Went through that box under the bed some more, ended up reading a couple other letters from other disappeared friends. Good ol Iain, who I wrote with for a couple years. I loved his letters a lot. He didn’t even live very far away, in Modesto. But we only hung out twice. The distance, the waiting, it made the tension nearly unbearable, so when after a year we finally lay eyes on each other, I think I got one of the best hugs of my entire life. And that was only the beginning, WINK.

Anyhoo, I smiled and sat on the floor tonight, reading my old letters, my old pals, Robert and Steven and a few other people who found me through Hex and Punk Planet. Missing, as I said before, all letters from Neil, which are now dust in some landfill, but before they were sent there, I managed to faithfully type into a word doc, which I printed out and will now archive for another decade in a box.

Also spied an extra copy of my last issue of Hex, number 7, summer of 1997. I read it tonight and decided it was my very favorite of all of them, the best design and the best stories. All banged out on my Royal typer. A bit sad to read because when it went to print, I had just bought my plane ticket to London and awaited my fake destiny with a fake person. I was so excited, no idea what I was getting myself into. Idiot.

Finally found a letter from Heather, the girl in Leeds who saved my life, in a way. She is so sweet and kind and cheerful, writing from some windy winter day ten years in the past. I wonder where she is now, if she practices law somewhere or still plays in punk rock bands. In this letter she said she was sorry about what happened with Neil, but that she had known him for many years, and never figured out what was going on in his head. I wish I had kept up with her. But we lost touch. I have lost touch with a lot of people.

Letters, such lovely artifacts of another time, another world. My favorite part of each and every day was that walk to the post office to look in my little metal box. I collected my mail and couldn’t even wait to get home, I read it on the steps. God, what a thrill! And now I check my email all day long and there is hardly ever anything there but spam.