While I’m devoting my blog to the letters of Fiona Apple today, I might as well share this one that she wrote to me.

I met her very briefly before a show back in 2000, only a couple days after that Roseland meltdown, and I handed her a letter wherein I told her I was in my school’s gay-straight alliance and was wondering if she would write a sentence or two of support. “Could you say some nice stuff about gay people?”, basically.

Quite frankly, 16-year-old me was much more interested in interacting with a celebrity than building an alliance between gays and straights, but Fiona took me at my word and wrote me this really sweet letter. The show was on a Friday, and I got this via FedEx the following Tuesday, and she even apologizes for it taking so long. For much of the 12 years that have passed since these events transpired, this has been the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me.

I’ve met her a couple times since, but I never got a chance thank her for taking some time out and being so thoughtful, especially for a lonely weirdo like me. Maybe someday.