We Are Never Meeting in Real Life

I’ve had sex with a lot of hot dudes—surprisingly hot dudes. And I’m sure you’re all, “Yeah, but they were pity bangs,” and maybe? I mean, probably?! But there have been so many! They all couldn’t have been trying to star in the John Hughes movie of my life! The first time I got a super-ripped bonehead naked in my bed I couldn’t believe my luck—I thought my life was going to completely change the second he wedged his rubbery penis into my vagina. Because I watch a lot of TV, and if nothing else, TV has taught me that if you are a positive person who is kind to the tiny woodland creatures who burst through your open window to help you clean your room and make up your bed, then one day the hottest prince in the kingdom, the one with a foot fetish, will find you after that house party you had to bail on early and fall madly in love with you.

So that first time: I lifted up his Sean John polo and used my tongue to trace every single groove in the unyielding ice cube tray of his abdomen while waiting to feel a change in my outlook and/or social status. After I sucked his dick, I reached over his taut, glistening body and dug through the crumpled parking tickets and past-due ComEd bills and fished out my wallet, surprised to find that hundreds of dollars hadn’t miraculously materialized within. Earlier in the evening, while we’d been making googly eyes at each other over dinner, my granddaughter had shyly approached our corner table with her hand extended, smiling at M. I’m pretty daft sometimes, and also there was a cheese plate involved, so I didn’t pay her any mind. It took a couple of minutes to realize that she was hitting on a dude I was on an actual date with—not asking what time it was, or if he had any quarters for the parking meter. HILARIOUS. He gestured to me as he informed her that what she was interrupting wasn’t a meeting between a troubled young man and his dowdy social worker, but that we were, in fact, eating a meal of a romantic variety. Her disbelief was palpable. And I just sat there with an exploded cracker in my hand because the goat cheese was too cold to work with but I kept trying anyway. I sat there with pieces of shattered cracker down the front of my sweater registering this beautiful woman’s unbridled shock while the wheels turned in my brain to come up with a suitable explanation for our inconceivable pairing. “Lucky lady,” she said as she walked away.

OKAY, SURE. But why, though? It’s not like he’d made her laugh or rescued her cat out of a tree. He just had glorious cheekbones and a magnificently crafted beard. Lucky people win the lottery. Or fly to California with no one sitting in the seat next to them on the plane. Or get the movie theater to themselves. What did she know about my luck? Was I going to wake up a millionaire after I had sex with M?! I flagged the waiter to bring us another bottle of expensive wine.





2.


H had a job—I’m not exactly sure what it was, though—and this beautiful apartment in Hyde Park that I only ever saw at night. It had high ceilings and massive windows big enough to curl up in with a book, but since he didn’t seem to read a whole lot, he must use it for something else. The first time I ever heard him sing, we’d just had sex, and I was lying in bed watching thunder and lightning rage outside while holding my asshole tightly closed because I knew I would have to shit soon and was going to try to make it home to avoid a clumsy “what’s that smell?” type of situation. Suddenly H slid out of bed and into a pair of gauzy white lounge pants, padding across the room to where a couple of guitars and a keyboard stood sentry in the shadows.

I pulled the blanket up to my chin and watched his skin glow deep purple in the moonlight, his biceps rippling beneath the surface as he tuned the strings of his guitar. I closed my eyes as his rich baritone filled the room, momentarily forgetting that I really needed to get a move on if I was going to get out of his place before the 6 bus stopped running. But his voice was so beautiful, and lying there smelling his lingering scent in the sheets while he sang one of Usher’s slow jams was an intoxicating mix, what with the steady rain and flashes of lightning, and yeah, I totally missed that bus and ended up running the shower so I could take a dump without his listening to my farts.

H also had a for-show girlfriend and a for-after-the-show girlfriend, and I’ll let you guess (A) which one I was, and (B) just how humiliated I felt when I figured it out. No, it wasn’t at his daughter’s fourth birthday party, where I stood awkwardly on the perimeter of the festivities sipping sun-warmed prosecco out of a child-size paper cup, the stranger whose inexplicable presence justified relegating her to supervision of the craft table. “I don’t know who that woman is, so let’s put her in charge of the pipe cleaners and the paste.” It also wasn’t during his mom’s annual July Fourth cookout, which I’d grudgingly attended even though I don’t like eating corn on the cob in public. That day, after I’d hauled bags of ice to a beachfront park under the punishing summer sun, I was rewarded with heaps of fawning praise from all the aunts and cousins who’d gathered round to poke at me with kebab skewers, inspecting my tender meat. I was approved!

For a giant slothperson, I am always amazed at how many rooms I can slip into unnoticed; I attribute this to the force field of negativity I project at all times. So when no one spotted me in the back of the café on “Undiscovered Soul” night, it was fine, because I could just chill in the shadows and not distract H from that song I’d heard him rehearsing when he thought I was asleep. He was performing in front of approximately seven people, five of whom were visibly irritated that their free Wi-Fi was being interrupted by a dude super-earnestly singing Donell Jones’s “U Know What’s Up.” At the end of his set I went to the stage to congratulate him and was intercepted by a woman who introduced herself as his girlfriend, a speed bump I hit going too fast but pumped the brakes fast enough to ensure a smooth landing. She’d heard of me, you see, his good friend the writer, and she wanted me to know that she enjoyed my work. As I was thanking her, H broke away from a crowd of admirers and said “Oh! Hello!” too enthusiastically, swiftly ushering me to the other end of the café, where I put on my I COULDN’T CARE LESS ABOUT THIS PERCEIVED SLIGHT AGAINST ME satisfied smirk mask and waited for his explanation, which sounded like, “Words words words words words”—deep breath—“words words words words words.” In that moment I wished that I’d ordered a coffee so at least I would have something to do with my hands. “…value our time together,” he continued. “It’s just that with this whole music thing she just fits my, you know, my image better.” And I do know. Which is why I gracefully stepped aside so he could pursue his dream of singing outdated urban contemporary hits in empty coffee shops for people who don’t care. And it’s a good thing I’m so selfless and full of gratitude, because if I wasn’t, the universe would never have been introduced to the modern hero also known as D’Angelo.



LOL JK, THAT DUDE WORKS AT A GROCERY STORE NOW.





3.

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