I flirt with my neighbor Al because he is a forcefield of appreciation, a smile on wry. Too old and too smart and too genuinely good to be greasy, he butters the days with banter and funny eyebrows. I flirt with Al because, at forty-two, with a bony neck and uncool jeans, I get to be in the music video.

I’ve been here before, but I was askew on the astral plane. I wouldn’t have known stars if they seared my forehead. I fancied myself an astronomer, then wailed at mud puddles for producing no light. I wanted to fall from the sky, to be the choice comet, or at least an acceptable apple. I wanted to be fallen for, and I wanted to be branded.

I wanted to redeem the sixth-grader who showed up at her first middle school dance in her velveteen hat and her search for a husband. I wanted an answer for the torch singer who spent prom night watching MTV with her mother.  I wanted my night, my bite, my turn.

At 29, I ran off the ragged edge of the earth and began online dating. I landed in the music video.

I landed across from David #1, the engineer who asked permission to hold my hand, then didn’t. He squinted as though in pain most of the time, and when I told him after three dates that I didn’t think we were a match, he writhed and whimpered that we had “a good thing.”

I landed in the red-furred arms of Boyd, all roses and no bread. We literally ran out of bread, and water, on a two-hour hike that stretched to seven, my blood glucose contemplating coma. But back in his barbarian apartment, he produced a vintage copy of “Owl Babies,” and a mix CD, and an innocence that makes me wistful even now that Boyd is a pliable lifestyle coach in California, even now that Boyd goes by “Apollo,” even now that Boyd still reaches out semiannually to ask, just to ask.

I landed in the eighth circle of hell, which I can confirm is a Cracker Barrel, with David #2, whose days were spent “processing up to thirty birds an hour” at Chick-fil-A. The waitress identified this as our first date, and David glistened like a biscuit: “we’ll always remember!” He wasn’t wrong.

This was the point at which my mother proposed that I was living Britney Spears’s “Oops…I Did It Again.”

I landed in the ashtray of David #3, ten years my senior in his three-piece suit and three-layer cake of criticisms. He was the only one who told me we “weren’t a match.”

I landed in the Magic Kingdom of David #4, who won a one-way ticket to a one-date tale when he asked if I would dress like Cinderella — the blue dress, you know.

I landed on the palette of David #5, a sad sequoia in a smock. He painted only replicas. He had his reasons. All his shades were drawn.

I landed in the apple cart of Blake, who bit into me and lit into me and would have cored me, if not for my mother screaming on the phone, and my deus ex landlord inexplicably arriving one night, “just to ask if everything was okay.”

I thought I was back in orbit. I never-agained. I claimed my power. I wielded my worth. I proclaimed my needs met.

It was a lie. I needed to be wanted.

I needed to dream with David #6, my metaphysical dreamboat with Paul Giamatti’s face and a tenured chair at Penn State. Over Skype, he shared a proposal for being transferred to my nearest satellite campus.

I needed to act adolescent with Taylor, the bouncing accountant whose contents were unsettled but whose packaging made me pay full price. I learned I was not dry wood. I learned that people at the bowling alley get embarrassed when 34-year-olds act adolescent.

This was the point at which my stepfather sang “Fox on the Run” every time he saw me.

I needed to pace my apartment during phone calls with David #7, who wanted to teach me the ukulele but didn’t have time to meet.

I needed to limit what I told my mother about Curt, who had done time for burning down, yes down down down to pie crumbs, a government building that stored records of his DUIs.

I needed to be soft as a moonshadow with David #8, the best of them all, who took me to the Muppet Christmas Movie in a sweater vest, who was all kinds of right except the kind that kindness can’t fix.

I needed to wait. I needed to write. I needed to get myself back to the garden. I needed to flirt with buoys like Al, and land softly back on the earth.

This was the point at which I lost the beat entirely.

Starved for starlight, I climbed trees. Had I been too hasty with the owl-man Apollo? Had I written off too many Davids? Had I written myself out of orbit?

Had I let myself write, I wouldn’t have bitten.

I wanted to be wanted more than I wanted to want my life. I wanted my night, my bite, my turn.

I coiled into a covenant so subtle, I didn’t feel the fall.

This was the point at which I sang and cried in secret, until the crying was done and the singing wasn’t.

It’s a terrifying thing to rise — not to climb, but to go limp in the grace that lifts. A terrifying thing, with tympanis and silences, howling owls and homemade applesauce.

It’s a terrific thing to want — not with greed, but with humor. A terrific thing, with red blood and deep breaths and wry old friends and brave new old worth.

It’s an endless thing to love — not with desperation, but with truth. An endless thing, with practice rooms down every hallway, and stars in every eye. Even your own.