Our friend Dave Bry has so very many regrets. Some of them are about girls, like this particular pang-worthy bit of remorse.

Dear Girl from California,

I'm sorry I didn't try to kiss you that Saturday night in 1986 when you were visiting your friend Kristen Anderson who'd moved to my town that year and had James Cash and I over to drink wine coolers at her house while her mom was away. As I'm sure you remember, James and Kristen had gone into her room, leaving you and me out on the couch in the living room watching "Youngblood" on Betamax.

I don't remember your name. But you were very pretty and I certainly did want to kiss you. (In all honestly, I wanted to do much more than that. I don't know about you, but I was still a virgin at the time. A condition that, at age 15, I desperately wanted to shed.) Unfortunately, despite however many wine coolers we'd drank, I could not find the courage to unpin myself from the far corner of the couch and slide over next to you.

Not even during (Jesus, especially during) that incredibly explicit sex scene between Rob Lowe and Cynthia Gibbs. (Don't worry, I had to IMDB that. Turns out she appeared in an episode of "Without a Trace" last year, too.) While that scene was on, it felt like I was being alternately blessed and punished by God. It also felt like I was paralyzed.

Then you got up, without a word, and left me there sweating by myself. I felt like a major loser. And guessed that I'd never had a shot anyway.

The following Monday, when I saw Kristen on the bus to school, she told me that you were mad that I hadn't made a move. That you had in fact wanted to fool around with me. And that you'd already taken a plane back to California.

It's hard to describe how very, very sorry I felt at that moment.

Dave Bry is an editor at a music magazine. He lives in New York City with his wife and his kid, so take that, California girl!

Previously: Dear Robert Sean Leonard