35 years on, I sit on a couch for a $140 an hour and remember how I had apologized for three hours before I kissed the girl who’s asked me to her house when her parents were out. I was helpless to tell her that I did not want to be the person who took what they wanted from me without asking. I did not want her to be the boy I had been and who still lived inside me. And the girl was annoyed and uncharmed and her parents came home within minutes of my fumbling ask and I went home feeling like a failure but somehow like I’d done it right.
And when I look up from the memory, I am lost in the tears of my helplessness. I want to help that boy. To let him know that he is not wrong to want. That asking is not a wrong.
