It's Friday night. I should be sitting catatonic before the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Channel (or whatever it is men like), but I'm not. Not even a little.

I'm sitting at my desk with a stuffed purple monster doll. There's a hole in its back where I opened him up. His stuffing is everywhere.

It's Friday night, and I've just eviscerated a doll. I'd go to bed and cut my losses, but this wasn't your typical stuffed purple monster doll evisceration.

A stuffed purple monster doll

2006 smacked me in the face like a wet year. I can't remember half of it, I'd like to forget another half of it, and I fully remember the third half of it.

One part of the third half that I'm happy to remember is all the romancin' that went down. It was a productive year where the Snootch Factor was concerned.

Despite that particular appetite being sated, I still had silent little crushes; girls I observed from a distance (even though we were sitting next to each other). The way I usually operate is to find one girl I think intriguing, and then find out over weeks or months if there's something beyond that initial attraction. I'm not a typical guy. I don't know what station pro-wrestling is on, I don't chest-bump my bros, and I hate one night stands.

If I have a one night stand, it wasn't my idea. I have this strange thing where I like to be interested in someone - maybe even like her - before (and after) anything goes down. I'm not interested in the empty, soulless, biological dictates that lead to sleeping with, and promptly forgetting, someone. In my case it's especially bad because, hey sweetheart, look at what you're missing out on. I'm awesome. Fake Steve Jobs linked to me.

What else do you want?

Last summer, there was this girl.

(I wonder how many other topics there are where you can write something using the simplest sentence structure, but have it communicate so much.)

There was this girl. She worked at a cafe where I spent most of my time. I'd say it was like an office for me, but there were too many interesting people there for me to be able to work. It was more like a second home. I'd show up, talk for a couple hours, and then I'd pass out from the drugs.

I had my spot at the counter where I'd have my laptop, my lime Italian soda, maybe a couple pastries, and my body. I was able to be passed out sitting up most of the time, but employees of the cafe and friends sometimes had to prop me back up so that I wouldn't fall off the chair. They'd also straighten up my effects so that other customers - rude people - wouldn't accidentally knock over my soda. I may have purchased the soda at 10:00 PM, but I always drank it when I emerged from my coma at 10:00 AM. Stay away from my soda.

It sounds like a mess. It was a mess. But when you're surrounded by people who care enough to keep propping you up to protect your gorgeous face from the floor, then you actually have it really good.

I was there all hours of the night. Life usually got weird around 3:00 AM. From then on, it was only regulars, crazies who started shouting matches with everyone, and the employees.

And this girl.

She was short. I liked that. It meant nobody had been pumping Human Growth Factor into her. I've had it with women who are nine feet tall. That's how tall the bad guy was in Big Trouble in Little China. I don't want to date the bad guy from Big Trouble in Little China.

She was very beautiful. Unusual. Dark hair, fairly short. Kind of an Audrey Hepburn pixie do. That one that makes you an Audrey Hepburn fan even before you get all tingly from her perfect French accent.

She was eccentric. Not crazy. Not a little weird. She was definitely eccentric.

I was in there one night with a friend of mine. We were chatting, and then it was 3:00 AM. This girl was working that night, and she called us over. She had taken little cocktail swords (you stick cherries and whatever on them) and made sheaths for them. We were all examining the handiwork. This girl was a great artist, a great songwriter, and, apparently, fully equipped in the skills department to make tiny sheathes for tiny swords.

Two minutes later, I was down on my knee. That's the position you get in when someone is about to knight you with a cocktail sword.

This girl knighted me. With a plastic drink utility. There was a whole ceremony and everything. Customers be damned.

Eccentric.

Then, almost exactly a year ago, I was going through hell. My grandmother had died, my boss at work was being a bastard (the stories I could tell), and no drug in the world was going to make me feel any better.

This girl, through conversation, found out. She told me she was going to make me a stuffed monster. I thought it was a cute thing to do, but there isn't much you can do to cheer someone up when everything seems to be going to shit.

A couple days passed, and there it was: a stuffed purple monster doll made especially for me. I imagine it seems kind of silly, but, though she was eccentric, it's not like I'm the guy you'd want to bring home to meet your parents or anything. I'm a little weird, too.

I found it utterly charming.

I'm fascinated by things. I like to know how people who know how to do things do those things. When I saw the monster, I wanted to know how he was made. I said that I wanted to open him up and examine how one makes a stuffed purple monster doll.

This girl shrieked.

She didn't want me to open it. She commanded me not to open it. She made me promise that I wouldn't open it.

I didn't know why it was so important, but...

Eccentric.

I haven't seen her since I moved away from Portland. I had a dream about her a couple months ago, and I wrote to her about it. It nicely summed up how I see her. I'd set the dream down here, but it's personal. For something to be personal for me, it has to be, well, personal. So you can bet it's personal.

She didn't respond.

Time passed.

I went looking for a fragrance among my things tonight. I have a place where I keep the things over which I'd karate chop somebody who tried to mess. These are things I associate with people I love. There are many fragrances in that place.

And there was a stuffed purple monster doll.

I looked at the doll and thought about how this girl didn't write me back. I wasn't angry. I wasn't hurt. These things happen. However, I wanted to know. If we weren't going to continue to communicate, then I at least wanted to know why I wasn't allowed to look inside this monster doll.

I set him down on my desk and cut the thread in the back. I used tweezers to pull bits of purple stuffing out one by one. I didn't want to damage anything because I intend to put him back together.

I made a mound of the stuffing. When it was small, I was still hopeful that I was going to find something so amazing about this doll's construction that I'd understand why this girl was so adamant about my leaving things sewn up.

The mound of stuff grew, and I started to think I wasn't ever going to figure out what was going on.

I grew impatient and put the tweezers down, pulling stuffing out with my fingers instead. Even a while into this, there was still nothing but stuffing.

Then.

This little thing.

Tiny, tiny thing.

I pulled it out. It was fragile. It looked worn. I was afraid I was going to destroy it before I found out what it was.

I brought it into the light. It was a little strip of brown paper that had been folded into a little square.

This girl really was hiding something. I never even would have known if I hadn't told her that I wanted to open him up. This little bit of paper would have just disappeared someday whenever I did. The stuffed purple monster doll would have remained among the only material possessions that were important to me, but I never would have known what this girl had done.

I unfolded the paper, and as I did so, a message was slowly revealed. It was so strangely intimate - it felt like this girl was reading it to me.

The message from this girl was simple, but it was one of the sweetest things I'd ever read.

Then I flipped the paper over, and my hair stood on end.

"No more bad thoughts"

The other side

This made me want to scream and clap and cry at the same time. Frustration over what could have been, joy at the thought that what could have been could have been, and knowing that I was right about her when looking at the selfless beautiful compassion of the whole act.

This girl's name was Sage, and I'm pretty sure it still is, and I'm damn well getting back in touch with her.