Dear Jared Leto,

Could you please bring your trash cans in? I know you are an Oscar winner and one of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelors, but trash day was Thursday. Where have you been all week?

Obviously, we have traveled different career paths to get to the same neighborhood. In 1994, you were Jordan Catalano on My So-Called Life, and I was a dateless, antisocial twenty-something who stayed home a lot watching My So-Called Life. In ’97, you got your breakthrough role in Prefontaine — gotta admit I never saw that one. Presumably you went totally Method and ran in very tiny shorts all over whichever LA neighborhood you were living in back then. Venice, maybe? I crashed my Corolla in the Miracle Mile that year! But, hey, I also wound up scoring my first-ever freelance TV writing assignment. When you live in LA, you take the good with the bad, am I right?

1999 was big for both of us. You were in Fight Club and dating Cameron Diaz. I got hired full-time on Dawson’s Creek and moved up from my “junior” one-bedroom to a spacious two-bedroom in Park LaBrea. I gained a pool and a workout room — but somehow I also gained weight (#StressEating, #ConstantRewriting, #CastMutiny, etc.). While I, sadly, had to go back to buying all my clothes at the Century City Lane Bryant, you famously lost 28 pounds to play a heroin addict in Requiem For a Dream. Didn’t see that one either! Frankly, it seemed like the kind of downer I just didn’t need at the time.

In 2002, when you released your first album, I got my first personal trainer. Thank god I can now mostly fit into the 14’s at Anthropologie. I mention this because I know that fashion — along with acting and music — is a huge priority in your life whereas for the fortysomething lady writer on the block, it is really not that big a thing. Fashion is great, sure — but I much prefer being able to get quickly and easily into my driveway without having to maneuver around the two GIGANTIC yard-waste cans that are constantly sitting in front of your house/imposing security gate.

Obviously, it is not your fault that I have terrible depth perception — that really has more to do with a strange condition called amblyopia and a childhood lazy eye that had to be corrected TWICE with eye surgery — but as you well know, our beloved street is very narrow, and if you hit one of those giant green cans with the left side mirror on your Volvo C30 — yes, okay, sure, it will collapse inward on that hinge-thingy. But if you hit it with enough force, it will actually BREAK the mirror — causing an unemployed TV writer seven years bad luck plus one full day of writing lost while she drives all the way to the Volvo dealership on the Westside to pick up a new one.

Not all of us have personal assistants, Jared Leto!

Some of us are economizing while we take time off to work on “side projects” — i.e., a novel we cannot sell — and I would totally expect you of all people to get that and be supportive. Are you not always putting the band first? Turning down plum acting gigs to go on tour with Audioslave? I respect you for that, Jared Leto. Just like I respect you for having ten and a half more bathrooms than I do, being named the sexiest vegetarian alive by PETA, and for keeping it down this past Saturday afternoon when I was hosting my book club.

In general, you are very considerate and neighborly that way. Apologies if it annoys you that I listen to Carole King constantly while I sit on the back deck doing my mindfulness adult-coloring-book exercises. Living in LA is stressful! Especially for a lonely lady artist who hasn’t been on a date in three years because all the age-appropriate, single, straight guys in the neighborhood are hooking up with 20-year-old Russian models. Maybe you could ask one of them to bring in the cans? Or Miley Cyrus? Or any special lady friends you might have who possess the requisite upper-body strength and some responsible, can-do neighborly spirit? That is all I ask, really. Just bring the cans in, Jared Leto! Do it for me. Do it for the greater good of the neighborhood. Do it and we will forgive you for Suicide Squad.

All best!

Gina