Teresa and I fought a lot. One day while driving home from work, in my head I was going, "I'll say this and then she'll say that and then I'll reply this and she'll come back with..." By the time I got home, I was so angry with her... This must have been happening a lot, but that was the first time I saw that I had actually had an argument with me being the only person involved. This was the guy that didn't think anything was wrong with him -- that only wanted analysis in order to "learn."

I used to often cross the street if I saw someone that I knew coming toward me. I didn't want that person to reject me, so I wouldn't know whether or not to greet them. So to avoid the problem, I would avoid the guy -- pretend I didn't see them.

When I was fifteen years old, I was by myself one night at a carnivalwhen I felt this warm hand in mine. It was a girl who was with her friend. I bought myself a ticket to watch a wrestling match -- she must have bought one too, although I don't remember this part. I do remember holding her hand all through the match and back outside and at some point the hand was gone. I never knew what that girl -- nor her friend, looked like. To this day I don't know.

Twice I was sitting in a booth at a drugstore when a girl asked if she could sit with me. I said, "Yes" without looking up. I never looked at people's eyes -- or even at their feet, as I remember. Both times, I never knew who the girl was. Once the girl that asked was with her mother, the other time she was alone.

Years later, married, I was standing in line at the bank and I looked down at a small boy and got a look I had never seen before. I turned away before it registered. "What the hell was that?" I wondered.

For years after that I would think of that incident and wonder what it was that I had seen. I could not imagine what it might be. Eventually I found out that it was a friendly look. I looked at someone who looked at me in a friendly manner and I didn't know what it was because I had never seen it before! Man, was I a mess. And I didn't even know it -- had not an inkling.

I used to go to parties with Terry when she was in college and I would sit in a corner pretending to be engrossed in a book or a magazine that I picked up. I thought that that way nobody would know that I was shy. Hah! Silly boy. I thought that everyone knew how to "party" except me. Without ever consciously realizing it, I always hoped I would meet someone who would tell me how to live. It seemed like everyone else knew something that was going on except me.