In search of lost time...and love

It was a typical Los Angeles winter night.
Temperature: 50-something degrees, with a slight breeze from the northern hills.
As I begin to sober up, the short gusts of wind pang rudely against my awakening nerves.
Having yet to recover my memory of the apartment code I stand anxiously awaiting...
After a few minutes, that pass as if a fortnight, I hear giggling and talking
Prating banter reminiscent of a bygone carefree.
She catches sight of my eyes as she inserts the key.
"you...I know you"
Five girls my age, carrying the most outlandish contraption.
But only one of them, her lips overdone but her handsome brown eyes, eyes that modestly invited,
tantalizing in both their beauty and good intention.
I could sense something oddly familiar, besides that inner attraction
In the elevator, pressed together, passing the third floor...
I spot the music tattoo of erotic etched in my memory
The young, exotic alluring senses...of Fridays,
Fall Quarter
Freshman Year of undergrad
"You were in comm 10 with Schubert, right?"
"Chubbyish guy with glasses?"
"Yep,
and our goateed hipster TA?"
"Alfred!"
I knew at that moment, I was speaking with a figment of my post-puberty sexual imaginary.
That tattoo, Notes cascading along a line of sheet music.
A innocent melody, wavy and slender, heightens the temptation of that fair skin,
 and those haunting eyes.
"Where do you come from?"
"A bachelorette party."
"Whose?"
"Mine."
"You getting married already? When?"
"Tomorrow. But tonight we're having fun. Want to join us?"
By now we are passing the third floor.
"Sure," I say, giving a clumsy wink. Her mouth perks up into a smile of abandon-and sincerity.
She's looking like Daisy from Gatsby.
As house keys and a vodka bottle clink.
I plop down on a couch, and pick up a remote.
I scroll through music playlists on the HD screen before pressing "select" on 90s' hits, par request.
 We take shots
She's sitting beside me, smiling fatigued, and draws a card
"Never have I ever..."
That foolish Freshman-year version of "truth or dare,"
interposed with Russian Roulette a la vodka 
 As a PhD. student, working round the clock meticulously analyzing documents (when not at the bar)
The bygone stupidity caused a well of warmth, strangely familiar yet eons...
"Your turn"
Half-slouching and at an oblique angle, I fuddle two fingers through some cards,
"six...dicks"
As I dutifully imbibe, eyes cross and lock...
Yes, those eyes, her eyes...that once gave me butterflies forty-five minutes of each week
Now acknowledging me...responding 
I feel her hands grasp my arms, smell the perfume whiff in my nostril...
and feel her lips around my mouth
Drawing back then...
her lips clasp the rim of a Coors
her comrades can be heard laughing
I can bearly conceal a blush,
euphoria and arousal.

My eyes widen tepidly.
A searing gash throttles my head,
hardwood and tile
a candy wrapper, nutshells and a bottle
but I see no eyes..
Rays of afternoon sun gleam through,
And I know she is gone forever...

That thirty-second instant,
mired in beer and lipstick
remains eternally
bygone
in my mind....