PRELUDE

Throughout my college years, except for my junior year in Spain, I worked part-time in the language lab, where I ran tapes for various classes—and throughout the fall of my freshman year, I carried a torch for one of my coworkers, Steve. It started when he came up behind me one day as I was sitting at a console and kissed me on the neck. He was blond, with a cute smile and weak chin, and his shift was right after mine. From then on he would flirt with me before I went off-duty. He’s going to ask me out soon, I thought giddily. All through the years I’d had crushes—from the time I was six years old—but he was the first boy who seemed as attracted to me as I was to him.

Recently I came across a poem I wrote about him at the time. (That peck on the neck wasn’t, apparently, the only one he gave me.)

His didn’t kiss me like other times—

abruptly, loudly, laughing—

in celebration of some triumph.

He leaned over as I sat

and his mouth paused,

touching the side of my face—

a slow, serious kiss.

My head remained bent,

my eyes unchanging,

while a gentleness wafted through me.

Week after week after week, I waited—and waited—and waited—anticipating the moment he would arrive each afternoon, hearing his voice in the hallway or the office nearby. More than once in my off-hours I walked down to the big lab—where I knew he would be and where there was a private booth for the operator—and talked to him about what was going on in my life, hoping to take things to a deeper emotional level, I suppose, but on these occasions he just went on with his work, seemingly uninterested in what I sharing.

When I finally gave up on “us,” I was angry, feeling he’d just been toying with me the whole time. I began to avoid him as much as I could—and when I couldn’t, I gave him the cold shoulder. After Christmas vacation, however, I had a change of heart. I saw my former behavior as childish—and settled into a new normal. I simply accepted the situation, had no expectations, and found I could be civil, even cordial to him. It was then that he finally asked me out.