I no longer have normal fantasies. When I kick back during a Monday morning meeting and begin to watch the movies in my head, they don't involve your typical perky redheads with high breasts and low morals, or whipped-cream fights with underage twins from Munich, or midnight skinny-dips with bosomy heiresses. See, I graduated from college a few months ago with a major in, swear to God, non-fictional rhetoric, which involved writing ten bitter double-spaced pages a semester about my ex-girlfriends. For what it's worth, I also have a minor in theatrical technology, which as far as I can tell involved dating actresses and welding. Nothing spectacular, but it was something.

But I went to work for a huge computer company and quickly found myself wishing for my old life. The pressure is incredible. The hours are hell. I wear wrinkle-free man-made fabrics five days a week. The most significant woman in my life is a waitress at Denny's who often remembers my name. It's not the life I wanted for myself, but here I am. And my fantasies, it seems, have adjusted to compensate.

So there we are, right? She's five-four in stocking feet, weighs 125 soaking wet, and wouldn't you know it, she's shoeless and dripping in my foyer because we got caught in the storm. This girl -- woman, she's 23 -- oy, she's charming. Make her brunette, chin-length with a little bit of a wave to it. Dimples and green eyes. Used to be a gymnast but she's added some useful curves. Call her "Beth". So me and "Beth", we're getting along pretty good, we've been good friends for a couple of weeks. Today we were out walking my dog -- hmm, a Rottweiler, call him "Toby".

So "Beth" and I are walking "Toby" and it starts sleeting out of nowhere. Colorado in April is weird like that. So we dash home and toss off our wet North Face fleece jackets and our Vasque hiking boots (this is Boulder) and we're standing there shivering and laughing like kids.

Oh, and this "Beth" is brilliant. She's got a good background in AIX systems administration and some IP internetworking skills. This becomes relevant later.

Okay, so there we are, and I get her a towel, and she towels off her hair and her arms, and then she looks me in the eye, grins, and says, "Maybe you should get out of those wet clothes," with this same grin. I concur. A lot. She says, "Go ahead into the bedroom; I'll be just a moment." (She speaks with audible semicolons. She's that kind of smart.) So I casually run into the bedroom, which looks out over the Rocky Mountains (this part is true -- my bedroom looks out on the front range of the Rockies and also the Celestial Seasonings plant. Technically I live on Sleepytime Drive. When the wind is out of the west my entire apartment complex reeks of Mandarin Orange Spice).

I slip off my clothes and slide under the flannel topsheet. She's gone for five minutes, ten minutes, and then... oh God. She's wearing my beat-up Pierre Cardin robe, she's STILL wearing the grin... and she's carrying a silver tray laden with toast, jam, tea, and a cloth napkin, none of which I own in real life. I have bread, but no toaster, but hey, it's a fantasy. She glides (GLIDES, mind you) to the bedside, sets the tray I don't own on the table that's not there either, and slips into bed next to me. "You look stressed; (more semicolons) may I rub your pectoral muscles? They're so large and firm, but I'm sure they must get sore from all that typing," she coos. Rub, rub. Ahh.

So then she feeds me some quince jam (which I've never had but it sounds cool) and toast and tea, and dabs the moisture from my lower lip with the cloth napkin. And then she wraps her warm, lithe, muscular body around me and says breathily, "How was work today?" So I explain this problem I had with an AIX supercomputing complex I deal with, and she says, "That sounds awful. Which level of PSSP do you run?" So I say, "Two point three," and she says, "Oh, sillyhead, there's a new PTF you have to apply to get the ODM to work properly with the print queue." We share a giggle. Tomorrow I will go to work, fix the problem in five minutes, and spend the rest of the day in my office with the door closed reading Dilbert and snickering the snicker of a man at peace.

Then she says, "I noticed that the carpet looks a little dingy in the living room; (;) may I steam-clean it?" I say, "No, 'Beth', I cherish every moment with you." She sighs contentedly and lays her head on my large, firm pectoral muscles and hums the Dire Straits album Brothers in Arms in its entirety, note-perfect, bursting quietly into song for "Walk of Life". I love that song. I doze off. She steam-cleans the carpet anyway.

Okay. Some of you are saying, "This man is DANGEROUS. Lock him up and make him watch Charlie's Angels until he can channel his urges." But I don't care. It's my inner life and I'll be as warped as I like in the privacy of my own skull. And let me make a prediction: In the future, there will be these new bed-and-breakfasts, like bordellos crossed with tech support, where harried computer guys can go to get fed tea and jam, told that their squishy, gelatinous, dough-like pectorals are large and firm, and receive expert advice on their technical woes. Steam-cleaning will cost extra.