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 Teri's Collection

   By Adrian Mailenna On Halloween weekend, 2004, I was visiting YaoiCon,
having lost a bet (see my con report, on my website, to see how that went),
and met a genuinely wonderful girl named Teri.  Saying that I was smitten
would be an understatement; she broke three months of writer's block, and I
spent the next two months crushing on her before I got shot down properly.

   It hurt.  It hurt a lot.  That said, I loved it.  I wrote a lot during
those two months.  Most of it is private, either just for me or just for
her, but some of it I don't mind sharing.  The most significant part, I
think, is the poetry; before I met her, I couldn't write it at all.  I
could understand rhythm and even produce it, but I couldn't understand
meter, and I don't rhyme well.  I'm not much of a believer in free verse;
it's too easily done poorly, and I'm not confident in my ability to do it
well.  Now, I can do it, though crudely, and it's amazing, almost spiritual
feeling to suddenly find this gift.  It's like being touched by God, or at
least an angel.

   In retrospect, I realize that I was't crushing on her, but some
idealized "her" that I was projecting, and the unbelievable way it felt to
suddenly start writing again.  I suppose, in that light, that it doesn't
matter that she pretended to honor me with her friendship for seven months
more before telling me never to speak to her again.  Sometimes you just
take the punches to get to the good parts.  Anyhow, this is the collection
of the writing I've dedicated to the matter, in loose chronological order.
It took me three months, but I've together all the pieces I care to save,
and the rest are ashes in the wind.  If you like it, be thankful to her. 
If you don't, blame me.

   1 - How do You Tell a Girl?

   I'm really bad at expressing myself to girls I'm suddenly crushing on.
Riding home on the BART the second day I spent with Teri, I thought about
how badly I'd done and dozed off a bit.  I woke up with the definite,
urgent feeling that I had to write something, and this came out.  It's a
little clumsy, but it was the first time I'd done anything like it, and I
became absolutely convinced that I had to at least try to know her better.

   2 - How does it Feel?

   I remember bolting awake at four in the morning, panting heavily from
under this impossible blend of desire and stunned stupidity.  I knew I
needed to say something before I could sleep, something very important, an
expression of gratitude for the return of my words.  This is how it came
out.

   3 - I Want

   My poetry improved and my writing streak got longer, and I started
crushing harder and harder as I figured out that I was going through
something much more intense than my normal
met-a-pretty-girl-must-write-nice-things-now rush.  There must have been a
thousand innocent, beautiful things I wanted to do with her, to add a
little happiness into the world.  Here are nine of them.

   4 - I'm Sorry

   I think I knew that I'd lost before I'd begun.  I think that I could
read, in the times I invited her to things, and found myself answered with
silence, that I wasn't even in the running for her affections.  I had to
know, though, had to hurt myself so that I could begin to heal, and I wrote
another poem to try to explain things to her.  All I was trying to do was
make an unmistakable attempt to ask her out, and it was probably too strong
for that, but it was the one I felt, the one I dreamt, and that was right,
aesthetically.  I made arrangements to give it to her, and was so nervously
excited that I couldn't sleep.  Around three-thirty in the morning, this
came out.  I thought about including it, but it seemed to spoil the purity
behind the poetry, and I left it out.

   I'm still not sure whether that was the right decision or not.  I've
included it here to show a little more of myself in this collection.  I
wasn't nearly as certain or confident as I tried to paint myself.

   5 - How do You Forget?

   Game over.  Sucks to be me.  This was actually part of a longer note I
wrote for her, trying to explain my situation, the gesture I talked about
in "Sorry".  I got shot down properly a few weeks later.

   6 - Fever-Dreams (Unfinished Thoughts)

   Some things I wrote just didn't survive, smeared out flat in my messy,
half-awake scrawl, and others only emerged halfway from that vague boundary
between dreams and the world.  They're not complete enough to stand alone,
but they're too beautiful to throw away, so I've put them together here.

   -- Copyright 2005 Adrian Mailenna.

   Personal use encouraged.  All other rights reserved.
   ftp://ftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/adrian_mailenna