Mr. Unavailable #126: Trouble

See The Imprinter, Business or Pleasure?, Spellbound, No Picnic in the Park, Squatter Love and Who Falls First? for the background on this one.

Three days later, on Sunday afternoon, I was sitting in bed working on my “personal essays” when #126 called and asked what I was doing.

I vagued it up. “Writing,” I said. I was also still in my pajamas and in the middle of a deep conditioning hair treatment.

“I wanted to know if you wanted to hang out.”

“Give me half an hour,” I said. “I have to wash my hair.”

“You don’t have to wash your hair,” he said. “A little dirty can be kind of sexy.”

I looked in the mirror at my hair, moistly crunchy and thick with conditioner.

“No, I really have to wash it.”

“Oh, OK,” he said. “Call me when you’re coming out and I’ll meet you on 3rd Street.”

Thirty minutes later, I went to meet him on 3rd Street dressed in my pink-and-white checked tube-top sundress and saw him walking toward me from a distance in his plaid shorts and white T-shirt. He had a bouncy swagger that was kind of cute. He looked good in plaid. And white T-shirts. He had a cute little crooked smile, actually.... Uh oh. What was happening? Something inside me was lighting up. And when I walked up to him and hugged him nervously, I knew I was in trouble.

“Hey…you dressed up like a picnic table for me,” he said.

“Shut up,” I said. “I’m going to a BBQ, so I dressed for that. And I actually have to go in 45 minutes.”

I was glad when he seemed disappointed that I had plans. And what I said was only half true. I really was going to a BBQ in 45 minutes, but I hadn’t worn the dress for that. I’d worn it for him.

A minute later, he must have realized his mistake because he said, “You look really pretty—very pretty, actually.”

“Jeez, took you long enough,” I said. “Back there, you were telling me I looked like a picnic table.”

“Sorry, sometimes I just say all the wrong things,” he said.

“I noticed…but I know you’re heart is in the right place.” And I knew it was.

He asked where we should go. I led him to 16 Handles. He didn’t get any fro-yo, but he followed me down the line as I got mine. At the cash register, he didn’t make any moves, so I paid for it.

I took him to a bench in the park in front of St. Mark’s Church and asked him why he didn’t get any. He said he had candida and couldn’t have sugar. If he had any sugar or carbs, he said, he wouldn’t be able to function for a couple of days.

“That’s why I have this,” he said, patting his gut.

“Ohhhhh, that explains it,” I said.

He walked me home, telling me about the person he’d been 17 years before—angry, short-tempered, confrontational. He was trying to impress me with the person he’d become. And even though I was now in danger of becoming hooked, I still knew what that was: someone who was emotionally unavailable and couldn’t even spring for a girl’s frozen yogurt.

And then, as we approached my building, he said this: “I was thinking about our complicated relationship and there are four parts to it: We’re having sex, we’re also friends—at least among the people we know—we’re brother and sister and we’re landlord and tenant.”

He thought about our relationship?

“Yeah, it’s so great,” I said. “Especially the sister part, that’s my favorite, it just fucks with everything else.”

“It would be bad if any of my neighbors saw us making out.”

“Hee hee.”

He left me in front of my building with a hug and a kiss on the cheek. It felt somehow lacking. Something about the whole thing did.

Signs of Hope: He called me just to hang out and walk around—a little QT.

Red Flags: Buying a girl a frozen yogurt isn’t a marriage proposal, it’s a gesture. It says, “I like you, you’re more than just a booty call.”

Turning Point: The moment I saw him and knew I was in trouble.

Diagnosis: For him: He may not have an anger problem anymore, but he sure as hell has an availability problem. And his heart may be in the right place, but you know what they say about the path to hell...
For me: I want him to want to hold my hand. I want him to want to make out with me in public. I want him to fall for me…because, despite my better judgment, I may be falling for him.