So the crush still lives on for another day ... maybe because I feel like it's 9/11 all over again and I'm finally feeling the urge to merge. For some reason I feel poetic about the whole thing, so here goes.

Ode to a beautiful man with sparkling blue eyes, who haunts my waking hours and sometimes my nights. You scare me. You distract me from my purpose, from my true ambition in life, the one I've been looking for all my life and now have finally found after all these years. I have been resisting you since February and managed to do a pretty good job of it unitl these last few weeks.

Where did I go wrong?

You make all my other loves, except of course the first one, pale in comparison, but then you are both Fire signs and I have I think, subconsciously avoided your type all these years. But now you've come into my life, at a time just when I am starting to feel comfortable with my wonderful state of single bliss.

I do not know what it is about you that fascinates me to no end, that brings me waves of joy and fun lust whenever I think about you. You're a marina boy type, even though I know you don't live in that neighborhood and I am so not a marina girl.

I feel despondent to think that all the other loves in my life never amounted to what I feel about you. I feel an unwilling victim to your masculinity, your smile, your hunkaliscious bod, your witty sense of humor and your cute smile.

And god, you're such a guy-guy. Not a wimpy northern california type who's afraid to be a real "guy-guy". I never felt what I feel for you, not even for Brian and Steve, my twin loves from a few years ago. Men I thought I couldn't live without, men I thought were this girl's idea of a mouth watering biscuit, ready to be devoured and savoured for each delicious bite.

No, I think I worship you and I've never worshipped any man in my life. And it was like from the get go, when I saw from across the room and my heart started jumping at the sight of such a beauty. But that's all I thought you were, beautiful but a distraction. And so I ran, and so I walked the other way when I saw you coming and you responded in kind. But life, with its odd sense of humor, has kept you in my orbit and I found myself unable to ignore your considerable and most incredible charms, especially when I sat with you in class every week.

And you are still in my life and I am falling desperately and deeply in crush. I tried to intellectualize what I feel about you, putting my crush down to pure animal like lust, because after all, you are beautiful specimen of a man. And what girl wouldn't feel what I feel. I mean, I've even watched the teeming hordes of women fall all over themselves to talk to you and I told myself I never wanted to compete for such a prize.

I've never believed in love at first sight. I used to laugh at friends who told me they looked across the room and saw the person they were destined to spend the rest of the life with, who they ended up marrying and now live with happily ever after. No, I believed in lust at first sight, but never love. And yet, I feel like I'm in love, even though I don't know you very well. God, I don't even know what you smell like, what you dream about, what you fear and most of all, what you love.

I don't kid myself into thinking that you might feel the same way. I look at your gestures of friendship, and although I secretly fantasize at what they might mean, I try not give in to my cursh. I think that you are just a nice guy and I'm just part of group that's trying to evolve into a community of support and friendship in art.

After all, you've never really come out and done anything to make me feel special. But then, I've never made you feel special and I know I never will. At least, not without a strong sign of encouragement from you. And even then, I don't know if I want you to know how much you make me feel. I don't ever want anyone to know how much I lose my sense of control around you, least of all you. I don't know if I could be that vulnerable again with someone. I don't know if I could tear the hardened scabs of hurt that have formed over my heart. I don't know if I want my heart ripped to shreds again. I mean, I know I would survive such a rending, even from you, but I'm afraid that I would hurt for a long time, maybe even forever.

My best friend keeps telling me that I take you and my crush all too seriously, that you could merely be a conduit to me meeting my one true love and that if we were to ever get together, you'd be at least a blast to date.

But I want you to be more than a blast. I want you to be a joy that is a part of my life for the rest of my life. And contrary to what I've always believed, if I can't have you as the love of my life, I don't want you in my life at all. That would be way too painful.

And so I have no choice but to take this crush one day at a time. I thought I was over you last week, I really did. But this morning, you were in my thoughts and it made me so deliriously happy to think of you, that I got slammed head first back into crush mode. The joy you bring to my heart is equal to the joy I'm having thinking about my wingie thingies. And I can't ignore this most heavenly of gifts. That one single person brings such happiness and joy to me is like a miracle. And isn't bringing love and joy what were all divinely meant to bring to each other?