Thanks to R.A.M.P. -
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Location/7885/index.html

R.A.M.P. was the site that allowed me to first make this available to anyone outside myself. It will remain on their boards until the webmistresses there choose to remove it somehow, but I've chosen to post it here as well as there. Again, thanks R.A.M.P. for giving me an outlet when I needed it. I know you don't particularly care for the type of web site I've got here, but I hope I'm forgiven.

There's a moral in this story somewhere. If you find it, let me know.

And I had to sit idly by as she walked away. I never saw her again.

That wouldn't bother me as much as it does if it were true. In all truth, I had to sit idly by as she walked away. I saw her a number of times afterwards, but she wasn't the same. Not by far. I used to be able to sit and dream of her endlessly.

I used to be able to admire every curve on her body from the sweet arc of her cheek to the sexy bow of her ass. I used to be able to go forward with my life knowing that she'd be in the future. She wouldn't necessarily notice I was there, but she didn't have to. As long as I got to see how the black cloth slipped over her legs and veiled her arms, I was content. As long as I could see her hair frame her face and swing like a solid sheet of midnight, I could rest easier. It didn't matter to me that she was oblivious to her admirer. It didn't matter to me at first.

I could go through the hellish rituals I'd been assigned knowing that between them I would see her. If I were lucky she'd see me too and maybe cast a smile in my direction. If I were in the favor of the gods, she would greet me. Once or twice I must have fallen asleep and dreamt, because I can remember her hugging me, wrapping her beautifully soft arms around me. Part of me told myself that those times were special. She hugged me because she wanted to. But the real half of my brain, the part that still tells me I was never good enough, told me that it was in her nature. All of her friends got that wonderful kind of hug, and in those dreams she was having a good enough day to consider me a friend.

She was the kind of girl I could identify with, the kind of girl I spent my daydreams with. This girl shared the same beliefs I did. On the times I got into conversations with her I found myself lost in her voice and agreeing with her words. This was a girl of my own heart. To me it seemed that a significant portion of our basic philosophies shared considerable chunks. We liked a good deal of the same things. The similarities I noticed frightened me, frankly, and to this day I don't know if I was exaggerating them or not. As I remember, I wasn't, but infatuation tends to cloud the mind.

She had a dress I think of sometimes. I love to remember her in that dress. The dress was actually rather plain, but she had a way of wearing it that was simply stunning. The dress used to hug her curves in a way that wasn't slutty or overly pretentious. The dress was perfect on her. It ran from her hips down her legs, a smooth black waterfall of some material that was probably very plain, like cotton, but which became elevated to silk in my head. I believe the ankle-length wonder may have been one piece, long enough to cover her from shoulder to foot, but I never could tell because it was usually accompanied by a jacket applied in a way only she could wear it.

I don't remember much about the days she used to wear that dress. I remember even fewer details. But I do remember dreaming I could be pressed against her body, my hands resting on the shelf of her hips, my face buried in that place on a woman where her neck meets her shoulder, the place that has always and will always make me a happy man. I remember watching her, only partially mindful that I had to cover up the look in my eye, the fidgeting of my hands, and the bulge in my pants. I remember one time on one of the trips, she wore the dress. In spite of the crowd of people in the place, there was what seemed to be a sphere around her, a space with no people in it, as if subconsciously they wouldn't dare come near such a person. I saw her and froze. I was powerless to hide the action. I don't know what she was thinking, or even if she noticed, but she gave to me a downcast smile that was at the same time both humble and incredibly knowing and strong. I was hers. I fell in love with her.

At that time I knew that the attitude I'd affected for so long was not only possible, it was closer than I thought it. At that time I knew that love and pain are blood relatives. I knew that no matter how I loved her, I would never be good enough, and that fact ripped me to pieces and scattered them to the winds. I wanted nothing more than to feel her breath on my ear as she told me something, anything that would have let me know that she was speaking directly and only to me. I would have listened to her tell me what she had had for lunch. I just longed to be close to her, and I wanted to feel the material covering her waist slide against it as I ran my hand from her side, to the small of her back, to her hip, to her arm...

I had sheltered a fondness for her far longer than she probably ever would have guessed. Before she knew who I was, when I was a face in a line I had singled her out. She was different, and she was alluring. She was the first girl I was nervous to talk to, because she was the first girl I had a serious crush on. I silently thanked anybody who gave me a chance to be near her, and praised anybody who gave me the chance to speak to her. On one or two occasions she touched me. I felt her fingers on my back and had to fight my own body so that she wouldn't feel the shivers she was sending through me. No girl before or since has been able to instigate in me that reaction to the degree she did.

The last night I saw her, she was as beautiful as ever, and clad in the monochrome that was her wardrobe. I watched as much as I could in that darkness. I was close enough to her for her to hear me yelling had I chosen to, yet she was so far away. After a while, I began to wonder what it was that was holding me back. I wanted to tell her what I had been thinking for so long. I wanted to let her know, but I couldn't. Because I was weak. To this day, I am weak. I will remain that way. Instead of letting myself hurt because of the thoughts I was having, I made myself hurt by blocking the blood to my hands. When they started to throb I felt better. By the time we left, I had given up. I gave her a pitiful goodbye. It was embarrassing.

And I had to sit idly by as she walked away. I never saw her again.

I used to be able to sit and dream of her endlessly. So I continued to do so. And then I saw her again. She had changed. She was no longer as beautiful as she was. She was still pretty, it was engrained in her to be so, but the spark she once carried was no longer evident. Either it had been put out by her, stolen, or hidden too far down for even her admirers to find again.

She no longer wore the dress. In fact, I suspect it has been since given up for other clothes, which I must say would never look as good on her as that dress did. She appeared to be a person losing the battle to keep from becoming an automaton. I think that since she died she's acknowledged me twice. Once I got her winning smile and it both refreshed me to know that it was still alive and killed me to know that it had been bastardized into what it had become. I'm sure she never thought twice about giving me chills that time when she touched me. I'm almost sure that she would never again, even in my dreams, stop me and hug me.

I wanted to ask her what had happened. What stole her away from me. It pained me to see her now. Why did I hold back from asking my love what made her change so drastically? I don't know. Sometimes I think it's because I'm still weak and don't want to let on that I think about her still, a corpse animated to be just like the living people who never had a consciousness to begin with. Not like her. Sometimes I think it's because I fear that she's happier now and I won't want to hear that. I want my old girl back. And sometimes, when it's late at night and the dark has decided to be mean and pick at my thoughts instead of being my lover as she usually is, I think it's because she was lying. To me, to herself, to him, to her, to you. And I don't want to think about that, but you know the dark. Sometimes it takes amusement in picking at your old scabs until they're bleeding again.

And sometimes I grieve her loss. The dark makes me bleed tears that she's gone and I'll never again have my fantasy of touching her waist, because there isn't even a waist to touch. When she died, somebody stole her corpse.