IDIOSYNCRACY: what is it about bad boys? . . . as early as grade school i wanted to be kidnapped by one . . . my fantasy didn't get more specific until high school in El Paso when i was assigned to a gym class with Gary . . . James Dean could have taken lessons in delinquency from him . . . for months, i'd been getting to school early, so i could watch him smear his girlfriend's lipstick as they kissed hungrily in his car . . . i couldn't decide if i was more thrilled or terrified when i first noticed him, barechested, leaning against a locker and yawning insolently while some phys ed teacher told us what we were going to be doing out on the hot playing field . . . by this time i knew exactly what i wanted to be doing: licking his smooth chest while he smoked a cigarette . . . just my luck, Gary dropped out a day or two later . . . i never saw him again but rumor had it that he'd passed a gang initiation rite by swimming across a sewage pit . . . ever the pragmatist, i kept my stalking all in the family and quickly developed a crush on his younger brother, Steve, whose girlfriend lived on my block beneath the Franklin Mountains . . . after my father left for work in the mornings, i'd get out his binoculars and watch Steve pick up Sara . . . little did my sleeping mother know that she had given birth to a voyeur . . . years later, i heard they'd found Steve buried in a shallow grave in the desert, with both his eyes poked out . . . a drug deal gone bad? . . . why can't nice guys do it for me? . . . you think you can save them from themselves,A, a good friend, once accused.