You Are My Baby, Even Though You Don’t Like Me: Found Love Letter From a Smitten Crip
My friend Steve forwarded me an incredible found letter the other day. Here’s a clip, click here or on the photo for a link to the entire thing:
This letter’s writer has a life so far removed from my own that I can’t believe we both speak English. I am not sure that I ever wrote love letters like this to girls when I was this young Crip’s age, and I’m sure that if I had, I wouldn’t have threatened an other “niggas.”
Underneath the smitten Crip’s bravado and posturing, and not far underneath it, either, he is lonely, desperate, wanting someone who is in all likelihood out of his grasp. His looks won’t catch his girl’s eye, so he’s turned to the creative arts, the romantic refuge for everyone whose physical charms are exceeded by their creativity.
However, if that’s the case here, my man must have a JACKED up face — his prose clinks like bullet casings on wet concrete. With nerve and bravery like this, though, he’s sure to have found someone to share his corner of the Crip kingdom with by now, as long as he hasn’t been shot yet.
It saddens me to think that love letters are a dying art form — that e-mail sent the penned missive the way of the dodo bird and now e-mail’s heading out, too. Soon lovelorn Crips and geeky kids will have to confess their passion in strage gluts of emoticons and beeping sounds, leaving me and Cyrano and this ugly little Crip to sit around in the museum case of the mind, slowly collecting dust.
December 17th, 2007 at 6:33 am
I’m all about the handwritten love letter. I once sent a thank you note, a real live letter, for sex. Not love, necessarily, but close enough.
December 17th, 2007 at 7:10 am
A thank-you note for sex would go straight to my head, and I’d probably hang that on my fridge.
As for this poor, lovelorn, gin-toting whelp, I think you should try to translate what he’s trying to say into the common tongue.
December 17th, 2007 at 9:49 am
It did earn me a fan for life.
What is the difference between “crip killer” and “crip city” and how could one mix them up in a letter? Are they interchangeable?
December 18th, 2007 at 11:53 am
Wow.
I love how this fella wants to have kids with her .. but he doesn’t have her phone number?
Priorities, man. Priorities.
December 18th, 2007 at 2:27 pm
Have to admit, I’ve never told a guy, “I will nvr have kids with you…” I may have thought it, but somehow it’s laughable here, in his “love” letter, and the “n” word, as if it’s all SUCH a putdown. Wish I could have read the rest (I have a yahoo, but not a flicker). I’m with Kristin on the “crip killer” and “crip city.” Dan, save that one folded in your wallet, not on your frig. Okay, so you’d need to obtain one first. Hmm, how’s that for a new year’s resolution. Jeff likely just needs new eyewear.
December 19th, 2007 at 8:55 am
In the crip’s defense, he has great penmanship. I mean, my handwriting was never this good.
December 19th, 2007 at 9:27 pm
yes, the penmanship is the icing for me, too- especially the stylized “Nigga” in the margin.
December 22nd, 2007 at 8:26 am
Okio? There are literally hundreds (if not thousands or possibly even millions) of women out there with whom I want to spend some time making babies but don’t have their phone numbers.
Charlize Theron comes to mind.
December 28th, 2007 at 4:32 pm
Jeff! Why you putting my biz in the streets like this Jeff?