Enséñame

1. teach me

2. show me

The neon green lights shining right outside his hotel room window gives his shirtless body the same soft glow I imagine he has all year round when he’s in Miami. I take off my jacket and shoes and join him in bed, caressing his chest and pecking him gently on his neck and jaw.

“I’m waiting for you to show me how much you like me,” he whispers, as I reach over and pin one of his arms down on the pillow. I smile, and we start kissing.

Chico Boricuo has a subtle accent. Not a Puerto Rican accent; he didn’t get it from his parents. He got it growing up and going out in Miami. It’s a cocktail of Latin intonations, all blending smoothly under the Florida sun. His skin tastes like coconut, but I’m pretty sure it’s his cologne. No wonder he chose to stay at “The Tropicana Hotel,” he informs me immediately after insisting on paying for my second vodka tonic at the Café.

That’s where our night started, where we first met, at the Thursday night gay Latin extravaganza: Pan Dulce. Chico Boricuo was standing right in front of me at the bar as I waited to order my first vodka tonic. He was there by himself… which is usually a pretty big turn-off, but his baby brown eyes and dimples exposed him as nontoxic, a far cry from my well-documented attraction to cocky crooks, bad boys and un-dateable delinquents. Chico Boricuo looked straight out of one of Johnny Diaz’s novels: warm smile that lit up his entire face, dark chocolate chest hair inching out from his tight forest green v-neck and about 27 or 28.

I turned around to ask my girl friend what she’s drinking, but instead of giving me a response, she widened her eyes as she motioned repeatedly with her chin towards the Chico.

“I’m not exactly sure what you’re plotting,” I tried to set her straight, “but let me tell you right now: it’s not gonna happen.”

Two drinks with a squirt of confidence later, and it looks like it’s definitely gonna happen. Chico Boricuo and I are talking intimately up against the windows that look out towards the twin gas stations on Castro.

“I don’t know where the Tropicana Hotel is,” I resume the conversation we started earlier as I check a text I’ve just received from my girl friend saying she’s found a cab home.

“It’s in the Mission. My brother picked it out for us.” Chico Boricuo and his brother are visiting San Francisco for the week. Every six months, his brother, who a few years ago moved to Panama, has to return to the States to fulfill his Visa obligations. But instead of going back home to Miami every time, his brother chooses and pays to meet up with his brother at a different destination. Earlier this year, it was Denver. This time, it’s San Francisco. And the Boricuo brothers are leaving tomorrow.

After we finish our drinks, he was drinking a Manhattan by the way, I grab his hand, and lead him towards the recently-remodeled dancefloor. But apparently, his Latin hips are unable to shake it to Kelly Clarkson, so he just stands in front of me, como un pez fuera del agua.

“How can you dance to this?” He asks me seconds before the chorus to “Since U Been Gone” is about to blast through the entire club.

“Just jump!” I shout. And he does. And I join. And Kelly belts. And we smile.

He gets a call from his brother, who has been hanging out right by their hotel in the Mission all night.

“My brother, he’s bored. Wants us to meet up for a drink or something.”

“Alright… let’s go!”

“You want to come? And meet my brother? Won’t that be a little weird for you?”

“Not, unless it’s not weird for you. C’mon, this is your last night seeing your brother. I want to meet him.”

We leave and meet up with his brother outside of the Make Out Room. They give each other a sturdy hug, and then I get introduced as a friend, but his brother, who is older, can read between the smiles. The three of us then head into a really tiny hookah bar across the street. It has a sign saying, “Members Only,” but we just walk in, and I order a hookah for us.

“So my brother wanted to see if we could go find an after hours place tonight,” Chico Boricuo says to me before taking a deep drag off a rose-flavored hookah.

At this point, I’m playing the part of local nightlife connoisseur, even though I’ve only lived in San Francisco for, like, six weeks. I walk around the hookah bar, mindlessly starting conversations with the strangers lounging on the couches and laying on the cushions, trying to get the insider information. But they’re all drained from partying, or foreign, or underage. So I give up, but not without a consolation prize.

“Ok, so… it’s really hard to find an after hours here, especially on a Thursday night,” and then I think of a place that might work: “Unless we want to dance like zombies until 8 a.m.,” but then I reconsider. “Never mind, we’re not going to the End-Up,” I start rambling. “But I did meet this really cool girl from Italia. Her name is Valentina, and she gave me a leftover blunt.”

Chico Boricuo’s brother is talking to some of the underage girls, and they totally love his luscious Latin look, so we step outside and light the joint.

“I had a lot of fun hanging out with you tonight,” Chico Boricuo says. His feelings start pouring out like Pina Colada, thick and refreshing, just sweet enough for my taste. “First, when you got me dancing at the club,” he starts recollects after his first hit. “I’ve never danced like that before! And my brother, he loves you by the way. The way you just go up and start talking to everybody, like it’s no big deal. And you always find a way to get what you want,” he says lifting up the blunt and passing it over to me.

I take a small hit. Inhale, exhale just long enough to think of a response, but all I can come up with is, “I really liked hanging out with you too.” But I guess that’s good enough. He pulls me in closer, and we start making out up against a fence on 22nd Street.

After a few minutes, I pull back, but keep my arms wrapped around his lower torso. “I can’t really show you here… show you how much I like you.”

The next thing he says to me, we’re in his hotel room. He’s lying warm and shirtless on the cool, clean, white sheets, and he says:

“I’m waiting for you to show me how much you like me.”

I kiss him, and take off his boxers and let him take off mine. And we fool around for hours, naked and drenched in the neon hues that are radiating from outside the hotel room window.

But I don’t show him how much I like him. Because to do so, I’d have to show him everything: me dancing alone in my room to Kelly Clarkson, making a fool out of myself just to make friends. I would have to show him how jealous and territorial I can get and the humiliating ways I have failed trying to be fabulous. I would have to show him all of that. I would have to show him this blog.

And we only have one night at the Tropicana. Because when morning comes, no matter what happens between us, underneath the sheets, he still has a flight to catch.

The truth is, I don’t always get what I want. In fact, I rarely do. And it seems that the guys closest to my heart are the ones already halfway on to somewhere else. And it sometimes feels like self-sabotage. Like I push myself to fall for these men who are miles and miles away. Keeping everyone, including myself, at a safe distance.

Because I’m not ready to show you how much I like you. Because there’s too much of me to show.

The Husband Hunter

I grab all the papers and stuff them in the glossy navy blue folder they gave me at the orientation an hour earlier. My hotel room is clean and spacious but nothing to brag about. I have a great view of 7th Avenue. New York is misty today. I scramble to the restroom, fix my hair and take the small bottle of Burberry cologne I bought just for the occasion. I spray it a few inches in front of me and walk right into the floating fragrance with force, feeling the small particles land on my blazer and lime green tie. It matches my Kenneth Cole watch.  Shit! I’m already late for the first meeting, so I rush out my room and down to the lobby to the main conference room.

The room is crowded with college boys all wearing black blazers. I walk in with confidence, a trait I’m certain all these men possess. Minutes before anyone takes the podium, I take a seat towards the back, perfect location to scope out the entire room. I open my folder, and read on one of the papers that the first thing on the itinerary is welcoming remarks by some hotshot at Lehman Brothers. Welcome to OUBC, Out for Undergraduate Business Conference—a two-day networking seminar in the heart of New York for all those overachieving, Ivy-league educated gay undergrads in the country.

How the hell did I get here? I was waitlisted at Princeton, my G.P.A. is dismal, I went to an overcrowded public school in California, and my creative writing major is not exactly the shortest route to i-banking or consulting. Damn, not even accounting.

I had first heard about OUBC two months earlier from a cute NYU boy I was drunkenly flirting with at Phoenix. He thought it would be a great opportunity to meet recruiters, network and hopefully land a golden internship at one of the big banks. He had intentions of becoming a high-rolling, i-banker. I had intentions of marrying one.

So this conference was perfect. Imagine the contacts I’d make? Dozens of put-together gay guys vying to be one step ahead in the competitive world of finance. And I would be the midst of it all, in the same hotel, undercover, trying to get them under the covers.

I got my resume together, highlighting my short experience at a national business publication and exaggerating my desire to enroll in an MBA program. And two months later, here I am, sitting at the Sheraton Hotel’s conference room in New York, listening a power lesbian give advice on how to keep in touch with recruiters, format a resume and informing us of the perks of joining the LGBT network at a firm. Apparently, there are many. Rumor has it that the gay network at Boston Consulting Group sent all their gay associates to Paris…

But instead of taking notes on how to secure a lucrative future career, I was surveying the room and taking notes on potential lifemates. If he raised his hand and kept asking questions? Too eager, next! If his tie is tied in an Onassis knot? Too flamboyant, next! If he has spiked his hair with pounds of product? He’s a lesbian, next!

Next thing on the itinerary, we break up into small groups and we’re given a business problem. We’re expected to work together and come up with a profitable solution. Bottom line: I don’t give a shit, so instead I volunteer to be the note-taker and agree with absolutely everything this Columbia undergrad, who has imposed his leadership, has to say. That’s perhaps the best way to deal with an Ivy leaguer: sit back, pretend like he’s correct and let him blow you. Yes, oftentimes they are right, but the way they go about it is so obnoxious. Columbia is cute, but I could tell he would be controlling in the long run. Next!

The plan for after dinner is a laid back cocktail social that the organizers had planned for us in order to relax a bit after a day full of bullshit. Now, that’s what I’m talking about. But since I heard that the year before, all of the participants had gotten wasted and ended up at one of the sponsor’s West Village townhouse engaging in questionable activities, this year, you had to carry a special red sticker on your name tag to get alcoholic beverages. Only the organizers had them.

After my second diet coke, I can’t bear the dry spell any longer. The only thing worse than being forced to make small talk with wannabe bankers is having to do it sober. On my way to the restroom, I notice that one of the organizers had left his name tag on a small table right outside the room, the name tag with the red sticker! Cautious not to get caught, I grab the tag and dash towards the restroom. I slowly peel the red sticker from the organizer’s tag and stick it right on mine. After smoothing it out a bit, I leave the restroom and head towards the bar.

After I order a gin and tonic without much of a fuss, a participant with long, sandy hair and green eyes looks at me and asks, “You’re an organizer! Oh man, this whole time I thought you were an undergrad. Where do you work?”

“Uh, actually, I’m not really an organizer,” I say as I start walking away not to draw the attention of the organizers that were mingling a few feet away from us.

The boy follows me, so I have to continue the explanation.

“I just stole the red sticker from a tag I found outside,” I say. “C’mon! Is it really that hard to figure out a way to get some gin around here?”

He laughs and takes a sip of my drink. Shortly after, I learn that the boy goes to Princeton and his family lives in the Upper East Side so he’s not staying at the hotel. He has just gotten back from studying abroad in Argentina, and really has no interest in being an i-banker, but his father a principal at McKinsey, made him come.

“I really just want to work for a non-profit,” Princeton confesses, “I feel like all this will still be useful.”

“Well, now that we’re being honest: I don’t want to go into banking either. The long hours, the pressure, I don’t think I’m cut out for it.”

“So what do you want to do?”

“I want to be a writer,” I say with a bit of an attitude. “Don’t worry, I’m fully prepared to be starving and living in a shithole in the Lower East Side for the rest of my life.”

“Yeah, it’s so infuriating to see all these people, all these guys, doing this for the money. That’s really the only reason anyone goes into banking: the money! I’d rather enjoy my life. So are you writing a story about the conference then?”

“Yeah, you could say that…”

“Alright, don’t worry. You’re secret is safe with me, I’m not going to out you.”

“Haha, well I heard during dinner that there are two straight guys here passing as gay, just to get the connections. Them two over there…”

“Haha, someone should really say something. It can be a public inning,” Princeton says, but before I can continue the repartee, his phone vibrates.

“Oh listen, I’m about to go meet my dealer downstairs, you want to come down with me?”

“Sure, you want to smoke up in my room upstairs?”

And just like that, I find myself smoking pot with a nice, down-to-earth Princeton boy whose dreams of helping the world outweigh the need to stuff his wallet. As I take hit after hit of the poorly rolled joint, I imagine my future as his trophy husband.

Inhale. His parents, progressive and supportive, would find me a breath of fresh air in their stuffy Upper East Side existence. I’d delight the elegant crowds at the galas and fundraisers and they’d be ok with me staying at home working on my novel. Once it sold, we’d take all the money and sail around the Greek isles for weeks, drinking champagne, getting tanned and inviting a boy or two to join us after dark.

Every morning before another draining day at the office, I’d have his coffee ready just the way he liked it, and I would make sure to have dinner reservations made before he got home. I’d iron his shirts and give him foot rubs on the weekends and take our dog, a husky named London, to the vet. We’d live below 14th Street because he would never really be able to get the hip out of me. And that’s what he’d love about me. Exhale.

Reality Bites

Denim Boy opens up the door to his apartment wearing only his light blue pajama pants. I walk in and immediately start kissing him, touching him up and down, my black leather gloves caressing his skin. I push him up against the wall and his back slams it hard, making the whole apartment shake a little.

“You’re cold,” he says almost whining. It’s mid-December in Chicago. He takes my shoulders and pushes me back gently, and then walks over to close his front door. Meanwhile, I walk to his living room and throw my coat on his leather couch.

“Alright, now I’m ready,” he says and walks up to me expecting me to jump him again. I stand there, facing him with a dubious look. I’m teasing him. Not giving in and doing what I so obviously want to do, pretending like I have no idea what he expects from me. After a few seconds, he gives him and starts kissing me. He wants it too.

I unbutton my long-sleeved shirt, and he pulls me down onto his black leather couch. He lies down, and I get on top of him, putting my hands on the armrest to support my upper body as he writhes below me. His pants were thin, and I could feel his crotch getting hard.

“You have great sexual energy!” he says when we stop for a bit to catch our breath. Feeling like a lion, I drag him up and then lead him to his bedroom. I’m ready to roar.

The following week, I take a flight back to California for winter break. I don’t expect to keep much in touch with Denim Boy, out of sight, out of mind. And I think that perhaps he feels the same way. We’re nothing official, just casual. I like him, but I’m not one to push (unless it’s physically and up against a wall). Besides, I know for sure that I’m going to see him again after I return to continue what we had gotten into.

But Denim Boy texts me every single day while I’m away. Little casual comments turn into full-blown conversations, and before I know it I’m falling asleep clutching my phone and waking up to a ridiculous phone bill. I never thought I would be the kind of boy to have to get an unlimited texting plan.

“I just checked our signs on Wikipedia,” reads one of his texts. “We share a planet!” Towards the end of my stay in California, every time my phone vibrates, I can feel it all the way deep in my heart, and I start getting really excited to see him again.

My phone vibrates one more time while I’m hanging out with a high school friend and her boyfriend at Angels & Kings. It’s Denim Boy. I text him that I’m in the area, and he invites me over.

My heart is bursting with anticipation. But when the door of his apartment opens up, instead of Denim Boy standing there, half naked with his body for me to hold close, I see… some other boy.

“Hey,” Some Other Boy says without introducing himself or letting me know what the hell he is doing here. Confused, I walk in and then find my boy sitting on the couch.

“Hey! How was your trip?” Denim Boy asks right before coming up to give me a hug.

“It was fine…” I say with a tone that hints at my confusion, as if asking, “Am I intruding?” Denim Boy then realizes and introduces me to Some Other Boy, who is wearing a Yale sweatshirt. So to make small talk, I ask, “Oh do you go to Yale?”

“Oh no, my friend gave it to me…” Some Other Boy says.

Wow, why would he do that? Why would anyone wear a collegiate shirt of a school they didn’t go to? So that they have to explain themselves, cause you know people will ask, that they didn’t go there?

“Of course, you don’t go to Yale,” is what I want to say. But I hold back.

Half an hour of awkward superficial conversations later, I’m getting impatient. I catch Denim Boy while he’s getting a glass of water and ask if maybe we can take the after party back to his room—just the two of us.

“Oh… tonight’s not a good day, we’re kind of having my friend sleep over,” he says but I don’t believe sleeping will be the only thing they’ll be doing tonight.

“Oh… so you guys are getting ready to go to bed?”

“Yeah… kinda.”

“And I’m the only person that won’t be spending the night.”

“Not tonight.”

“So I should be getting out of here then.”

“We’ll hang out some other time, I promise,” Denim Boy says as a sort of consolation prize as I’m getting my jacket and ready to leave.

“Actually, no. We won’t. This was kind of the last time.”

Sitting on the El back to campus, I keep going through the moments in my head over and over again. We had a great time in bed, and when we hung out, and he kept making contact while I was gone. Was he bored? Was I just an immediate distraction, and now that he had found this Yale poser, he’s done with me? Squeezed every drop of fun out of me, or so he thinks. And why did he keep texting me, and pretending like he was into me? I would’ve been fine had he walked away after our casual hook-up. I would have scratched him from my boy bank and not have kept investing in what I thought would be a profitable return.

And I was so certain that this real boy would be different. He would care and be kind and not play games, not lead me on and resort to me whenever he wanted, like some plaything that would be available to him whenever he wished. What happened to the good old days when a boy kissed you because he meant it, not to just show that he could?

And then I keep thinking how my most intense flames tend to fade suddenly. What is wrong with me? And it’s happened with both the eccentric, party boys and with the real, down-to-earth boys too. Guys just want to make out with me, and hook up with me and take me home. But when it comes to starting something serious, I fall short. I’m a one-night thing and then expire.

I feel like a toy. So disposable.

Meant to Be

My face after I get off the phone causes Sunny D some concern.

“What’s going on? Who was that?” he asks but I don’t have the time to answer him. There are a million little thoughts preoccupying my mind right now. I leave him in my room, dash out of the apartment and head down taking elevator to the lobby of our building. We have an unannounced guest.

I open the front door and let her in, wearing grey linen pants that flare down to her high heels, a navy cami under a white ruffled blouse.

She takes off her large, dark brown sunglasses to reveal her green eyes. Like a gypsy’s eyes I’ve always thought. She has a new haircut too. Her jet-black hair is less voluminous and cut right above her shoulders with sharp bangs hanging right down to her eyelashes. Even when flying cross-country, my mother doesn’t understand the concept of dressing casual.

“You don’t think I’d surprise you,” my mother says in her Spanish accent almost with a chuckle. She gets her tenses confused, rarely utilizing the past tense. Appropriate for a woman that has taught me to live always in the present. Mom has managed to not only surprise me by hopping on a plane on a whim and coming to visit me in New York, but she’s also surprised herself. She loves her newly rediscovered adventurous side. Reminds her of the days she’d used to go out to dance clubs in Guadalajara all night and come home at dawn. A past she couldn’t cling on to anymore.

I hug her then ask, “What are you doing here?” I try to make it sound like I’m delighted to see her, but secretly I’m also terrified.

“Few days off from work, I think, I’ll go to New York,” she says as we take the elevator back up to my floor. She has already checked into a hotel two blocks south of the Empire State Building so she’s only carrying her thick leather purse.

“Wait right here,” I say when we get to my door, “the apartment is a little messy.”

“Messier than your room back home?”

“Much messier!”

I run back into my apartment, close the door behind me keeping my mother at a safe distance. I actually consider locking the door, but then Sunny D comes out of my room and asks, “What’s going on?”

“My mom. She’s here! Hurry, go put on your pants!” Sunny D gives me the “oh my” look and turns back into the room. “And hide the pot! And the lube! And… can you make my bed?”

My mom knocks on the door. I let her in and introduce her to Sunny D, who is now, thank God, wearing pants.

“This is my friend. He also lives here. With me. Well not with me… but in this apartment. He’s my roommate! That’s why he is here too. He lives in that room. So he’s here.”

Extending his hand, Sunny D says, “Hi” in a perfect pitch for parental approval. My mom shakes his hand and smiles gleefully. She judges people instantly. And so far, I can tell she likes him. I give her a tour of my small apartment. She walks into my room, takes a quick look around and the looks at me with somewhat disappointed.

“Mijo! Your bed!”

Fast-forward to two hours later and my mom goes from merely liking to adoring Sunny D. They are sitting on the couch, watching the episode of Sex and the City where the girls go to L.A. and Charlotte realizes that her marriage is a “fake Fendi!”

They’re eating popcorn mixed in with M&M’s, a treat I was certain my mother would have second thoughts about but is not enjoying copiously like a 7-year-old pudgy kid at a carnival. She has gotten adventurous, I think, as I lounge on the other couch flipping through the pages of a magazine and watching them snuggle up on the couch like gal pals. Sunny D is making her gasp. He’s making her giggle. I knew the kid had charm, but my mom has built-in reservations. Reservations he blew away effortlessly like fan blowing through confetti.

St. Mark’s Place, the Met and Mamma Mia later, the weekend ends and my mom has to get ready to go back to California. As we wait outside her hotel for her cab, we share a cigarette and she looks at me and tells me a story of when I was a young boy growing up in Mexico.

“You know, ever since you were like 5 or 6, you wanted to live in New York City,” she says. “Do you remember?” I nod and take a drag of our cig.

“All on your own you come up with it. I never talk to you about New York or what it means to live here. To most people in Guadalajara, New York City is too far for a dream even. So who knows how you got the idea about it, but this is where you wanted to be. And it’s the first thing you do, after your graduation, you came straight out here. I came to visit because I was afraid too. It’s a big city and you’re too young. But you surprised me. You found a job and a place to live… and a boyfriend,” she says referring to Sunny D, and I blush.

“It’s true, and it happened so fast. I can tell you love to live here. This is where you were meant to be.”

My mom stomps out the cigarette, and we notice her cab pulling up. I give her a hug, and she steps in. We wave goodbye.

The entire time my mom spent with Sunny D and me, I tried desperately to keep our relationship a secret (whatever type of relationship we had). I would flinch whenever he came close to hugging me, and would give him a look whenever his details about our New York lives got too intimate. Eventually he got the hint. But the whole time, my mom knew exactly what was going on.

As her cab drives away, I think, she’s right. She’s always been right. This is where I’m meant to be.

A Real Boy

After one too many times riding the roller coaster that is dating boys who think they’re the biggest thrill you’ll ever find, I was ready to leave the amusement park. For a couple of weeks, I was on a self-imposed boycott so I could straighten out my life. Three months short of graduation, I still had yet to find a stable entry-level slave camp that would take me solely on the fact that I’d overpaid for my education.

The last thing I needed was the twists, turns and inevitable bumps of a new guy, especially since I’ve noticed recently I tend to attract men who rely on me to carry on a big chunk of their baggage. Eccentric like from another planet, if not completely psychotic, my previous paramours had the tendency to drown me in drama when all I wanted was to stay afloat.

I’ve often wondered what it is about my personality that makes me a magnet for extremity. Perhaps, I’m too accommodating to their demands, or maybe a more suitable explanation is that I’m the one drawn towards them. I do admit: I’m like a month flying mindlessly towards the flickering light in the dark until it gets burnt. I find something oddly alluring about a boy engulfed in his own flame.

So if it’s me, then it’s a behavior I can change, I thought. No more game-playing, ego boost-craving, manipulative boys. When everything is covered in starry facades, a down-to-earth attitude is what really shines. And so I made it my mission to look for that, a real boy.

It was this ongoing quest that convinced me to make one exception to my boycott and head down to the Gold Coast to meet my latest fling, a guy I had met two weeks before at a clothing boutique in Lincoln Park while looking to purchase a new pair of jeans.

“Hi, do you work here?” I asked pretty sure that he worked there.

“No, but I’m sure I can help you,” he said self-assured that he could work there.

“Ah, I don’t know about that. I’m pretty picky when it comes to jeans.”

“Everyone should be; it’s hard to find the right pair.” And with that he walked over to the wall where all the jeans were hanging and offered his advice on several styles. As it turns out, he’s somewhat of a denim connoisseur who hunts down rare denim through thrift shops and on eBay.

We exchanged numbers that afternoon and had been texting incessantly ever since. I’m weary of sparks that stem from impersonal communication like texts or online, but when I started getting all giddy whenever my phone vibrated, I knew it wasn’t forged.

I perceived this guy to be somewhat of a different breed from the self-aware, superficial fireflies I had encountered in the past. In the many conversations he initiated, he illustrated an aversion to the Boystown merry-go-round: mind fucking, disposable eye candy and all things crafted to impress. He was just comfortable staying in his apartment, cooking dinner for his friends and watching a Tim Burton flick. Which is what he had planned for me that night. A date at his place, exactly the type of real boy behavior I longed for.

I arrive at his Gold Coast apartment building, and I’m initially taken aback by the high-priced décor of the building. I wonder how a junior in college has the resources to indulge in such a lavish living arrangement. After signing in as a guest, the doorman calls him up, says my name, and after a subtle nod lets me through to the elevators.

Denim Boy opens the door to his pad and gives me a hug. He had gotten a hair cut since we had last seen each other, his curly black hair is now more rectangular in shape, but his light blue eyes had stayed just the same. He is delighted to see me carrying a brown bag with not one but two bottles of red wine to complement the penne pasta with vodka sauce he has prepared especially for the occasion.

After dinner, we sit on his black leather couch perusing though old issues of fashion magazines while Batman Returns blares on his television screen. Our favorite Batman movie, we concur. After the scene where Michelle Pfeiffer trashes her modest secretary apartment and turns it into a twisted Hello Kitty fetish bordello, I grab his attention and point out the new Louis Vuitton ad with a very naked Marc Jacobs decorated in bright neon pink lettering.

“You know I’m really good friends with his ex-boyfriend,” he says assuming I had no idea about Marc Jacobs’s personal love life.

“Jason Preston?!” I ask knowing every detail.

“Yeah, that’s who I stay with whenever I’m in New York.”

Real boys don’t associate with Marc Jacobs’s ex-boyfriends, I thought. So then I have to ask, “How do you know him?”

“Well, for a while… I was seeing this guy… who… you know… used to model for Diesel,” he says quite aware of how ridiculous that statement is on a first date. How ridiculous this whole conversation is in general.

I make a face to indicate to him my utter lack of words. Like there’s no way I’m going to compete with a Diesel model. But I’m partly just playing up to the ridiculous scenario. It doesn’t really get to me. What I do ponder is whether Denim Boy has any other secrets that propel him further out into the stratosphere, where fashion models, reality TV stars and lunatics reside.

So maybe he isn’t as ordinary and uncomplicated and real as I had hoped, but we’ve been having a great time and social circles don’t necessarily dictate the true nature underneath. Besides, if I ran away from every guy with connections to the glossy glossy lifestyle, I would be stuck somewhere between Nebraska and my own private Idaho, and I can’t even tell you where those states are on a map. My only concern now that I had learned of my predecessors is to… work it. Better than a model.

Which to me, at that time, drunk on red wine, means to start making out hard core on the couch to the very loud sounds of Danny Elfman.