Linda
sat next to me excited and scared. I had given up trying to downplay my
reputation, if people wanted the badass swinger that was what I would give
them. The irony was that I was this romantic at heart, waiting for that first
kiss, that moment when the world would shake and I would find perfection in the
dance of love. Instead, I ran. I was that 16 year old virgin who no one would
go out with because they had all heard of my exploits with the college girls at
the all night discos in the warehouse district. In their minds I was always
high, under the influence of something, had caught the clap dozens of times. In
retrospect it would have been nice to have experienced the person I was
supposed to have been. Instead I was sitting in the back of a darkened school bus bumping along the
highway trying to seduce a young freshman who was scared to death I might try
to take her right there on the bus and perhaps more afraid that I would not. I
looked out the window past Linda her reflection odd on the dark mirrored glass.
I was always staring out windows trying to pin point or perhaps reconcile
something that was out there just beyond the horizon, lost to the peripheral.
