A long time ago, when I was living in my favorite apartment behind a bamboo patch in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, I wrote my first love letter. It was a liquid hot afternoon, and I was sitting on my screened porch, enjoying my boredom, thinking that I was full up with the very thought of her. I drew a pretty cool heart on a piece of newsprint, rolled that into a manual typewriter, and then pecked out about 15 sentences. I took more than an hour. I had to. I couldn’t edit, and I couldn’t use Wite-Out. It worked too. That woman was happy.

很久以前，我住在亚拉巴马州塔斯卡卢萨市。有一天在我最喜欢的那套公寓里时，我写下了我的第一封情书。公寓在一片竹林后面。那是一个天气炎热的下午，阳光穿透竹林在门廊里留下许多斑点，我坐在门廊里无聊着，却满脑子里想的都是她。我在一张新闻用纸上画下了一颗相当漂亮的心，把它放进手动打印机里，然后打印出了大约15个句子。我花了一个多小时。这是必须的。我不能编辑，我也不能用修正液涂改。见效了。那个女人高兴了。

So happy that she stuck it on the door of her refrigerator, where it clung to a magnet-laden collage of birthday cards, Easter cards, thinking-of-you cards. This irked me. “It’s a love letter,” I told her. “It’s only for you. You’re supposed to save it. It’s supposed to be folded up in a book somewhere.” She didn’t get it. She treated it like a card.

她很开心，于是她把情书贴在冰箱门上。冰箱门上贴满了生日贺卡、复活节卡片和思念卡，它们仿佛组成了一幅拼图。这个让我很恼火。我对她说：“这是一封情书。只写给你一个人的情书。你应该保存它。它应该夹在一本书里什么的。” 她不听。她把情书当一张明信片一样对待了。