For the past several nights, I have been lying in wait, dreaming of a visit from The Seducer.

I like giving this title to a man, heralding him as my own personal antihero.

The Seducer.

It’s provocative; it’s mysterious; it’s slightly dark and sinister; and it’s sexy as hell.

At the same time, it also has this romantic quality. It foretells a misfit story of longing and loneliness.

I am well-suited to such a tale. Perhaps even fated for it.

Without my ever giving voice to a desire for such a person, The Seducer has always materialized.

This started as if on cue. At the first signs I showed of becoming a woman, teenage boys came to call for me at my bedroom window. It never struck me as odd that they couldn’t find their way to the front door, that they didn’t show up until light’s absence demanded a honing of their senses.

And anyway, that would have been far less interesting.

How I loved their pleading whispers, just the other side of the screen, waking me from a perspiry sleep, beckoning me out into the night’s cool air. How I loved to pull back the curtains, like a Rapunzel, like a Juliet, and see those sweet smiles.

But more than any of it, how I loved to crawl out of that window with the help of their hands on my hips, to meander the dark as though it had been bequeathed to me. Climbing fences, skinny dipping in pools, our limbs entangled on dew-wet trampolines, hot breath on my neck.

And afterwards, giggling until lights went on. Taking off running until there was a fire in my lungs. Never keeping up. Those wonderful boys who were somehow strong enough to just grab my hand and pull me along. The sensation of flying.

As I write about it now, it is as if nothing has ever brought me closer to unrestraint. Which explains, I suppose, how I never outgrew it. How it evolved and I evolved with it. Until anything that was supposed to happen in broad daylight, anything normal, lost its appeal. I couldn’t help it. Living properly? Forget it. Why?

Why would I want anything that cloying and obvious when so much more was being offered to me in the shadows?