The aged, worn envelope with grandparent cursive on the front was postmarked December 2, 1944. WHAT NOW? How was this happening? At first, I thought it might be some weird prank, or mistake. How was this being delivered in 2013, almost seventy years later? I had so many questions: The letter had been opened, but why was it sent again, now? Had it ever gotten to its rightful recipient? How had a postal worker seen this and not been as fascinated as I was? Were letters like this floating around, re-sent all the time so it was just a common occurrence? Was I a character in a Nicholas Sparks novel?!
The note inside was a love letter from a lieutenant, Joseph O. Matthews, to his wife, Betty, who was living in my apartment on MacDougal Street while he was deployed. Joseph was at Camp Lejeune, a military base in North Carolina, and this letter was sent right before he was shipped off to the war in Okinawa. It wasn’t excessively romantic, he didn’t write about being afraid or longing for her touch. But it was intimate, and sad, beautiful and simple. A brief look into their relationship, their dialogue, their shorthand, without overly acknowledging the weight of the situation.
As much as I knew I wasn’t involved in this soldier’s handwritten note to his wife, I felt I was being pulled into their story, their private life for a moment. Who were Joseph and Betty? What happened to them, and what was this love story that had existed in the same room I was sitting in?
There were a few ways in which I could proceed in a scenario like this: (1) I could brush it off. The postal service is clearly disorganized—they keep sending me elderly membership cards and diaper discounts. This letter slipped through the cracks—weird, but who cares? (2) I could tell a few friends and save the letter as a keepsake, a fun conversation starter. OR, (3) I could see this as an adventure, and follow the clues from an old piece of paper for no reason other than curiosity.
This felt like the type of thing that could only happen in New York City—a twist in time, a clumsy mistake in the system, a lost letter landing in the hands of a hopeless romantic. If that’s not a movie (CONTACT MY AGENT) I don’t know what is. The city, traced through the history of one apartment, one tenant to another. Maybe I romanticized it, maybe I blew it up into something bigger than it was, but this city has an energy, a lifeblood that beats and pulses and makes you feel like you’re a part of something. I’d just gotten a seventy-year-old letter sent to me in the mail. I was a part of something! It felt like magic. On top of that, my grandmother Estelle was from Brooklyn, and grew up there in the ’20s and ’30s. I don’t know a lot about her life in New York, but this made me feel closer to her—the date on the letter was only a few years after she would have lived there, and this couple was her age. I imagined what it might be like to see a correspondence from her back then, recirculated into existence. Who was she writing love letters to? What did she think about and worry about? Did she trudge up the stairs to her third-floor walk-up, looking through her stack of mail hoping for something good? Did she see the city like me, and wander the streets to lose herself in thought? Did she struggle with hair removal and what was the best and least painful way to go about it too? If her letter was out there, lost, I would want someone to find me.
So, I decided to Tom Hanks it. I Cast Away’d it. I WOULD DELIVER THIS LETTER IF IT KILLED ME!
When I knew I was going to deliver the letter, I got in touch with my friend Todd Bieber. Todd and I had known each other for a few years, we met auditioning for improv teams (neither of us got on one), but we’d hung out in the comedy community ever since. In 2011, while cross-country skiing during a blizzard in Prospect Park, he found a roll of film in the snow. He then documented his journey to find the people who owned the film; developing it and posting some of the images and information on where and when he found it online, imploring the internet for help. Thousands of people responded, and his project went viral. He traveled to Europe on a wild adventure, meeting new friends along the way who offered to put him up in their apartments or take him out for drinks. He documented his entire, inspiring experience. I remember watching his video online, it was so exciting—he made something incredible out of nothing, out of merely being curious. He returned the film to its rightful owners, but the story became way bigger than just them. He could have walked right past that film, not developed it, not given it a second thought, but he didn’t. He saw a possible connection, something outside his normal life. I knew he was the guy to help me, I could be his next documentary about found things being returned.
Todd filmed me talking about the letter, about my hopes to find Joseph or Betty or their family, and about my excitement in general to begin whatever this was going to be. Maybe we would deliver the letter to an adorable old couple, living together in one of those tiny but perfectly lived-in New York apartments—the ones where every single thing in the room has its own story. Maybe there’d be photos of their family lined up on the mantel, evidence of their life since this letter was written? Maybe we’d get to see the love story closer to the end and then hear how it unfolded? You almost never get to see real love stories closer to the end.
Besides figuring out which songs this elderly couple and I would sing together accompanied by their in-home grand piano, and what pastries I’d bring along, the thing that interested me most about the letter was that it was real, and simple. I was so caught up in this false intimacy spending so much time online can provide, that this felt so pure. We were looking for two people and their family, simply to return something that belonged to them. I didn’t want to rely on the internet, but rather try to find them the old-fashioned way, by foot, and see where we could go in the city to find information. I wanted that human contact even in the search process, the face-to-face interaction. So, Todd and I began our quest: We went to the municipal archives and scanned census records for my address, their names and any others mentioned in the letter itself. We went to the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and the New-York Historical Society library and talked to the employees there, but we kept coming up short—nothing led us to the family. After exhausting our in-person options, we went back online. We made a website, www.lostletterproject.com, Todd uploaded the video he’d shot of me, we posted it to all our social media platforms, and we asked for help the same way he had with his found roll of film. I remember watching the engagement happen in real time—people were spreading the story and commenting, it happened so fast!
Receiving a seventy-year-old letter in the mail somehow wasn’t the most astounding part of this experience, but rather how people reacted when they read about my story. A lost love letter made people sit up, engage, want to help. It made them feel something. They excitedly shared our posts, commenting on Twitter, on Facebook, everywhere about the story, “Greenwich Village Woman Receives Letter Sent 70 Years Ago.” I should also note, for the five and a half years I lived in Astoria dreaming about one day living in Greenwich Village, this headline made my life. The story got picked up by various news outlets online and was in the NY Post. My brother and sister-in-law called me—they were in a doctor’s office waiting room and Kelly Ripa was holding the article from the NY Post, talking about my letter on Live with Kelly and Michael. Kelly didn’t know me at the time (I was just a Greenwich Village woman!); this was before Kelly was on Broad City, before Broad City was on TV. She just found it fascinating, a true New York story.
Random strangers were curious enough to band together and help me deliver this letter. My romanticized idea of snail mail as this time-honored, tangible form of correspondence was put on pause—the internet can be kind, loving, and intimate too—we had found the family! The letter had been lost somewhere inside the US Postal Service, or floating around the country, behind countertops or hidden under a pile of paperwork for almost seventy years, and the internet found its rightful owners, in forty-eight hours! That’s pretty inspiring. The end of the story doesn’t quite match the beginning, but it wouldn’t have left as lasting an impression on me if it had. Some of the best experiences don’t end with a bang, but
rather a dose of reality.
I didn’t end up delivering the letter to an adorable old couple who invited us in for breakfast—no toast or jam—no telling us about their lovely relationship or what it was like to fall in love in my apartment on MacDougal Street. My heart didn’t melt, seeing them together, holding hands after seventy years in their quaint but beautifully decorated apartment filled with Betty’s original oil paintings as we sipped some rare tea they’d gotten years ago on vacation in India (my imagination really ran wild). There were none of those perfect, ribbon-wrapped images of what I imagined might happen.
I didn’t deliver the letter to Joseph or Betty (they both had passed), but instead to their son, Scott, and his half sister Marna. Scott lived on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, only a subway ride away from my apartment, so not the travel-around-the-world-to-deliver-a-letter type of adventure I had hoped for. When I sat down with Scott and Marna, I finally heard their actual story: Joseph and Betty had gotten divorced a little over a year after Scott was born, leaving Joseph a single dad. Scott didn’t have a relationship with his mom growing up, and only reconnected with her much later in life. This love story I’d been fantasizing about couldn’t have been farther from the actual events. But the letter I delivered did give Scott an intimate look into his parents’ brief love for one another when it was real. Neither Scott nor Marna had ever seen this side of their father, his delicate writing, his use of the word God, his soft side. It wasn’t what I’d hoped for, but maybe it was something they’d needed.
Through whatever bizarre twist of fate, and postal service mishaps, I had ended up with a seventy-year-old letter on my kitchen counter, and I’d concocted a story. I wanted so badly to see real love play out, a story of two people that began right there in my apartment. But things don’t usually unfold so gracefully: love, adventures, and in many cases, mail. We grow and change over time, just like our rapidly expanding ways of correspondence. We fuck up just like the post office. We idealize the past, fantasize about the future, and cross our fingers but more often than not, we get a punch in the gut. If I learned anything, it’s that hopeless romantics don’t give up after they get one seventy-year-old letter in the mail and it doesn’t go as planned. Nothing is for sure, but it’s all worth it, all the love lost and all the lost letters.
HEARTBREAK CITY
I had never been in love before.
I’d gotten to a certain point in my adult life where I felt that maybe I wasn’t cut out for it. For this thing, this phenomenon that seemed to happen to everyone else. This monster that overtook my friends, my co-workers, random people on the subway, and swallowed them whole. I started to think my heart might be made of solid rock, impenetrable. I’d probably be written about later in life, a modern-day mystery, the woman who never fell in love. It would be my comeback! I’d stop doing laser hair removal and make it really interesting. I imagined a cross-country tour, Meet the Loveless Lady!—it would be just a few weeks though, as that type of thing can be pretty draining, especially in your seventies. I’d deal with logistics when the time came.
There was an underlying sense of loss within my body, for an experience I knew was essential to being alive. I was sad, but I shoved it away, pushed it under the day jobs, the random hookups, the comedy. Something was absent. I know this from my extensive study of love stories—first and foremost, the Rom Com. I love a solid Rom Com, in fact I have a hard time continuing my day after catching a glimpse of a Nora Ephron or Nancy Meyers film. A frame, a sound bite, the mere mention of one can hold me up. Entire flights where I needed to work have been sidetracked, calls canceled, important meetings have been delayed! I cry at the end of these films, when the two main characters finally get together—we knew they would! I’m a sucker for a good love story, a fated romance, basically anyone going out on any limb to declare anything. I have Spotify playlists completely devoted to love songs, ones I check periodically to make sure I haven’t accidentally made public. I’ve lived vicariously through these films, these songs, through the pain and heartache, the triumphs, and the voice cracks. I was right there with them, but there’s a difference between intellectually understanding love from a distance, and being inside it.
I couldn’t pinpoint exactly what was wrong with me, what was off, why I wasn’t able to connect on that level with another person. This connection seemed to come with great ease to everyone else. I felt disabled and ashamed. I thought if my skin were pulled back I’d be revealed to be the robot I was, unable to fully grasp the human beings around me. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been infatuated, had crushes, slept with, fucked, and dated many people in my life, but it always faded. I didn’t and don’t like wasting time with someone I know isn’t for me, so nothing ever lasted very long. I’d end things swiftly, not engage fully. I’ve really liked a lot of people, even loved some, but I wasn’t in love, hadn’t found someone I really craved being with, anyone I saw as the other half of my team. I never felt a sense of togetherness, never that yearning to dive deeper. This was just how it was going to be, and I was starting to be okay with it.
A few years ago, one of my best friends said to me, nonchalantly, “I can’t imagine you with anyone. You’re so set in your ways.” She didn’t mean it to be harsh, but it was. I took her words about me in like a fugitive. Like a fugitive whose story you believe, but maybe no one else does yet, so you take them into your home, shove them into the closet with the water heater while the police search your block. Not like a killer! Like a wrongfully accused fugitive that wasn’t dangerous or anything—you know what I mean. Anyway, I fed this thought, talked to it as I went to bed, lived with it for years. If one of my best friends, one of the people closest to me, honestly felt that she could never see me with anyone, maybe it was true? My friend was right, I couldn’t imagine me with anyone either. I was set in my ways, I didn’t know how else to be. I stopped hiding the secret (innocent) fugitive of an idea and embraced it. I brought it up out of the basement and started making coffee with it in the mornings, going on walks with it in the afternoons. Maybe things would be fine like this? I’d set myself up—I SHALL NEED NO ONE! I’d get huge, thick eyeglasses and an eclectic sense of style. I’d have a routine and stick to it. Plenty of people live like this, and I’d be just another stunning, single woman living it up into old age with nothing to care about but herself! Wonderful. My mind would spin out in other directions—shitty and somber directions. I pictured myself like the James Earl Jones character in The Sandlot, whispered about and feared, a mystery to the children in the neighborhood. I had been getting more involved in voice-over work—this was me, I was him, case closed!
And then, on a night like any other, I saw someone across the room at a party. It was someone I’d seen before, someone I already knew, but it was different. In one glance, I saw her, anew.
I’d only dated men up until this point. I was and still am attracted to guys, and always felt a natural inclination toward them, and it wasn’t until art school that I ever even thought about being with a woman because that was the first time I was around out queer people.
I felt open, and figured if I ever met a woman I was interested in, I’d see what happened. But I didn’t really put much thought into it, and I never felt that pang of desire, so I stuck with men. Looking back, I wish I had explored myself more thoroughly and found the beautiful parts of who I am that are attracted to the person, not the gender. I wish I’d questioned myself and the world I’d grown up in more. Every time I think I finally got it, finally figured myself out, I find there’s more to unearth.
I’ve never been someone who fantasized about having the perfect wedding. I’ve never planned out my bridal party or imagined what my honeymoon might be like, and I still berate myself when I don’t immediately, uncontrollably fawn over friends’ engagement rings. “I’m sorry, it is gorgeous, I just forget to look at certain fingers for jewelry!” Those events and details aren’t something I ever envisioned for myself as a kid, they weren’t ever at the top of m
y to-do list. I was busy following my brother around, playing catch until it got too dark out. I was preoccupied daydreaming about being on SNL, or having a one-woman show on Broadway like Gilda Live. I was so caught up in dealing with what I might do, who I might grow up to be, I didn’t even get into who I’d be with. I just assumed I would get married. I assumed I’d eventually marry an amazing guy who is funny, down to earth, creative, and successful, and then me and this handsome yet approachable guy would have kids. I just assumed that would play out, and so I pushed it into the future for whenever those cards might unfold. That assumption, that “norm,” was just there, in my mind and body, for as long as I can remember. It’s all I saw in my life, on TV, in movies, in school, everywhere I went. It’s what you did and how you eventually ended up. This ingrained idea of one day having a heteronormative family wasn’t something I was ever disgusted or hindered by, but rather a neutral and known fact, as clear as me growing up and getting a job.
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