It was Fall in Michigan and I was fresh off a summer of working out and preparing for a sophomore year full of soccer, track, and school work. Back then, MTV played music videos so I would spend two to three hours a day doing pushups, crunches, and light weight training. Between that and my caddying job there wasn't time for much else.

My father took me to the movies early in the afternoon on a Saturday. Arnold Schwarzenegger was an actor then and his movies were destroying box offices world wide. My mother and sister would have come to see it too had they not been urgently engaged in beauty treatments from head to toe, and whatever else female tandems do all day on a Saturday. I'm sure my Dad and I preferred it that way anyway. Movies with them meant that I'd spend the most important portions of the film answering questions from Sis. And Dad would be waking Mom up every twenty minutes.

I watched her come in like it was slow motion. I'm sure my father had a good chuckle watching his son fall ass of teakettle into twitterpation, but I wouldn't know. The rise and fall of her hips played a gentle hypnosis on my focus, and swayed to the rhythm of my accelerated heart beat. The girl was fit and trim, curvy in the subtle ways of early adolescence as it weaves its genetic mastery on the female form. In that moment, I'm sure I couldn't remember my own name, that is, IF I even had the stones to introduce myself.

As luck would have it, she was going to see the same movie my father and I were headed into. Having gone to Christian schools all my life, I felt it sinful to look upon the visage of a woman for too long. But there I was staring relentlessly at this girl's perfectly shaped behind. If I had heat ray vision I'm sure I would have burned a hole clear through her hip. As it was, I might have had just that because at the height of my interest, she turned.

Her torso twisted just slightly to her left, allowing her head enough flexibility to look directly behind her. At me. Her left hand reached up to slide the hair that was in front of her face to behind her ear. I looked away, but only so much as necessary to watch her in my peripheral vision. Her eyes, carefully, moved from the side of my face, to my feet, and back up. Then, as simply as she'd turned towards me, she turned back and let her hair fall back into place.

Heh heh.

My Dad chuckled. That woke me from my confused delirium. I asked him what was up, but he only shook his head and said he'd explain later. Once In the theatre he said that I'd "been chose." Then, as only a loving father can do with an ignorant son, he explained what that meant. Nervous and confused I denied even the remote possibility and fought him on every point he tried to make. Eventually, exasperated, he gave up.

Thursday night is often the last time I sleep in my own bed until Sunday. Usually I have to work early in the morning on Saturday and since I'm used to falling asleep in the early AM I gotta sleep at the studio if I wanna make my airshift on time. Then, since I work all day Saturday until late at night, I usually head back to the studio to sleep before my afternoon airshift.

The trip to the studio is one of preparation. My book sack is filled with, well, books. But also my PSP, my buddy's Nintendo DS, honey (for my tea), hot sauce, mini-disks, a tape recorder, pens, a pencil, a Gideon Bible, my travel pouch with more pens, notepads, aspirin, a 50 cent piece, random membership cards, nail clippers, toenailclippers, and a bathroom for decoration. Making sure all this stuff is in there saves me about $1.27 in gas. Money I can save up so I can make my student loan payments on time, the interest of which is taxed so the government can use my tax dollars to bail out companies that overcharge me for the products I use while spending themselves into debt taking out loans from banks that can't afford them but can write them on their books so stock prices can go up while their infrastructure hurtles towards oblivion but is saved because of the extra $1.27 I didn't spend on myself went to them so they could spend more money and loan out more bad debt.

The trip is a nightmare of boneheaded road-rage-inducing fops during the day. At night, it's a peaceful jaunt down the main drag. Well, usually it is.

I was stopped by a red light next to the closed down Walgreens. Next to me, a black car that saw it's best days more than a decade ago comes to an abrupt halt right at the light. Three heads, three male heads, jerked forward and bobbled around as the car jiggled to rest. Then, it backed up.

He, like me, was wearing a leather coat. It was a quarter after midnight so they were either on their way to a club or coming back from one. The driver, a brown-skinned fellow with a sharply manicured pencil-thin goatee and freshly lined haircut started to lower his window. I was new to the area so I wasn't sure what kind of directions I could offer him and his buddies. As his shoulder worked in urgent circles I pressed the button to lower the passenger side window. Once sufficiently lowered, he raised his left hand to his face and traced his pinky from his forehead to behind his head as if he were clearing hair from his face. The music from his car was blaring, but I could hear his address as clearly as if he was standing next to me.

Hey BABEEE!!!

A light sheen of sweat burst onto my forehead. Looking at him, he resembled someone from my past, a friend or cousin or something. But that thought along with me realizing that a man had addressed me like some sort of voluptuous hottie had me all kinds of confused. How was I supposed to address this guy? Be cool? Naw, that'd give him and his boys cause to flirt harder. Should I flirt back? Heh heh. Moving on. Should I act angry? No, you never know what these crazy folks have on them weapon-wise. The only thing I could do was laugh nervously and hope for a green light. As I looked up to will the red light away, I saw that it'd already changed. In spite of the speed limit being 45 I was suddenly curious to test my car's 0-60 time.

He and his friends chased me for almost a mile. Their Rent-A-Wreck, ultimately, couldn't keep up as I sped up every time they got close enough for me to hear their radio. Besides, I guess they were hungry. Just as my car was crossing the 56MPH threshhold they rapidly decellerated to pull into Taco Bell.

I stopped by Meijer just as I planned, looking around to make sure they hadn't followed me. Shopping done, the studio was my final stop. There, I sat down in my favorite chair and prepared to get my four and a half hours of sleep before my airshift. But I had to write this out, most of it, at least, before I closed my eyes.

I've been hit on by gay men before. Why was I so weirded out by this one? I don't know. I'll be thinkin' upon it though. And wondering why, oh why, for the life fo me didn't I talk to that one girl so long ago. Dammit. Ignorance is bliss my foot.