Dear Christie,

I doubt you remember me. Saturday night, at the strip club? You were working and there was one guy there, unkempt and alone, throwing money away like a drunken sailor? Yeah, that was me.

I'm writing this into the ether because I'm not going to see you again, but I needed to express my gratitude to you. You helped me to realize exactly what has been killing me, pressing upon me, making me crazy. I'm lonely. I'm starved for attention. I'm desperate to feel as if somebody gives a rat's ass about me, and so desperate I'm willing to pay you to fake that kind of interest in a slovenly moron such as myself.

It's not a sexual thing, and I hope you know that. I mean, I happen to think that you are probably the most beautiful girl to say more than 2 words to me. If I were a better, richer, more handsome man, I might be slightly closer to your league, but... I know that I'm not. And really, I didn't even want to fantasize that you had some sort of sexual interest in me. If you did, I don't know if I could have handled it.

And that's why when I paid for the half-hour lap-dance, we ended up sitting around talking. We mostly talked about you, about dance, about how you were saving up money to start your own dance studio. You're so young, only 21 years old, but I was incredibly impressed by your determination and smitten by your youthful optimism. I don't do optimism any more, and my determination has really not gotten me all that much. So I was just keen to piggyback off your dreams and admire your work-ethic.

You gave me hope. I don't have much of it, these days. Mostly I feel empty, and angry, and alone. And even now, I don't have much hope for myself. I'm going to go on living, but it's going to be a brutish, ugly and unpleasant life, in which nothing good is going to happen to me.

But, I think, good things are going to happen to you. You're going to save up the last of the money you need for the studio, and then you'll open it and begin teaching. It'll be tough for a while, but you'll be pursuing your dream. You'll finally be able to date and of course you're going to land somebody beautiful and brainy, a doctor or something like that, and he'll make you feel alive and happy in ways you don't yet know. Maybe you'll have kids; and you'll be a wonderful mother and have wonderful children.

I envy you, but mostly I'm just happy to know that you exist. You're everything that I want, all the optimism and determination and beauty and hard-work. There are none of those things in my life, none that aren't qualified in some way by bitterness and cynicism and numb. So getting to spend that tiny amount of time with you, talking, made me feel better because even though my life is never going to feel that good... I'm glad it does for someone else.