His name is H. He listens to Dan Savage podcasts, reads The WOW Report, espouses liberal politics, and enjoys viral comedy such as Drew Droege's send-ups of Chloë Sevigny. He also plays the recorder and speaks passionately about goblins, sorcerers, and various other constituents of the Dungeons and Dragons adventures he shares with friends. He is, by his own admission, a nerd with a capital "N." This may be true, and I may have zoned out more than once this evening as he recounted a particularly dicey game of D&D, but he's a Nerd with one of the loveliest smiles I have ever seen, and right now, as I write this, he is sleeping in my bedroom.

I met him through a mutual friend of Ex's and mine - one of the few who took sides. During a long phone conversation, she told me Ex had no idea what he was doing, that he was confused and utterly unaware of his own confusion. She compared him to a broken car - one I couldn't possibly hope to fix - then mentioned a friend of hers on Long Island, a dramaturg, who lives with a gay roommate. She wanted to play Yente to my Tzeitel. I politely declined. Cut to a few days after my unexpected stay at the hospital. She called again. Again, she floated the topic of the gay roommate. It may have been desperation that swayed my answer, or perhaps it was sudden clear-headedness. Either way, I said "yes." Per my friend's instructions, I friended the Long Island dramaturg on Facebook. A few hours later, H friended me, and thus began my first 21st century courtship.

"First comes love, then comes marriage..." In H's and my case, first came Facebook, then came Skype, then came non-virtual contact - all in short order. We texted back and forth the night he friended me, then for several hours over the next two nights. Soon we were planning an actual, in-person date. He lives near my parents, so I suggested I drive to his apartment while I was visiting them over the weekend. He made dinner - a salad with baked broccoli and carrots for starters, a sweet-potato soup for the main course, and apple cobbler for desert. The date lasted from 6 PM to two o'clock in the morning. We made out. A lot. Three times, I think - each for a solid 15 to 20 minutes. I hadn't made out like this in years - not since Ex and I were enjoying the full bloom of our honeymoon phase.

I teased his lips with my tongue. I relished each change of rhythm and technique - from gentle kisses to passionate joining of the tongues to wet side-quests down the neck and up to the lobe of each ear. Pressing my forehead to his, I opened my eyes and saw him smiling, eyes closed, face fractured by ocular tricks into a beautiful, Cubist painting. He looks enough like Ex that twice I caught myself forgetting which man I was kissing. But then I would pull back - just enough for my eyes to decipher H's face in its everyday form - and marvel at the serenity of that face, the unselfconscious beauty of that smile. At one point near the end of the date, I whispered, half-giggling, "I want to do more, but that would be indelicate." He opened his eyes slightly, touching my head. "I promised myself I wouldn't... on the first date." Our 21st century courtship suddenly sped down to a decidedly analogue pace. I may have driven home with an erection, but my heart was sated, aflutter with the excitement of new possibilities.

---

It's now the day after our sleepover. H woke at 7:30 and played Super Mario Brothers Wii until I woke up at 10:00. I drove him to a mom-and-pop cafe for breakfast and coffee. Last night we dined at a French bistro (yes, we have those in Jersey), then returned to my apartment, played fetch with Genevieve, talked, and fought a few rounds in Super Mario Brothers Brawl. We didn't have sex, but we touched lips and tongues and skin in another rhythmically variegated marathon of kisses. I like him - a lot. Sometimes he talks too much - either that or his play-by-play reconstructions of D&D make time seem longer than it is. But he's gentle, easygoing, shy, thin, attractive, informal, goofy, complimentary, eager, and unafraid of his own imperfections. In short, he's not unlike the Ex of 12 years ago, and aside from being thin and attractive, he couldn't be more different than the Ex of today.

H may turn out to be a rebound - or he may be something more. For now I'm simply trying to enjoy him, D&D and all. It's been 12 years (really, almost 13) since I introduced myself, mind and body, to a new person. It's a beautiful, wobbly process, full of surprises and nerves, and I intend to enjoy it.