I see that Madonna's love letters and erotic tapes are up for auction in New York City. The only aspect of Madonna the world hasn't seen yet is video of her colonoscopy. Coming to a theater near you.

I admit I've saved love letters, though I rarely feel any desire to revisit the musty passions lurking within. There's a time and a place for phrases like, "We breathe each other into our souls," and it's called college.

I don't want to read Madonna's letters or listen to her sexy answering machine messages for the same reason I don't want to examine her used tissues or watch her give birth: I am not a weirdo.

The sentiments expressed by lovers are best kept private forever; they rarely age well removed from their context by the ravages of time, like one of those curly paper party horns of yesteryear you find behind the couch when you're moving, and you blow it and it just flops at half mast with an exhausted wheeze.

Even some of the great and durable romances of history did not leave us with the most inspiring love letters. Everyone knows Abigail and John Adams were among the hotter couples on the Revolutionary social scene, and Abigail wrote this to her husband just before Christmas of 1782:

"… I have seen near a score of years roll over our heads with an affection heightened and improved by time, nor have the dreary years of absence in the smallest degree effaced from my mind the image of the dear untitled man to whom I gave my heart."

If you are considering writing an advice column, you should probably come up with a better name than "Dear Untitled Man."

When Beethoven died, a letter to his "Immortal Beloved" was found among his things. Nobody knows who this woman was, but Beethoven had a string of illicit and doomed romances.

(Any soprano familiar with his Ninth Symphony has felt his bitterness toward women. There are notes in that piece only dogs can hear. In my college choir days, I used to fantasize about digging him up just to slap him.)

I have seen a translation of that letter, and while German is hardly the language of love, even in English it sounds whiny and confused. It's signed "Your faithful Ludwig." Whoever she was, she has to have been disappointed. I have received sexier letters from my bank.

Another note that probably should have met with an open flame is this one from Charlotte Bronte to a married professor who doesn't seem to have returned her affection:

"Monsieur, the poor have not need of much to sustain them -- they ask only for the crumbs that fall from the rich man's table. … Nor do I, either, need much affection from those I love. I should not know what to do with a friendship entire and complete -- I am not used to it. But you showed me of yore a little interest … and I hold on to the maintenance of that little interest -- I hold on to it as I would hold on to life."

Whoa, girl, you'll melt his spectacles.

You may remember Charlotte Bronte as the author of "Jane Eyre," a book about a girl with a self-esteem deficiency and a passion for her brooding employer, who tries to marry her even though he already has a crazy wife who burns the house down and blinds him. Breaking up is hard to do.

Say what you will about Napoleon -- his stature, his ego, his hats -- but the man knew how to write a love letter.

"Sweet, incomparable Josephine, what a strange effect you have on my heart! … I shall see you in three hours. Until then, mio dolce amor, a thousand kisses; but give me none in return, for they set my blood on fire."

Rowr. Nowadays that same idea would be an e-mail or a text and read, "Luv u sweetie! C u later!" Less Napoleon Bonaparte, more Napoleon Dynamite.

Maybe Madonna's love letters are worth reading. At least she's keeping a dying tradition alive. I'll miss it when it's gone.

Maybe I am a weirdo.