I don't remember the last time I was really gaga over a girl. I guess that would be "woman", now, actually, now that I'm over thirty, but when I was younger, I was always getting impossible crushes on the fairer sex. The pretty ones, of course, the ones that wouldn't give me the time of day. I claimed, though it was a stretch, that I had had a crush on this one girl — we could call her Jane, I suppose — from fourth through twelfth grade. Lots of guys did, I think; she was a beauty. I didn't really though; I believe Jane kinda left my fancy at about eighth grade. But still. Four years. And I never really made a move on her at all — it was all at a distance.
Then, I had another intense infatuation that started when I was eighteen and in my freshman year in college. Let's call her Kit. And that one, wow. I do admit that I got to third base with her, but man. Kit lasted (on and off) all through my madness, ending with a big dumporama only three years ago. She visited me here in San Francisco, and I asked if there was a chance for anything, and she was quite distinct in her "No". I finally had to let go of her. Kit was all wrong for me, if I really thought about it. But when I kissed her, really kissed her for the first time back when I was nineteen, it was like what S. Morgenstern described in The Princess Bride: "Since the invention of the kiss, there had been five kisses that were rated the most passionate, the most pure. This one left them all behind."
Hm. I hope I haven't grown out of it. Those kinds of kisses, by their very nature, don't happen every day — but let there be one, just one more.
LG