We’d been shooting for two weeks already, melting. Most of the crew had chiggers bad. Chiggers, we were told, crawl in and lay eggs beneath your skin. They attack ankles and genitals. The cure is nail polish.

Instead of attending my ten-year high school reunion I went to a psychic healer. This was the Boston suburbs, on the eve of Thanksgiving. Annually, on the night in question, prodigal Massholes in the eighteen-to-thirty-five demographic flock to the b…

  Sunday. Father’s Day. It was a lovely day, high sixties and sunshine, the last spring wind before summer stills the air and AC units plug windows, dripping dirty water on my sunburnt, hairless head. I was at the King Suite at the hotel 6 Colum…

Dear Lane Pryce, I feel like Eminem when he wrote to that dude Stan, recommending psychiatric treatment before realizing that Stan had already driven his car off a bridge, pregnant girlfriend tied up in the trunk. Or like the guy in that Phil Col…

Dear Joan, Just wanted to check in, as I can’t help but feel slightly responsible for your actions in this week’s episode. I thought these letters from the future would do you all some good, providing twenty/twenty hindsight into your blindingly…

Dear Joan Holloway, First off, a thank you. Thank you for reminding me why I still tune in. Things were iffy for a while, what with Don’s extramarital dalliances confined to the boudoirs of his fever dreams, Betty in a budget fat suit, and Ca…

Dear Betty Draper Francis, As I write this I’m live-streaming President Barack Obama’s Barnard College commencement speech on my laptop. What’s a laptop? Imagine a typewriter that’s also a Sears catalogue that’s also a post office that’…

Dear Pete Campbell, You’ve always creeped me out. This isn’t entirely your fault. You can blame your parents for the beady eyes and the cheeks as yet untouched by razor; for your emotional immaturity; for the fortune they squandered and the love…

Dear Sally Draper, You know what’s weird? You could be my mother. I mean, you’re not, obviously. My mom’s a ginger and Jewish, and her sixties childhood was really quite different from yours, what with her not having Don Draper as a dad…

Dear Peggy Olson, I haven’t heard back from Don, so I thought I’d try you instead. Draper might be a lost cause anyway, hormonal and unhinged, prone to mood swings and irrational behavior. One minute he’s weeping with wussy regret, and the nex…

[facebook_ilike] Dear Don Draper, I think I know what’s wrong. Are you waking to pee in the middle of the night? Suffering from joint pain? Hot flashes? Vaginal dryness? Don, you’re going through menopause. I’m kidding. Sort of. No one doub…

Dear Don Draper, I worry that you may not be getting these letters. I have yet to receive a response, and after seeing last night’s episode, I’m convinced that either the mail isn’t arriving or you’re willfully ignoring my advice. Especial…

Dear Don Draper, I just got off the phone with my mother, and she’s a bit upset. This is not your fault, I know. Mothers! You never really had one, so let me explain. They’re a complicated bunch, prone to outbursts of emotion. Always clutching…

Dear Don Draper, Birthday greetings from the year 2012! Adam Wilson here, writing to tell you that things will be okay! I know life looks bleak right now, Don. You just turned forty. You’re feeling it. Your frown lines tell the tale, your smok…

My name wasn’t on the list. When I told her I was with The Paris Review, the woman in charge gave a can’t-be-bothered shrug and stuck me on the red carpet between a correspondent from the socialite party blog Guest of a Guest and a reporter from The …

  My interest in Owen Wilson (American actor b. 1968) is admittedly creepy, undoubtedly perverse, and possibly based on nothing more than the fact of our shared last name. For I, too, am something of a Wilson. A shared Anglo-Saxon surname, howe…

I’m a Reagan baby, a product of recession, later reared in the economically secure Clinton nineties, in a McMansioned suburb of the Eastern Seaboard. Our athletes—statuesque Celtics and  sinewy Red Sox—were billboarded, televised, and extra-li…

I came to cynicism late. The others had been listening to punk rock for years, espousing anarchy on bathroom walls, wallowing in upper-middle class suburban angst. But my parents were still together, and believed in human goodness. I took their six…