Correspondence May 21, 1987 (greeting card)

When I was younger, I was very much into impressionist art and would go out of my way to acquire cards or pictures with the paintings of painters such as Monet. My enthusiasm for said artists waned a bit as time went by, but I had a stash of cards with pictures that I especially treasured. The cards were small, less than the size of a postcard, but they had glossy fronts and high quality color printing. The card stock was sturdy and I can even remember the smell of them as the higher quality cards enclosed in the contained space of the box they were stored in retained a distinctive bouquet of printing fluids and wood pulp.

I used those impressionist cards only on occasions that mattered to me in some way. They were not "throwaways" like some of the more mundane and cheap, flimsy cards that I kept on hand. It's no shock then that I used one of these cards to get back to T after I'd fallen in love with him as a result of his second set of tapes to me. He had no idea that there was any significance to the card nor that I'd suddenly gone from being ready to abandon him after his first correspondence to being passionate about him.

Card front and back:

Card interior:

Transcript:

 Dear T,
    Hi! I’m through w/three sides of your tapes and working on the fourth side. I was sooo impressed at this point that I felt compelled to drop a second note to say:
1.    I was such an idiot for waiting so long to listen to your tapes.
2.    I’m even sorrier for taking so long to get back to you.
3.    I have to work my nifty little 24-hour shift tomorrow so the earliest you’ll hear from me is the week of the 25th... though I am literally DYING to reply to you.
4.    Here are the things I want out of a penpalship (I will expand on this on tape) – a meaningful exchange of interesting conversation, preferably intelligent conversation... which you supplied beautifully.
    Once more I’m very sorry for taking so long to reply. I was terribly impressed by your tapes & hope to get back very soon.
    Take care,
    S

*****

Though I mentioned this in previous posts about correspondence, there was a more than two month gap between my listening to his first tape and his second one. I was trying very hard with this card to repair any damage I may have done to his impression of me by being emphatic in my appreciation of his second set of tapes. It was my fervent hope that he'd give me a second chance despite my slack response.