An illustration I thought might kick us off.

Goodness... I think everyone's busy in the RSVP discussion chattering about their fake dates. Good to know that we're all still really high schoolers at heart.

Jameliz, er, what's YOUR first love story?

Het or homo?

Dude's a renaissance man.

A lovestruck nine year old with a fire across my heart you wouldn't believe. She wasn't the prettiest girl in the class - pale, unkempt, bossy - and yet possessed of a quality I couldn't quite pin down, and now can't even remember.

My pursuit of her saw me rise to the pinnacle of my romantic life, and it's been downhill ever since. Nightly I would write little notes to her, earnest testimonies or messages of intent - I love you, perhaps we could hold hands once - place them in envelopes and ask my neighbor to pop them onto his coal fire (we were all electric). Then I could watch in hope from across the street as my boyish declarations lifted from his chimney to seek a favorable breeze.

But to no avail, and I cursed the gods of the written word because my smokey overtures were destined to go unanswered.

And now I thank them, for an answer would surely just have ruined everything.

This is so well written and such a complete picture in so few words. You've worked the magic of just the right few words. I remain,

Your Humbled Monarch

I first met her, lit by moonlight through the window. I stood, gaping, the jar of Vasoline in my hand.

Her snores rumbled through the crackerbox motel room like tractor-trailers growling up a steep highway. Over the bed a tattered picture of Elvis in his white jumpsuit thumbtacked to the peeling paint wall, slashed by the angled shadows of the dirty venetian blinds.

I stepped forward and something crunched under my sneaker-clad foot: A lonely barbecue-flavored Pringle, now reduced to crumbs.

The noise awakened her with a grunt. She began rolling over; tabloid newspapers, candy wrappers and cheap porn cascading down her mountainous, dimpled thigh as I watched what appeared to be continental drifts of flesh slide ponderously into new positions.

Finally, the geologic age ended and she settled on her back, her barrel-like knees apart, the glory between them shadowed by the night and the cheap light bulb in the only working lamp in the room.

Her fist shot out and her sausage fingers snapped irritably and sprang open, hungry.

Trembling, I extracted the crumpled, sweaty twenty dollar bill from my pocket and placed it in her open palm, which slammed shut like a Venus flytrap on a particularly juicy insect. The arm was retracted, certain maneuverings reminiscent of bears mating, then The Voice.

"'Kay. Drop yer pants, do it."

At that moment, my manhood sprang erect and I knew love for the first time, love beyond doubt, beyond question! I had to make this magnificent creature my own. Let other men have their lesser loves, mine would rival Olympus!

My pants seemed to fall away of their own volition as my fingers barely brushed the button, and I emerged from my chrysallis of loneliness and ill purposed life now born into my undying love for her as she lay before me, awaiting my sword of love to pierce her with its urgency!

And that is how I met your mother, kids.