By Pfantazm

	It started out simply enough. It started for the simplest of reasons. I was bored. My roommates were both Back East in Ontario for a couple of weeks at least and I was bored, bored, bored. Fortunately, there's the Internet. I had recently discovered a new (to me) online game based on creative writing. The site was divided into a large number of rooms where people with similar interests can find each other. Backstory: the other reason I had been on the Internet so much lately was to look at nude pictures. Of men. Since you can't tell from where you are I'm male also. I had been coming to the fairly certain conclusion that I was gay and I think I have recently accepted this of myself. I don't know how my friends and family would take it. I have educated guesses, but I have faith in my ability to be astonished. So for the first time I was trying things out in the game's (apparently) gay room, which had the unassuming title of "Closet". Fairly misleading, I thought, but it's the most likely choice. The Closet was also my first adult-language room, which I had always avoided because I thought it made the game easier. Anyway, after playing a while, I did a location check, to find out whether there were other Canadians about. I started off by saying I was in Vancouver. There are usually quite a lot of us around, and that day was no exception. One player chatted back that he was from Vancouver too and asked what part. I told him downtown. He gave the intersection he was living near, which was on streets I recognized, even as a newcomer to the city. He asked again where I was. I gave him my street name. He suggested we get in touch. He gave me his e-mail address in a private message. I reciprocated. Since I was on a metered ISP I had to log off very soon after that. Nothing more of interest to us happened that day. The next day when I checked my mail, I found a message from the player I'd contacted. He said the Closet was the gay room and that occasionally people that don't strictly fit sometimes blundered in. Which category did I fit into? Up until then I hadn't told a soul that I suspected this about myself. Was I to out myself to a total stranger? I decided, what the hell? He already assumes so (This is a he, right? He signs his messages Robert, so assumptions all around.), and if he'd been reading what I'd written over the course of the game, he'd get the distinct impression that I was gay, so let's say so. But let's hedge it as much as we can, yes? I sent back an encouraging e-mail, giving him confirmation and my degree of closetedness. I also asked him some completely personal questions, just to keep things somewhat even. We sent a few messages back and forth, and eventually he suggested I phone him. He gave me his phone number and said the next move was mine. I mulled for a while. Being the suspicious bastard that I am, I immediately considered the possibility that I was being drawn out for a gay-bashing or a theft or something. The problem with this theory, however, is called the Bank Robber Problem. Have you ever seen a caper movie where the thieves go to rob a bank, but since the security is so tight, they need all this nifty-neato hi-tech whiz-bang gadgetry to pull off the crime? This is where the plot breaks down. These guys had to spend a few million dollars to steal a few million dollars, after which, they retire. After splitting the take, of course. Better just to sell off the hardware to some stupider crooks and retire on that. Same deal here: why would a gay-basher log onto the gay room of an online game in the hope of encountering a handy victim? Hanging around the parking lot of the hated establishment of your choice was less fun, but ten thousand times more efficient, give or take a few. But, being the suspicious bastard that I was, I still checked out a few things. I had my target's phone number. With a criss-cross directory, I could get a handle on his location, just like you read in the P.I. books, but it was late and the library was closed. So I went out and hoofed it to the intersection where he said he lived. I found out there were a few residences around. So he could live right there. But there was no way to know. I tried everything I could think of. Was there an online criss-cross I could try? No. He had a Hotmail address like me. Could I use their directory to get his location? I couldn't coerce the directory to acknowledge his existence, although I could do so for myself and for others whose names and addresses I knew. I tried to recall the name of a business that I'd seen in that area and looked them up in the White Pages. The exchanges matched, implying that the number likely belonged in the same neighborhood as the business, but that was all. So I returned to the motive that was driving a lot of my actions this week: Sheer Boredom. If I didn't get out and do something, I'd go stir crazy. This guy could turn out to be a friend, and I had none that were native to this part of the country. I called him up. I got his answering machine. I left a message saying who I was, that I was interested in meeting and, in a fit of utter recklessness, what my phone number was. I hung up and beat myself up as a fool for exposing myself like that. But I had one foot in the quicksand now, and despite all of my paranoid fantasies, I had no clue what was coming up ahead. The next day he called me and we set up a time to get together. He suggested a café he knew about when I said I had no idea where we could meet. So at Friday at noon we would meet up in one of the booths of the café. So help me, I walked to the café a day early to scope it out. I swear I'm not usually so intense, but I wanted to know if I could find it in the first place, and to know how long it would take to get there on foot, since I hate driving in downtown. Everything established, I turned around and went home. Friday threatened rain. I actually got there a little early, but not by design. I was nervous and that made me walk faster. When I arrived, all of the booths in the corner were occupied, none of them by anyone matching Robert's description. He had said that he had very short hair, almost to the point of being shaved. This was all I had to work with. Well, if he couldn't get a booth, he'd just sit anywhere. The place wasn't so large that a search couldn't be made from the centre of the room. No one matched the description, though. I sat down off to one side and people-watched. After a while a man about my age came in with the correct kind of do. He placed an order for a coffee at the counter and made a quick sweep of the room. This could be him, but he didn't seem to take any special interest in the booths, and he ignored me despite the fact that I was watching him openly. (To be specific, staring at his head.) He took his coffee and sat down in another corner. So maybe that's not him. I wait a little longer. After about a minute a guy in a wheelchair rolls in. Head almost shaved. Could that be Robert? I do not believe that anyone should be thought less of because of anything they have no control over. Perhaps a wheelchair-bound individual might avoid admitting to it in an effort to foster the attitude that this should not be the first thought that enters your head when thinking of him. I believe this is a very healthy attitude. I aim for the same goals, and forgive me if ever I fail. But I think it's taking the concept too far when you are trying to come up with prominent ways to identify yourself to a stranger, and you begin your description with, "Well, I have no idea what I'll be wearing," as Robert had. Still, I could not eliminate this newcomer as a potential Robert. But he was a distant second on a list of two. It was now almost 12:10 and no third candidate had presented himself. I approached the coffee-drinker. "Robert?" I enquired wittily. That was the start of a good, if shaky, ninety-minute conversation. We discovered that we had a number of interests in common. Over the course of it I ordered lunch there and was served a monstrous sandwich, half of which I would end up carrying home. I apologized for being so long in getting myself lunch, explaining that it was the size of the sandwich that held them up. I'd peeked behind the counter to watch its construction, all those tiny scaffolds and little men in hard hats. It would have been finished sooner had there not been a union strike. He laughed. I was really enjoying this. For most of my life I've been an unsocial creature, only relatively recently coming to the realization that it might be worth trying to get to know other people, and that they would likely not be like the kids in grade school. Robert was very easy to talk to. Finally, Robert said that he had some errands to run, but that we would walk together as long as we were headed in the same direction. We stopped in at the bank. I waited off to the side and considered my good fortune while Robert got in line. A bank-employed busybody asked me if there was anything he could help me with, and I told him I was just waiting for a friend to conduct some business. I was being sincere about the friend part. I looked at Robert in line and got this weird idea that I knew him from someplace. That sounds dumb, but not from today, from sometime before today. During the course of our conversation, we'd covered where we'd lived all our lives. He was from the Montreal area, I was from the Toronto area. I'd gone to university in Southern Ontario, he hadn't. We'd even discussed places we'd travelled on vacation. I was positive that until two months ago, when I moved to Vancouver, we hadn't ever been in the same geographical area. So why did he look so familiar? Well, his face sorta looks like my cousin's from home. But his haircut makes his head look all the wrong shape. Actually, a friend of mine from back home kept his head almost shaved and if you mushed the two together you'd get Robert, but the two of them had never met. Oh wait, yes they had. While my friend and I were doing research for a project, we ended up at the community center where my cousin worked, though I didn't know that was where he worked, and you idiot, you're stalling. You know why he must look familiar. It must be one of those. What else could it be? And then my mind conjured up the image of Robert, smiling and laughing, about two feet away and to my left. My head was turned to face him. There was beige behind him. That's all. Just one near-static image. Oh, fuck, what are those doing coming back? Flashback. Well, not really. I have no memory of the following taking place, but my mother told me the story and she is not the sort of person to make things like this up. When I was two years old, I spoke to my mom about my other mother. She asked what I meant. I said, "You know, my other mother." Since the woman I was addressing was my biological parent, she was confused. She eventually got me to tell her what I was talking about. I told her, and note the use of the double past tense here, that when I had been seventeen, I had been killed in a motorcycle accident. Spooky. The obvious conlusion that everybody draws from this is that I remembered a past life. This is the only explanation I can think of. You think maybe I saw something on TV, and associated myself into it? Interesting theory, but why would I think my mom would know the dead character's mom from the TV? And why would I be watching something like that when I was really into "Sesame Street"? But wait, it gets better. You can't blame this one on TV. I have first-hand memories of these events and they may even be (hooray!) relevant to this story. When I was a little older, about eight, nine, or ten, I would have episodes where I would relive events as they happen. That's gibberish, I know, but I have always had trouble explaining this. I have a great analogy, though. Imagine that you watch one of those movie trailers on television. You know, the ads that give away all the best lines in the picture. Say you watch one of those, but you immediately forget that you've done so. The memory is still in your head, you just can't access it. Then you go to the movie and all of a sudden you recognize a scene and you find you can deliver the lines right along with the actors, even at the premiere. That's what my flashes are like. The only difference is that I don't get to see all the best parts of my life. My trailers are all the boring bits like sitting in the back of the family car as we pull out of the driveway of the Canadian Tire, heading home. Mom is saying something, but I'm not listening. I'm staring out the window at a house across the street that has a brown garage door and big house numbers. When this happened, I got an overwhelmingly strong sense of déjà vu. Not just the vague impression I'd been in a place before, but full color experience with stereo sound and with thoughts and attitudes included at no extra charge. Every friend I've ever told about this has said, "If you see the winning lottery numbers, let me know." This indicates that they have not been listening, or still don't get it. Yes, it is still possible that I will have some flash of myself holding a winning ticket, but I will only be aware of it while I'm holding what I know to be the winning ticket in my hand. To put it another way, I can predict that the meteor will strike the house, coming through the roof and killing us all, but only a second or two before it happens. As a predictive power, this is useless. Dionne Warwick would not look twice at me. These things scared me as a kid. I didn't know what a psychic was. If asked, I'd probably tell you that Robin was Batman's psychic. So I abused my power. I changed things. If I felt a trailer coming on, I would do something other than what the trailer said I would do. That made it go away. In fact, the whole problem went away; I stopped having trailers. Maybe, I theorized, I outgrew them. Maybe I altered the path of my life so much that the trailers could never get started again. The Butterfly Effect, you know. Either way, they stopped coming. Until the day I was in the bank and saw my new friend sitting and laughing against a background of beige, remembering an instant of my own future. Oh fuck, what are those doing coming back? But this time is different. I've managed to latch onto a frame of the film. (See? It's a great metaphor.) I know about this one, and I can identify one of the actors. That implied I would be seeing Robert again. When Robert was done his banking, he said he hand other errands to run. He'd had fun, though, and he wanted to do this again. (I, of course, already knew that. Gods, being a psychic can make you arrogant.) I agreed and we went our separate ways. I obsessed for a good week after that. What did it all mean, I wanted to know. Fortunately, there was someone else I could bounce ideas off of. I had a good e-friend. I'd been telling her about my trailers not long ago, so I filled her in about Robert (although not precisely how we met, or the first thing we discovered we had in common) and the frame of the trailer I'd gotten. Thank the gods I had someone I could trust to talk about this. Everything had changed. Before the bank, I wouldn't think twice about telling someone I'd just met about the trailers (though thank the gods again it never came up with Robert), but now it was different. This was something that was happening now, and that made all the difference. It was like joking to your locker room buddies, telling them about that wetting-the-bed anecdote from your childhood. You realize who you're really close to when you wake up with yellow sheets. Even though I felt I trusted my electronic pen pal, I reflected that I still had so many secrets flying around. She didn't know, and was not going to know until I was good and ready to tell her, that I was gay. Ditto for my roommates, and they weren't as up-to-date on my trailers. My family knew none of it. I'd kept Robert in the dark about much of my "normal" life for fear of the consequences of his intrusion, and I didn't dare tell him about the trailers now. Why, even you, dear reader. I'm keeping secrets from you too. This story is autobiographical, and I'm being completely honest about my experiences and impressions, and if you ask, I would tell you just about anything. Anything, that is, except any scrap of personal information you could use to identify me. In that respect, I am as easy to get a hold of as a handful of air. I don't call myself Pfantazm for nothing. My e-friend and I discussed the subject for some time, but couldn't come to any conclusions. The only thing to do, we decided, was to continue contact with Robert. Robert had just gotten a new job, though, and was also looking for a new apartment. He had little or no spare time. In the interim, I thought a lot about Robert, our conversation, and the significance of the trailer. For the first time, I considered sexual relations with a person I'd met. You want confessions? You got 'em. I have never had any physical attraction for anyone. I have never looked at another human being, man or woman, adult or child, and thought, `Ooh, yeah, baby, I want me a piece of that." (I have, however, looked at cake that way. It's just not the same.) And before we travel any darker roads, the same goes for animals, plants (?), or any inanimate object (except dessert). So this thinking about Robert was heavy stuff for me. Maybe he was just the first person I thought I stood a decent chance with, or maybe there was something more. Either way, it was nice to know I could have urges just like everyone else. Oh, and need I say I was a 24-year-old virgin? I thought not. In the absence of alternatives, life went on. I picked up Roommate #1 at the airport and brought him home. I caught up with Robert on-line. Then one night, goddammit, it happened again. I had a trailer. I was in my bedroom, in just my underwear. (Briefs, if you must know.) I had the blinds open and the bed pulled away from the wall so I could stare out the window. The lights were off, but I was writing the fictional erotic story I'd been working on for months, and which may eventually see the light of day on this archive. I could make out what I was writing by the light of the display of my stereo, which is actually pretty bright. I was writing a particularly nice stretch when it began. I stopped writing. I looked out the window. My roommate was going to come through the door behind me and we would have a serious talk. No, we wouldn't; he wasn't coming. I looked down at the page. I looked over to the radio. The right song was playing. And it was over. I had recognized all of these events, even the bit about backtracking on my roommate. Would that be happening at some later date? Just what I need: trailers within trailers. But I was smiling. I wasn't making it up and I wasn't looking for some excuse to explain that image of Robert. It was all real. But I didn't want them back, did I? Intellectually, there was nothing to fear. I could not do anything about them, and I couldn't be harmed by them. I suppose I could be harmed during one, but if I was quick enough I might even avoid that. Then I thought of all the things the trailer implied. I did something very unusual. I tried writing in the dark. I'd never done it before but it looks as though I was bound to anyway. That meant I was also assured of getting the stereo I had. I'd been in the process of writing Part 4 of The Knight and the Thief, my gay erotica story, which meant that whether to biology or free-choice side of the argument wins, I was destined to be gay, and I would be accepting enough of the fact to write the story. The move to Vancouver that had caused so much grief within my family the last few weeks before I'd left, that I'd thought was a rare show of guts on my part, was reduced to an inevitable action. Hell, the book of lists where I got the names of my characters for the story, which I'd happened upon in a bargain bin at university and I'd thought was a true stroke of luck, wasn't. I'd never seen or heard of the book before I'd bought it, and I've never seen another copy since. The world had conspired to provide for me the opportunity, the money and the inclination to purchase that book. The implications were staggering and depressing. How much of my life is predetermined, then? From some of the most fundamental facts about my life to some of the smallest details, all the pieces had to be in place to make that trailer happen. Where was there room left to express my free will? Or did this mean that I have none? I didn't want to believe that. But how to get around the evidence? I didn't sleep well that night. The next day I had to take my jetsetting roommate over to the ferry terminal to go to Vancouver Island to visit his mother. I was having trouble concentrating on my driving. On the road, I asked him whether or not he'd felt the impulse to come into my room the night before. Well, I had to be sure, didn't I? He said no and asked why. I told him about the most recent trailer. He didn't have any constructive advice to give either. Where do you go to find out about this, without coming off feeling like an ass? Coming out as a psychic freak is just as daunting as coming out of the closet. I was telling everyone about the former because it's easier for an outsider to take, I think. When I got back home, I threw myself into a book. When the phone rang, I just about jumped out of my skin. (Who says you can't surprise a psychic? You just have to try harder.) It was my first cousin, once removed. (I went and looked up how that works in the dictionary just so I'd know what to call him. Talk about defining a relationship.) He was calling just to catch up on our lives. He was about the only person I knew in Vancouver before the move. We talked for a while when the answer I was looking for came to me. My cousin was into all that New Age stuff. Could he tell me anything? I gave a description of the trailers and asked him. Good lord, I might as well have asked a Jehovah's Witness what he does to fill his afternoons. He talked about every one of his beliefs over the next fifteen minutes. Do you remember what I said about the losing participant in the Robert Lookalike contest from the café? I believe it applies to your spiritual beliefs as well, although you do have a choice in that matter (if we have free will at all, but let's not go back there just yet). As far as I know, I'm the only member of my family who does not see my new-age cousin as the family joke. Every time they laughed, they hurt me as well. I've always been unconventional. For my whole life, I've always been the one who didn't fit in. Now this, I know, does not make me different from most teenagers (whih makes for a nifty bit of irony, when you think about it) but this does: I did not want to fit in. All my life the other schoolkids would pick on me. Why on God's green earth would I want to be one of them? So I cultivated my uniqueness. I became downright quirky. I have odd habits and weird hobbies. I encouraged the impression that my brain works slightly differently from everyone else's. I even did mundane things in offbeat ways. I enjoy swimming, and it was my idea to see how long it took me to swim for fifteen minutes. Go ahead. Read that again. It didn't make any more sense the second time, did it? Allow me to elucidate: how long would I have to be in the water in order to actually swim for fifteen minutes, not counting rest time? (Speedos, if you must know.) So when my family laughed at my cousin when he declared that he and I had been brothers in a past life, why should I think they wouldn't laugh at me? It was conversations like the one I had with him that made me wonder why I tolerated it. I did manage to pick out some things though. He had heard of something like this before; I was not unique in it. Meditation would be the most likely way to improve it: making the brain stop talking, he called it. Another temporary way to stop thinking is to laugh. Apparently gurus chuckle after making a sage statement. This releases the thought, or so it is said. He also said that if I was interested in finding out more, a magazine called "Shared Vision" advertised a weekly seminar on Fridays about alternative medicines and such. They were hosted by one of the editors' daughters. "You'd love her," he told me. "She's gorgeous." Apparently there were some energies my cousin wasn't picking up on. He finished and I thanked him, and we ended the call from there. Meditation, huh? I didn't see how this would help. What was I supposed to be opening myself up to while I meditated? Trailers? Was I supposed to get advanced memories of when I was trying my hardest to do nothing? That's useful. Why bother? Besides I have enough trouble trying to get my brain to take a break. I was constantly thinking about something. Christ on a bicycle! Wasn't I writing a scene like that when the trailer happened last night? My characters were just mellowing out and enjoying life. I went back and reread the passage I'd finished. It said, and I quote: Soon the water was cloudy with the soil and soap from their bodies, though it hadn't been that clear to start with. When they were done they all sat there enjoying the view[....] None of them spoke. Anything so complicated as words would ruin the feeling. And there I had been in the dark, picturing the scene and enjoying the view out my own window. That's when the trailer happened. I got into the state of mind of my characters and held it for a while after they'd moved on. Wasn't that what my cousin had described? Gearing down the brain? OH, SHIT! In the frame I have of Robert, he's laughing! He's looking my way and laughing! If I'd just done something or said something funny, I might have laughed myself when that frame happened. When you laugh, say the gurus, you stop thinking. All the other incidents I could remember from my childhood were the boring bits. When I was bored. Kids fidget when they're bored because nothing is occupying their minds. Was I occupying mine with trailers? The resurgence of trailers began when I'd been describing them to my e-friend, and when I'd been faced with two weeks of terminal boredom while my roommates were in Ontario. So here's a hypothesis: I'm open to trailers when I'm thinking less, or when I'm in a particular state of mind. Days went by. Still no contact with Robert. He had applied for a new job which would probably allow him more time off, but I didn't hear from him how it turned out. When he switched apartments, he lost ready access to his friend's computer. So he can't answer his e-mail except through an Internet café, and he can't play that game at all. He also didn't give me his new phone number. I was beginning to think the Big Trailer wasn't ever going to happen. I had another trailer, or almost did. And so ends the original story. I really wish I hadn't stopped just there because I don't remember what the trailer I almost had was. So what did happen? The Big Trailer hasn't happened. Yet. Robert looked about the same age in the bank as he did in the trailer, but that means nothing. As long as he's still shaving his head, there's hope. I did have another trailer, this time of my almost walking into a stack of globes, which was not a boring moment. That shot that theory all to heck. (I say `heck', because I just reread the first half of the story, realized how much of a potty mouth I was, and I'm trying to make up for it.) By this point, I've gone half a year without a single one. I figure they'll come and go at random. [Note: I had one a day or so after writing this part of the story, avoiding an argument. Now the theory goes that I have them if I think about having them. - Pƒ] What else has happened? Let me see. All of that took place around August 1998. I wrote the above over the course of about a week, and ran out of steam as it became ever more unlikely that Robert would get back in touch. As it was, he would bulk e-mail me and other friends and family twice more, then disappear entirely. In September came the breakdown that caused "Strings Attached" to be written. If I had not had that daymare (trust me; it's a word), I know I would have become truly suicidal. A few weeks later, the pressures built up again, and without permitting myself any more thoughts of ending it all, they had to leak out somewhere. I spilled my guts to my trustworthy e-friend, who has helped me a lot. A short time later, my troubles seemed over. In October, I gained employment. I was a seasonal employee at a large bookstore in the downtown of Vancouver. We won't go into the incident with the Native Transsexual Knife-Wielding Maniac because I wasn't there. There was, however, a really cute guy in the next section over. He seemed to take more than a passing interest in me as well. Nothing ever came of it, but then I'm not sure I was ready for it anyway. He bailed and went home for Christmas, and, due purely to bad management, I lost my job, ostensibly because they didn't like my hair. I spent a bitter month at home again and got my next job within a week of trying. During this time, my writing continued. "Strings Attached" went from thought to paper to text file to archive in one day. All five parts of The Knight and the Thief were completed. I got up the nerve to send the first one off. There were no catcalls. There were no harsh critics. For both stories, all I got were nice letters from people. I'll never get a lot of mail back, because my writing simply isn't the sort most people want to read. I get enough to keep my ego pleased. As for this story, I considered fictionalizing it. Start with what I had, then make the moment of the predicted trailer be the time when my first time with another man resulted in orgasm. Wouldn't that have been nice? From there, I'd write the second story in which my predictive trailer would leave Robert bleeding heavily and lying on asphalt. (Nothing personal, Robert.) Then the trick would be living with that and trying to use the information to find Robert in time when the incident really happens. The third story I won't tell you about because I may still use it. In the fourth one, I'd meet Mr. Cute Guy in Reference after Robert decides he can't take this anymore, and after being hit with a car, who can blame him? Together Mr. CGiR and I would rid the building where I worked of the evils inside, including the not-quite-sane management that would eventually get me fired and whatever attracted the Native Transsexual Knife-Wielding Maniac. (Admit it. The phrase rolls nicely off the tongue.) Perhaps it's just as well I didn't ever write that story. I am no longer a 24-year-old virgin. I am now a 26-year-old... non-virgin. I've had a massive infatuation with one guy in California. I spent a week in Montana with someone who eventually decided that he couldn't take a long distance relationship. As I write this, I'm in Washington, D.C., at the e-friend's place, and wishing I had my new boyfriend here with me because I miss him. [Note: he and I broke up because he didn't want a short-distance relationship. - Pƒ] I'm writing this to clear out the backlog a little more, since I have "Knights of the Road 5" to work on, another one-off story about to get steamy, and I'm procrastinating. I have the thought of giving Bastian and Lennox their own series of stories. I also have a science fiction story I'd like to write. I waited until all five parts of "Knights of the Road" were complete before sending out the first one because I was worried I'd give up partway through. Now I have to admit it: I'm hooked on this writing stuff. I came out to my roommates, who told me, "Don't take this the wrong way, but we don't care." Absolutely the best thing they could have said. I belong to an organization, at whose convention I spent a week with someone, and what with a last minute room change that finished up with me sleeping with a very openly gay man, it pretty much became public knowledge what my orientation was to anyone who cared to pay attention. No backlash there either. They are a most exceptional group of people. I'm also working through the dark part of my life, some of which was covered in "Strings". I'll probably confront my parents about everything. I'll let you know how it goes. [Note: it has begun. Mom sorta cornered me into telling her the person I broke up with that had me upset was not female. So far, so good. - Pƒ] And the philosophical dilemmas I brought up in the story? How could I not believe in reincarnation when it's fairly obvious I was a biker in my previous life? I'm stubborn. That's how. The arguments for fatalism, that everything is pre-ordained, can't be brushed aside so easily, however. I do remember trailers, while Mom might be wrong about the other thing. The answer is simple, given what did and did not happen. I now know of a trailer (Maybe two, if you count the abortive one about my roommate coming to have a man-to-man with me.) that never happened. This implies I have more trailers in my head than ever come true. The simple solution is that I'm psychically hedging my bets. I have trailers I'll never use because there are several directions my life may take, and there are trailers of all of them. I just don't remember the others because the event never gets to spark the déjà vu. I have free will again! And all of you, my e-friend, my ex-roommates, my fellow convention-goers, my friends from the on-line game, my readers and especially my boyfriend, you've all done it. I'm truly happy for the first time. And I never get bored anymore.

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