I looked into this mirror backwards and accidentally, found another universe.

I heard music, I was transported to a time when I the future would unfold to an amazing thing, an experience of something I'd tasted, but which I would have, forever.

I was with friends, entranced by life, with love and possibility, the colors in a person's space, the smells, the sounds of our voices, alive and full of sensual promise.

I felt this, at work.

We can listen to music in headphones.

When I put this in, I was so overcome with emotion, I was crying, though no one noticed.

The absolute beautiful possibility of everything, I saw it, sitting at my desk, I felt it.

I had always assumed it would happen.

Our family spending some goofy boring day at Lake Fulmor, and the whole time I kept thinking I was going to meet a girl, I always thought that, wherever we went.

On the ride home, I fight with my family, so mad that nothing had happened, and back home, potentiality was drained, if there was one, in the first place.

I felt passion in things, in art, I expected my life would fill with such passion, that women would love me, I would be taken on some wild flight, that all the things I felt when I listened to music would really happen, because I felt them.

Surely, these things just happened to people, because I would look at people's lives, and some didn't have to try, for any of the things I wanted.

Attractive and popular, charismatic-- as if they had always been that way.

It was so easy for them, I assumed eventually it would happen to me.

I just happened to learn music, I just happened to be an artist, I just happened to be intelligent, so it seemed to follow that with these qualities I would just happen to find support and love and romance and all the beautiful emotional things that I felt, but was often short of actually experiencing.

So when I heard this music, I remembered that innocent expectation.

I went to college cities, filled with young women, and the vibration in the air was absolutely intoxicating.  I thought that because I felt this, my premonition would lead to actuality.

I always thought this.  I thought that when a girl flirted with me, I was attractive, therefore she would eventually seduce me.

Of course in actuality the flipside to this is that I was so bogged down with esteem and social anxiety issues, that later I remembered, a number of woman actually did make passes-- and I blew them all off because I was desperately frightened of the very thing I wanted, and I suppose it didn't fit my self-construct which was generally: worthless ugly person who sometimes felt attractive.

I was no match for myself.

In any fight, I would always take myself down, often in the first few rounds, a knockout punch between the eyes, bloodied nose, eyes rolling back, body hits the floor, and you're down for the count.

When I remembered these things, when I remember these starry nights, it struck me, because I have apparently turned this thing off.

I have turned off the belief, because I learned (or chose to accept) that the belief fails.

Of course, I taught myself that.

I began to take risks, so that I came to creep up on the experience of potentiality.  I remember being totally surprised when Heidi, who I was totally enamored of and totally in lust and maybe in love with, told me: "I admire you.  You're a free spirit.  You do whatever you want."

Even with her saying that, even with all the wonderful things she told me, I still chose to not believe.

I had been choosing this for years.

Here's a rather strange example, one of many:

I was at my friend's college dorm, I made myself go there, because I knew that I was supposed to do scary things, be around people.  I'd read lots of books about shyness and human sexuality.  I was informed, I knew the risks, I knew the potential paybacks, I was ready to jump.

So I got all gussied up, and went out and somehow Tiffany was there.

Tiffany was David's new sister-in-law, and I really liked her.

This brings up that whole night when David called me when I was 19 because I had a car and he didn't, and his mom wanted us to track his Dad, follow him, because she suspected he had a girlfriend (she was right).  I lived on the mountain, and his Dad worked at a boys' home, there.  She thought he was cheating, and David asked if I would pick him up that evening, go up the mountain and wait for his Dad to leave, then follow him to see where he went-- sometimes reaching speeds of 77 mph in my old car.

I was in love with David's mom.  Totally in love.  I loved her, I was in love with her, I lusted her, I suspect I even became friends with David... because of his Mom.  When I first met David in computer class, he was really nerdy and had more bizarre social behaviour than me.  But at awards night (I got an award for computer programming), I saw David there, but I also saw his Mom, and I was totally consumed with her vibration.  I knew I was in love and I knew that David was going to be a very dear friend of mine, and I would get to see his mom.

Anyways.

So us chasing his Dad in my old Camaro is another story, but ultimately they divorced and she found this really cool guy with a really hot daughter, a couple years older than me.  This would be Tiffany.

Tiffany was hot in the strangest way.  She was way out there, real hippiesh, but pretty, though goofy, and I was entranced with her.

Being entranced with women is nothing new to me.

So we're at this party at my friend's dorm, and Tiffany is there, and things start to wind down.

How is Tiffany there.  I don't know.  Life is full of weird coincidences.

The dorm is very small, painted white, there's a small tube tv (hey, this was the early 90's!) on the dresser, lots of bottles, a couple table chairs, and bunkbeds.

The lights were off, but the door was open, and Tiffany sat in front of that door in a kitchen chair, the light streaming over her from the hallway, facing me.

I was sitting in a chair about 6 feet from her, which was almost the length of that tiny dorm.

My friend was in his top bunk, just laying there.  I don't know if he was talking to us or I thought he'd passed out, or what.

Tiffany sits in this fricken straight-backed chair, and I'm sitting in a chair, and she's looking at me.

It was obvious I liked her, I had found a way, through David, to write her letters.

I used to write her letters, snail-mail, and she would write me, and the letters smelled wonderful, which she said she did on purpose.

So it's not like there wasn't something there.

I guess.  I dunno.

Anyways, I'm looking at her, wanting her desperately, but also fighting with a profound feeling of being a worthless piece of shit.

So my idea, whenever this would happen was that, I hoped she would come over and "be" with me.

I was always hoping things.

I was not very aggressive, our entire family was not.  We tended to let things happen to us.

So Tiff and I sat there looking at each other, and nothing happened.  What started as a really positive-vibe flirtation "I am excited by you" thing became something less because neither one of us moved.

I didn't go over there, and I started to feel depressed.  I was the man, I was supposed to do something, but I couldn't, didn't she like me enough to just come over and "be" with me? 

The vibration was changing, because I didn't know what to do, and she didn't, I didn't know how to make her come over and be with me, I didn't know how to approach her without my voice shaking or without being goofy, and my friend was in the upper bunk so he might be aware of anything stupid I might do.

Everything hinged on every next perceived action or inaction, like: one move, and you get a fatality, and I always thought it was a 10% chance of success, so I never really went for that perceived 10%.

I could have said her name, quietly.

"C'mere."

Waving her over, like we have a secret.  That makes a smile.  The vibes are saying what's real.  We both know all the ramifications of this standoff.

Now I'm going to move first, no matter how silly it seems, because I know you would like me to, and at the very least, we can smile at the sheer goofiness of it.

Wave of the hand, a comforting, playful tug.

You don't look at her in that way, you simply motion her over, because you want her closer, and you know that she wants to be close.  She wants comfort, you know that now.

You project this idea, of holding, of warmth, of security.

It's not a question of lust.  It's a question of trust, of comfort, of serenity.  The way it feels when you need to be held so badly, and then suddenly, someone's holding you, and you're holding them, and everything is right in the world.

That didn't happen.

We were looking at each other with an open abandonment, an obvious need.

I didn't know what to do, all I knew to do was send sex vibes.  I knew that I wanted her, that's all I knew, and I projected that.

The vibration began to fail.  She doesn't want neediness, she wants comfort.  She doesn't want to comfort me, she wants to be comforted.

I felt worthlessness draw it's heavy blanket down me.

I've failed.  I have failed you.

I could feel my face pulling down, I could feel that needy thing coming out of my eyes.

Please please please come over to me, stand up, walk over, and sit on my lap and hold me, show me you need me.

She got up from the chair.

She climbed into the top bunk with my friend.

They proceeded to make out.

I sat there a moment and listened to them, and thought what a piece of shit I was.

When they started fucking, I went over to the tv, and drank the leftovers from every bottle.

They were in blankets, in semi-darkness, moving in those intimate ways.

I drank the leftovers of every bottle until I didn't care how much they moaned.

I got into the bottom bunk and passed out.

I never heard them come.