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who has the crazy perfect laugh. I mean that man in my building who seems to carry his hockey stick everywhere. I have a girlfriend, Susan, and I love her. But it drives me crazy to see them and to know that I can’t touch them. I won’t ever be surprised by them. Do you get this way?”
    Anyway, I could ask the questions that you wanted as well!
    Joey Comeau

    Dear Hallmark,
    Mother’s Day is fine, I guess. Except some people have lost their mothers. And some people have lost their fathers. Not everyone has family. You want a holiday with wider appeal. Well, we all have strangers on the edges of our lives. We can all be secret admirers.
    Look around the next time you’re at the mall. Or look online. Social networking sites. The Internet is full of people to secretly admire. I went online this morning and fell in love a dozen times.
    There’s a girl who makes detailed maps of her neighbourhood and she knows a boy who hates Allen Ginsberg — except for one line that he thinks is perfect. He has crooked eyes and takes all these pictures of balls bouncing. That is his obsession, bouncing rubber balls. He knows a girl who, in every picture, is pulling her shirt up to show off her belly. Every picture. “What’s up? A camera? Yeah yeah. Let me get my belly out.” She looks so happy just to be here. She knows a trashy girl in a tank top, wearing a little too much makeup, who is out drinking with her sorority friends in every picture. This girl has bleached blonde hair and only one interest:
Carnival of Souls
(1962).
    What ever happened to secret admirers? Are they just stalkers now? If you notice someone, if you pay too much attention, that’s weird. All of a sudden you’re that guy who sits on the bench in the mall, right in front of the storewhere she works, staring inside all day. Or, worse, you’re the guy who keeps going in. The guy with the Orange Julius who keeps saying, “I’m just browsing.”
    But I’ve never been able to just walk up to a pretty girl and start talking. My brother used to do that. Charm was his specialty. The closest I can come is writing notes. I write notes to strangers while my girlfriend is at work.
    â€œYou have the best laugh I have ever heard. The only thing I know about you is that you work with maps and you always take the second straw from the dispenser — I do that too!”
    You need a new holiday, Hallmark.
    International Stalker Day.
    Joey Comeau

    Dear Aliant Zinc,
    I am writing to apply for the position of bookkeeper. Attached, you will find my resume, and a list of my qualifications. I have been keeping books for four years now, and I am never going to give them back.
    The first book I ever kept was
A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder.
A lady friend lent the book to me just after we’d met, when we were first exposing our tastes to one another. She smiled, handed me the book and said, “These words will change the way you think about your life,” or something like that. I don’t really remember. I just remember the way that book felt in my hand. It belonged there.
    When I was a child I had a mild case of obsessive- compulsive disorder, and this feeling was like that. It was satisfying the way counting the hairs on the other children during naptime was satisfying. It was like a nail being driven into a board.
    When a week had gone by, my lady friend asked, “Have you finished with my book yet?”
    I shook my head. “No,” I said, “but I’m finished with you.”
    That was how it started. That was the beginning of my library. Keeping books became so much more satisfying than orgasms had ever been. Adding to my bookshelves was more exciting than ridiculous underwear or clumsy sexual innuendo. Every girl would lend me a book or two, and Iwould slide it onto my bookshelf and write them a polite note.
    â€œLisa, please do not stop by anymore.”
    â€œAllison, no