Passing

She had stirred my imagination and heated it to a rolling boil. I hoped the torrent she had provoked was completely unintentional, and circumstance just happened to place me between her and the book she was assigned. Maybe her fingers held the door frame for balance as she slipped out of the room. I needed some rational explanation. Since her introduction I had become dangerously fascinated with her. I knew I was susceptible to fabricating something out of nothing. It was a habit I was desperate to break.

I mused further. If her behavior was concentrated and deliberate...if she did aim to strengthen the spell she had cast so firmly at our introduction, she did so without requitance. She was undaunted, requiring neither validation nor acknowledgment. She seemed entirely disinterested that I was captivated by her smooth legs, assaulting every inch of them...she was looking the other direction. She could not know my eyes lingered as her fingers slipped away...she was already out of the room.

In a way the memory of those moments hung by a thread. I could conceivably deny the event completely, and so could she. It could disappear without a trace. Perhaps this was her intention, to surround us in that surreal realm between fantasy and reality. I could not know what my face revealed to Vanessa in that fleeting glimpse...maybe nothing, maybe everything. Without knowing, the moments drifted away. I held onto them because I hold onto extreme possibilities like this...it's what I do. My curiosity had been hijacked. If she was conscious of what she was doing, I could not let them fade. I was eerily aware of the fact that rich moments like this tend to drift away like smoke over a book burning. I tried to accept the burden of memory, the simple facts.

Vanessa and I didn't cross paths for a while, and my obsession with her mercifully faded over the next week. This was temporary. It jumped to the surface immediately as I saw her approach during a walk across campus. "Should I smile? Should I talk to her?" Her bold eyes captured me from a short distance and she smiled curiously as she walked by. She seemed totally natural and genuine. When I turned around she did not look back but sensually glided her extended index finger up the side of her jeans. I regretted looking back and tried to think about my upcoming test.

This is probably starting to sound like a young man's dream, right? It was actually quite the opposite. She was completely off-limits to me along with every other female on campus, which I will explain later. This fact forced me to push thoughts of her away as I tried to focus on my work. Being a literature student, my battle was hindered...

Reading of the infinite desirability of Aphrodite, I found myself incapable of visualizing anyone but Vanessa. I found my imagination ill-equipped to interpret the text in any other way. Flowers, paintings, the sky, everything of beauty became Vanessa. The more I tried to eliminate her from my mind, the more irresistible she became. I had seen Vanessa a total of two minutes, never spoken to her, and I had somehow allowed her to grapple my fancy and squeeze like lime into a coconut. I needed to get it together.

I tried to recall what might have prompted this. I hadn't pursued Vanessa or anyone for that matter, and even kept my distance from, well, just about any social gathering...especially those including booze and women. At the time I believed my integrity, reputation, and future depended on my ability to remove exposure to temptation, and eliminating my fixation with Vanessa became essential.

I thought about trying to talk to her but that would just be creepy. Besides, it was reasonable to assume that she gets off on this sort of thing with a lot of guys. She is certainly capable of attracting a lot of attention. I decided to stuff her into the dark corners of my mind as much as possible. I expected her to stop taunting me after she discovered I was completely unresponsive. I was very wrong.