Mr. Unavailable #126: Sanity Takes a Turn

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 4^th and 1^st 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.

Mr. Unavailable #126: Pre-Disintegration

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

It’s amazing how holding a man at bay only serves to bring him closer. After being grumpy and distant with #126, he called me the next night to ask if he could use my computer—and then maybe we could go get food, he said. My grumpiness had waned with a good night’s sleep and a reality check: he’s leaving, he’s not boyfriend material, it’s just supposed to be fun.

When he came over, he sat next to me on my sofa as I did a quick search for mattresses online. Then he said he wanted to get a bike, so I looked at Craigslist and sent a message to someone with a bike. After that, he wanted to buy a ticket for Burning Man. He pulled out his credit card and said he wasn’t good at online forms, so I started filling in his information. When we got to his address, he got confused and didn’t know which one to use.

“Where does your bill come?” I asked.

He couldn’t work out the right billing address—he was here…he used his card there…he was going to live in Arizona…where did his bill go? He tried his 2nd Street address in New York. Rejection.

“Oh, that’s right. I guess my bill still goes to New Mexico.”

Maybe my impression from James’ birthday—that he was an idiot-genius—wasn’t far off. Becoming a vet? No problem. Putting his address into an online form? Forget it.

After we bought his ticket, I put down my computer and said, “Are we done with our tasks?”

Sex with #126 is interesting. The last time, we never made it off the sofa; this time, my feet never touched the floor. It’s a big difference from a year ago when #111 never even carried me to the bed—we always got up and walked, and usually he went first.

This time, just like the last few times, there was potential for a happy ending, but it stayed at potential, so, once more, I feigned my way to the finish. Because our original plan was computer tasks and maybe food, we headed out and just started walking. Neither of us was really hungry, so we wandered in the direction of Thompkins Square Park. On the way, we were talking comfortably about our various aches and pains and I said, “Doesn’t it feel like we’ve met before?”

I’d been thinking it for a while, wondering if we had. Something was very comfortable about being with him. Even when he acted weird, it didn’t bother me. Maybe it was that way because I knew he was going away. I couldn’t think of a time when we’d met. Maybe it had been in a past life.

As soon as I posed the question to him, he stiffened.

“Oh, maybe we have,” he mumbled, increasing the distance between us by about an inch. Fortunately, if he felt a little cornered by my question, I didn’t care. I just chuckled to myself and changed the subject.

When we got to the park, a huge crowd was sitting in front of a screen watching "Raging Bull." We sat toward the back on the dirt and watched the last 20 minutes as the relationship between Robert DeNiro and Cathy Moriarty disintegrated. And then she announced she was leaving him.

#126 was next to me but we sat separately, with our own arms around our own knees. We didn’t touch. We didn’t lean in and whisper to each other. Maybe we had met before, but maybe it had been in another life—because, at least in this one, even though it felt like we were disintegrating, we’d never even integrated.

Signs of Hope: He called me just one day after my grumpy episode. Maybe grumpy is the way to go.

Red Flags: We were pre-disintegrated.
Also, and I hate to keep harping on it, but he can buy a $350 ticket for Burning Man, but he can’t buy me a $5 frozen yogurt?

Turning Point: None. It was just supposed to be sex, so all was back on track.

Diagnosis: For him: He’s staying the course.
For me: I veered off course momentarily, but, after tonight, I’m back on it.

Mr. Unavailable #126: Purgatory

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

After I had the walk-around with #126, I confessed to Zoe that I was in trouble.

“I knew you’d get attached,” she said.

“Yes, you told me so. If I don’t hear from him for a few days, then I’ll be fine. I’ll get over it.”

Zoe was having an online tryst with a gambler from Connecticut. Zoe being Zoe, she'd asked him how big his willy was and he'd sent her photos, which she'd then shared with me and just about anyone she'd met more than once. "I do love a bit of girth," she said, "but this is major." He was the equivalent of two stacked cans of soda. I know because I saw all of the angles.

"And he's not even hard in these photos," she said.

After two days of scrutinizing his willy, it suddenly occurred to me to put a question to her. "What does his face look like?" I asked.

It turned out he was pretty cute.

"I know I'm going to get shagged senseless with this one," she said. "I just know it."

Distracted by the adventures of Zoe, I was feeling a little more over #126. Three days after the walk-around,  I’d just gotten home from work and was feeling irritable when he called asking if I wanted to hang out with him and his best friend, who I knew, too, though more tangentially. I told him I was grumpy.

“What might make you feel better, sweetie?”

"The gym," I said. "I have to go."

“Why don’t you call me after,” he said.

After the gym, I was still grumpy—probably because the whole time I was at the gym, I was trying to talk myself out of hanging out with him. I'd talked myself into a state of neutrality and, when I got home, called him. He wasn’t with his friend anymore, so I asked how his visit was. He said it was good and then added, “Matt thinks you’re fantastic. And that was unsolicited. He really does. He thinks you’re a total babe.”

“He must think you’re a pretty lucky guy then.”

“I haven’t told him anything…I haven’t told anyone a thing.”

That was good. I think.

He asked me how my mood was.

“I’m still grumpy,” I said.

“What can I do to make you feel better, sweetie?”

“You can take me for frozen yogurt.”

“OK, let’s go get some frozen yogurt.”

He swung by my apartment and picked me up. Walking down the street, he asked what was getting at me. I vented about this and that, circling the truth.

He said that he was feeling a little sad, too, that he was meeting all these people—me?—but that he knew he wasn’t staying, so he was kind of just here waiting for his real life to start.

At least I knew where I stood. I was part of the stalled part of his life—the staging ground, the opening band, the commercial segment, the temporary shelter, the purgatory, the waiting room.

“It would help if I had a bed,” he said. “Would you want to split a bed with me? Then I can use it for the next couple of months and it could be yours in the apartment.”

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

When we got to the register at 16 Handles, again, he didn’t make a move for his wallet. At the park nearby, I finished my yogurt, leaned forward on the bench and, on the verge of tears, put my head in my hands.

“You seem sad,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

What was wrong was that I was growing attached to someone who only wanted me to help him kill time and couldn’t even spring for a frozen yogurt after offering to.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just grumpy. It will pass.”

He walked me home and we hugged outside my building. “I would hang out longer, but I’m just too grumpy,” I said.

Signs of Hope: When the best friend loves you, it always works to make them love you—even if just a tiny bit. And at least he offered to do something to make me feel better.

Red Flags: Even though he offered to do something to make me feel better, he didn't do it. There was that and, now, I knew I we were just hanging out temporarily in purgatory. His real life was waiting for him on the other side of the River Styx.

Turning Point: There was none. The whole thing was very confusing: He offered to take me for frozen yogurt but then didn’t; he said he was building new friendships and would miss people (me?) but then said he was unsettled and wanted to leave as soon as possible.

Diagnosis: For him: He has good intentions, but you know what they say about the road to hell.
For me: If I could separate what I want from him from what I want in general, I’d be fine. But I can’t.

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.

Mr. Unavailable #126: Who Falls First?

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

Two days after our turn on his twin mattress, #126 called saying he was starving.

“I’m going to go to that place...Angelina?” he said. I told him I’d be 10 or 15 minutes. “I might die, so is it OK if I go ahead and order?”

When I walked in, I was taken aback. Not because he had a half-eaten plate of food in front of him, but because he was sitting with a table full of people, all of whom I knew and some of whom he knew—he knew enough of them to sit with them anyway.

“When I came in, they asked if I wanted to sit with them because I was alone,” he said. “Isn’t that nice?”

I felt internal contradictions brewing. At the same time that I was annoyed that he didn’t get a table for two, I also desperately didn’t want the people to think we were together.

Fortunately, I knew more of the people than he did, so I managed to look non-contradicted. I told them funny details about my new job—a company proud of its employees’ can-do attitude; yet, somehow, every time I asked people to do something, they'd say, “I can’t do that.”

After they left, it was just the two of us. He looked at me, lingeringly. "What?" I asked. He just shook his head.

We talked. Here are a few things that we learned about each other:
• We learned that we both make the same amount of money (good for me as a writer, less good for him as a vet).
• He learned that, in my spare time, I write “essays about my life that have a larger point.” (i.e., I finally figured out how to describe this without describing it.)
• He learned that I’m a little bit psychic (I knew he was going to say his dog was a mastiff a second before he said it).
• And, I learned that back in the 1980s, he paid $250 for his apartment.

When the bill came, I started to get out my money but then stopped and said, “Is this a date?”

“Would you like this to be a date?”

“Yes,” I said.

“OK, it’s a date. I was kind of thinking maybe I’d pay but then you make the same amount I do…”

"And your apartment that you could rent for $2,000 a month, you bought for $250," I said.

He put down the money. "Thank you for dinner," I said sweetly.

He started walking back toward his place. “Where are you going?” I asked.

“We’re going to my place,” he said.

“Oh good, I’m glad we’re on the same page. But we can actually go back to my place because Zoe’s staying at a friend’s.”

We turned and started walking. He seemed hesitant.

“Is it OK if I don’t stay over,” he said. “I’d love to sleep in a bed with you sometime, but I’ve got to get up for work early tomorrow.”

“That’s fine,” I said. “I didn’t stay over the other night.”

Back at my place, we never made it past the sofa. It was vigorous and enjoyable, but, again, I simulated satisfaction. And when he left, I was glad he was gone. I liked my space. It wasn’t personal.

Signs of Hope: We were on the same page.

Red Flags: I didn’t mention it earlier, but at one point on the sofa something he was doing hurt and when I told him, he sounded a little angry, asking, “In a good way or a bad way?”

Turning Point: When he left. It was nice to get some action and then just be alone.

Diagnosis: For him: 1. Maybe I'm succeeding at making him fall for me. That's what the look at dinner felt like. 2. Looking at the red flag above, maybe his anger problem isn’t as far in the past as he thinks it is.
For me: I don’t care when I see him next + I’m glad he left = I’m not falling for him.