Sugar come by, get me high

January 14, 2005 - 2:55 a.m.

<%@LANGUAGE="JAVASCRIPT" CODEPAGE="1252"%> I’ve managed to whittle my four men down to one. Weed out the idiots, if you will. Lawyer #1: I asked him what he wanted to do for our first date and he said, “I dunno. Maybe we can just hang out.” I don’t “hang out” with grown men in lieu of a proper first date. OUTEN! Lawyer # 2: Is the fool who called me at 2am to start our date. OUTEN! He is mistaken if he thinks I’m ever answering the phone again. And the Gap Manager? Let’s face it. I’m too good for him. More educated, better job, more heterosexual, established etc. Besides, he’s a smoky gay Christ-adoring tobacco lover. No thanks.

I decided to go out with the Jet Pilot again, because…I had a gut feeling. I strongly believe in the 2-date rule, because great things can happen on the second date.

I went out to lunch with him as a snowman and I had a really good time. I found myself getting all silly and stupid-shy, like when I actually like someone. The set of brass balls that normally dangle between my legs just vanish and I turn all fluttery and faint. See? I have no problem kissing strange faggots on the mouth, but when I like a boy I turn into Sister Mary Francis, blushing with my hand over my mouth.

You know what fucking did it? When I walked into the restaurant he was already there, and as I walked up to his table he STOOD UP. You know whumsayin? As in: A lady has entered the room, I will stand next to the table until she is seated.

I don't know if I'm much of a lady but HELL YEAH.

I’ve got 2 words for that: Niiiice.

We had good conversation, and I ate some crazy polenta with black beans and who knows what.

On Saturday he picked me up and drove me to my car, the one that was buried under a snow bank with a flat tire. He shoveled it out and got down on his knees in the snow and ice and changed my tire. While he was bent over I was looking at his butt and imagining him with is shirt off.

We drove to get my flat tire fixed, and it’s always a Mexican mom & pop shop and I’m like: Shit, they don’t take credit cards. I’ll go find an ATM. And he’s like: No, I have money. He paid for everything.

We go back and he puts my new tire on and the whole ordeal took several hours, until the sun went down, with him soaking wet and frozen fingers from the lug nut wrench. He asks me what I’m doing the next day and I say I got no plans. He says: Do you want to go out for dinner and a movie? There’s a new movie I want to see by the guy who did Amélie.

And I was all: Ch-ya! Amélie is my favorite movie, Audrey Tautou is a sweet piece of ass!

He says: Call me in the morning and let me know our ETD.

Estimated Time of Departure! How precious!

Aye, Aye Cap’n!

(Is that why I was possessed to buy Cap’n Crunch, that very same day? I drove straight to Target and bought a mega box of classic Crunch, something I haven’t eaten in years…hmmm.)

The next day we went and saw The Very Long Engagement which was very good, and then he took me out to a fancy French restaurant, in keeping with the theme of the movie.

It was the kind of place that had only a few things on the menu and looks like this:

Scallops - 27
Lobster - Market
Veal - 46
Salmon - 34
Steak – 43
Beef Something – 32

Like they know their food is the shit, they don’t even have to use $dollar signs$.

We both ordered the salmon. It was de-lish and was resting atop a pile of unidentifiable vegetables that I have never tasted in my life. YUM.

Before we went out for dinner, he said he needed to stop by his house to feed his cat. Now, I knew the general vicinity where this nigga lives, and I thought it would be nice, but you know how it is in the city where there's crappy interspersed with the nice so you never know what to expect.

He pulls his car up in front of a row of mansions and I’m looking up and down the block for the normal house. He starts walking towards a fancy house and I’m like Where are you going? And then his key opens the wrought iron gate and as we pass the lion sculptures at the entryway I look up and see a beautiful three-story mansion.

I walked in and my heart stopped beating. I thought I was dreaming. “Whose house is this? Are you house-sitting for someone?”

”No. This is my house. I live here.”

I can’t even describe the way this house looked because my vocabulary lacks the proper terminology, as I have long ago forgotten everything I learned in Art History and Architecture classes. I’ll just say that it was…classic…and beautiful, with a fireplace, and a balcony. Tall ceilings and a nice staircase with wood banisters. Antique ceramic tiles, gorgeous wall paper, huge stained-glass windows. I'm not sure how many bedrooms and bathrooms there were. And the thing that sent my knees a-buckle was the library straight out of Sherlock Holmes, with built in wood bookcases full of hard cover books. Oh my Christ on a popsicle stick. From that point on I didn’t say anything because I felt like I was punched in the chest.

Someone choke me, cuz I can’t handle this. I'm not used to seeing nice things, and quite frankly, I don't know what to do with this information.

Here’s the strange part. For years, I’ve enjoyed strolling this boulevard and staring at all of the old, beautiful homes and wondering what they look like inside. They’re all fenced in with wrought iron but I just stand on the sidewalks and stare into the windows. Once a year they have a “mansion walk” where you can get tours of the inside of the homes, but I was always too cheap to pay the $25 admission. This past summer I was getting particularly enraptured by his block, and would look at each house and make a mental note of what I liked about it. I remember standing right in front of his house with my face pressed through the gate and thinking how expensive it must be to have curved, convex windows.

This pilot? He’s living in my dream home. The one that only existed in my mind up until the moment I walked into his home and lost my breath, because there it was, in real life, just how I imagined it.

I need to stop thinking about this because it makes me crazy. I’m still in shock.

…

Additionally.

I got very sick this week, bad enough to stay home from work, and at my job sick days are the same as vacation days so you can bet I don’t stay home sick unnecessarily. He offered to come over and bring me movies and popcorn, and his cat to warm my feet but I said no. I’d feel really uncomfortable having someone take care of me that I haven’t even smooched yet. Besides, you can never let a guy see your ugly sick face, at least in the beginning.

Yesterday I was still sick but forced myself to go to work, and he wanted to come over and take me out for coffee before I left. Do you know that I answered the door to a bouquet of flowers? I did. And he was holding a big stack of magazines for me to read while I’m sick, and I’m talking good magazines, like Art Forum and American Photography, not candy-ass People.

We went down the street to the café and I was still out of my mind with fever but I listened to him talk and it was all good. As we were leaving, I said, “I have to go to the Post Office and mail something to my girlfriend in Phoenix.” And he said, “Give it to me. I’m flying to Phoenix tonight, and I’ll deliver it to her myself.”

How fucking HOTTT is that??

This weekend we have plans to do something, possibly a show at the Steppenwolf Theater if tickets are available. That’s a “theatre”-- like with real people standing on a stage. This is a high-class cultural event that I have never bared witness to. The last play I went to was a $5 student production of “Lizzy Borden” at UIC. Terrible. The story I had in my mind as a kid, of axing my own parents, was far better.

How did I manage to find a guy like this? Oh wait, he found me. How did I pull that off? Life is good, people. I shite myself in anticipation.

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The Fast, Days 1-6
January 28, 2007