Show me a picture (preferably of a woman, a good looking woman, a good looking woman at least half naked) and my mind will manufacture a story, a past, a future, a plot, a cast of characters, a set of motivations, spreading out from the picture through time and space.

But faced with reality, my mind will sometimes focus, for reasons I cannot fathom, on the strangest little details, obsessing on a gesture, a glance, a movement, a facial expression, until the real story, the real people, the real motivations, have faded away from a moment frozen in time, and I am left with only the impression of an image. It is frustrating as hell to have seen a story, to have lived a story, and to be unable to tell it, especially when they are stories about breathtakingly beautiful slender young brunettes flaunting their sexual power. Well, maybe I've hit upon it! You see how useful it is to write things down, to make sentences and paragraphs, and order out of chaos? To structure the madness of reality with the pure beauty of English? Perhaps they have simply taken my breath away. Perhaps if I write of them now, fully understanding the nature of my difficulty, I can wrangle a story or three out of them in the future.

The most recent, before last night, was at a family wedding. I come from a large family, and the cousins alone make for a large wedding. This particular wedding reception, with its loud music, raucous dancing, too much drinking, and a series of attractions, flirtations, and almost couplings, some I saw personally, some told to me by my wife, some told to her by my youngest cousin under circumstances I never fully gathered, would make for a delicious story, or perhaps several. But the only image I can consistently recall is waiting outside, before the wedding, with my wife and several family members, my youngest cousin, dressed in a form-fitting dress that revealed her long and shapely limbs as she strode purposefully, almost demurely, on high heels that accentuated the legs of a young woman delighting in her new-found sexuality, purposefully ignoring, yet clearly enjoying, the stares of all of us who watched her approach the church.

The one that has driven me crazy the longest happened decades ago, when my wife and I were first married, just after I had graduated and my wife was still in school. Wait, that's misleading. My wife has been in school her whole life, sometimes as a student, sometimes as a teacher, sometimes both. But I digress. The girl in question was young and sultry, pale, with dark curly hair, beautiful curves, a face, my God, the kind of face you could gaze at all day. And that's all I can really remember. Her face. I can't even remember her name. She was involved in a triangle, herself, a guy, another girl, jealousy, revenge, all the pairings you might imagine, and possibly more. Great stuff for a writer. But I can't. I can't get past her face. I can't even get past her eyes. I remember coming home one day to our tiny apartment, finding this girl and my wife studying. Lying on the floor, six feet from each other, books open, gazing. Gazing at each other. Didn't even notice me come in. Her eyes drew me in too. Not that she noticed. The laundry, which my wife had promised to do, still lay heaped and undone in the laundry basket. I remember taking it down to the washing machines. I remember being down there a while, the elevator having a tendency to disappear for long periods without warning. She was gone when I got back up, and my wife was starting dinner in a very cheerful mood. But that girl's eyes, her staring eyes, never left me. Every time I sit down to write of her, I am lost in them again.

Finally, last night, reduced to a single gesture, a fluid motion, a reaching down, a grabbing hold, a raising of the arms. I don't remember her name either, but she is a graduate student, a teaching assistant in several of my wife's classes, young and tan, lithe and muscular, thin of face, long and dark of hair, large of breast, long of leg, flat of stomach, and round and firm of ass. The gesture, the motion, in question, came as she walked down the hall of my house from the bathroom to the living room, observed unseen from the door of the bedroom where I supposedly slept. Her hands, as she passed, grasping the hem of her t-shirt at her hips, arms crossed in front of her, rising over her head, back bared, breasts bouncing free, nipples hard, face flushed, focused, ready, confident. The audacity of it! Reach, grab, raise, while walking. Walking? More like stalking. Reach, grab, raise, exposing. Knowing. Knowing she was wanted. Such awesome arrogance. I almost came on the spot.

Somewhere in there is a story waiting to be told. A story of her arriving at the house to work on lesson plans, a story of me answering the door to find her, stunningly braless in t-shirt and jeans. A story of work stretching into dinner. A story of me cooking for them. A story of my fantasies at dinner. A story of dinner stretching into conversation and socializing, and drinks. A story of my wife falling asleep. But of course in reality it was I who started to nod off; reality, at least my reality, being generally much tamer than my stories. It was I who stumbled off to bed, lying half awake in our bedroom down the hall when the door opened further with a creak. Perhaps, if I can get past the image of that motion, of her stride, of her full breasts, her muscular back, her look of determination, I shall write a story of a supple young woman sneaking into my room. "Fast asleep" I heard my wife report. It wasn't true. Dazed, I rose to correct her, had started to the door when I heard the young woman excuse herself and start up the hall. Perhaps, if I can get past the grasping hands, the crossed arms, the lifing, the freedom, the utter freedom of that motion, I shall write a story of how our eyes met, how my arm shot out, how I dragged her into the bedroom, kissing her roughly. In reality I watched and waited. Waited and watched. Watched through the half open door as this gorgeous young woman returned down the hall. Stalking, her feet bare sinking into the deep carpet, her eyes sparkling, her mouth smiling, her nostrils flairing, her hands reaching, arms crossing, hands grasping, arms lifting, shirt rising, back flexing as the shirt passed over and up, breasts bouncing as the shirt passed up and over (how did that feel on her nipples?), long dark hair tossed with a quick flick of her long neck, smile wider, mouth open as the shirt, tossed with a quick flick of her long wrist, sailed through the air in front of her, down the hall, back to the livingroom, where my wife, I am sure, lay waiting.