Jenny and I would kiss deeply, and long. There was snow falling.

I looked up at the dark sky riddled with flakes, just dumping down. It was midnight December 25th, 1993.

Jenny, Rachel and I had decided to take a stroll into the night as we’d seen snow coming down from inside her warm cozy house in Chantilly, VA, lit aglow with yellows and crisp siennas from the roaring fire. I think there was a fireplace.

Yes, there was. Rachel was a good friend of hers who lived a few doors down. Instantly the snow made me think, if its thick enough, how would I get home? It's a 45 min drive back to Springfield after all, and in the snow it could easily take over an hour. Who would want to do such a drive? My Dad would have, as he always did in those days, anything I needed.

My heart skipped a few beats and fluttered at the thought that--i-might-have-to-stay-the-night. Is that even possible? I thought. Would two somewhat conservative parents of Jenny's actually let that happen?

Holding Jenny's hand threw an adrenaline my mind and body had never known and in some ways would never know again. I remember the night as a deep blue, and I think it’s no exaggeration to this day.

Jenny’s short, bright strawberry blonde hair gleamed off the street lamps.

That street light intermittency of being blotted out by the deadening sense of snow fall, that great silence that falls across the land. Jasmine oil, and maybe the remnant of some patchouli and honeysuckle she wore, drew me into her, always. I’d never known what it was like before her, to really kiss a girl.

I suddenly knew what it was like to fall in love then, the meeting of our hands shot through me again, actually holding a girl’s hand. Her hands were soft, yet firm in how they felt. The actual feeling of reciprocation. I always just felt like a retard before then. And this was no ordinary girl, brilliant, beautiful, free minded and political. A mind equal to mine.

What were the odds?

Next to nothing. And yet, I’d found her at 15, and she’d found me. I can thank two people: my mom who forced me to go to that summer arts program, The Institute for the Arts, and Brian Bell, the most charismatic person I have ever known or will ever know. He introduced me to her, then tried to steal her from me. All’s fair in love and war, I guess.

Jenny and I would kiss deeply, and for a long time. Every time. It evinces tears from my face and light from heart of mind.

There is no sentence to describe it. Incorporeal, spinal chills and that of feet lifting from the ground, your body evaporating into…into something else, entirely. I know in a dimension very close by proximity of light years, me and Jenny have kids somewhere.

Somewhere aloft in a Universe where all these recent days never happened. Maybe we still have that old white Lincoln. Or maybe we sold it. Did I stay in Virginia? Move to Maryland? Did I ever go off to New York? The future was not present walking slowly across the dark tar, lighting up from piling flakes...

-- End Memoir Sample --