The difference between love and "I'm trying to impress you"

Tonight I went to see the Salon of Shame, a public reading of embarrassing journal entries, poems, and frank diary bits from the adolescences of strangers. I've participated in this show in the past (I have no shortage of embarrassing creative effluence from my past) but I'm always stunned by the hilarity which exists in the archives of the pasts of my peers. A girl got up and read the "romance novel" she wrote after reading her first at the age of 13: "My Flaming Desire," starring a girl who can "speak to animals with her mind" and a "handsome," "romantic" protagonist fireman Captain Jack.
My sides split and shall never mend, tho' how I long they will.