Take 2, or How I Wish That I Had Tried

He just smiled a beautiful smile but I was paralyzed with fear.

I just felt so much love, everywhere. In my chest, around my crotch, on my face, I could just feel lighting up with awkward incredulity and gratitude. Oh why. I felt so alive, so validated, so I-am-somebody. And I just wanted to get up and hug him and bless him for his gift of joy. I just felt so very grateful, so very giddy, so drawn to him.

And then the doors stayed open a split second more than they ought to, and my head was empty, my mind blank, and then I was so so close to getting up and following him. So very close.

And then... the doors closed.

There would've needed to be a huge billboard saying "Go here for hot guy who totally smiled at you, you know the one who made your heart race for 15 minutes later?" Or saying, "Hey you big dumbass, you want it or not?" Or, "Hello? Anyone home? FUCKING GO!"

I need those. Really. Fucking hell.

I'm still a little boy trying to get out of his shell. Now it mostly works, so I forget that I always need to get past that damn shell of fear and "behavioural correctness". I've pushed and pushed and now I still need to push some more. Go out there and not let fear paralyze me. Go out and fucking do.

***

Overwhelmed, I looked up to the ceiling and thought, "life is just hanging by a thread". This very fragile, on-the-verge-on-breaking, spider cobweb just holding everything together, defying the laws of physics and common sense. And we, little spiders, swiftly and delicately move across our webs, sidestepping deadly obstacles and getting stuck in sugar-sweet honey. It's so vulnerable. When it rains, it gets all pretty but heavy and threatened. At any moment, a huge housewife can take her broom and whoosh! wipe it all away — make it crumple into a crushed thread of sickly white.

***

Already his face is fading. I try to convey it in my mind and others contaminate his image — faces I know crowding the face I want. He's becoming this image, this version of himself, appropriated by me, lost by me. He's fading at the speed of light, while growing in mystique and importance.

What was a few minutes punctuated by a second-quick climax is now a whole reflection. A stranger is now a symbol.

In the words of one Penguin Prison, "The more I look the worst it gets."