Author and Columnist
When I was little, I thought the whole world was black and white before I was born.
You always were a bit solipsistic.
Yesterday, I spent time with Nancy. Her parents told her that they trusted me in general and to drive her places, a distinction shared by few of her friends.
Driving, yes. I would not otherwise trust you with a daughter.
I was thoroughly impressed with her knowledge. Better, Nancy had the strong teashop smell of Sarah, winning her subconscious favor.
Do you know what young women don't find charming? Telling them that they are more attractive because they smell of other women you desire. Using the same shampoo is not grounds for a crush.
she was snuggling against me and it was admittedly difficult to resist her charm.
A little bit of willpower would have taken you a long way.
Having brought up Nancy a few times, it may be proper to discuss why you did not pursue her beyond admittedly enjoying that she crushed on you.
The stock answer was that she was too young, which was accurate. Keep away from people in high school, even though you are only a year and change into college. However, Eileen was a proximal age. You would not have hesitated if she were willing. So, why not with Nancy?
In a roundabout way, it was age. Had she been a college student already, she would have come out the other side of a natural uncertainty, a sort of half-formedness. I can't say that she looked any more inappropriately youthful as Eileen -- the pictures I have suggest that neither girl could be mistaken for undergrads -- but it seemed more pronounced in her. She would have been closer to your type if she were twenty. At sixteen, she was not. You have compunction enough not to want to harm her (or limit your freedom to make considerable romantic mistakes with others).
If you care to be forgiven, I don't know what forgiveness is to be had here, but you feel bad about how things turned out with Nancy. As she declined to connect with you after, you may have dinged her a little or proven yourself not to be worth her attention.
There were a few tense moments when I had to push the idea that I do not think I can be more than a friend to her and that I must be good, that she likes me because I am good. Kissing her several time and both of us trying to resist letting more happen did not help matters.
"Kissing" is a generous underemphasis of what you tried to do. You did try to fondle her over her clothes, which she mercifully put a stop to.
Also, these were not chaste pecks. Tongues were involved.
If more had occurred between you -- and it should not have -- you might have felt differently at keeping your distance. This is not encouragement, just how you react to anything past first base at your peril.
She came with me to the play and seemed disappointed that I couldn't lay with her in the grass and talk further on the matters that make up life.
I may be disappointed by this as well. However, the parentheses of activities around theatrical productions do not allow much time for lying in grass with young women whose lips you have tasted hours before and whose bra you may have given a squeeze.
To be quite honest, I was very confused - am very confused - and was grateful to just have time to sit and think. Or not to think. Just time, perhaps.
To feel guilty and regretful, you mean.
She was very sweet and charming at the Palace. A princess indeed. The only real faux pas occurred when Zack was jokingly flirting with Kate. So I, in a likewise manner, grabbed her away and said, "No! Mine." She smiled wryly and stated definitively, "I am no one's."
I wish you both believed that.
And I would contest that the, shall we say, off-coloredness discussed below was much more of a faux pas. It simply was not, for the greater part, yours.
Thus, as she put it, "our worlds would collide."
Your worlds remain juxtaposed but do not intermingle much. You do not act at New Paltz. If she still works lighting, I cannot tell you.
I was a mite bit embarrassed when she told several racist jokes to my friends, as they do not know her and do not know that she certainly is not a racist.
Several?
I affirm that Kate is not racist, but it is more than bad manners when meeting new people, no matter how she wants to unsettle you.