Dear [REDACTED],

All I really want is to not have fucking crabs, again. The second time in seven years. I thought seven was supposed to be a lucky number, but not for me I guess. Seven years sober and buying prescription strength lice killer shampoo yet again. I want you to know I don’t blame you, baby. I know I didn’t get them from you, and I swear to fucking God, if I gave them to you, I’ll wash you myself. I’ll bathe and delouse your crotch on my knees. I’ll play whatever album you want. I’ll spend hours prostrating, atoning. You wouldn’t make me do that though. You’re a real grown up, a man in a wild thicket of bugs. An STI isn’t even that adventurous anymore, hell, it’s rote! I don’t care how easy they are to cure. All I really want is, just once, to get chlamydia instead.

All I really want is for this bisexual painter to lock me away in his box of paints. Do you think a project manager could handle that?

And all I really want is to quit my job. I want to be a career server, or maybe I want health insurance. I want to make $800 in tips serving brunch and not have it disappear into a tip pool, leaving me with only $240, while a man who can’t even shave his head cleanly extracts value from my labor like some kind of hybrid grape from Michigan being turned into natural wine in an alley in Logan Square. Am I being too specific? Should I disguise my employer better? I’ve been fired from two restaurants because I can’t keep my goddamn mouth shut, maybe the third time’s the charm! That’s not an invitation to a threesome, but it could be, someday. I think we need to fuck at least a dozen more times before I want to invite someone else in. That always feels like a thing to do once boredom has sunk in. Maybe I just don’t understand the drive, or maybe I just find other things exciting. I hate to apply for a new job until I’ve lost the one I have, I hate to look for a new lover while I’m still entangled. All I want is for you to see that I’m trying so hard to be present.

And all I really want is to live in that night we stayed up till 6 AM in your friend’s living room. The stale crackers and the white wine. The blanket draped around your shoulders like a shawl. He spent the whole night misunderstanding. I was being kind to him because I wanted you to marry me. He was willful, a sad fact. He wanted me to fuck him. I couldn’t be convinced of anything that night, least of all a threesome or a difference in kisses. I just wanted your bed in the half finished firehouse, I wanted the weird bathroom and the fake walls that didn’t connect to the ceiling. It was your last night in the city and I wanted you all to myself, but I settled for a class reunion instead of a courthouse wedding on January 6th. Did my restraint endear you, or was it clear that I was too tired to let the night end? No really, I want to know. You can tell me!

All I really want to be is your hand down my throat. I want to be trained on your form, the cords destroying my gag reflex. It’s a leftover from an overly anxious childhood, what a bore, choking and almost puking when the dentist tried to take x-rays of my teeth. What’s the point of having organs you can’t touch? I’d like an anatomy lesson, please. I want to feel your shoulder brushing my nose, your other hand wrapped in the back of my hair, holding me still. I don’t want to be just a hole, to you or anyone. I want to be all yours, you can’t just pick and choose which parts to claim ownership over, just like I can’t pick which days of the week to love you.

And all I really want is to have you write me a letter a day, even if it’s filled with stupid shit like “you really don’t see Dalmatians much these days.”

All I really want is to tell you about the fantasy I have every time I’m waiting for a bus and one goes by, going the opposite direction. I run across the street, I get on, I turn off my phone. I become someone totally new, totally different. I leave it all behind. I go by my middle name. I become a male waitress at a different restaurant in a different neighborhood of Chicago, or hell, maybe I even become a bartender!

All I really want is a dog and to live alone. All I really want is to date a man smarter than me, just once. I want to try it out.

And all I really want is to never lose the sensitivity in my nipples. What was it that John Giorno wrote about Bob Rauschenberg’s? Oh that’s right, he calls them Hog Tits. I never want that to be true of mine, I want them perky. I want them to make every man I flirt with for the rest of my life a bit confused when they see them through my shirt. As in, wait, so you didn’t have top surgery?

All I really want is to never have boring sex again. I’ve had too much. Now is the time, for the rest of my life, for sex that feels like the sex I had with my lover the other night. He came on my face and I slid his cock back into my mouth while looking directly up at the paternal shape he cut against the ceiling—I felt so good. I felt so happy. There was so much joy in me it felt like my entire body was vibrating. I was a Hitachi wand and I almost started crying. I told him this after, and he smushed my face into his pecs and said you can always cry if you want to.

And all I really want is to know what you’re scared of, is it your bills? Your ex? Your deadline? Or how you think you’re gonna die? Or is it really just a fear of silence? I could tell you what I’m afraid of, but it seems you’re still allergic to answering your phone. Does it really break you out in a rash? Would you like me to rub ointment on it? I can be free before 1 AM. I can be free all the time. I basically am. Unless I’m with Jac and Holly. Maybe that’s all I really want, is to be with Jac and Holly, in Indiana, at the cabin we rent every year. It’s less a cabin, and oh god look at me. I got so distracted and forgot to leave you in silence again. Maybe that’s why I love the letter so much. I get to go on, I get to forget you haven’t responded yet, or forget that you’re just talking over me in dozens of texts launched like ships at an international conflict. I want to pretend you can listen to me. I am having so much fun doing it! Don’t take it away just yet, I promise I’ll get you back to silence someday soon.

All I really want is to roam around a gallery show of yours, like cattle. All I really want is to fix every problem in my life, in order. And all I really want is to believe in God until I’m dead.

All I really want is to fully surrender to something. I wonder if this would even be possible. Maybe it’s time to take that suggestion seriously and just go skydiving. What’s the worst that can happen? And there I go, jumping before the gunshot has gone off

All I really want is to use my body like a battering ram against life. I want to be fucked like a goat.

And all I really want is to be fucked in an alley, or maybe just fingered. I want to be wearing new glasses, new shoes, and have gotten an expensive facial. I want you to add to it, get me a citation for public sex, a second expensive facial. I want to be a better cook, so afterwards I can make you a delicious meal casually. You can cum twice in a night, right? I’ll take a knife skills class. I’ll be so fast when I dice a vegetable, I’ll make such a fabulous roux, all to say thank you for stretching me open in an alley. Preferably one that doesn’t smell like trash but God doesn’t give with both hands.

All I really want is an oral fixation.

And all I really want is to go down on you in a theater. They don’t even have to be showing porn, it could be anything really. They aren’t making Nancy Meyers films anymore so I am open to whatever you want. I would prefer it not be a foreign film, I don’t want to miss plot points just because I can’t stop tasting you. Start by simply resting my hand in your lap, I just want to hold it. Support your balls and feel the warmth radiate into my hand. You know I have poor circulation. Once my hands start to shake they really don’t stop until I take three deep breaths, or I feel your shaft rest in my palm. We don’t even have to have sex actually, can I just hold it for you, baby?

And all I really want is to stop being so goddamn judgmental. All I really want is some patience, a way to screw my head on right, or maybe just to be rightsized. And all I really want is deliverance.

All I really want is to never have to think about the way I look going up and down the stairs ever again. I want to not think about how I look at any moment, specifically on the stairs, or when eating a salad, or a rather large sandwich, or when crying and being viewed in profile.

And I want the CTA budget to not be slashed. I want every political prisoner freed in my lifetime. I want to be filled with grace till I’m bursting. I want to keep listing things about myself and life and love and passion to you until the day I die. I want you to chime in, I want you to cut me off. I want to hear your lists. I love information! Have you read that book? I’ll mail you my underlined copy. I want to listen to all your lists, and I want to be reminded of things I want to list back to you. I want to share with you, I want our conversations to overlap and crush themselves, I want to be desperate to keep up. I want to spend every day trying to remember what I meant to say to you two hours ago. I want to spend the rest of my life interrupted by you, and interrupting back.

That’s all I really want, how could anyone accuse me of asking too much? Write me back, start with a list, and we’ll see where we go from there.

Jo