"I Could Be Writing To Tell You Your Feature Is Tasteless, Promotes Sexism, And Secures Its Readership By Offering Slanderous And Sensationalized Accounts…"

People often wonder what the fallout of a Crap Email is like. We don't often know! This guy contacted us once, thinking his ex-girlfriend had changed her name to Anna Holmes, even though her name was not Anna; when he finally figured out the deal he good-naturedly defended his doghouse-building skills and retreated back into his proverbial own. Truthfully, he seemed really nice, and I felt a little bad. The same cannot be said for "Christopher Davis," the Ayn Rand prostrating author of last week's "I Am, Right Now, Involved In Something More Important," which many of you felt to be the Douchiest Email Of All Time. Here is definitive proof it was not! A tale told in two parts: one note sent to his ex girlfriend after discovering his Crap Email on our site, one sent to us. (And yes, I bought Ayn Rand's journals last weekend and have been crafting a primer on why she is to be avoided. Although that will seem rather unnecessary in a moment.)

Dimitri The Lover's History Of Sexual Assault, Weapons Stockpiling And Psychiatric Evaluations

"I Am, Right Now, Involved In Something More Important"

"Your Friends Were Very Jealous, Even If They Say They Weren't, They Were Envious I Approached You"

"Keep The CDs. They, Like My Former Love For You, Mean Nothing To Me Now."

Okay, first I should probably explain the picture, which depicts Su Dongpo aka Su Shi, a legendary Chinese poet and Renaissance Man (well, it was before the Renaissance but you could call him a "Soong Dynasty Man" I guess) whose melancholy love poems I vaguely remember reading back at some point when I read stuff, and for some reason I couldn't get it out of my head that I wanted to depict a Chinese poet here, because "Sarah's" friend who sent me this amazing email told me very little about its sender, "Jun," except that he was well-educated and Chinese. And for good reason: this email is so fucking spectacular additional context would almost spoil it, except you should know that they'd been broken up for three months without contact, and that it was preceded an hour earlier by an email casually inquiring about some CDs he'd left at her house. Oh, man.

"Through Your Inadequacy To Fulfill Me, I Have Realized My Own Egotism"

Well HERE is an interesting twist on a common narrative courtesy reader "Mandy"! Usually when you date a writer and he is a selfish asshole who forces you to break up with him because breaking up with you would require him to verbalize the full extent of his idiotic assness, the silver lining is that you can get a bunch of writerly man-hours out of him because he feels guilty. My ex-boyfriend edited all my stuff for years after we broke up, to the point that I realized he was actually a decent person. This is in stark contrast to "Josh," who dated Mandy for nine months while they were editors on the college paper. He cheated on her the whole time with a reporter at the paper — ever worked on a college paper? this = not easy — then broke up with her, only to commence nagging her via all the various modes of correspondence with little editing chores and proofreading requests. This particular email came with a ten-attachment cargo of stories to read. (Hey Josh, I know some guys who are really good at this sort of thing!) But it was not without a fairly thorough self-criticism! Try not to get an ulcer…

"I Do Know That You Will Kill Me If I Slip On Anything… That's Why I'm Afraid Of You Haha."

There are two types of friends in this world: those who hate your on-again off-again boyfriend-esque fuck person with the passion of a jihadi, and those who don't really mind him, whatever, he's going to be back anyway so might as well make light conversation etc. etc. I personally tend to fall into the latter camp, but Laura does not. And Kurt, her best friend Tracy's on again-again off-again layabout wannabe writer recently-no-longer-ex-boyfriend knows it. So he sent her an email professing his love — well, his "love" and alternately his "like" — for Tracy and entreating Laura for a fresh start of sorts. Laura was less than charmed. But in lieu of sabotaging the rekindled love affair — did we mention Tracy is at present withholding sex, a la "The Rules"? Because that's always a good sign — she decided to send it to us, with some editorial commentary. And despite my pacifistic tendencies, I'd say she's doing girlkind a service, because while it's always nice to hear a dude wants to be "the best person in your life," you have to question the relationship with reality enjoyed by someone who says such a thing while simultaneously being the worst person in his own.

Ah, Yes, The Boys Club And Their "Humor"

"They're Teetering On The Precipice Of A Great Opening Of The Bowels Of Their Being."

Yeah, some things are better left standing on their own. (Like my liver: I think it hurts, but fuck it! Let it hurt some more!) Okay then, so Jesse and Belinda met in middle school, around the time his maturity was peaking. They reconnected after college and dated — wait for it! — ON AND OFF. For a couple years. She was too needy. He was too volatile. They split in September and their last contact, she thinks, happened last February, when at around 2 a.m. she heard someone scream "I LOVE YOU BELINDA" outside her apartment window. And then last week: this masterpiece. Dear Jesse: Belinda may be gone, but Jezebel loves you.

"Though, As Most Analytical Perfectionistic Minds Do, I Find Myself Going Over The Many Flaws Caused By My Nervousness, Lack Of Antiquate Dancing Ability…"

Welcome back to Crap Email From A Dude, where the names are made up but the 24-point signature files and commensurately-inflated senses of self-importance are real! Marcel met Lidia in a theology class and he asked her to a dance. She accepted, and he thew in a trip to meet his parents in the suburbs as a bonus. On the way, he talked about "him. And his life. And his future. His parents lived in the middle of nowhere - I started wondering if I would be kidnapped." No such luck! They went to the dance. It was "uneventful." Well, that's how she saw things anyway…as this email displays, no two people can ever really experience the same narrative. Lidia broke things off after learning about his criminal record, but she owes a debt of gratitude to Marcel, who in the space of two dates taught her the enduring lesson: there was never a case of self-loathing so bad it interfered with a dude's central self-obsession! (Or, for that matter, inspired a spell check.)

"You Had Me Over To Your House Once. Yes, I Remembered Your Address."

Jenna, 29, met Theo, 31, at a convention. They got drunk, and had sex. And he cried — well, sobbed, if you want to get technical. Because it was "so beautiful." Was it possible she'd actually found someone who liked her TOO much? Not wanting to fall prey to the whole "falling for assholes" scam, she dutifully had sex with him again. And again he cried! And in an unusual bid to exert hegemony over her RAM, proceeded to commence a rigorous regimen of contacting her simultaneously via as many distinct modes of communication possible. She knew it was over the day he conveyed his fondness via text message, personal email, work email, instant message, Facebook wall post, Flickr comment and phone call within five short hours. She told him it was over the day he sent more than twenty text messages. And he cried — and began communicating her via mail. He sent a basket of blueberry jams and concert tickets to her work. Then he sent PHOTOS OF HER APARTMENT to her house. As you can imagine, Jenna has quite the crap arsenal, but these two specimens — sent within a day of one another after she did not reply — give you an idea. Is it commentary on my deficient movie knowledge or media misogyny that I can't think of a male pop cultural figure whose image does justice to this guy?

The "Natalie Portman Breakup Fantasy" That Got One Soldier Through The Iraq War

What possessed the vast preponderance of the humans throughout history to endure the misery of everyday existence? Yeah, I would still be wasting time pondering that sort of thing, which is why I read the weekend's Modern Love, the work of a soldier recently home from Iraq, where he went in pursuit of that abject wretchedness of which so much of my generation has been deprived. He lived in an abandoned building without running water among rotting corpses and constant mortar fire. The temperature hovered around 120 and he got a shower every 6 to 12 days. "It was everything I had ever hoped to experience in the military. It really was," he says. And the thing that got him through: fantasizing about Natalie Portman. Or more to the point: fantasizing about dumping Natalie Portman.

"I Have Two Women Who Love Me..."

This email is brief, but only because it omits words that are needless to indict its own crap. Its sender is Jim, an underemployed poet in Portland, and we received it from Jessie, a gainfully-employed poet in Portland, after Jessie embarked upon a romance with Jim, a longtime friend. Jim and Jessie had sought solace in one another's arms in early February after breaking off very long-term relationships, Jim with a poet named Simone who had moved to San Francisco to pursue a professorship eight months earlier. (Jim had not wanted to move.) Jessie knew that Jim still had feelings for Simone, but respected Jim's right to mourn the relationship privately, and the new relationship seemed to be proceeding with promise. Then on Tuesday...

"Chronic Male Horniness" Is Not An Excuse For, Well, Anything

Jude Law Turns His Back On His Dreams

"Future Emails From You Will Be Deleted Unread"

Sometimes we get an email we're compelled to run for the sheer fun of flouting intellectual property laws. Felicia met Dave, a fiftysomething professor and writer, on Nerve. Two days before they were supposed to meet, she rescheduled. (See, she had this friend, and the friend got suddenly hospitalized with pneumonia, and the friend happened to be sick with terminal lung cancer, soooo.) So anyway: he agreed, they made a date a few days later; he did that thing where he didn't show up and turned off his cell phone to avoid the confrontation; then he emailed to apologize, and so she suggested that maybe they could meet at a bar near her house, at which point he went kind of apeshit. Why so "weirdly specific"? he wanted to know. Did he honestly ever expect her to come to Brooklyn? Was she going to make it worth his while? Shouldn't SHE come to HIS neighborhood, seeing as it was her friend's terminal illness responsible for fucking up the whole dynamic in the first place? She did not think so, and told him as much, at which point...

When You Start Dating Someone, Can You Still Sleep With The Ex Until You've Had The "Talk"?