The Girl of My Then-Dreams ...continued
by Andy Kwon, 04.15.06

“19,” I answered with naïve confidence.

“Oh…” she waned like a bad record player. Now what’d I do wrong? “You’re too young. I’m 25.”Ugh… I saw the end of an ambitious pursuit.

No. Not like this. I trailed her into class and sat besides her, still recoiling from her tragic remarks. “So,” I broke the awkward moment. “Do you read any books?”

“Yeah!” she responded with unforeseen interest. Could this be a turning point? “Mostly girly books.” She mentioned The Notebook, Memoirs of a Geisha and a few others.

“What about… The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood?” I threw out the question, having seen the movie.

”Yeah!” she exclaimed. Phew.

“Did you read it?”

”No,” I honestly answered. “But I did watch the movie. I think the directing was a little off,” I muffled my malevolent feelings for the foul movie.

”Oh…” she sighed with inevitable disappointment.  “I liked it.”

At this point a gray-haired colleague invited himself into our exclusive hobnobbing and began shooting out nebulous book titles at the girl. “Have you ever read Maximum Issues?”

“No.”

“A Foreign Division?”

”No.”

“Fever State?”

“No.”

The unflinching list clearly included every possible book he had either read or read about, as the length seemed analogous to a $200 sales receipt from the 99 cents store. At one point, I even heard “Grapes of Wrath.” Were these even “girly books?” What was he thinking? Was he hitting on her too? Before my paranoia could intrude on the obscure exchange, somebody else did. This time, the femme professor, and the subject somehow distorted into musings about yoga. Suddenly the eccentric senior and I found ourselves sidelined and booed by fate. The next I knew it, the game was over and so was my chance.

I drove home that night in somber withdrawal. The radio was on, but the only song I heard was the requiem to a lovely affair that never was. When I reached home, I couldn’t dispense the recent events out of my mind. Somewhere between the thoughts, I must’ve conducted my routine schedule of microwaving dinner, eating it, turning on the TV, brushing my teeth, turning off the TV and going to bed because I found myself on a date with her. The details were fuzzy, but all I could remember was shear joy and reinforcing the painful thought that it was merely a dream. It had to be… reality was only an alarm ring away.  The next morning, I recalled having recycled this same dream a dozen times.

When I attended class, I tuned out the professor until it was break. Although I pretended to make my way to the restroom, I was just calculating a precise time to strike like a hawk. Or so I wanted to believe. If anything, I was a servant waiting to ask his queen if she’d accompany crumpets with the tea. How I wished I were her personal servant. At least then I could be with her for the rest of my life. “Your majesty, tis the time of evening for your daily warm bath.”

Before the marvelous thought could run its course, she manifested affront the vending machine. I gulped and made my entrance. “Hey! How are ya today!” Okay, that was bad.

“Fine. How are you?” she replied.

“Fine,” I fabricated a lie. “You?” Wait, she already told you she was fine. “Er, actually wait. Um, yeah you- you told me you, uh were fine. Right. Right. Okay, so… um.” I sighed in humility.

“Are they open right now?”