Shopping for her that Christmas had become quite a problem. She was my best friend, and in a perfect world, we'd be dating. But as anyone can tell you with a quick look around...this world ain't perfect. I lusted after Dana with the lust only the truly infatuated and completely unsatisfied can. If I were to open my personal mental dictionary and look up the word 'perfection', Dana's smiling face would be staring right back at me.

And, if you listened to her personal definition of 'perfect man,' I fit the bill completely...except for one crucial detail. She wanted someone "Funny, warm, sensitive, caring, not afraid to show his emotions..." And then, always, she would add, to my chagrin, "...oh, and sexually attractive."

Well, if you haven't guessed by now in which catageory I'm deficient in, let's just say that I am funny, warm, sensitive, caring and not afraid to show his emotions. GET THE PICTURE? What I did have was an absolutely undying love for this woman, a love that was fueled by lots of late-night and early-morning fantasies. She once asked me if I fantasized about 'us,' and if so, what were my fantasies.

I told her quite honestly that I did have sexual fantasies about her, but in the overall scheme of things, that was only about one-tenth of the total fantasy/sex content ratio. The rest of the time, it was about dumb, romantic things like walking down the beach hand in hand, having dinner in some classy resturant together, doing the dishes together, having people over to 'our' apartment... dumb, adolescent stuff like that, stuff I craved with every fiber and nerve ending of my being. And I knew with the deepest, most moral and emotional certainity that if we ever did get together, she would be popping her head against a brick wall for taking so damn long.

I'm one of those guys who's always on the outside looking in; a little smarter than the rest of the people around me, a little funnier, a little more 'hip', in a weird, Nick-at-night kind of way. When it came to answering the questions on Jeporady!, I had no equal. When it came to playing Trivial Pursuit, everyone wanted to be on my team. When a female friend bought a new VCR and had no idea how to program it or get cable channels, they always, invariably called me. Manual? Who needed a manual? I'd scoot down in front of it, pushing my glasses back up my nose as I instantly decoded what the problem was and fixed it. If it was electronic and had some way of interfacing with the world, I could figure it out.

It was the flesh and blood computers, the one with the two large disk drives in front and the core memory underneath that I could never reverse-engineer and decode. They spoke in a language as forigen to me as binary is to most people. I swear to God, if I heard the "Let's Just Be Friends," speech one more time, I was going to kill something.

But Dana was different. She knew on some private mental plane that I was hopelessly in love with her, but didn't make me feel bad about it, didn't ridicule me about it. She rejected my affections without making me feel bad, and in my own private hell, that earned her high marks. So we remained friends, good friends, the kind of friend that will call you last thing at night and first thing in the morning...just to talk. Just to hear the sound of each other's voice, the sound of each other's laughter coming over the line. We had private jokes, inside little comments that we threw back and forth like a personal, private code that only we could understand.

If it were possible to have a love affair without the sex, Dana and I did. We were closer than most boyfriends and girlfriends, and we revelled in it.

But, as with all things of this nature, there were invisible lines drawn, unspoken but understood limits that we could never cross. Or, actually, that I could never cross. You see, it was somehow OK for her to call me and tell me about her latest boyfriend and what a stud he was between the sheets, and how he treated her like a queen. But it was not ok for me to talk about the women in my life (what few there were...) because that hurt her feelings. I know, this sounds incredibly masochistic, but those were the rules, and I stood by them and tried to quell the little flutter in my heart and the twisting knot of agonizing pain in my gut I felt every time Dana started dating someone new. That's not even mentioning the times I'd call her first thing in the morning and some man's voice would answer. Those times absolutely fucking sucked.

Or the times she would regale with me tales of her sexual activity. Like the time she and one boyfriend flooded out the bathroom because of some bathtub gymnastics. Or the weekend she spent in front of a fireplace with another guy, twisting their bodies into impossible positions for hours on end.

I know.

Love's a bitch.

So here I was, Christmas shopping for the most important woman in my life, and there were still rules I had to follow: Nothing too personal. Nothing even vaguely sexual. Safe things, like sweaters and books and videos. Possibly a CD or two. But nothing personal, private... nothing that she could cherish and treasure for the rest of her life as having come from my hands and heart.

Oh, sure, I'd broken the rule once or twice. Like the time I sent her a vibrator as a joke. She told me that there was a dearth of male action twixt her sheets, and I helped her out with this glow-in-the-dark, plug-into-the- wall latex vibrator that was huge. She loved it, and we nicknamed it "Glow Worm."

I'd given her a priceless Japaneese porcelin mask to hang on her bedroom wall. It'd cost me almost six hundred dollars. It was a birthday present. You know what she gave me that year?

A keychain.

In the shape of a guitar.

I don't even play guitar!

So, anyway, being the miserable, self-abusing asshole that I am, I was shopping for Christmas and trying to figure out what to get her. The mall had shown me everything it had, and I had one of two reactions to every possible gift:

Reaction #1 : Not personal enough.

Reaction #2 : Too personal.

I hate Christmas. What did I have to look forward to? My parents were long since dead, my sister had her own thing going with a husband and two kids and her husband's entire family. She'd made it more than clear that as long as I sent her a check every month, she'd be happy if I stayed away. My brother was off in some far-away country with the Navy SEALs, and so was not going to be celebrating Christmas this year, unless it was to stick a Bowie knife in his mouth, sneak up and slit the throat of some unsuspecting guard somewhere. Dana was spending it with her new boyfriend, Ralph.

He was ten years younger and looked like a male model, and if you could believe Dana, had this thing between his legs that would make Mr. Ed hang his head in shame. So much for my Christmas Eve.

Anyway, I was passing through the lingere department when something inside me snapped. I wasn't going to be sorry for my feelings anymore. I was going to give this fucking woman a real gift, a gift from the heart. Something classy and sexy at the same time, something beautiful and precious and wonderful, just like the way I saw her.

I spoke to a salesclerk and explained what I was looking for. She smiled at me and asked Dana's size. I had all that information in my address book, under "D." I read off all of Dana's measurements, obtained by going through her closet when she was in the bathroom. (It always amazed Dana that I managed to get everything right without asking...hehe...)

She brought it out and wrapped it in front of me. It was a teddy, emrald green with black lace trimming. I'd seen it on a mannaquin, and knew immediately that Dana's long curly blonde hair and sea-foam blue-green eyes would do that outfit justice. A little part of me was sad that I'd never get to see her in it. A couple of years ago I was planning to get her another present along those lines, and she somehow found out about it and was kidding me on the phone.

"Hey," I'd said, "I won't buy you anything I don't get to see you in." And that had been the end of it; she hadn't had a response to that statement.

But this time it was different. I asked the salesclerk for a small card, like the one you send with flowers. I thought for a moment, and then remembered a little ditty from Willy Shakespeare:

"To me, fair friend, you never can be old

For as you were when first your eye I eyed,

Such seems your beauty still."

I wrote it on the card and taped it to the outside of the box. It was three days to Christmas, and I planned to drop it off at her apartment that night. But I got paged by work, and had to go in and rewrite some system utilities, and that turned into a forty-hour programming marathon. It was Christmas Eve, about noon, when I finally emerged from my office and told me secretary that I was calling it a night.

I walked in the door to a ringing telephone.

"Hello?"

"Rick!" The voice was Dana, and she was crying.

"What's the matter, honey?"

"That bastard Ralph! He broke up with me today!" She started crying again, long wracking sobs that tugged at my heart and made me wish evil things to happen to Ralph. Things involving anthills and honey.

"I'll be right over," I said, and hung up. The drive to Dana's apartment took six minutes. I walked in, as I always did when I knew she was alone, and found her on the couch, feet curled under her, crying into her hands. I went to her, sat on the couch, and gathered her shaking form into my arms, doing my wonderful best friend/dutch uncle/good buddy routine.

She felt wonderful in my arms, like she belonged there. I was just over six feet, and Dana stood five-nine. Five-eleven in heels, so when we danced on those rare occassions, her head fit wonderfully on my shoulder. I chased those thoughts out of my head as I stroked her back.

"What happened?" I asked softly.

"He c-c-called me, and t-t-t-told me that he d-d-d- didn't w-w-want to s-s-s-see me anym-m-m-more," she sobbed. "He s-s-said that he m-m-met someone else!" She dissolved into another round of crying, and I let her get it out of her system. We had this routine down pat. Dana would cry, I would hold her, I would tell her what a bastard he was and that he didn't know what he was giving up (and thus saying without saying that I knew what he was giving up and was ready, anytime, to take up the slack...but that's part of the dynamics of the relationship...)

So we went through the script. Neither of us flubbed a line. Finally, all cried out, she asked, "What are your plans tonight?"

"I don't have any," I said.

"Oh, Good. I'd hate to be alone." It sort of annoyed me that she automatically assumed that I'd spend the night with her, but there wasn't much I could do about it now. So, we made dinner, ate it, did the dishes (just like in my fantasy,) and sat down to watch "It's a Wonderful Life" on TBS. She loves that movie, and as usual, was in tears by the end. I must admit, I was also a little damp around the edges, and she knew it. I didn't care if she did or not.

We sat in silence, with her head on my chest as the credits rolled, and then the screen went to commercial.

We started talking about Jimmy Stuart, and what a great actor he was, always playing sweet, warm, sensitive men.

"Now why can't I meet someone like that?" Dana complained. "Someone kind and sweet and warm and funny and sensitive?" I'd heard this perhaps a thousand times before, and each time had kept silent. My arm was around her shoulder, and my hand reflexively closed, gripping her tightly, so great was my sudden anger.

Keeping my voice even so as not to let on, I finally said what I'd been waiting to say for as long as I can remember. "Yeah, it must be pretty tough to find someone like that. I mean, someone so funny that you can just call them on the phone whenever you're sad and he'll cheer you up. Someone so warm that whenever something happens to him, either good or bad, the first thing he wants to do is call you and share it with you. It's so hard to find someone sensitive, someone who cries at the end of "Wonderful Life." Someone so sweet that they write poetry to you for your birthday." I had done all of those things, and I knew she knew it. Sarcastically, I added, "Yeah...must be real tough finding someone like that."

She didn't say a word. I dropped my hand from her shoulder and walked into the kitchen to get another beer. I was disgusted with myself for finally saying it...at ten to midnight on Christmas Eve.

"Oh!" Dana said, sitting up. "Your present! I almost forgot!" She ran into her bedroom and returned with a box. It had polka-dotted wrapping paper and looked like a huge dice. (die?) I took it and opeened it carefully, smiling at her.

I pulled out a coffee mug. It said "Bestest Best Friend" on it. I exclaimed that it was just what I needed, and that I loved her for the sentiment. I kissed her on the cheek and she smiled at me with shiny eyes. I told her I'd be right back, and retireved my present from my car.

Suddenely, I was scared. She was going to freak. I knew it.

I handed her the box and watched carefully as she opened it, ready with an excuse or an explination as soon as she saw it and went ballistic.

Amazingly enough, that didn't happen. She read the card and smiled at me. (I'm sure that I'd have to explain it to her later...she was never a Shakespeare fan...) Then she folded back the tissue paper and saw what it was. Squealing, she lifted it by the straps and held it in front of her.

"It's gorgeous," she breathed. "And my favorite color!" (Actually, her favorite color is forest green, not emrald green, but I wasn't going to correct her at this point.) She suddenely leaned over and kissed me straight on the lips.

Let me make something clear at this point. The entirity of our physical contact over the past six years had been two wonderful hugs, some slow dancing at a mutual friend's wedding, several kisses on cheeks here and there... and this kiss.

It was over in an instant, but it was an instant that would be burned into my mind forever.

She jumped up and ran into her bedroom, slamming the door behind her. I knew that she was trying it on, and I wondered if she remembered what I'd said about giving her sexy clothing. I turned my attention to the TV and tried hard not to imagine Dana stripping her clothes off to try this new present on. I flipped around and found some chior singing "Joy To The World" on cable and watched the sopranos reaching for those high notes. My mind began to drift and fantasize, and in my dream I imagined us married, on Christmas morning, watching our children opening presents and giggling, me standing behind Dana, my arms around her waist, the both of us in comfortable, fuzzy bathrobes as we watched our prodigy open their gifts. I got lost in that comfortable fantasy, turning it over and over, looking at it from different angles, the way a film director might, looking for the best shot.

And then, as always, that sad little tug at my heart as the fantasy machine ran out of steam and told me that it would never be, that I was chasing rainbows again, that I should be happy with things the way they stood, and that I should find someone to love, someone that would love me as much as I loved Dana.

The idea that there might actually be someone like that was, of course, ludicrious.

Snorting to myself, I changed the channel to HBO. "Ghost" was playing, and I watched Demi Moore and Patrick whathisname make slow love after smearing clay over each other. That closeness, that physical intimacy that was made so much better by the already-established emotional intimacy made me teary eyed. And as always, when I watched two characters in love kiss on screen, I felt like I was having a heart attack. This little pain starts in the middle of my chest, about heart-high, and then makes a sharp left and descends...and then slowly fades away. I'm not sure what that is, but I feel it. The most intense I ever felt it was when I saw Dana kissing her boyfriend in the mall. She didn't see me, didn't know I was there, and I watched them osculate hungrily, tongues meeting to play on that silken field, and I wanted to kill that man with my bare hands.

I heard the door open behind me, and I noticed the clock on the VCR. It was 12:30am...Christmas Morning. Dana had been in her bedroom for forty minutes. I wondered if she'd brought Glow Worm out to play.

"Ghost is on," I said, without looking. I knew that it was one of her favorite movies. There was no response, and I detected that she was standing in the doorway to her bedroom. Curious, I looked over my shoulder and felt my heart sieze and the breath lock in my chest.

Dana was standing in the doorway, leaning against one arm held above her head, all her weight on one leg, the other bent slightly and held forward of the other...a model's pose. And she was modeling my teddy.

"Like it?" she said. Her voice was a husky, deep- throated whisper. I was speechless. I nodded softly. "I remembered what you said a few years ago...about not giving me anything you couldn't see me in. And then I remembered what I said tonight about looking for a nice guy. And then I finally listened to what you had to say, Rick. I really heard you this time."

Still speechless, all I did was nod.

"C'mere," she said, softer still. I stared at her, my mouth dropping open. Surely, she couldn't mean...could she? My question and prayers were both answered when she crooked her finger at me.

On shaking legs I stood and walked to her. She dropped the arm that had been on the jamp and let it fall on my shoulder. She curled her fingers, and she was suddenely scratching the back of my neck lazily, as one might scratch a cat behind the ears. Believe me, if I could have, I would have purred. Her touch on my skin, this first electrical, sexual touch sent bolts of passion shooting through my body. I wanted so desperately to feel and smell and taste every inch of her that I shook with desire.