The following can also be found in the book Chicago Stories 1996. Click here to learn more, and to download a free electronic copy.

I'm writing this letter and I have nothing to say, which is strange. Just sitting here, watching you and thinking that maybe you are glancing at me every so often, and it's such a pleasant, simple, base activity that I don't feel like writing anything analytical about it.

I write letters like this all the time to attractive women across the room, but I never get the courage to give them to them. I write novels, and in one of my novels I have one of my characters give another character a letter like this. Someone just read the book and told me that they thought that the scene was incredibly charming, but I said that it was charming only in the context of the book, and that if a strange man really came up and gave her a note she'd probably think it was pretty weird. And she kind of agreed but wasn't sure, so we sat there at the coffeehouse and wrote notes to each other, but it just wasn't the same.

My mind is kind of mush tonight, so I'm not sure what to say. I'm listening to Pavement right now, this song that I think is called "Radioactive" -- "He's got the radio active and it makes me feel okay." I've been listening to way too much Pavement recently and I'm not sure why. I guess it's just the right thing to hear these days. Do you ever get in one of those moods, where hearing a certain band is the only thing that will satisfy this sense of restlessness? Maybe it's just me.

I'm sitting at my table, trying to figure out if the woman you're sitting with is your girlfriend. Unless something very random happens, I'll never know for sure, because I'm trying to make the decision based on entirely surface-level criteria, which is an impossible task.

The two of you are having a rich conversation, full of laughing and leaning-ins and chain-smoking, which could mean that you're lovers or that you're simply good friends. You both have the same clothes on and the same haircuts, which a lot of gay couples end up unconsciously doing after dating for awhile, but could also just be a coincidence. And on top of that, your clothes and hair match the way a lot of my lesbian friends look, but it also happens to be clothes and hair that's just generally popular right now. And of course, I'm fairly sure now that you are stealing glances at me... but hell, that doesn't mean anything. You could be looking simply because you're wondering why that strange guy keeps looking at you.

Sometimes I'll be at a coffeehouse and someone will be looking at me and writing in a notebook, and there's this little part of me that hopes that they're writing about me, that they're observing me and making little opinions and conclusions based on what they see. I have this desire to go over and ask them what they're writing, just to see if I'm right. But I never do.

I don't even know why I'm writing this letter. Bored, I suppose. I'm supposed to do some work on my novel tonight, but I'm not really in the mood. I see attractive women all the time and wish I had the courage to just go over and talk to them, and of course I don't have that courage, never have as far back as I can remember. I think that's why I write these letters. I'm actually much closer to giving you this than I usually am when I write. But I don't want to slide this to you while your friend/girlfriend is with you -- it would be incredibly embarrassing to me and probably not just a little awkward. So unless something ridiculously unexpected happens, like your friend leaving while you stay, it looks like this letter will be another piece of my permanent collection.

(At the top of the next page is written in large magic marker:) I have to wear a dress on the 1st day.

I went to an open mic on Tuesday, and someone wrote this in my notebook while I was in the bathroom. I still don't know who it was.

I enjoy writing letters precisely because I get to give them away and never get them back. I'm attempting to write for a living right now, and as a result have this obsessive desire to record my work, to catalogue it, make sure nothing slips through the cracks and becomes a lost piece. I get so preoccupied with this pursuit, that it truly gives me a pleasure to write something down and hand it to someone else and know that I'll never have to deal with it again, never have to keep tabs on it.

In the last two years, I've written three novels, about 40 short stories, a book and a half of non-fiction, two chapbooks, and lyrics to about a dozen songs, altogether totaling perhaps in the neighborhood of 225,000 words now. I tell you this as a way of explaining why my little one-page letter is turning into a four-plus page tome -- and also hopefully as a way of showing you that writing is just what I do, and why you shouldn't be worried that I'm a stalker or psychotic or any of a thousand things that make Chicago such an adventure. I simply write, and I write a lot -- I write to my friends, I write to strangers, I write to myself, I write to audiences, I write to my grandmother, I write to attractive women across the coffeehouse from me. Writing is my way of dealing with the world, with life, which admittedly is not the most suave way to deal with it. But it occurs to me that there's much worse ways to deal.

I don't know. I sit here and watch you, wonder what your story is, your history. It's an unpleasant side effect of hanging out with a writer, this constant need of theirs to know everyone's stories. I've been this way as long as I can remember, which is strange because it was only two years ago that I decided to try to write as a career. I actually studied photography in college, but now that I am writing a lot, I recognize all kinds of personality traits of writers inside myself.

Well, your friend just went to the bathroom and then you immediately got up and went, so I assume that means that you're about ready to leave. I still haven't decided whether to give this to you, but I think I'll wrap up just in case the opportunity presents itself. Thanks for letting me ramble for a bit. I hope this letter's been interesting. Goodbye.