Sincerely Yours

Dear Steve,

Forgive the forwardness of the introduction, but as many kisses as you’ve stolen from me in the dark, I think we can dispense with a few formalities. You have fun, now, referring to yourself as “Uncle Stevie,” and in your approachable, light-hearted, and – yes – avuncular column in Entertainment Weekly that’s just fine. You probably get to talk to folks who don’t go back quite so far with you, and you can be Uncle Stevie to them all you want. But for now, just for a little bit, you’re going to be Steve, and I’m going to talk a while.

You don’t remember when we first met, of course. Why should you? You’re a busy guy, meeting a lot of people, shaking a lot of hands, looking in a lot of unfamiliar faces. I remember, though. I remember a bin in a used book store, four “cut out” paperbacks for a dollar. Fifty cents’ allowance a week didn’t go far, even in 1984, but that was two paperbacks if I’d managed to scrounge a few extra pennies for sales tax.

You were in your own world, your own place in 1984. By many accounts, including your own, it was maybe not the best place, and believe me when I say I’m sorry for that. But when I was a girl, and I met you for the first time, the place you took me to was magical. Not in a unicorns-and-fairies kind of way, heck no, but magical all the same. Life in a town called ‘Salem’s Lot was changing, and I got to watch. Life in that town was stripped down to its essence, life in that town was lost and changed forever, and was it a kind of voyeuristic delight to watch that, to feel a chill down to my toes when I thought of the gentle scratches at the window? It sure was. Unicorns and fairies had nuthin’ on that place.

That’s when we met, Steve. Oh, you weren’t Steve then, and I wasn’t fully who you came to know either. No, becoming that person took a few more years, a few more books, and a bunch more nights with that funny toe-chilling creep. I got to know your friends, and you introduced me to some folks who became good friends of mine. You don’t know it, but I even fell in love a little here and there. Jack Sawyer, he was the first. Striking out on his own like that, so close to me in age, going through so many things I couldn’t even imagine. Ben Hanscom, so overcome with love in a way I thought no boy actually could be. And Roland. Did you know, when you introduced Roland to me, that you’d start a lifelong relationship?

Do you know, I think maybe you did. You sly dog. Because each time you introduced me to someone else unforgettable, and then made me feel pain and terror on their behalf, you pulled me a little closer. Each night up way too late reading, each toe-chill, was one more chance for you to slip your hand into mine in the dark.

Why write to you now, Steve? Why, after twenty-five years, should I be made so bold, to declare myself in such a manner? Simple. Last week, our paths actually crossed. It’s something I never thought or expected would happen. And of course, after such a gift of words from you across the years, I had few – and inadequate – words at my disposal at the time. You should have seen me when they interviewed me for the news, though, Steve! I wouldn’t shut up! Face to face, though, simple pleasantries and smiles had to suffice. Time was short, the line was long, and signing your name hundreds of times has got to get pretty old, pretty quick.

Let me tell you, because you’ll laugh, what a thrill it gives me to take that book down and look at your name, scrawled in actual by-God ballpoint pen. If I run my finger over it I can feel the impression on the paper. Then I grin like an idiot again. Yep, I can see why you don’t do this all that often. Here you spend all your time writing me love letters, and I go all googly-eyed the second I actually get to watch your hand holding the pen.

Thank you. For every mash note, toe-chill, stolen kiss in the dark, and gentle scrape at a dark window. I didn’t need the signature, you know, though it now holds pride of place in my collection of letters from you to me. It seemed only fair to finally write one back.

Sincerely yours,
I remain,

Constant Reader

Thanks, man

November 16, 2009   Posted in: Uncategorized

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