to embrace it. Reclaim it. Own it. The way that black people call each other "the N word". Acknowledge that the dirtiest thing in the human imagination belongs to you, and that the world secretly worships it. Go ahead and want your cunt fucked hard. You deserve it.
Are you still reading? Oh, I really fear that I may have completely disgusted this woman that I want so much to be a part of my life. I am just trying to be honest, about things we were going to have to talk about anyway. If the way I think about these thing is a huge turn-off to you, then we were probably going to discover it soon enough. But I hope I haven't surprised you too much. I am still a very nice guy; I just don't believe in speaking bullshit. I still want to hear you tell me who you are. I'm still going to melt every time you say my name. I just also want to see the pink skin of your cunt wrapped around the base of my cock.
I mentioned while texting earlier that I wanted to discuss your tendency to focus on pleasing the man you're with. I have no complaint at all about you making me feel as good as I can feel. But you should know that I plan on doing the same to you. Not because I'm super-generous or even that I'm trying to keep things fair. It's just that there will never be anything that could turn me on more than to see you in ecstasy, and to know that I brought you there. It's purely selfish; nothing compares to the pride I will feel, the victory I will celebrate when I taste you come on my tongue. So don't fight me. This dumb rash, which you seem so self-conscious about, doesn't seem to be affecting your lower half. So expect to wrap those smooth, toned thighs around my head this weekend.
As a final note, I will say something about this skin thing you're so freaked out about. And I really don't know how to say it any more clearly than I've been trying to say in these past few emails. I really like you. I like this person you are. A patch of skin on your back is not who you are. Whatever is happening is only temporary. And, to be my true weird self for a moment, I'll point out that everything about us, including the good stuff, is only temporary. I expect to enjoy the body you are currently inhabiting, but what I really want is to be with you, with the person that you have always been and will always be. Be with me, Regina. Don't let temporary things interfere with pleasure you might remember for the rest of your life.
This was too much to say. I suddenly feel like I may have completely freaked you out here. But I am going to hit send anyway. You are either changing your phone number right now, or your panties are damp and you're eager to see me again. Unless you stop me, I will pick you up around 6pm tomorrow. We'll have a nice Friday out, and you can back out of Saturday if I've really screwed up here. I strongly suggest that, if you're going to break up with me, that you wait until Sunday. Because, even if it is my only chance to do so, I plan on making you feel very good on Saturday.
Your King,
X
Letter # 5
My Queen,
I'm really missing you this week...all two days of it so far. Having you with me all weekend has me thinking of you as part of my life, to the point that watching TV without you curled up on my couch feels like those first few days after I moved in, when I was doing without many things I needed and all my familiar things were still boxed up. My head is as filled with random thoughts as it always is, but I find myself thinking of ways to express those thoughts to you. And yes, my bed feels empty without you in it, but I'm thinking of your soft, sweet sleeping breath more often than I'm thinking of the many fun things we did.
Of course, I'm thinking of those things too, but that weird conversation we had on the ride home Sunday makes me wonder if you realize how many other ways you make me feel good. I loved watching movies with you. I loved playing a game with you, and people-watching at the music festival. I loved taking a nap with you, talking on the terrace, making you eggs. I loved looking at you and touching you also, and I hope that you find your own pleasure in that and that you're not always thinking of pleasing me. I am officially seduced at this point, and feel far more connected to you than I probably should after less than two weeks. But I hope you're experiencing your own version of that. Partly because that would legitimize this pride I feel at having won your interest. And partly because I want you as addicted to me as I am to you. But mostly because this feels amazing, and I strongly suggest you try it out.
I have to admit that I haven't made much progress on your poem today. These last two days have largely been dedicated to searching for a job. I think I told you that I don't expect to pursue the teaching right now; it just doesn't pay enough. So I've been applying online and researching staffing agencies. It will feel good to settle into a normal routine, and I'm eager to get on with it.
It looks like I may have Thursday night free, but I have to take L back the next morning so I don't think I'll be going out. R just needs to work Friday, so I have a normal weekend after that. A long one, in fact, since Monday is a holiday. So how much of that time will I get to spend with you? Should I invent another music festival to justify you staying overnight again? Let me know if you have other things you need to do. Meanwhile I will find some things we can do; ought to be a good amount going on for a holiday weekend.
I'm going to climb into that empty bed now. Looking for a job always makes my brain feel like it's been doing math all day, and it's beginning to complain. You won't see this till the morning, so: good morning, my queen. I hope that your day starts well and that it ends with you aching to see me.
Your King,
X
