See The Imprinter, Business or Pleasure?, Spellbound, No Picnic in the Park, Squatter Love, Who Falls First?, Trouble, Purgatory and Pre-Disintegration for the background on this one.
Now that I was back in the swing of having a summer fling, I was having an easy breezy Saturday morning getting highlights at the cheap Polish salon down the street, the name of which I will not reveal in order to preserve the inexpensive nature of the service. Also: Zoe had come back from Europe with a year’s supply of Yasmin, so she gave me an emergency month and, fully embracing my flingdom, I popped my first one that morning. When I came out of the salon, there was a message from #126. I called him back. He and James were a block away. As we met up on the corner of 4th and 1st Ave., I tossed my hair.
“You had your hair done,” James said.
“Doesn’t she look like my sister even more now?” #126 said, putting his head next to mine and looking at James. “It’s like all my fantasies come true.”
I suspect he was trying to be flattering, but he just ended up sounding perverted.
James looked at us as if he was on the verge of figuring something out, but then he didn’t. He hugged me instead, saying, “It’s so good to have female energy…the two of us were just like, ‘Duh, what are we doing today?’…And you had your hair done, too…that’s hot.”
“I love it when women do that kind of stuff…the hair…the nails…the cleanliness…youknowwhatImean.”
“Wait a second,” I said. “Just the other day you said dirty was sexy.”
“Oh, uh, yeah, I don’t really ever know what I’m saying…I, uh, contradict myself all the time, youknowwhatImean?” #126 said.
“Is it true that blondes have more fun?” James asked.
“Maybe,” I said, giving him a tricky little smile, even though, really, I doubted it.
“I never knew this side of you…” James said, “…considering threesomes…getting your hair done…there’s a naughty side to you, isn’t there?...Are you naughty?”
“When given the opportunity,” I said, actively not turning in #126’s direction because I'd said it for his benefit. He was silent.
I walked with them a few more blocks, feeling like I had #126 in my pocket. Then Zoe called needing help getting her things out of storage before she ran off to her tryst with Big Willy in Philly, so I had to go.
I hugged James and then #126. “I’ll talk to you later,” I said.
And I really, really thought I would talk to him later. Like, that-night later. And then I didn’t hear from him. And I started to go insane. Maybe it was the pill, but maybe it was me.
I texted James, trying to casually ask what they were up to.
He said maybe a movie later.
The next text I got from him said he was tired and going home.
It was suspicious. Very suspicious. Why would he just go home? It was Saturday. Was he lying? Did they meet some women somewhere and were hanging out with them? Was it him? Was it me? Was it the pill? Was I chemically unbalanced?
As my insanity began to peak, I ran through my mental Rolodex for someone to call. Zoe had left for Philly, Kevin was busy...And then it occurred to me...Mr. Unavailable #98. He lived a quarter of a block away and ever since I'd run into him at a party over the winter, we'd become friends. I called him. he picked up.
"What are you doing want to meet for coffee?"
It was nearly 11 p.m.
"Sure, mama. When?"
"Ten minutes? On the corner?"
"I'll see you there."
I told him everything—about the pill, the fact that I was in heat, the other fact that I was going crazy.
"Why don't you just call him and tell him to come over?"
"I can't," I said. "It's not like that." And it wasn't. It occurred to me that there is something a bit fishy about not being able to call your booty-call guy for a booty call.
We ended up going to a late-night Japanese food place on Stuyvesant and I got to distract myself by talking about #98's love life: He had consigned himself to a lifetime of aloneness because he was only attracted to crazy women. I parsed and diagramed until 1 a.m. and went to bed feeling OK.
But the next morning, I woke up in the dead center of Crazytown. I had plans to get an A/C for my apartment and had lined up Kevin to help me out. When he met me in front of HousingWorks to head up to Harlem, I was huddled outside in the rain, juggling a cigarette, umbrella and cell phone, the latter of which I was using to have Elaine, who was on the other end, talk me off the ledge.
In a matter of 24 hours, I’d gone from feeling completely in control to feeling completely used and sexually frustrated. Getting the A/C was a good distractive project, taking up a bunch of time that would otherwise have been spent obsessing, but I was still hormonally overwrought. I had plans to take Kevin to dinner and a movie later that night as a thanks for his help, but, in the meantime, I had some time to kill. Fortunately, I had a mission.
Signs of Hope: I was giving a killer performance after I got the highlights—charming, cute, flirty. I thought I had him in the palm of my hand.
Red Flags: I was sure I would hear from him—sure of it. But I didn’t.
Turning Point: I had a few hours after I saw him to sit home and obsess, so when he didn’t call by the time I thought he would...
Diagnosis: For him: He’s staying the course.
For me: I don’t know if it was the pill leading me astray or what, but, yet again, I’ve veered off course.
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