Sometimes I will think of women of my past. I will think of the ones I loved, or imagined I loved.
Sometimes I cannot help it. Those linger the most whom I could never have. Those who for one reason or another rejected me. These are the ones, above all others, with which it seems I cannot make peace.

Years later, like now, I stop to look at myself, and I see that my life has tidied up and is heading, supposedly, in a respectable direction. I see that I could be held for intelligent and prosperous, that I am capable and able to speak up for myself.
I look hard, as if to make sure I'm not the young, insecure boy I was when I dealed with these women, but still, they persist, and I slip back in time.

I will remember how it used to be as a young boy. How inferior I considered myself, how completely out of her league I felt, and what I would not have done to gain her favour.
And now, the tables would be turned. Now, they would need me. She would come to me, and I would be safe, able and secure up to the edge of complacency.

She would come to me, and though I had made up my mind not to, I would be 15 years old again, running from my secure life and dropping everything else for her sake, atoning for what I once couldn't have. The hair I had seen resting on other boys' shoulders for so long would now, only too late, rest on mine.