Tricia, my First-Ever Girlfriend

Tricia was my first girlfriend. For the most part, she was a pleasant experience. Most importantly, she also proved to me that I could be a good boyfriend if given the chance.

Sad Beginnings

She was from Cambodia, she'd immigrated to the U.S. in 1986 with her father and stepmother. When I met her in late 1992, she was already a naturalized citizen. "Tricia" was the name suggested for her by one of her longtime U.S.-resident relatives upon her entry into the US And she preferred it when people call her by that name because she said it saved her a lot of trouble on telling people how to spell it.

Her life story was epic. Tricia was born in Siem Reap in northwestern Cambodia. The year was 1974, near the end of the Second Indochina War (aka, the Vietnam War). At this point, it might be appropriate for me to provide some background information about the world she was born-into. For America, the war was awful. For Vietnam, the war was horrible. For Cambodia- it was the apocalypse.

By 1970, Cambodia had been thoroughly caught-up in the fighting among its big neighboring powers in South Vietnam and North Vietnam. Indeed whenever elephants fight, it is the nearby grass which gets trampled most severely. This occurred despite the neutralist stance of the ruling Prince Sihanouk, who had tried to remain on friendly terms with all the various belligerent powers on both side of the Cold War. Sihanouk was unpopular, and was overthrown in a 1970 coup to which America had given nodding approval. After the coup, Cambodia was controlled by the U.S.-backed client regime of Lon Nol, an inefficient and corrupt band which initiated hostilities against Cambodian Communist insurgents (the Khmer Rouge) and Viet Cong troops stationed on Cambodian territory. The Lon Nol regime enjoyed little popular support among the Cambodian populace, though it could hardly be called a right-wing police state on the par with the various governments of South Vietnam.

At any rate, the forces of the Khmer Rouge (under their leader, Pol Pot) were fighting to take-over Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge were ruthless; they took no prisoners among Lon Nol's soldiers and herded civilians off into the forest whenever they captured a town. In 1973, they reportedly began experimenting with radical agricultural collectivization schemes which boded ominously for the future. The Khmer Rouge intermingled with the Viet Cong through an uneasy alliance borne of circumstance, and this association made them a target for the US military.

In the first half of 1973, the US was in the process of slowly withdrawing from Vietnam (not to end the fighting, mind you, but end the domestically unpopular presence of American troops there). But the fighting took a savage turn in that year; in an effort to make a lasting dent on the communist forces, the US Air Force conducted a bombing campaign inside the eastern edge of Cambodia. (The objective was to hit bases and supply lines which were being using to support the Viet Cong insurgency in South Vietnam, in addition to hitting the Khmer Rouge.) The bombing was one of the most intense in the history of mankind; over 100,000 tons of bombs were dropped by B-52s until Congress forbade further air-strikes. (Ironic side-note... Nixon's reaction to Congress halting these air-strikes caused him to remark to an aide that America had "lost" southeast Asia- a place it had never "owned" in the first place.)

Factional fighting between the Khmer Rouge and Lon Nol forces continued to rage throughout Cambodia 1974 and 1975. At any rate, this combination of heavy bombing and guerilla fighting began to render large parts of Cambodia uninhabitable. It was into this pulverizing mix that Tricia was born.

The forces of Lon Nol had never held secure control over the country; news of Lon Nol giving permission to American air strikes on Cambodian soil only served to undermine the regime's credibility among its people. The government began to break-up like a wooden house with a bad case of termites. One big whack and the whole edifice came crashing-down. On April 17, 1975, forces of the Khmer Rouge marched into Phnom Penh, the capital. The rest of Non Lol's forces collapsed almost immediately. The Khmer Rouge immediately began their radical and ill-conceived programs of transforming Cambodian society. Within two weeks, the apocalypse began as the Khmer Rouge declared the birth of a new nation and a new age: Democratic Kampuchea, Year Zero.

During Year Zero, everyone was forced-out of the cities and towns. Two million Cambodians were herded into the countryside to labor in agriculture cooperatives. Because Tricia's home town, Siem Reap (and much of northwestern Kampuchea) had been among the most agriculturally-productive areas of the country, demands for crop surpluses were heavier than elsewhere and the population there was squeezed more harshly.

The Khmer Rouge abolished private property, organized religion and traditional family-based agriculture in an attempt to break-up as many entrenched social hierarchies as possible and create a grand, new classless society-- by leveling it downwards and ostensibly rebuilding from scratch. The millions of former urbanites were forced to work in the fields ten to twelve hours per day, in very poor conditions. Between 1976 and 1979, it is estimated that well over 1 million people died from overwork, disease, starvation or in mass-executions of "class enemies". (I suggest you see the movie The Killing Fields if you'd like to see a cinematic illustration.)

It was during this time that Tricia's mother died. It was a direct result of a lack of medical care. And in 1979, Vietnam invaded Democratic Kampuchea because of a border-demarcation dispute. The Khmer Rouge fled into the forests, and hundreds of thousands of slave-laborers were free to escape. Her father, older brother and stepmother fled Cambodia in the wake of this hell-on-earth for Thailand. Television images of emaciated people stumbling into northeast Thailand were beamed around the globe, and large-scale refugee camps were set-up. Tricia was four years old, and the fragmented memories of the escape were among her earliest...

Her memories of escaping with her father to Thailand was one where she had to hide under a canvas sheet on the back of a small boat in the middle of the night. She was crossing a small river, and she remembered peeking-out from under the tarpaulin. She saw the floodlit silhouettes of border guards with assault rifles slung on their backs patrolling the riverbank. She was so terrified of making a sound, she was afraid to breathe.

She spent the next three years in a Thai refugee camp, living in primitive conditions. She told me about what it was like to live there. Plywood/tarpaulin shelters. Dirty water. Ragged, emaciated, starving Cambodians pouring-in from across the border. One night, a lantern accidentally got knocked-over and a fire raged through the shantytown. Tricia ran-into her dad's flaming lean-to to help him rescue whatever meager possessions they could save as flames licked at the shanty. The next morning, she heard that a dozen people had died in the fire.

Her family came to the US by applying to enter under the auspices of a special immigration quota for Cambodian refugees. The quota sounded rather limited in scale, and I have a feeling that Tricia's family was probably very lucky to get-in.

In short, Tricia had lived a large percentage of her young life in conditions far-removed from that of most Americans. The deprivation had to have been considerable, and the memories were still present in her mind. I think she really appreciated living in a house with electricity and a flush-toilet and not in a tarpaulin-roofed shanty with running sewage outside the door. On some subconscious level, I also think she appreciated being able to walk outdoors without fear of accidentally losing a foot to the 10 million lost land-mines which have been randomly strewn-about the Cambodian countryside.

Indeed, she didn't act like a typical spoiled American bitch.

How We Met

I was seventeen. It was October, 1992. I was with my friend Phil at the food court in the largest mall in our city, standing in line at a pizza joint. We were there to get some soda. In fact, we were killing time while we waited to see the movie The Last Mohican. We were chatting about geek stuff, and all of a sudden, my head swiveled just in time to see this gorgeous, long-haired, 5-foot girl walk by. Mouth gaping in awe at the sight of this stunningly cute young woman, I turned to Phil and raised an index finger.

"I'll be right back!" I slapped him on the back and darted-off, leaving him confusedly behind.

I ran-after her, just in time to see her walk-in to a fabric store.

Feeling unusually bold, I walked-up.

"Hi." I said. She looked a little put-off by a stranger coming-up and saying 'hi'.

"Hi?" She was in the process of looking through different samples of cloth. I think she was making it a point to try to ignore me. Well, I'll be persistent.

"I wanted to say hello because I think... oh, I'll be honest. You have to be one of the most beautiful girls I've ever seen." Hmmph, they have a new name for 'persistent guys' nowadays, don't they? They call 'em 'stalkers'...

She laughed in a very sincerely embarrassed fashion and looked-away from me.

"I don't mean to scare you." I continued. "My name is NiceGuy. And you?"

"Tricia."

"I'm here to see a movie with friends."

"I'm just getting some cloth for an art project."

"I see. Well... um... basically, my friends are waiting for me to show-up outside the theater, and I know this is probably a scary question... but can I get your phone number?" I asked. "Is it okay?"

She nodded, unthinkingly, blankly, almost in a dreamlike state. "Okay..." And she wrote it down on a scrap of paper one of us managed to dig-up.

Thanking her, I ran-off to rejoin Phil. I was excited as hell to have her phone number. A day or two later, I called her.

And, that's how it started. I called her, she would call me back. And we talked on the phone many times. Over time, we found that we had a number of things in common (but probably not enough in common, now that I look back.) After a few weeks of talking and gentle persuasion, I finally convinced her that it might be fun to see a movie with me.

First Real Date

We showed-up at a movie theater downtown. I was excited as hell: wow, my first real date(!) Somewhat pathetic was the fact that I was seventeen at the time.

She showed-up, indeed she was wearing some lipstick that accented her mouth quite beautifully.

The movie started. After a while, we began to hold hands. Naturally, I was paying more attention to her than I was to the movie. I was a little bit terrified about what to do: I wanted to kiss those hot lips all right, but I didn't want to scare her away by acting too fast on the first date. I don't think I even remember how the movie ended... I was so jazzed about holding hands with this very attractive girl, and all the while craving the thought of kissing her.

After the movie, the lights turned-up. She suddenly leaned-over and planted a wet, hard kiss on my lips. I could feel her lips going against mine and my adrenaline kicked-in. I was about to put my arms around her, when she stood-up suddenly.

"Let's go." She whispered.

We walked-out, holding hands. My head was swimming in excitement.

Now, it wasn't my first real kiss... that distinction goes to Bai Meihua, an eighteen year old woman whom I had met on my first trip to Taiwan only four months before I'd met Tricia (I have not written this story; I might even get around to it one day). And although this first-ever kiss with Meihua was in a super-romantic setting from my point of view (under the full moon, in a secluded copse of trees in a park), Tricia's was the hottest-ever kiss I'd gotten in my life up until that point in terms of getting my hormones raging. I was so turned-on by Tricia's kiss, I could've popped.

So... She Became my Girlfriend

I really was happy. She was very kind and sweet and gorgeous. At the time, she really seemed like the perfect girl.

Looking back.... really the biggest thing we had in common was our affection for each other and our mutual kindness. She wasn't interested in many of the subjects that I enjoyed. I didn't follow her taste in music or tv. Sometimes she said that I made her feel dumb when I talked about subjects that she wasn't into. Things like politics or international issues, for instance. I didn't like making her feel dumb; indeed she wasn't dumb. I always told her that I thought she was smart, and that if I ever make her feel dumb it wasn't on purpose. And anyway, I tend to talk about obscure stuff, not necessarily 'smart' stuff.

But at any rate, we liked seeing movies together. We liked holding hands and kissing. Almost every day, we talked on the phone and came to appreciate each other very well. Her parents didn't approve of her having a boyfriend, so this relationship was one which was very low-key and she couldn't advertise it openly.

But in May, 1993 she told me that she'd fallen in love with me. I'll never forget it. It was a very hard thing for her to say. But when she said it, I could feel the electricity in the air. Although I had strong affection for her, I couldn't honestly say that I was in LOVE with her. I think I didn't really know how love felt at that point. The big L-word is the heavy artillery of emotion in my opinion, and use of that word is not to be toyed with lightly. Especially when the heart of a sweet young woman is at stake; I decided to be honest. After she told me for the first time how she loved me, I told her that I would never betray her love and I would treasure her precious heart. I promised her I'd be true to her, I cared deeply for her well-being and said that I cared about her happiness above all else. I understand that she'd wanted to hear that I loved her back, but I had reservations about using such strong words as 'love'. I couldn't say it.

It's very painful when you love someone and your partner doesn't feel the same way about you. If I could've distilled my words to be sweet nectar and spoke in the most ephemeral of heavenly tunes, it still wouldn't have meant as much to her as me telling her that I loved her back.

I wasn't totally mature back in those days. I'm sure I might've said a few ignorant and thoughtless things to her by accident now and again. But I think she forgave me for whatever small faux pas I made here and there.

But perhaps I did love her in an immature, high-school way. It wasn't real love, but I felt something pretty darned close to it.

My Date to the Prom

I asked her to my senior prom. If it hadn't been for her, I probably wouldn't have gone altogether. My best friend Phil had an important internship out of town that weekend, so he didn't go. At the time, one of the major factors in me deciding to go to my prom was that my sister planted the idea in my head that I'd regret it for the rest of my life if I never went.

My sister drove me to her house to pick her up.

And... she looked stunning. Her hair was up, and she was wearing a gorgeous black velvet dress. Utterly flawless make-up. She wore high-heels, bringing her up to five-foot, four inches tall. Exquisite.

Boy, when I went to the prom. I think I really surprised a lot of people. Here I was, with this exotic-looking, beautiful woman on my arm that evening. With the exception of Phil, no one knew that I had a girl hidden-away somewhere. And Tricia seemed so proud to be with me, too. She happily clung to me, danced with me and stood close to me in full view of everyone. Most of my classmates never even suspected that I was capable of having a girlfriend, much less one who was so utterly good-looking.

After dancing for a while, she and I sat-down together to rest. When a romantic slow-tune came-up, we looked at each other longingly. And we kissed long, deep and hard. I heard a few people holler something like "Whoa, check-out NiceGuy!"

Truly, it was a good prom. But she had to be back home by midnight, unfortunately.

First Intimacy...

My first intimate experiences were overwhelmingly good. But they weren't on prom night, though. It was about two weeks after.

She came-over to my house while my parents were away. Tricia was the first woman to ever see me in the nude. And, she was the first woman whom I ever saw 95% nude (she said she wasn't yet comfortable taking-off her panties... I respectfully accepted this arrangement because I wanted her to feel comfortable and I certainly didn't want to pressures her into sex.) But we played-around in bed. Me, buck naked. She, naked save for her panties. Since hers was the first female body I'd touched in sexual ways, it was the most exciting experience of my life up until that time. We explored each other's sensitive spots. It was unforgettable. It felt like heaven. It felt like everything I imagined, only better. How I yearned to feel her again.

The second time we shared intimacy, it was at her house. She and I had the day-off from school, and she invited me over to her house in her parent's absence. They didn't know I was going to be over. I had come-over ostensibly to deliver our prom-photos.

She opened the door and smiled at me brightly. She threw her arms around me. I kicked-off my sneakers and she brought me into her bedroom. We immediately embraced the other, jumped onto the bed and began kissing each other all over our bodies.

We were naked together for what felt like hours. Around noon, we heard a noise downstairs. It sounded like a garage-door opening.

"What's that?" I asked.

Her eyes suddenly widened in shock. "It's my parents!"

For a second, I thought she was joking. "Good one!" I smiled. "You had me going there for a sec."

She immediately rolled-off the bed and started throwing-on her clothes. "No, really!" I heard a door slam-shut and a muffled voice call-out in Khmer from one floor below. Tricia's voice lowered to a near-whisper. "Hide under the bed!"

Shivering in my underwear, I did so. I crawled-under the bed and dragged my clothes with me. What if they found me? What would happen if I got caught? I sneezed when I inhaled some dust and heard feet coming-up the stairs. Tricia's step-mom called-out in Khmer again. I laid noiselessly still as Tricia opened the door as her stepmother stood just-outside her door. Trembling with fear, I saw two pair of feet out in the hallway. Best to not breathe... they both walked downstairs, away from me. I let-out a sigh of relief.

But just then I remembered: I left my sneakers just inside the doorway! Ugh, they would most certainly be noticed. I sighed. It'll be a miracle if I get-out of this one undetected.

So, I was sweating under the bed as I tried to quietly put more clothes-on in a space hardly big-enough for a corpse. After a few minutes of Tricia parleying with her mom, I heard the door open. I saw Tricia's feet and heard her sigh solemnly: "NiceGuy, put your clothes on. My mother wants to have a word with you..."

Aw, crap. I tried to neaten myself-up and slinked-down the stairs. Is this the untimely end of NiceGuy?

Her step-mom was sitting in a chair, grim-lipped. Tricia was sitting on the floor in front of her. I sat on the floor beside Tricia and apologized for being in the house without permission.

Speaking sternly in Khmer, she shared a few sharp words with Tricia. Tricia gave me a bit of a running translation every now and then so I could get the gist of the argument. I just sat there, head swimming in at least two types of bewilderment. Probably looking more scared than apologetic.

Tricia told her mom that I came-over to deliver the prom-photos. We'd heard her car drive-up in the driveway, and I ran-up to hide in the bedroom. That was our story, and we were sticking to it. I'm sure Tricia's step-mom knew that we were up to hanky-panky.

Her stepmother voiced how disappointed she was in Tricia, how she'd prayed to Buddha that her stepdaughter wouldn't turn out to be a disobedient tramp. Didn't she know that her father didn't approve of her having a boyfriend?? She was piling-on the parental guilt-stuff real thick. But I pulled-out the prom photos to show her mom, to prove that I was indeed delivering photos.

After a few minutes of angry talking, her step-mom calmed down. She instructed me never to come-over without permission again.

On the way-out, Tricia told me to meet her at a public square a few blocks away in about one hour. I did so. My head was full of anxious, worried thoughts. How would this impact our relationship? Would she be banned from seeing me ever again?

At the appointed time, she walked-up. When she saw me, Tricia started bawling and collapsed against me.

"I'm so sorry! She wasn't supposed to come home like that!" She put her hands over her eyes and wept. We sat-down and I let her head rest in my lap.

"Hon, it's okay. I'm fine now." I brushed her hair and tried to calm her down.

"You were scared to death!" She sobbed.

Inexplicably, a female bystander came-up and angrily chided me. She demanded to know what I had done to make this girl cry.

Tricia sat-up and angrily informed her that I hadn't made her cry, so just go away.

After a while, I'd calmed her down to the point where she said that she was so profusely sorry for putting me in that situation. I told her that we shared responsibility for it, and she shouldn't blame herself. I felt bad for contributing to the mess, and I'd hoped it wouldn't jeopardize me seeing her in the future.

I Leave For My Summer Job

The week after, I had to go to my summer job in a different state. We wrote letters back and forth to each other. I loved getting letters from her- she would always kiss the envelope, so there'd be a pinkish lip-mark sealing it. I thought this had to be one of the sweetest gestures a woman ever made towards me.

I was away for six weeks, but it felt like forever. The mail took 5 days go get to her, and I was always overexcited whenever I got a piece of mail from her.

One unforgettable letter said: "...being in bed with you was the most wonderful experience of my life. I can't get you out of my mind. I've been thinking about this for a while, now and... I want to make love to you. I mean, I want us to make LOVE. When it happens, I want it to be the right time. When it happens, I want it to be with you..."

So she was the first woman to ever want to make love to me. But she and I never did make love. If we had, she would've been the woman to whom I gave my virginity. As it was, she would hit age 18 in my second semester of college. Our relationship didn't last that long.

I go to College

We attempted a long-distance relationship while I was at college. This was before email was becoming popular for all and sundry, so we had no alternative but to write letters and trade occasional phone calls. I also sent her a gift: a sweatshirt with my college's logo on it. It became her favorite article of clothing.

I wrote a lot of letters. In fact, I don't think I've ever written so many letters to one person in my life. Every week, I wrote at least one. And every time I wrote her, she wrote one back. She would seal each envelope with a lipstick-kiss. One time, she said that she was reading my letter in school and left it in her notebook. She walked-away from her notebook to go to the bathroom, and came back to discover that three of her female friends were in the midst of taking the liberty of reading the private letter I'd written. Tricia's first reaction was angry at this violation of her privacy, but her anger faded when her friends said how jealous they were. They were jealous that Tricia's boyfriend would write a letter as romantic and 'beautiful' as the one which I'd sent her.

College was challenging, especially since it was the first time I was away from home for more than a few months at a time. But that's also what made many aspects of it so grand. I can't say that I really liked a lot of the people in my dorm during my freshman year. Most distressingly, there were quite a few rednecks who... well... didn't care for people with darker-hued skin.

As if in confirmation of this, on one occasion a female student (I highly suspect it was the girlfriend of one of the redneck guys on my dorm floor) called me and made fun of me in an Asian-like, pidgin-English for liking an 'Oriental' woman. I angrily hung-up on that shameless piece of trash.

I couldn't come home until Christmas break.

Christmas Break

Perhaps, I look-back at high school and pile all of these mature expectations on how each of us should've behaved towards each other. Maybe I overestimated the ability of a 17-year old girl to stay in a committed, long-distance relationship?

Nonetheless, I was nervously waiting outside her high school. I'd gotten some flowers for her, and I was waiting for her to come outside. I had not informed her that I was waiting there, I wanted it to be a surprise. Perhaps, though, it would've been my benefit to have given her some warning.

I waited and waited... finally, school let-out. The doors opened, and a tongue of high-schoolers came-out. It was a nippy day, and the sky was overcast. After a few minutes of frantic crowd-eyeing, I spotted her. Immediately, I waded through the crowd which was surging forward.

Tricia was walking with two of her female friends, heading towards the curb. I intercepted her, she looked shocked.

"Hi!" I said. I handed her the flowers, and expected her to hug me... which she did. Tentatively.

"NiceGuy! What are you doing here?!"

"I wanted to see you after you finished class. Are you busy?"

"Actually, yes. I'm going to go somewhere with my friends." She looked-up at me.

"Can I kiss you?"

"Um... okay..." She sounded unsure. I did. Just then, a car drove-up. It was a rusty clunker, there were a pair of southeast-Asian-looking guys driving it.

"I promised my friends that I'd go play pool with them. I don't think they'd like it if I brought you along..." She hugged me again. "Hon, I missed you. But... call me tonight, okay?" I nodded, numbly looking-on a she opened the door and hopped-in the car with one of her female friends.

"Call me later tonight, okay?" She asked again. I nodded wordlessly. She waved and the car drove-off.

It would be the last I'd see of her for a long, long time...

That Night, On the Phone

"I... I just wish that you'd made this easier for me by being bad to me." She said, sadly.

"What?!" I asked, surprised. I had called her only a few minutes before. Now she was breaking-up with me. The news hit me like a ton of cinderblocks in the gut.

"I mean..." she continued. "...if you'd been bad to me, it would be easier for me to break-up. But... you've done nothing bad. You've always been so perfect to me, in fact."

"That's because... that's because I love you." I sniffled. My voice got hoarse. "Why do you want to break-up?"

"I just can't stand being so far away. I... I need someone close to me. The distance is just too much. It's not because you're a bad person... I just don't think I want a long-distance relationship. I'm very, very sorry..."

"But... hon, what if I came home more often? I could take a Greyhound bus to visit maybe every few weeks..."

"I don't think that would help. I... I've been away from you too long. When you kissed me, it felt like a stranger was kissing me."

"There was no magic?" I asked, a painful lump appearing in my throat.

"No. There was no magic. It felt like a stranger kissing me."

"That's just because we haven't seen each other in so long..." I was really fighting-back the tears now. "That's all it is. It's not because I don't love you. Your love means everything to me, it always has. I've shown it every way I can. I'm sorry if I didn't return it enough, I am sorry I couldn't be home often enough for you to feel it... Please give us another chance?"

"I'm sorry, NiceGuy. I just can't do this. It's too hard on me because I can't ever see you. I... need to be with someone. I need someone I can see more often. I'm sorry, but- but I'm letting you go. You're free now, NiceGuy. You don't have to worry about me anymore." And with that, we said good-bye.

I hung-up, tears sliding-down my cheeks.

"I'm free now." I sniffled.

It felt awful to be that free. At the time, it felt like the worst thing in the world. To this day, I never understood what appeared to be an abrupt change of heart. How did things fall-apart so quickly? Based on her letters, I had no clue she was thinking of breaking-up with me. Maybe her love for me wasn't as deep as I thought?

At any rate, breaking-up with Tricia had devastated my heart and shattered my confidence for at least a year after that point. I didn't start dating again until the second half of my sophomore year. Well, in the first half of my sophomore year it wasn't for lack of trying. As a sophomore, I just couldn't get a damned date at my college regardless of how many women I asked-out. But, then I met Harriet. That would be the only intimate relationship I would have in the next four years.

PostScript: Four and a half years later...

More than four years passed. I went through college. By some miracle, I got into grad school at University X in my hometown and I enrolled. The bewildering sideshow of Sally came and went. I had not yet met Mi-Jun.

So, at University X, I was walking between classes. It was well-into my first semester and I was stressed-out. The workload was piling-up. In grad school, having any spare time at all involves a certain level of guilt. It was a typical day, my head was crammed-full of the long list of stuff I needed to do later-on that day. I was inwardly worrying whether I would pass. But suddenly, my head swiveled just in time to see this oddly familiar, long-haired, 5-foot girl walk by. I stopped. It couldn't possibly be... could it? Going on a hunch, I followed her and managed to catch-up.

"Tricia?" I asked in wide-eyed disbelief. "Is that you?"

She stopped, turned-around and looked surprised. "Oh, hi." She didn't sound particularly thrilled. Not irritated mind you, but not thrilled.

"I didn't know you went to this school! How are you?"

"Well, I'm between classes right now. I can't talk long."

"I'm in the grad department. How about you?"

"I'm in the undergraduate program. I decided I want to be a medical-scanning technician."

"Cool! Well, how about I get your email address? Maybe we could have lunch sometime?"

"I have a boyfriend-" She said it painfully and distinctly, as if to throw some form of demolition charge at me. "...and he reads my email." Oh, a two-stage demolition charge, is it? Ka-pow. Ka-pow.

"Well... I mean... are you sure I can't even try to keep in touch with you?" I asked. "I'm not a threat to you two."

"He's a computer science major. And he's from Thailand." She decided to throw that one-in for some reason.

"I see." Hmm, she's being more standoffish than I'd hoped. Plus, she didn't look as cute as I remembered her. "Well, if your boyfriend doesn't respect your privacy or approve of you having male friends, then what kind of boyfriend is he? It's just that... wow, I never thought I'd see you again. This is really a surprise for me."

"NiceGuy, I've got to go. Sorry I can't talk. If you give me your email address, I'll write."

"Okay." I scribbled it down for her and handed it to her. "Bye."

"Bye." She hurried-off.

And I never heard from her again... Indeed, she seems to have a new relationship. A new life. And she's keen on living it without any reminders of the past interfering with the present.

Fair enough. That I can understand.

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"Women. Can't live with 'em... pass the Beer-Nuts." -- George Wendt as Norm, Cheers.

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