Editor's Note: Through top secret sources, including but not limited to certain Hollywood luminaries and her connections in the Japanese mafia, Batgirl has been able to obtain some of the early correspondence between Derek Jeter and Jessica Biel. As a service to you, her beloved readers, Batgirl has typed in the letters for your edification, and will be publishing them a little at a time. She expects no compensation—the knowledge that she is contributing to the advancement of scholarship is reward enough.

19 November, 2006

My dearest Jessica,

I hope you do not think me too forward, but ever since the night we passed together at the club Hyde where I first held your lily white hand, I can think of nothing but what it might be like to hold it again.

Oh! So bold you say! I can see your girlish cheeks flush now. But, you must understand, the very thought—Oh, Derek, you say. Too much! too fast! I am a lady! Je suis une femme!--only increases my ardor. For it is your very propriety, your modesty, your grace—it is that very flush of your cheeks that makes me lose all of my reason. Oh, Jessica, Jessica!

I know I am not worthy of you. I know it with every beat of my too-too-sullied heart. And yet the philosophers tell us that to love someone, truly and wholly, is to transcend this mess of skin and bone and sin and become something greater than ourselves, that we reach humanity's most noble state. It is in that way that I approach you, Yankee cap in my hand, not as myself, but as a transcendent being, who—through love, through you—has only now discovered what it means to live. To live! To love! To live!

My heart, my heart,
Derek

20 November,

Dear Derek,

Thank you for your letter dated 19 November. I hardly know how to reply. I must admit to a certain quickening of my heart when I read your words, but I cannot condone such ardor. I, too, felt the connexion between us, but we must not pursue this further, for I see a great danger ahead. My reputation is everything to me, and while it is tempting to throw it all away, to lose oneself in the sincerest longings of one's own heart, we must remember our place.

I ask you to respect my wishes.

My best,
Jessica

21 November

My dearest love,

Ah, you are cold. Your words wound me to the quick, but perhaps that was their intent? Perhaps you wish me to lay my whole heart bare before you, so you can examine its true qualities and judge its worthiness that way? In which case I say, wound away, I relish the opportunity, for it gives me the tiniest morsel of hope that you are considering my suit. And the tiniest morsel is a banquet to a starving man.

In fact, I shall save you the trouble. Come to me, my love, and I shall open up my chest and rip out my heart and present it to you for your examination. Do not spare it. Look into its darkest corners, its deepest recesses, use your finest skills of analysis, spare it no judgment. I know you shall find it wanting, but I know it is my only chance, my love, to call you my love.

It has been two days since I have seen you, and already I grow restless. I long to look into your bottomless eyes again. Might you—perhaps—favor me with a picture? I can gaze upon it and become somehow edified by your very image. If so, I shall be sated, at least for a time.

Yours, in agony,
Derek

22 November

Dear Derek,

At your request, I have enclosed a photograph of myself, it is just a trifle taken for a literary periodical called Maxim. I hope it provides you with the solace you need. I beg you to remember my position. It is not a world for lovers. Perhaps someday it shall be, but for now we must remember ourselves.

Until then, I remain,
Jessica

Will Jessica relent? Stay tuned.