Throwing Faces at the Sky

The childhood letters I found caught me completely by surprise. I had forgotten about the extensive letter-writing that would go on between me and my friends at school and anyone I happened to meet. I went to a very preppy middle school where I clung to a pack of girlfriends. We were in some ways the stereotypical “weird girls,” but in many respects I think we were genuinely unusual - a mixture of being wise beyond our years and immature tortured adolescents. I think the letters speak to this in-between zone. Somehow a few of us became friends with local “gutter punks” - kids who would drink 40s under bridges (were obviously not in school) and would redundantly philosophize about fascism and punk rock. I found a slew of letters from someone I had forgotten about for many years. He would write so many desperate and passionate letters to me about his terrible father and his love for the Subhumans. We called him Robert because he styled himself as Robert Smith, complete with dirty black jeans, eyeliner and teased hair. He even had a British accent that he often broke out of. I of course pretended not to notice, preferring him in full character. I wish I could obtain my responses to all of these letters, but alas the internet, as we know it, was still years away…These letters are but a taste of “Robert”: