Men I've dated, part n in a series

Ever date someone who was so gorgeous and witty and talented that you couldn't believe they were slumming it with you?

He's a performance artist, actor, and filmmaker. When he lived in Philly he paid his bills by working for a moving company. He didn't need to belong to a gym. Some large two-digit percentage of his body was tattooed, most of it professionally, some of it half-covering a few old scratches that looked as though he'd done them himself.

We met at a weekly artists' social night shortly after I moved to Philadelphia, when I was still married. After my husband and I split, he wasn't in the immediate wave of men in that circle of friends who started hitting on me -- he waited until he was between girlfriends, instead.

There's a coffee shop around the corner from my home, and we met there. It was unusual to see him in daylight. He knew me as someone who dabbled in experimental films and worked on a couple of local productions. I explained that before filmmaking I'd worked for about 10 years in the dot-com industry. "The 1990s were great," I said. "If you could just say the word Internet you could get forty grand a year and free pizza and beer until you tripled your body weight."

"I don't know what the Internet is for," he responded, "other than porn."

We slept together only twice, I think. Most of the time I was speechless that someone so hilarious, talented, and ripped would bother to spend time with me. I don't know what his motivations were: Curiosity about someone who works 9 to 5, rather than artist's hours? Had he heard something about me from another filmmaker? Simply trying to get through a dry spell? We didn't exactly have much in common to talk about, and our conversations were limited.

He quit seeing me very soon. He met a burlesque dancer (or was she a roller-derby skater? Likely both) whose name is a flower and who must be ten years younger than myself. He was shy about it. I approached him after one of the artists' social nights, and I asked him if he'd like to share a cab home with me. He hemmed and hawed a little, so I said, "Ah. So you don't want to come home with me. That's OK." I smiled.

"Well, no. I mean, I do," he said. "But I don't think she'd like me to," and he indicated the dancer.

"Oh! I didn't know you were seeing her. That's great! She's really sweet. I'm really happy for you." I knew it couldn't last and I had been thoroughly, thoroughly enjoying every second we spent in bed together and every mid-day memory that came up in between. He looked relieved. It was so cute. He gave me a quick squeeze with one arm -- one rock-hard, heavily illustrated arm -- and crossed the dark street to the stoop where the artists looked as though they'd be spending the rest of the night. It must have been 2:30 in the morning, and I knew I'd be waiting for a bus for a while since the El wasn't running any more that night.

I think my attitude was the reason why he had such an enthusiastic response for me when I found him on Facebook recently.

He's moved on to another roller-derby skater (or is she a burlesque dancer? Anyway she's the spitting image of the actress Maggie Gyllenhaal) now, and his Facebook photos show that they've done some world traveling together. He's been moved to a type of emeritus status with the moving company since his performance art work has him permanently in New York these days. I think his next show will be there in New York next month. Maybe I'll go see it.

Men I've dated, part n in a series

One evening after I'd put my daughter to bed, I was dumped by phone. When the call came in, I recognized the name on the phone's display, and after I'd answered with my usual cheery greeting, I heard:

"Well, I'm calling because I'm breaking up with you."

It was an interesting phrase from someone who'd never called me his girlfriend to begin with.

I'd been warned that he was a serial dater and a commitment-phobe. He's lived in the same bachelor pad for over a decade and, though he's had steady, highly remunerative employment since he finished university, he has procrastinated buying a home. He talks often about buying a condo near his workplace. Now, condos are great. I've lived in three of them, and I like not having to be personally responsible for, e.g., roof repairs. But a condo is admittedly often a stepping-stone to "real" home ownership of an actual house, with a lawn and a tree or two and a driveway -- in other words, a way to avoid commitment to "real" home ownership. And he was putting off making a decision to even buy a condo, in the face of the first-time homebuyer stimulus incentive, too. Though far be it from me to try to force upon others my own boring bourgeois values. In any event, between the home-buying delay, his reluctance to have sex with me in the previous week, and the content of a few "how's our relationship going" conversations, I had already been expecting the phone call for a couple of days before the phone finally rang.

Several months ago, he decided to get rid of his things. He wanted to live more lightly and not be encumbered by so much stuff, he told me. So he got rid of books, clothes, CDs, videos and DVDs, kitchenware, boardgames, linens, and so on. Because he'd rid himself of his kitchenware, he used plastic plates and Solo cups. He had a few coffee mugs and a brandy snifter upended in the kitchen sink. The fridge held an assortment of 2-liter bottles of soda. The cabinets held some packages of disposable plates. The dining table served as a liquor cabinet.

When a practicing Zen Buddhist friend of mine simplified her life a dozen years ago, she also got rid of a lot of her kitchenware. She kept a single bowl, a plate, a set of flatware, a coffee mug (and her moka pot), and a stripped-down assortment of cooking essentials. Far be it from me to question a person's motivation, but dare I say that my Buddhist friend went about her lifestyle simplification process with a little more meaning and purpose than this guy did?

Unfortunately for a commitment-phobe, we started dating just before the end-of-year holidays. My family Thanksgiving was slated to be a brunch affair, because my sibling had numerous commitments with her spouse's relations; and since my nuclear family is small I invited him along. He reciprocated by taking me to his family Thanksgiving later in the day. What I thought was a fun and highly entertaining way to meet new people, he interpreted as "moving too fast."

Toward what? I don't really know. I have no intention to leave my home and share my living space with another adult any time soon. I haven't been drafting a pre-nup for myself nor adoption papers for my daughter. I wasn't putting together a trousseau in a hope chest. It is true that I usually go from 0 to 60 very quickly in a relationship. But generally I don't have a destination in mind, and I'd told him so a few days before the phone call.

He could only repeat that we were moving too fast. He asked me if I had anything to say, and I said no. Clearly, I told him, he had some impression of what I was doing in the relationship that didn't jibe with what he wanted in the relationship, but I wasn't going to be able to change his mind.

The last morning that we were together, I went to his (nearly empty) clothes closet and hid the blouse I'd worn the previous night to a party, in among his work shirts. Maybe what I'd intended as a joke came across to him as some kind of hint that we should buy a house together. Perhaps it was the last straw for him. Or perhaps it wouldn't have mattered anyway.

The question I'm left with though is, "Why now?" And I don't mean in the sense of sentimentality about the holidays; I mean in a very practical sense. I'll have a ton of free time between Christmas and New Year's, and he's got a ton of vacation time set aside for the second half of the month. Why kick your girlfriend to the curb now, rather than enjoying all that free time together? Would he really, truly rather sit at home and twiddle his thumbs, or go see a bunch of movies on his own, or hang out only with his guy friends? Put frankly, the sex was very good. The conversation was intelligent on both sides. We're both morning people. I liked his jokes, his stories, and his family. And the sex was very good.

Oh, well. It was fun while it lasted. And I didn't want to go to his New Year's Eve party anyway.

Men I've dated, part n in a series

"I'm on a first-name basis," he said, "with vodka."

On a recent cross-country flight I was reading a paperback collection of short stories that I'd put away, half-read, some years ago. Stuck to the inside back cover was a Post-It note with a name, a phone number, and an Art Museum area address on it.

"Vodka, she speaks to me, and I speak to her. We get along well, except when we don't."

"When is that?" I asked.

"When I don't respect her," he said, and he refilled my glass.

When we met, he was updating one of those beat-the-test books for getting into professional school. He was facing a deadline for shipping his portion of the work on a new edition to his co-authors and editor. Although he worked at home in his apartment, the place was clean, if a little cluttered, in the way you'd expect an author's pad to be cluttered. I remember hardwood floors; an open-tiered desk with papers and books surrounding a Mac, which had been left on; table lamps that were placed so well in the rooms that the layout seemed scientific; and the square, black, reflective shapes of a few uncovered windows along one wall. There was a wooden mission-style bed with a rumpled plaid-patterned comforter. We spent most of my visit on the bed, just talking and drinking.

He was from Buffalo, where the lake moderates the summers but smothers the city in snow every winter. His family had been in Buffalo for a few generations. He said he wasn't the only alcoholic in the family, and not the first, either. He'd lost an uncle to vodka, an uneven sidewalk, and a snowbank a couple of decades ago.

"That's very Russian," I said.

"My uncle didn't respect vodka the way I've learned to respect her."

(Does the Art Museum area select for alcoholics? My friend from Buffalo lived literally one block away from the alcoholic pathological liar I had a later, three-year relationship with. They lived on opposite sides of the 33 bus.)

"Dozens of people freeze to death," I continued. "They pass out drunk on the streets of Moscow and never wake up, every winter, dozens of them." I moved a little further under the comforter. I get cold easily, and the apartment was one of several drafty flats in an old subdivided townhouse. An unintentional yet successful come-on: he put out his cigarette and we started necking.

We would have accomplished more, but as I say he was an alcoholic. I went home a little frustrated, and then disappointed that we didn't get together another time to try again.

Nowadays he's in New York City, and he's still co-authoring the same beat-the-test book. He's gotten married, which is great. I found a few photos of him online, looking older than it seems to me he should be looking. Or maybe he was already over 40 when I met him.

Men I've dated, part n in a series

Really, I'm not in the habit of bringing home men from bars. I'll recount two of them here. Keep in mind that the tales may not be too accurate, since they originated in bars. And furthermore, who knows how true are the tales men spin to me in bars? How true are the tales I spin in bars to men about myself?

One of my bar dates told me he was a world-class soccer player. He had been selected to play for the U.S. in the World Cup, but suffered some horrible back injury and could no longer play competitively. He accompanied the team for the trip and enjoyed the trip immensely -- France 1998? Italy 1990? -- but gave up soccer and went to engineering school instead. How true was his story? He was built like an ex-athlete: heavily muscled as if from years of training, broad shoulders as if from physical therapy to heal a back injury, a belly as if from working behind a computer during the day and hanging around bars at night. He name-dropped the owner of the gastropub several times and had come downstairs after celebrating some kind of dinner or get-together with a crowd of friends. He wrote his phone number on a coaster, but I never called him afterward because his friends had taken his keys from him. I don't want to get involved with a man-child alcoholic again, even if he does have a soccer player's stamina.

Several months earlier, I was studying in my "local," a dive bar with very cheap basket food specials and continually discounted PBR but a few good offerings on tap. I did a lot of law school studying in this bar. Sometimes I would set up my laptop computer at a table in the early afternoon and prepare notes for the next couple of days' classes. Sometimes I would simply take a casebook and a highlighter to the corner stool at the bar. Most of the time I'd last three pints, at which point I would join in on some nearby conversation, or another regular would stop by and I'd decide to be social, or I'd have had too many pints to study efficiently -- after enough time had passed for me to finish three pints, I would do best to take a study break anyway.

Some younger guy from the neighborhood was sitting a few stools down from me and was intrigued that I was drinking one of the local microbrews rather than a PBR or lager or Budweiser bottle. We talked about local microbrews, the lack of a wide range of choices at my local, and the wider range of options at the Belgian gastropubs here in Philly. We ended up at my place in short order. He was tall and skinny, not athletic or post-athletic, but the tall, skinny type that I'd been attracted to when I was a teen. It was a highly enjoyable encounter. A week or so later we met at one of the city's Belgian gastropubs for further beer appreciation. It was very humid, and rain came and went sporadically. On the way home we sort of shared an umbrella, but he walked very fast, and I'm a short person. The rain came down harder. I hadn't brought my own umbrella. We separated at a corner between his apartment and my home; he didn't walk me to my door, though it's about three blocks from his. I quit texting him for another beer-appreciation date after he declined twice, explaining both times that he had a prior commitment with friends from high school.

He sent me e-mail about a month ago wanting to know if I was free. I didn't answer, even though I was, and since then I still haven't found someone to go out and appreciate craft brews with.

Men I've dated, part n in a series

In the early 1990s I was halfway through my undergrad degree, and my high-school boyfriend invited me to his wedding. He had gone to a small state university out West, while I stayed in the mid-Atlantic to finish high school and start college more locally. We'd kept up the long-distance relationship for a while, going through a fortune in long-distance dimes (this was the olden days, before everyone had e-mail); but eventually he fell in love with a fellow engineering student, and they married in the summer after his college graduation.

It wasn't the first time I'd driven across the country. The first time had been with that same high-school boyfriend, to help him return to school his sophomore year. I remember the car, a 1983 Chevy Cavalier wagon. We hung our graduation tassels, 198x and 199x, from the rearview mirror -- do kids still do that? We stopped at Wall Drug, where I bought a waxed-cotton hat with a leather wind cord. We visited Yellowstone National Park, which at the time was astoundingly beautiful with the wildflowers that proliferated after the 1988 fires. The car's odometer flipped to 100,000 miles somewhere near the Continental Divide in Montana; we stopped and took pictures. A few months later, the graduation tassels were lost when someone broke into the car to steal the rearview mirror. I never understood why they hadn't left the tassels behind.

The wedding was the first I attended in the circle of my age-mates, and it showed. The couple obviously had a very limited budget; the groom asked for his parents' permission to break a glass for good luck; I wore a type of inappropriately short dress that only someone in her early 20s could get away with; and on the strength of that dress I slept with the best man a few times, sometime later that fall when we were both back East.

But this post isn't about my high-school boyfriend or his best man; it's about the date I took to his wedding. My date was someone I'd met in a social club at university. He was short. He bore a striking resemblance to John Denver, so much so that some people in our social club called him that when he wasn't there to hear. He was a little older and was going back to school after a stint in the Army. He was good at camping and hiking and making do on a road trip with a limited budget. Late 1 night while we were camping, he pointed out some of the more obscure constellations to me, which I appreciated. Then he told me that if I looked at them indirectly I'd see them better, which irritated me, because I already knew that trick. He expanded my practical understanding of driving a stick-shift car by making me the designated driver out of Mile High Stadium's parking lot and into the Denver mousetrap after he'd had a few during a baseball game.

We drove his 1979 Toyota Celica Supra. When we ran the air conditioning, the gearbox heated up dramatically, so most of the drive was very, very hot. Somewhere in Colorado he put "Rocky Mountain High" on the cassette player and I had to turn my face very quickly to the window so that he wouldn't see me laughing and ask why.

The road trip itself was largely uneventful. We camped a couple of nights, slept other nights in overpriced interstate motels, and mostly spent as much time as we could on the road because we had to get back to school. Unfortunately for my date, I passed a lot of time on the trip quietly mooning over another fella. Somewhere in Kansas he put "Bridge over Troubled Water" on the cassette player and I had to turn my face to the window so he wouldn't see me coming to tears for missing the other guy, who played a lot of Simon and Garfunkel when we were together. I tried to be a good sport, though, and I put out for my date a few times, including one pine-needly encounter in the tent one cold, mountainous night. But I think we both knew that he was merely my lift to the wedding, and this was my "payment," and we weren't going to be able to continue once we got home. It didn't end gracefully, because I didn't yet have the communication skills or even the self-knowledge to understand what I was doing and be completely honest about it, both to me and to him. Truthfully I feel ashamed about how we ended: I pettily fussed at him over the phone to mail my Swiss Army knife, which I'd left in his car, to my dorm room. I was so young and immature, even for the age I was. I wasn't nice to him at all.

I haven't seen or talked to him in over 15 years. His name is too common for me to effectively Google him. I used to have a photo of him taken outside Mile High Stadium, but I tossed it years ago. I don't know if he went back into the Army; he's probably not too old to have been sent back to Iraq or Afghanistan. (The best man was Army, too. He went to Iraq in Desert Storm and got sent back for Iraqi Freedom, but in the interim he'd settled down, gotten married, and had 2 kids.) If I ever saw him again, I don't think I'd apologize, but I would acknowledge that I was less than classy with him, and that I hope I didn't turn him against women for too long.

Men I've dated, part n in a series

He's a musician and has worked as a musical director off-Broadway and in the Catskills. He appeared in a few episodes of a well-received cable sitcom, now off the air. He had a very brief speaking part (no close-up, but a credit in the end titles) in a film that won the Academy Award for best picture.

He's a cruciverbalist, a person who constructs crossword puzzles.

He lives in New York, and we met during the fringe festival a few years ago. That year, there was a late-night cabaret of various acts -- based on the vaudeville model -- that would open shortly after most of the evening shows had ended. I was working the door, taking cover charges, when the cabaret organizer and emcee walked over and said, "Hey, Glomarization, you like doing crossword puzzles. Here, someone wants you to give this a try." I was confused, but door traffic had frequent lulls, and the ID-checking bouncer and I had run out of conversational topics, so I dug out a pen and worked on the crossword.

I've just remembered that, at some point that week during the cabaret, I took out a sharpie that I'd been using to mark drinkers' hands and drew a fake tattoo on my arm. It was an anchor plus the name of a local filmmaker that I'd quit sleeping with, but who I still got along with really well, and who had showed up to the cabaret that night. When he saw it he laughed out loud, and I was happy to have entertained him. But I'm pretty certain that was a different night, and in any event this post isn't about that filmmaker.

Though I'll interject as a final aside that I believe it adds up to 4 men, now, that I've slept with who are in the IMDb. It's mostly a coincidence.

Back to the crossword constructor. He was at the cabaret because he was providing piano accompaniment to one of the acts, a voice actor and friend he performs with from time to time. They have a few songs, stories, and jokes, an entertaining schtick that they can keep up for a good hour. I found him backstage after their show, and I handed him his completed crossword. I think we charmed each other.

They returned a couple of years later to do their act again for the cabaret, and the voice actor got to keep the hotel room they were supposed to share all to himself. After the show, the 3 of us shared a cab to the hotel, where the crossword constructor retrieved his bag, and then the 2 of us came back to my place. The next morning, we had breakfast at a local deli and wandered through one of the monthly city flea markets.

In between the 2 cabaret gigs, I had visited him in New York, where he works for a book publisher to pay his rent. We got Indian take-out for dinner, and we watched what we could see of the sunset from the fire escape outside his tiny apartment. We shared the morning crossword on the subway into town. As a rule, I hate sharing a crossword. I would rather relinquish the entire crossword to the other person than solve it with a buddy, even a close friend. Maybe I tolerated it with him because we had a goal: finish the crossword before we get to midtown Manhattan. Maybe I tolerated it because it was novel to let myself share a crossword with someone. Maybe I tolerated it because we were an excellent match. Maybe I would have been able to tolerate it for the very long term.

For a while, I would buy the newspapers where his crosswords appeared and then clip and mail the completed crosswords to him in New York.

Recently I finally got around to seeing the movie he'd had a speaking part in. I blame my delay in seeing the film, as well as my discontinuing doing his crosswords, squarely on law school. Its twin exigencies of no time and no money. I should get back in touch with him, but I can't think of a way to do it that would leave us comfortable, or desirous. "Hey, last week I saw the movie you're in. I know it's been several years since the movie was released. They didn't show your face but it sounded just like you. I know it's been a couple of years since we've seen each other. I'm sorry I haven't sent you any of your crosswords lately."

I don't see him or his friend scheduled for the fringe festival's late-night cabaret events this year.

Men I've dated, part n in a series

A couple of days ago, I picked up a copy of Sarah Stolfa's The Regulars, a compilation of portrait-snapshot photos the author took while "she earned the dubious distinction of Unfriendliest Bartender In Town" at McGlinchey's. I'd gone into the bookstore for something else but thought I'd enjoy flipping through the portraits to see if there was anybody I recognized.

To my surprise and delight, I found a photo a guy I'd slept with a few times in the first year after my ex-husband and I split. The photo must have been taken about the time that we were seeing each other -- I don't mean from his expression, which is a little wary and perhaps unhappy, but from what he's wearing, and from the year noted by his name, and from the length of his hair.

Though we didn't meet at McGlinchey's. We'd found each other thru Craigslist, and the first time we met was at the Locust Bar, another, similar dive. On one date, we went to a Sixers game and bought nosebleed seat tickets. I got some kind of vertigo and woke up in the morning with a nasty, nasty headache. On another, we stayed at his place and watched Secretary and he got to try something new. We didn't really click, however; we may have had a third date, but if we did I don't recall it.

One morning some months later, we passed each other on the sidewalk, going opposite directions to work. After that, I started taking a different route, and then I started law school and didn't need to walk down that particular street any more. I haven't seen him since. But apparently I just need to go to McGlinchey's sometime if I want to say hey and catch up.

Men I've dated, part n in a series

This is a brief one, because we dated so briefly.

It was last year, when I was a 2L and he was a 1L. He's from the Midwest. He's in his early 20s -- he started law school immediately after getting his undergraduate degree. He claimed he'd done about every drug under the sun: weed, meth, cocaine, heroin. He didn't have track marks, but he had scars from a previous girlfriend.

I never saw his apartment, but his overcoat smelled of mice.

Since then we've had a couple of classes together and run into each other a few times a week, either in a student-group meeting or simply passing by in the hallway. As he gets older, he'll probably get better at ending relationships. As it is, I think there's a very good reason why I haven't dated someone in his 20s since I was in my 20s, too.

Men I've dated, part n of a series

For much of my first year of law school, I was dating a guy who lived out toward Valley Forge. He hated driving into the city, but both his other girlfriend and myself lived here in town. He was almost literally twice as big as I am, and continued to gain weight while we were dating. He detested lawyers, but my law school plans were in place when we started dating, and his other girlfriend was an attorney. He preferred his other girlfriend to me and didn't tend to hesitate to tell me so.

We dated for the better part of a year. The sex was excellent. Even when it was sub-par, it was very, very good.

On either side of the bed he had matching bedstands with drawers. One was mine, and the other was the other girlfriend's. In my drawer, I kept shampoo, a toothbrush, and toys that I shouldn't share. I never looked in the drawer on the other side of the bed.

I met the other girlfriend for coffee one time in the summer before I started law school, at his insistence. I don't remember the content of the conversation. She's an acquaintance of my ex-husband, as well, though I'm not sure how seriously they ever dated. Late into the relationship, we had a miscommunication via e-mail that demonstrated that neither she nor my lover was ready to call the situation polyamorous.

But this post isn't about her; it's about my former lover. He was a depressive perfectionist. When he moved into his house, a post-war starter home, he ripped out his kitchen. I started dating him about a year later, and he still had no kitchen in his house. He was wanting to design it himself, but he could never get the lighting scheme exactly right, or the appliance layout completely ergonomic, or the plumbing correctly planned out. He kept a small fridge next to his desk, where he kept beer and orange juice. He ate a lot of microwave popcorn. He kept an electric drip coffeemaker in the bathroom. His coffee wasn't too bad at all.

He was very handy. He intended to do much of the kitchen renovation on his own, and he helped with some fix-it tasks in my home. But when he painted a room in his own house, he didn't know that he needed gray primer to go under ruby-red paint.

Since he had no kitchen, he ate almost all of his meals in restaurants. (It's no surprise that he kept gaining weight while we dated.) He almost always found a flaw in the meal: an egg was too crispy; the sauce was better last time; the coffee was no good. One night he left no tip at a restaurant in the city -- though, in his defense, the dish was listed on the menu as being prepared with market vegetables, but was served with reheated frozen niblets.

He hated traveling, but his job sent him to southeast Asia. He preferred self-directed, productive work, but his employer made him a manager. One time at his house, he was on a conference call; I tried to bring him a cup of coffee or something and he became enraged at me for distracting him. I believe he's working for a different employer now.

I think he didn't want to hurt my feelings, but he didn't know how to quit dating me and see only his other girlfriend. He preferred her as friend and lover; they were much more compatible socially, emotionally, and sexually than he and I were. We dated for quite a while longer than we should have. On the night I broke up with him, I took the train to the usual suburban outpost, carrying a sack full of things he'd left at my place. When he arrived, I put the sack in the back seat of the car, climbed into the front seat, and asked him to sit for a minute rather than drive away. I forget exactly what I said to end the relationship. He wasn't upset at all. I think he was relieved that I'd done the hard part.

We went to his house to empty out my drawer, and then, on the way back to the train station, went out for dinner.

Men I've dated, part n of a series

I spent one of my better New Year's Eves with an academic. He was (or still is) a professor of Latin American Studies at a small university in the outer, outer western suburbs of Philadelphia. We went to see a band at a club on South Street.

We'd arrived early enough to get seats at the bar and started kissing shamelessly as soon as the clock on my phone rolled to midnight. The bartender passed out tiny portions of champagne in plastic cups.

Part way through the show, another former lover of mine arrived unexpectedly. He immediately fell in love with the bass player of the opening band. When she walked past me on her way to the bathroom I told her that my friend wanted to take her home after the show -- but sadly for him, she was engaged to one of her bandmates. The 3 of us enthusiastically wished her a happy new year. I don't know if the band is still together; they weren't a very good band.

After the main attraction wrapped their set, my date and I staggered home on South Street against the flow of drunken New Jersey suburbanites walking the other direction, from the Penn's Landing fireworks to their PATCO trains.

The next morning, my lover taught me how the Incas counted with their quipus and explained the Mayan doomsday prophecy.

He mistakenly believed that how I like to be treated in the bedroom also extends to how I like to be treated generally. A week or so after New Year's, we went to go see a movie at the Vox Populi gallery with some university colleagues of his. We looked at the sculpture exhibits outside of the makeshift cinema before the film started. When I touched one of the sculptures to get a better understanding of what it was made of, he slapped my hand, and not gently. "Don't hit me," I said. He laughed at me and looked at his friends. "No, you don't hit me," I repeated. He didn't understand why I was annoyed.

I think he thought he was slumming it, sleeping with someone whose B.A. was good enough only for secretarial work. Most of the time he would wait until I was done speaking and say whatever he wanted to say, with no actual response to the content of what I'd said.

I've completely forgotten his name.

Men I've dated, part n of a series

A former lover invited me to brunch at a local tavern on New Year's Day. We ended up being a small enough party that we all just hung at the bar: myself, him, and 3 friends of his from the local dance and film scene. While we were there, other acquaintances happened by, because the tavern had been a favorite haunt of his when he lived in Philadelphia.

He's since moved to New York and is often in California. He's often in California not for film industry reasons, though he's a national award-winning film editor, but because the love of his life moved back to northern California last year after getting out of academia. They can't live together, but they can't quit being in each other's lives.

But that's not the point of this post. The point is, after we'd been at the tavern a few minutes, I noticed that the barback was someone I'd had the distinct pleasure of taking home from my local one time a couple of years ago. (A pleasure, that is, until after he'd left and I had to change the sheets, air out the mattress, and leave open the door to my bedroom for a good four hours to get rid of the cigarette reek that he'd left behind.) I asked him to re-fill my coffee and wished him a happy new year.

Later on during the meal, I saw another man walk in whom I'd dated very briefly last spring. He was with some other people, one of whom looked like a date, so I didn't interrupt their meal to say hi. He was a little young for me, anyway; we couldn't keep a meaningful conversation going for long.

Philly really is a small town. This is why you should be excellent to the people you sleep with, even if you don't click and can't see each other more than once or twice.

My former lover gave me a lift home a little while after the love of his life showed up and the party dispersed. She said I should sit in the front seat because I don't get to see him as much as she does.

Men I've dated, part n of a series

A former lover of mine was so intrigued by me that he wrote a screenplay about me a few years ago.

It was a feature-length rom-com along the lines of Chasing Amy, only the character he based on me wasn't gay, and my love interest wasn't a comic book artist. The movie was never produced. He was realistically talking to people who could talk to people who could have produced it, and Rosario Dawson would have played me. As it was, he held a reading in somebody's livingroom with some local actors. One of the actors didn't show, so I had to read my own part, even though I'm not an actor by any stretch of the imagination -- and I ended up having to begin my début performance by simulating an orgasm in front of half a dozen near-strangers (and my former lover).

Some aspects of the film showed up in a short film he made a year or so later: a couple of the jokes, thoughts about non-monogamy, a character's name. But as far as I can tell, the feature film is still on blocks.

That said, it's nice to remember that I was his muse for the short time that we dated. He's with the love of his life now. We all run into each other a few times a year in the local arts community. I assume he's told her that we slept together a few times. But to avoid drama I never bring it up, in case he hasn't told her; and if he has, there's no respectful, polite reason for me to bring it up anyway.