Ah Women...

They make the highs higher and the lows more frequent. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

I never went through that stage as a little boy where girls were icky to me. I was always facinated with the fairer sex... and then just with sex... And back to the women again.

I remember my first crush as clear as a Texas summer sky. I was, I suppose, around six or so and it was kindergarten. I had no idea why, still don't. She was a beautiful little girl, and last I saw her a beautiful young woman, but that was twenty years ago.

I havn't a clue what attracts me to certain women and not to others. I have a picture in my head that I call the ideal (physically anyway) woman.

I've never dated anyone who looked like that. My ex-wife came close, but there were differences... Some bigger than others... (I really didn't mean that to be funny, but it is, isn't it?)

I didn't really date in high school. I was a little bookwormish and weird. By the time I was a senior I was alternately shy and overly agressive (I suppose I am over the shy part of that equation). I did OK as long as I was outside of elements that were familiar enough to make me regress. My first true love came along about this time. Any other time earlier or much later, and that may have ended differently.

When I got out into the real world, I did much better. I had a whole "bad boy" thing going on. Truth is that it was insanity. I had a string of attractive, but amazingly vacant girlfriends. I wasn't very nice to many of them...

Then along came my Ex. Things were never perfect, but things never are. She taught me to think as part of a couple... Tough duty for one such as myself. I loved her more than anything. She very nearly destroyed me for it.

I spent a few years alone since then. I did away with my freewheeling/whoredoggin' days. At night somtimes, when I sit on my back porch, smoking a cigar, sipping a glass of good whiskey listening to music or just the wind and the trains off in the distance, I think about times gone by... Different girls, different times...

Laying on the hood of my '77 Dodge watching a meteor shower with my shoulder touching hers, her blonde hair blowing in my face.

Breaking into the swimming pool at the golf course only to find it empty. Sitting in the deep end howling like dogs, listening to the echoes.

Standing in the ocean, handing her a silver ring with a black onyx stone, only to see her drop it and watch it dissappear beneath the waves. Sleeping in a rubber raft on the porch in the cool breeze that night, unable to move because her long black hair was wrapped around my arm and I would have woken her up.

Looking into her sea green eyes and holding her hand the first time I told her I loved her... And meant it.

I think because of this I can sleep at night. Because of this I'll be OK.