It’s taken me a little over a decade to write to you. I fell in love with you as a 14 year old girl, completely certain that the Smashing Pumpkins were the greatest and best band in the universe. Oh, I had already missed the grunge boat, of course, by several years. And I’ll be honest, it wasn’t really even until Mellon Collie when I even started paying attention. But that album was all I ever needed (well, with the occasional Pearl Jam “Vs.” interlude). I remember distinctly traveling in our minivan toward our vacation house in Pennsylvania, listening to Mellon Collie on my Discman and reading the liner notes and lyrics. Over and over. And over. We shouldn’t even get into how “Stumbleine” changed my life.

I think the reason I fell so hard for you is because you appeared to be a regular sort of guy. Like, the kind of guy who you could go to high school with, or would have grown up with. Sort of gangly, not particularly goregous in a Rock God sense, but just – I don’t know – approachable. So like many other teenage girls, I began to voraciously collect every shred of thing I could get my hands on related to you. Magazines, CDs, books – I would sneak out of my bed and print off articles from the magic Internet. Everything. My obession grew and grew. When I was 14, you were already 29; but I remember doing the math and rationalizing it – when I was 25 you would be 40, making it socially acceptable (albeit May-December). I even remember tearing out pictures of you from a Rolling Stone from the library.

On December 2, 2000, when the Smashing Pumpkins played their final show, I was sitting in my friend’s dorm room in Missouri, drunk. The local Chicago rock station was streaming your show. I don’t remember anything about it, I just remember thinking of all the things I would have done to have been there.

Two years later my inner 14 year old got the chance of a lifetime. I had pretended to like Zwan, like everyone else, and they were going to be playing a show in town. I was going to get my chance to see you in person. It was an amazing, full-circle sort of moment, but cut short by a friend’s bad trip. I seem to remember running out to the back of the venue you played with my friends, trying to see if you were signing things or out there at all. You were not.

Cut to Christmas two years after my failed attempt to woo you after your Zwan show. What did my wondering eyes did appear? Your poetry book, signed by the author. A little piece, a little something.

I wouldn’t be true now to claim that the Smashing Pumpkins are my favorite band. But I’ll be damned if someone wants to talk shit about you. I might be creepy as hell, but I’m loyal. I heard you sold your Chicago home a while back. My inner 14 year old was kind of hoping to run into you in the city so we could finally fall in love in some completely convoluted sort of “meet cute”. You know, like we were supposed to when I was 25.