Mr. Unavailable #126: Friends, Zero Benefits

See The Imprinter, Business or Pleasure?, Spellbound, No Picnic in the Park, Squatter Love, Who Falls First?, Trouble, Purgatory, Pre-Disintegration, Sanity Takes a Turn, In Heat, Fireworks, Part 1, Fireworks, Part 2, Don't Tell Mama, Mr. Leaky and A Game of Text for the background on this one.

Around 5 p.m., I met #126 on the corner in front of The Bean.

“So, what’s going on?” I asked. We started walking up 1st Ave.

“Uh, yeah, I'm, uh, I’m going to weasel out of our deal,” he said.

“I see,” I said.

“Yeah, I made a bad, uh, deal for myself. I was talking to Mike and when I told him about it, he said I was crazy, that I could get $2,000 for my place. I told him that a deal’s a deal and he said, ‘Yeah, a deal’s a deal, but you shouldn’t be making bad deals.’”

“You already knew you could get $1,800, but you said you wanted someone you trusted who could help direct renovations."

“I know. That’s what I do. I sell myself short.”

As we crossed 4th Street, I was quiet.

“Are you mad? I wouldn’t blame you for, uh, being mad,” he said. He nervously ran a hand through his hair.

“I’m processing,” I said. “So, where are we going?”

“Oh, I, uh, have to be uptown in 20 minutes.”

“You were just going to tell me and take off? We weren’t even going to talk about this?”

“Uh, yeah, do you want to, uh, talk?”

He really did need to be walked through everything—getting a ticket online, ordering a bed and having it delivered, buying frozen yogurt, initiating a conversation about the bombs he was dropping.

“Well, you’re leaving, so we can’t talk now. When can we talk?

“We could, uh, go to dinner on Wednesday?”

It was Sunday, but I knew that with him it was best to take what I could get.

“OK, let’s do that,” I said. I was already planning on leaving my money at home. To make it really count, maybe I’d make a reservation at Nobu.

“Yeah, we can go to dinner and process together,” he said.

That was annoying. Clearly, he’d already processed up a storm, concluding that he’d gladly trade his morals for money.

“I mean, don’t you want to maintain some kind of friendship?” I said. I know, I know, but it was the best I could do. After what had happened with Heidi (more on that later), I didn’t have the energy to hold onto any more resentment.

“Yeah, we were becoming friends before,” he said.

He wanted to get a sandwich before he got the bus uptown, so we turned around and headed back to the deli on the corner.

As he paid for his sandwich, I stood there smiling, thinking about what a spineless, clueless idiot my new friend was. I may have been losing an apartment, but I was gaining so much more: I'd never have to deal with his wishy-washy landlord ass again.

I snickered and then said, “Remember when you said the thing you hated most was disappointing women? Well, you did a good job with this one.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. He put his head down and took his sandwich from the deli guy like a little boy who’d just been scolded.

He turned to me. “Your green eyes look really pretty with your green dress,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said.

I looked at him and squinted, the wheels of understanding beginning to turn. Compliments were his way of extricating himself from sticky situations. Instead of saying, "I'm really sorry, what can I do to make it up to you?," flattery was his escape hatch, his diversionary tactic, his “look over there!”

As we walked out, I wasn't done giving him a hard time. “Yeah, you come to New York, look to bed down as many women as you can and then leave.”

“I, uh, don’t look to do anything. I just kind of float around and, uh, bump into things and when something comes along I, uh, don’t say no.”

I guess that meant I was one of the things he bumped into. I already knew he had a tendency to say all the wrong things, so I knew not to take it seriously. That in and of itself shouldn't have been acceptable. It really was like he was like a little kid, or even like George W., getting away with things because people assumed he just didn’t know any better.

“Asshole,” I said, hitting him on the arm. I put some power behind it.

At the bus stop, he was eating his sandwich as the bus pulled up. Before he got on, I could have told him about the big splotch of mustard on his chin, but I didn’t.

Signs of Hope: We were getting along(?)

Red Flags: He seemed a little too relieved when I mentioned the thing about being friends.

Turning Point: When he got on the bus. I walked away wondering if I’d let him off too easy.

Diagnosis: For him: Maybe he’s not really a spineless, clueless idiot. Maybe he just plays one in NYC.
For me: I’d gone all Rodney King on the situation because I couldn’t handle any more bad blood in my life. But had I done it at the expense of my dignity?