Well, wait a second. Not too much anymore. That's why I started writing about this in the past tense. (Tense? Is there something disconcerting about fixing something in time?) I used to dream about girls. I'd like to say "women", but I was too young to be thinking about women. (I'm not sure girls become women until they're about 40, anyway. So maybe I shouldn't be getting so hysterical about the distinction, although I do worry that you girls - er, women - in the audience will be freaking out if I keep saying "girls". But, then again, the hell with it!)

But, like I was saying, I used to dream about girls. I had this sneaking suspicion they knew the secret to life, and the goal of life was to find the one who knew the secret to your life, and discover the magic action or incantation that would prompt them to give - yea, deliver - it to you. To me. Sheesh, I keep oscillating between "you" and "me", and it's starting to bother me, thinking you're thinking, "What a fucking shitty writer! He can't even settle on either 'you' or 'me'! Duh!" But I won't dwell on that any longer.

Slender, tan legs. I used to say it was black hair, but I think I've matured beyond it needing to be any particular color, although I must admit I've been a bit hooked on maroon, on and off, for a few years. Or maybe even as long as a decade. Just when did that color become a rage of sorts? Late 1990's? Or was it more reddish then, and evolved into the sultry maroon that gets me imagining that a throat connected to such hair could enunciate pleasure like no other could?

So let's just stick with maroon. I've admired blue hair on occasion too. But girls who can go blue kind of scare me. It's just too big a social risk, unless of course you have hips that could cause a man to forgive you for intentionally murdering his first born. Because then you can do anything you want, and everyone (except ugly jealous girls) is always ecstatic with everything you do. God bless you.

Ooops. Too much obsessive information.

Anyway... so you have the slender, tanned legs, and maroon hair. And your name is "Kathy".

God, now I'm having difficulty believing a "Kathy" could ever have maroon hair. That's because I don't think maroon hair color had been invented (or become popular enough) back when I obsessed over the name "Kathy". So it's like I'm violating laws of physics in trying to fuse these separate notions into one. We're borderline thermonuclear, here, even though all we're trying to do is imagine a slender, tan-legged Kathy with maroon hair. My God, "mind" is such a fucking dis-ease!

But there's no point lingering too long on what a disaster mind is, because we know mind will make sufficiently good excuses for itself to quickly forget its shortcomings (if not, indeed, its very nonexistence), and thus be entranced with the thought of itself once again, if you know what "I" mean.

So this girl - this Kathy - she knows the secret to life for me. And in saying that, it occurs to me that if I charm it from her, then it'll no longer be a secret to me, and thus worthless. Right? Just like with Schrodinger's Cat: dead, for having looked. Potential trumps reality.

So I must find her. I must become a delirious loon if necessary. Because she's way enigmatic, with a touch of melancholy.

Wow, what a coincidence, because I really like that in a girl. So this is working out just swimmingly. And hopefully not drowningly.

Having said "reality" a ways back, I'm remembering the disappointing truth that the only "Kathy" I've ever known to the point of "dating" (although I think we just went out a couple times) was half brain dead, with a crotch whose aroma could split a tank in half. Or so it was, the one day my nose had the misfortune of honing in on that zone, with the highest of aspirations of involving lips and tongue in a way that convinced her that her birth canal needed a splashing of my seed as badly as negative needs positive. In other words, immediately, and without regard to consequence. Or, better yet, with the dread of being powerless to resist, despite the knowledge of dire consequence. One of those, "I shouldn't, but I can't help myself!" orgasms.

I still like the name "Kathy" immensely. But, yeah, the memory of that stinky dumbbell has a - how you say? - tarnishing effect on my overall wish to believe there's a slender, tan-legged Kathy with maroon hair out there, cherishing and protecting the secret for my life, patiently waiting for me to charm it from her long, elegant fingers. It bothers me (for the sake of this emission) that I picture those fingers being pale white, which I suppose technically could go with tanned legs, if she's just not very good at tanning (e.g. she places her beautiful hands under her firm, rounded ass while tanning her legs).

No wonder I'm with someone who isn't named Kathy, doesn't have slender, tanned legs, and thinks of my maroon-haired lovelies as freaky slut types who cast spells and ruin mens' lives with the incongruity between their calming appearance, and their psychotic behavior.

I think my woman does have that secret I was talking about, though. And so I'm fine with the absence of the aforementioned superficialities.

Or, so I say. Obviously I'm never more than an edit buffer away from that old obsession, that hunger for the impossible. Because although I've never personally met a maroon-haired girl, pictures of them do slightly connote a degree of evil. They wouldn't have to say "boo!" too loudly to kick-start a little fight or flight avalanche in this boy.

But, of course, as with gambling, that's part of what I imagine to be the fun of dealing with that kind of girl. You don't know how quick the fuse is. You don't know the how deep the dysfunction runs. Was it just an uncle that abused her, or all the male cousins too? These things are difficult to ascertain when you're transfixed on legs and hair and fingers. And name. Please, let us not forget about name!

And now do I back away from my increased pulse rate, shallow breathing, and dry tongue, and return to work, and to mapping out the rest of the day and evening with the keeper of the secret for my life.