It's 9:35 PM, Saturday night. I'm seven months single, dear readers, and the thought of spending a Saturday night alone still makes me uneasy. (I say "dear readers" knowing there may not be many of you left. I've wanted to write several times since May. Each time I got as far as composing an opening sentence in my head, but then my other writing life - my playwriting life - would interfere. The play is now finished - or as "finished" as any play can be - and opens in less than two weeks. And now I am back to blogging.)

This afternoon I professed my affection for a man by telling him, "I like you." Yes, I am a blogger and a playwright; I taught college English and now earn my living writing test questions, many of which concern vocabulary, and the best I could manage for this, my first post-breakup expression of meaningful, romantic feelings towards a fellow human soul, was "I like you." "I'm struggling with this. [Long pause.] I might as well say it, I like you. [Long pause.] I have feelings for you." William Shakespeare, eat your heart out.

I can't say much about the man in question. I've done a spectacularly lousy job of preserving my anonymity as the author of this blog, to the point where former students and even my own sister are now intimately acquainted with the details of my every petty, post-breakup thought, not to mention my randy ride on the (homo)sexual merry-go-round. I also made the unfortunate choice of posting the blog URL on my OkCupid profile. I told myself I was doing this as part of a larger effort to be completely and refreshingly honest with potential dates. (After all, hadn't OkCupid encouraged me to do just this by inviting me to post on my profile "the most private thing I'm willing to admit"?) I may have been gunning for honesty, or I may have simply been looking for new readers. In either case, common sense (plus some dating advise from friends) led me to remove it.

(Said one OkCupider who read my blog prior to the take-down: "At the very least, now anyone who has read it knows how you tick and the truth is, sometimes 'very ugly honest' is better than no honesty at all." "That's all well and good," I can imagine my friends saying, "but 'very ugly honest' is still, well, ugly.")

I can't say much about the man I "like," but I can tell you what I would have said to him had my English teacher's verbosity, my dramatic flair, and my nerves not failed me.

I told you I'm struggling with my feelings for you. I'm struggling because I'm embarrassed for having these feelings and anxious about how you will perceive them, and me, after I've shared them.

I'm anxious because you've told me that certain kinds of men objectify you, deliberately ignoring your complexity, spirit, and intelligence. (These are my words - "complexity," "spirit," and "intelligence" - not yours. You sometimes refer to yourself as intelligent, but in a grim sort of way. I mean intelligence in the joyous sense; the vibrancy behind your eyes that is its own kind of dancer.) I'm anxious because, whatever else you might think, I don't want you to count me among these male objectifiers. I'm embarrassed because, I suspect, the reason you told me about them in the first place is because you felt safe with me, and now here I go having feelings that could make you feel unsafe.

I'm embarrassed for other reasons, too (let's get those out of the way). I'm embarrassed for having these feelings despite our startling external differences. I'm embarrassed that I've drawn strict no-crossing lines in certain areas of my life, and my feelings for you cross them. I'm embarrassed that you said nothing in response to my confession; you simply smiled, paused, then returned to the subject of what we had been talking about before. (Trust. How sickeningly difficult it will be for either of us to trust a new man after feeling so betrayed by the last one.)

I'm embarrassed because I'm judging my feelings through other people's eyes besides yours and knowing how ridiculous it would look.

But most of all, I'm embarrassed for saying "I like you" when I should have said... I enjoy you. I understand you. To say "I enjoy you" sounds trivial, but I enjoy everything about you. Earlier in our conversation, I remarked on my astonishment that after sleeping with a dozen-or-so men since my breakup, I still hadn't found a lover who made me want to stare into his eyes for hours. True enjoyment can come from something as simple as this - looking into another person's eyes. I could beat you at any staring contest; that's how much I enjoy looking into yours.)

My feelings for you are strange and paradoxical. (Aren't you lucky to be the object of these affections?) Strangely, I do not lust after you. When I fantasize, it's not about us having sex but falling in love. This is possibly a result of our history; sexual thoughts had no place in it. (True, I found you attractive even then, and recently, when I told you this, you were kind enough to say the same. But we were talking about aesthetic, not sexual attractiveness. "You have nice cheekbones and two eyes." "Your nose - thankfully - is positioned roughly at the center of your face.")

I'm embarrassed and yet thrilled by these feelings because their existence means I'm still alive enough in my 30s to have foolish crushes like the ones I had on my best (straight) male friends in high school. I feel a strange, groping sadness at the thought that you are every bit as unattainable as those friends, yet I'm happy to be sad about something that makes me feel hopeful at the same time. If I can have these feelings for you, surely I'll be able to have them for someone else someday. It may take years before I find him, but when I do, I will show him this love letter (this love blog?) and point to this line. ("You see?," I'll say. "I was pining for you before I even knew who you were. I've always been a believer in preparing for what's ahead.")

To you, the inspiration behind my present pining, I have these words. I don't care how jaded you feel you've become, do not allow another man - not a single man more - to take advantage of you. You are complex, spirited, and intelligent (repeat after me). "I am talented. I will work harder than I ever thought possible to fulfill my dreams. And I will be kind to myself. I will forgive myself my wariness about love and allow myself to be wary without fretting that it will become my permanent condition, because I have been hurt, by others as well as myself. And I will use this, my pain, to learn more about myself and what I want. This will make me a better partner to the next man I decide to love, and it will teach me to demand that he be a better partner to me."

If it's love you want, you shall have it. You've sunken your hopes into a few jerks in your life (who hasn't?). In fairness to those jerks, they may not have been jerks at all, just not ready for what you had to give them. (The altruist in me is trying to give the jerks of the world the benefit of the doubt, including my own special jerk.) But leaving aside the question of other people's wants, know your own and pursue them with all the desire and urgency you can muster. If you can do push-ups every day (and you do!), if you possess the discipline to tighten your body into this ridiculously slender ripple of sinew and skin, then surely you can muster the urgency and desire to dive head-first into the realization of your dreams.

I'm debating whether to show you this post. I might boldly do so after not-so-boldly urging you to disregard the business about my feelings for you. ("That's not why I'm showing this to you," I might say, and I don't think I would be lying.) Really, I want to thank you. Thank you for stirring these foolish, funny, giggly-serious feelings in me. Thank you for being an unexpected source of support as I continue to come to terms with and learn to embrace my singleness. Thank you, this Saturday night, for bringing me tenderness and peace.

By now you should know that I'm a total Kate Bush "nutter." (This is the appropriately British phrase adopted by some members of the Kate Bush forums - which, yes, I visit almost every day - to describe us die-hard Kate lovers. Given her substantial gay following, I'm assuming a phrase like "Bush lovers" was a no-go.)

Bush released the first (and likely only) single from her new album last month. Of course, we all listen to music through the lens of our own experience. But sometimes a song speaks so directly to one's life that lenses become unnecessary.

Here, then, is the song, "Deeper Understanding." For regular readers of this blog, the overlaps between the lyrics and my life of late probably need no comment. But if you're new to "Diary of a Gay Breakup," here is a musical summary of the last four months, told in the form of a call-and-response between Bush's lyrics (below, in italics) and myself (in brackets beside them).

Press play now and read along...

As the people here grow colder [Ex dumps me.]
I turn to my computer  [And I start blogging.]
And spend my evenings with it 
Like a friend. [Writing my little heart out.]

I was loading a new program [OkCupid, Manhunt]
I had ordered from a magazine: ["I would use for promiscuity."]

"Are you lonely, are you lost? [I was.]
This voice console is a must." ["This web-camera is a must."]
I press Execute.

"Hello. [Said several dozen men.]
"I know that you've been feeling tired.
"I bring you love [Said none of them.]
"And deeper understanding.

"Hello. [Another dozen men.]
"I know that you've been feeling tired.
"I bring you love [Said none of them.]
"And deeper understanding."

Well I've never felt such pleasure. [Men want me!]
Nothing else seemed to matter. [Men I don't want!]
I neglected my bodily needs. [I'm still not exercising!]

I did not eat. [I wish.]
I did not sleep. [Micro-naps at work.]
The intensity increasing [Dom.]
Til my family found me and intervened. [Had my family "found me" with Dom, the song would have ended here with my dying of embarrassment.]

But I was lonely, I was lost, [Yup.] 
Lost, so lost without my little black box. 
I pick up the phone and go Execute. ["I turn on my cam and go Destitute."]

"Hello. [Say twinks and bears and Doms.]
"I know that you've been feeling tired. 
"I bring you love [This ain't no Match.com.]
"And deeper understanding.
"Hello. ["Hey..."]
"I know that you've been feeling tired.
"I bring you love ["That would be nice someday."]
"And deeper understanding."

I turn to my computer...
Like a friend.

A few days ago I did something on my webcam that I never thought I'd do: I cried.

Last week was a doozy. For starters, there was Ex. After two months of mostly avoiding all but the most rudimentary contact with he-who-shall-continue-to-remain-nameless, last week I found myself in his presence for hours on end during technical rehearsals for the college's spring production of Shakespeare's The Tempest.

I knew this week was coming; in fact, I brought it on myself. Shortly after I left teaching - and was left by Ex - I asked that he allow me to stay on as sound and playbill designer for the show, partly because I wanted the money and partly because I simply couldn't bear to quit the college and my old life cold turkey. But I was prepared, especially after reading an e-mail he'd sent me a few days before.

Dear Steve,

I really want to respond to the questions of a few weeks ago [Note from Steve: I can't remember what exactly I asked or when, but I'm sure you can guess what about.] I honestly still don't know how to answer your questions. What I do know, at this very moment, is I don't want some angry email in response to this email. [I'm good at writing angry e-mails. What can I say?] Also, I feel like there are just certain things I cannot tell you because I don't want to lead you on.

All I feel that I can tell you at this moment is I'm always on the verge of tears. You may think, as others have to, that everything is just honky-dory [sic] for me - that I somehow made some quick recovery. Truth is I have not. I feel as though I did the right thing for both of us in the moment; I believe I still feel that way.

Therapy has been brutal and continues to be so, and it is painstakingly slow. I feel torn to shreds and God knows when I'm going to be put back together. I'm not Humpty-Dumpty thankfully [note the fairytale reference here - okay, the nursery rhyme reference], so I know I will come back together at some point.

I'm trying to do the best I can within the circumstances I've created for myself.

I hope this email makes sense to you.

Ex

His e-mail did make sense to me, especially the parts about feeling "torn to shreds" and, clunky syntax aside, "trying to do the best I can within the circumstances I've created for myself." (In my case, substitute "circumstances I've created" with "circumstances that were created for me.") I was genuinely glad to learn he was in therapy and relieved that he hadn't, in fact, made "a quick recovery." It's not that I suddenly thought we were heading towards a reconciliation. I was happy and relieved because, for the first time since December, I recognized him. I knew the man who had written this e-mail, sympathized with him, even. My tango-dancing, twentysomething-chasing, biceps-measuring gay-bot of an ex-partner was becoming a Real Boy again.

Or so I thought. Over the course of three rehearsals, my sympathies quickly faded, as did my patience. Among the indignities I suffered those nights were:

1. Learning that Ex had brought Sven to a rehearsal to serve as "Lift Consultant" on the show. This meant Sven had worked with my former students - the same students I'd shared with Ex, the students who knew more than they should about the breakup thanks to Ex's extensive Facebook posts. I felt humiliated enough knowing they'd seen Ex's "hot" new boyfriend on Facebook. Now I had the pleasure of knowing they met him in person as he consulted on their lifts. (Lest you think I was snooping, I discovered all this when our Stage Manager sent me a list of changes for the playbill - changes that included Sven's name and "Lift Consultant" credit. Granted, Ex was kind enough to take me aside and prepare me for what I was about to see, but... Oh wait, that's right. Ex said nothing.)
   
    
2. Learning that I no longer had auto insurance. I was setting up at the beginning of our second rehearsal on Easter Sunday when Ex informed me that our insurance policy was being dropped because his license had been suspended for an unpaid parking ticket. "Don't worry," he said. "I took care of my license and got new insurance. Mine was only one-seventy a month, so yours should be even cheaper." How long did I have until I needed to buy a new policy? "Tomorrow." How many insurance companies are open for new buyers on Easter Sunday? Turns out, none.
   
    
3. Being caught offguard by a Sven sighting. Our Stage Manager - who is also my friend, and who apologized for having to send me the playbill changes, as she knew too well how I'd react upon seeing Sven's name - our Stage Manager poked her head out of the lighting booth and asked if I'd seen her phone, which she'd misplaced. I scanned my sound table, saw a phone, and held it up to show her - "Is this it?" My fingers brushed against the keys, causing the screen to light up. And there was Sven, shirtless, his underwear-model-abs on full display. It was Ex's phone, and Sven is now his wallpaper in addition to being his lover. Ex has a habit of leaving his phone unattended and/or entrusting it to a student, along with his keys, to prevent it from getting lost. My first thought upon seeing the "Sven theme" he'd installed on his phone? This man's torso will be the death of me. My second and third thoughts? How many of my students have seen this? How many of them are counting this as karmic retribution against a bad grade they earned in one of my classes?
   
    
4. Watching Ex give the world's most convincing performance of "everything's hunky dory." In his e-mail Ex wrote that "others have to" think he's okay, as if the vision of a happy Ex were so deeply important to so many people that for him to appear otherwise would crush their tender sense of the cosmic order. Imagine Oprah Winfrey confessing to being a child molester, or Kylie Minogue committing hari kari onstage during a techno-infused encore of "The Loco-Motion." Too many lives would be destroyed, too many worldviews shattered. Oprah's disciples would doubt the very existence of God; gay men at dance clubs everywhere would dissolve into tears at the first chorus of "la la la" from "Can't Get You Out of My Head." As with Oprah and Kylie, so too with Ex. Such is the curse of celebrity.

To use a term from my new test-development career, I had "black-boxed" this piece of Ex's e-mail the first time I read it - meaning I'd simply read past it without thinking. During rehearsals, however, I realized that however much Ex might have been crying on the inside, he was determined to chirp out his "Loco-Motion" to its effervescent end. So effervescently did he chirp that it was hard to imagine him crying on the inside at all. He "hardy-harred" with his students; he swung gayly on one of the swings installed on stage for Aerial; he gabbed with the nicotine-addicted among the cast and pulled a drag from one of their cigarettes, then giddily fled his Assistant Director, also a student, who called after him in delighted shock, "I can't believe you smoked!!! How could you do that? Oh my God, [insert Ex's name heeeere]?!" A less honest man might have dimmed the wattage a bit. But Ex would suffer no dishonesty on my behalf. As he's proven time and again, he is nothing if not honest.

(It occurs to me that I forgot to insert a kvetch alert at the beginning of this post. I promise to put it in the title.)

By the end of the second rehearsal, I felt powerless to the point of tears, as though every muscle had grown four legs and been kicked like a dog. That night I received a message from my Robert-Blake-lookalike, Manhunt "dom." Was I ready to continue our lessons in person, to learn how to be a good boy? Maybe I was a cutter aching to break skin. Or maybe I was a dog seeking the protection of a much larger dog. I honestly don't know what I wanted or who I was just then. Either way, I answered: "Yes, sir, I'm ready."

I took precautions. I said I would give his address to a friend so that someone would know where I was (I was lying, but he didn't know that). I had my trusty hangnail clipper in my pocket in case I needed a weapon. I made eye contact with the security guard who buzzed me into his condominium complex and even considered preparing an SOS text - "I'm at [X] address and need you to contact the police NOW" - to be sent at the push of a button should circumstances demand it. (I'm still alive and writing, so obviously Dom's resemblance to Robert Blake stopped short at the murder charges.)

The evening began tantalizingly enough: Dom instructed me by phone to enter his condo, proceed to the third floor, strip, then wait for him, kneeling in the middle of his living room facing the television. I heard him coming up behind me, his shoes making whispery footprints in the zebra-print carpet. He pressed his palms against my skin, dragging his hands and fingers from my ribs up to my neck. He nudged my knees apart with his foot, cupping me in his hand and stroking me. Finally he came round in front of me, showing me his face. Still on my knees, he ordered me to hug him - tighter, tighter. Did I want to be his boy? Yes, sir. "Show me." I grasped my arms around his waste as tightly as I could. Robert Blake or no, I felt protected.

This feeling changed, however, once it became apparent that Dom could not stay hard. He ordered me to "suck it" and I sucked it. It softened in my mouth. He said, "good boy," which was my cue to stop sucking. Then he jerked it until it stiffened again, thrusting his tongue down my throat all the while. Then, back to "suck it." And I sucked it. And it softened in my mouth. And he said, "good boy," etc. At one point during the sucking he shoved it so far down my throat that I gagged. By now I was beginning to feel like the cutter.

Next he commanded that I "eat his ass" and "suck his balls." I have no problem doing either, but one thing I learned that night is I have an internal timer, an intuition for how long I can tolerate spending on these activities. The same goes for blowjobs. I can suck cock with the best of them, but only for five minutes at a time. I can eat ass, but my fear of bacteria means I prefer to restrict it to a sort of sexual punctuation - an ass-eating exclamation point here, a salad-tossing comma there - rather than making it the substance of the foreplay. But Dom liked his ass eaten and suffered no slackening of my tongue. As for his sucking his stubbly balls, he would not excuse me from that until "my whole face was covered with my saliva." I gagged a second time when he said that. I gagged a third when he ordered me to hock a loogie on his dick and lick it up. (Here I drew a line, peering up at him squeamishly and cautioning that I would probably puke. Mercifully, he ordered me to clean up my spit with a towel.)

Between the ass-eating, the ball-sucking, and the "red light, green light" fellatio that dragged on long enough to outlast the royal wedding, I was privately thanking God in whatever Hebrew I remembered when he finally jerked himself to completion on my stomach. I didn't need to come. I was so grateful for his orgasm that my own would have been redundant.

I hung around for another half-hour as Dom showed off his collection of vintage film noir posters. The walls were covered with them. He pointed at one and remarked in his flat, nasally voice, "that poster is worth 6,000 dollars." Then he pointed at another: "that one is worth 25 dollars, but I bought it because I enjoyed the movie. I only buy posters of movies I enjoy." He said this to imply that most collectors are concerned only with value and are idiots because of it. In fact, nearly everything he said sounded like an insult. "I'm an arrogant person," meaning the humble among us are idiots. "I don't read books," meaning those of us who do are plainly stupid.

When it was time for me to go, he offered me a soda. I politely declined; he said I could show myself out.

The next night after rehearsal, I drove from the college back to my cousin's apartment where I've been staying two or three days a week. (He lives fifteen minutes from work, where he is also a test developer, and charitably allows me to crash at his apartment to cut down my commute.) Rehearsal ended at midnight; my cousin was asleep by the time I got back, and all was quiet and dark. I inflated my air mattress, kicked off my shoes, and plopped down with my laptop, logging onto Manhunt and switching on my webcam.

My memories of rehearsal were weighing on me, and my ass was still soar from the spanking Dom had given it. I was sad and alone in a dark, empty room, but I wasn't aware of this, and I didn't start crying, until I clicked into Manhunt chat and glimpsed this posting from one of the men in the chat room: "Jersey City guy looking to fuck or cuddle." My heart sank. How long had this man been trolling these chat rooms? Did he draw a distinction between fucking and cuddling, the one so stark, so easily anonymous, and the other so tender and intimate? Or had they somehow become interchangeable, one just as meaningful or meaningless as the other? He must have been so jaded, so lonely...

That's when I realized: I am that man, or at least I'm in danger of becoming him. I scanned the sea of profile pictures of the other men in the room - one extreme close up after another of hard-ons and assholes. Once in awhile, a torso. Once in a very great while, a face. Here we were, a legion of men 90-something strong, showing off our genitals via computer on a Wednesday morning. Before that night, I'd told myself I was here to liberate my sexuality, to expunge my shame. I was the male Isadora White Wing in a gay retelling of Fear of Flying, wresting my authentic sexual self from the jaws of a homophobic culture, fucking my way to clarity as I'd once scornfully accused Ex of doing with Sven.

On the one hand, becoming sexually liberated is precisely what I've been doing, and if you back-read even as far as a month ago, I think you'll agree I've made progress. At the same time, what became clear to me that night is I'm lonely, as are most of the men on Manhunt and OkCupid and Grindr. You might be thinking, "duh!," but somehow I'd managed to "black-box" this truth until that night, and once I finally realized this, I started to cry.

I doubt anyone saw I was crying. At 1.3 megapixels, my camera is too fuzzy to show tears. I didn't sob or gasp, didn't bury my head in the pillow or wring my hands at the heavens. I simply stared into lens of the camera, my lone physical companion that Wednesday morning at 12:47 AM. I imagined Ex with Sven - out dancing, perhaps, or sharing a bed in what used to be Ex's and my apartment. I decided to feel sorry for myself and for random, chat-room pleas for fucking or cuddling, and the tears simply came.

I haven't sworn off Manhunt or my webcam, but I'm conscious now not to overuse them as buffers against loneliness. The same goes for face-to-face sexual encounters. Dom was a mistake for many reasons, most of all because when I went to him I was lonely, angry, and sad. I can't say I've sworn off being a slut, but the next time I share fluids with a stranger, it will be because I'm horny and happy, not horny and sad.

Meanwhile, nature has finally stabilized. It was 78 degrees today, 67 degrees yesterday, and the 18 cats that live in the alley below my kitchen window are spending the afternoons sunbathing in the neighbors' backyard. I'm gradually surfacing from my "meh" (there's nothing like a minor Tempest to get the blood flowing). And I have a new auto insurance policy. It's a hundred and twenty dollars a month - in New Jersey, that's practically free - and written in no man's name but mine.

Ask almost anyone on the East Coast what they are waiting for and they will tell you, "spring." Not "spring" the season - that began almost a month ago - but "spring" the expectation, the idyllic promise of summer. In the three weeks since you heard from me last, the tri-state area has seen at least one 80-degree day and one hail storm. Nature has snowed, warmed, then chilled again. The sky has gone from cloudy grey to radiant blue to apocalyptic slate, all in the same afternoon. This has been a spring of extremes - a spring, perhaps, that's reeling from an unexpected breakup from winter. It storms and swings in defiance of change. It is pissed off.

Contrary to the weather - which is a surprisingly balmy 60 degrees today, perhaps as a result of medication - lately I seem stuck in a sort of internal, meteorological "meh." Not sunny, but not raining; not cold, but not warm. I am a tepid summer day in Britain, so "meh," in fact, that two weeks ago I set about writing a post describing just how "meh" I felt, only to give up after a few paragraphs and leave it unpublished.

During a session with Melanie, I described this as "an emotional vacation." After two months of swinging so far left and right that my pendulum made gashes in the walls, I am now just hanging here, spent. I commute my hour-and-ten-minutes to work, listing to NPR and tech-news podcasts. I arrive, write my test questions and score other people's essays, take 15 minutes for lunch instead of 30 so I stand a chance of beating traffic on the way home, then depart, get stuck in traffic, and listen to an additional hour and forty minutes of NPR and tech-news podcasts. I drop my retro-style briefcase on my sofa, make myself a PB&J sandwich, and boot up my new, quad-core laptop to OkCupid or Manhunt (yes, I am now a Hunter of Men as well as the Prey of Seraphim). Sometimes I watch TV; usually I chat with strangers on Manhunt into the wee hours. Then I go to bed, rising at 7:30 the next morning. Rinse and repeat.

On weekends I stay active socially by going out on dates. I stay active physically by having sex with as many of these men as possible. In the past three weeks, I've boinked a sculptor in his studio on a moving blanket (he came, I didn't); jerked off a freelance lighting technician in his bedroom (he came, I didn't); had phone sex with a 25-year-old former child actor who insisted he was too mature to date other 25-year-olds (he came, I didn't); made out with a lawyer on my sofa (no coming was involved); and danced the bedroom shimmy with a 31-year-old makeup artist and retired drag performer (miraculously, I came, he didn't).

In the interest of self-improvement, I am also taking online lessons from a Manhunt "dom" about how to be a good "sub." Thus far I've learned to say "sir" at the end of each sentence, be naked on camera with my hands behind my back (to show my dom I'm not touching myself), and smile big, bigger, bigger on demand. These lessons are to culminate in a live meeting, at which time, I'm told, I will be asked to strip, kneel, participate in some casual chit-chat (to ease my nerves), and then begin my formal training. As intrigued as I am by the idea of being the O to a stranger's René, I seriously doubt I'll be naked on my knees in this man's apartment anytime soon. For one thing, I have a bossy streak. For another, my would-be "owner" looks like Robert Blake, and even if Blake hadn't been accused of murdering his wife, I will always remember him as the creepy, pale-faced "Mystery Man" from Lost Highway. And no amount of chit-chat could make me feel comfortable kneeling naked in front of that man.

All of this might seem tame by some standards, but since my breakup I've had more sexual partners than, well, ever. Before Ex, there was Sam - he of the loft bed and pubescent frottage - and a guy I met in high school while I was working at a toy store. He went to the high school across town, which meant he was beyond walking distance, which meant I needed to get a ride from my mom to see him (I told her he was "a new friend" I made at work - little did she know). Once at his house, he proceeded to give me a blowjob in his bedroom. That is, until his mom's voice came blaring through the intercom (his house was so big it was outfitted with an intercom system) and one of his brothers started banging on the door. He gestured frantically for me to pull on my pants, then wiped his mouth and disappeared to tend to whatever it was his mom and brother wanted.

I figured this would put an end to the felacio, which was fine by me; I'd never had my penis in another man's mouth before and could have done with a little more conversation or at least more kissing. But my "new friend" was undeterred. He showed me to his backyard - the one place, he assured me, where we wouldn't be interrupted - and lay me down on the grass, picking up where he left off. He was right about us not being disturbed - not by any human members of his family, anyway. But the family dog refused to be ignored, licking my friend's face (as it bobbed up and down on my crotch) and slathering my lips with doggy kisses.

texting and chatting with me, and I had high hopes for the lawyer which were dashed when he called to say I was a wonderful guy but he didn't feel sexual chemistry. (Let it be noted that he initiated the make out session, not I.)

I'm having better luck with the former drag performer/current makeup artist; we had dinner in the city on Friday and he'll be spending the night at my apartment tomorrow. I have doubts about our long-term potential. (Case in point: he didn't go to college. It may sound snobbish, but a college education is important to me. After all, I was a teacher myself until only slightly more than a month ago.)

Regardless, I may have hoped for more from some of these men, but I allowed myself to expect only what I received. It's easier to keep from getting hurt this way. At the same time, it's harder to get giddy, feel butterflies in your stomach. I've felt those butterflies, to be sure. They are what drive me from one stranger to the next, their little, winged bodies whipping me into a smitten frenzy at each new bit of information I discover. His favorite musicians and films. His preferred sexual positions. His typical Friday night. What he does for a living. His name.

But this is the price of liberated sexuality married with pragmatism. No sooner than the stranger and I schedule our first date, I go from butterflies to a self-willed stillness. I encourage my mind to wander, or I chat up another stranger online as backup for the one I am meeting in person who may or may not exceed my expectations. If I know sex is likely, I will permit myself to get excited about that. Otherwise I stay neutral - a 55-degree afternoon, neither cold nor warm, cloudy nor sunny. But better to be "meh" than whiplashing between extremes - at least for now.

Outside my window, the wet grey smudge
of the afternoon waits
for spring.

I have a confession. As enticed as I am by the idea of indiscriminate sex, I am also completely terrified of it.

For one thing, as I've already documented, I don't like how I look. It's not that I think I'm ugly. In fact, given the right lighting and a kind angle, I think I can look quite handsome. But that's when I'm fully clothed. When the clothes come off, it's a different story.

My sense of physical self has long suffered from a sort of Goldilocks complex. Some parts of my body are too big (belly, ass, thighs), another part is too small (guess which one) and, in an unfortunate departure from the fairytale, none ever seem just right. As a reader/friend reminded me, I could always go to a gym and whip my marshmallowy bottom into shape (Ex would have liked this; it might have even bought us an extra few months). I appreciate the value of exercise; my body-image was never better than at the tender age of 20 when I devoted a half-hour each day to push ups and crunches. Last month I decided to carry on this routine. I got as far as 10 knee push ups and half as many excruciating crunches before I reevaluated my decision.

Thankfully, a technology exists for the marshmallowy, modern man - the man who craves sex but shudders at the thought of exposing himself directly to a stranger's judging eyes.

Two nights ago, I was chatting with a man on OkCupid whose profile photo broadcast the all-American good looks of a college football star or an Old Navy mannequin. He'd winked at me earlier and was now making small-talk; I, emboldened by the attention, flirted by way of my keyboard like a horny Mavis Beacon. At one point I teased him for having only one picture posted to his profile. He offered to show me others - possibly of the more lascivious sort - and suggested I do the same. Alas, I had no such pictures, I wrote. And I couldn't imagine him wanting to see them even if I had.

I thought wrong. My playmate wanted to see me, or at the very least my chest. He tried sending me a picture of himself as incentive but it "didn't go through," so he suggested we switch to Skype, where he was certain he could shoot me the file.

Skype has one feature OkCupid lacks: video chat. Surely I must have realized my playmate had ulterior motives; probably I was too high on hormones to care. In any case, switch to Skype we did. He sent me two pictures - one of him shirtless at the gym and the other of him, also shirtless, squatting in a half-finished attic. (He was a building contractor, he told me. Apparently building contractors have a tenuous relationship with their shirts.)

"You're shitting me," I wrote, gawking at his six-pack in the pictures. He responded with a question mark. "How can you possibly be attracted to me?," I asked, no longer flirting. My playmate was one mustache and a bottle of posing oil away from being a Village Person, and I did NOT look like that without my shirt on. My playmate replied that I was handsome, that it didn't matter. I'd spoken plainly, yet here he was, sticking to his guns. He wanted - truly wanted - to see my body. And I was starting to believe him.

Then he asked me to turn on my webcam.

I didn't want to break the spell, to supply photographic evidence that my playmate's shimmering carriage was actually a pumpkin. He sweetly pressed on. He wanted to see me. He'd shown me his chest; now it was only fair that I showed him mine. What did I have to lose?

I might have continued saying "no" were it not for that timeworn question. What did I have to lose? So what if my playmate didn't have a webcam? So what if I wouldn't be able to watch him while he watched me? So what if I were beginning to suspect he might not be the person he claimed to be, that the the 1950s Football Hero might have been his ex-boyfriend, son-in-law, or some random person he'd managed to photograph, shirtless, on three different occasions? (He'd sent me a third picture as extra incentive for turning on my cam, this one of him - or his ex-boyfriend, or his son-in-law - standing shirtless on a roof.) This wasn't about my playmate. This was about me getting over myself and turning on my damn webcam.

I clicked the "video call" button. He answered.

He asked me to take off my coat (I was chilly that night); I did.

He asked me to take off my checkered shirt. I had on a t-shirt underneath, so no problem; I did.

Then, as I knew he would, he asked me to take off my t-shirt. "I want you to stand up," he wrote, "and take off your shirt, and don't even think about it."

This was the moment of truth. I blushed at the camera, ginning dopily. "You're already thinking about it," he wrote.

I was. And though I never stopped thinking about it, I took off my shirt, stood up, backed away from the camera - far enough for a wide shot - and showed him my bare chest.

"Who doesn't like chest hair?!," he exclaimed.

"I've got that!," I replied. I was smiling, delighted, feeling as though I'd accomplished much more than simply removing my shirt.

Then I heard a bell, followed by an electronic blip - the sound of a Skype hangup. I glanced at the chat log; it said, "call ended." The green icon next to my playmate's handle had gone grey. I typed "hello?", hit "enter," and the text just sat there. My playmate was gone.

I searched for him that night and the next, poking around OkCupid and periodically scrolling through my Skype contacts. His OkCupid profile remains active, but the man behind the profile is gone. Could it be that the spectacle of my naked chest scared him off, after all? But then why did he compliment my chest hair?

I invent stories to account for his sudden disappearance. Perhaps he's married and closeted; his wife could have entered the room just after I took off my shirt, at which point he would have hastily switched off the computer. Or maybe this is how he gets off - by persuading self-conscious Jewish men to go bare-chested, then abruptly signing off, leaving them hanging, as a kind of power play. Maybe he has a torso fetish. Maybe I made him come. Maybe he hung up because I didn't make him come.

I'll never know what happened to him or even who he was; nor am I likely to encounter him again. Regardless, I have him to thank for introducing me to my webcam, for helping me take one small step and one giant leap towards exploring my sexuality in pixels. The next time a stranger on the internet asks me to remove my shirt, I'll think about it less. My pants, on the other hand... Those I'll hold on to for now.

"There is no such thing as the wrong man," says Marianne Faithfull in her song, "The Blue Millionaire." In 1964, when Faithfull first hit the British airwaves, her voice was a sugary but thin soprano. By 1979, four years prior to "The Blue Millionaire," it had undergone a staggering transformation - from stock songbird's warble to shredded baritone clef; a voice kicked down and rubbed raw by more than a decade of drugs and hard living. Few would call it a beautiful voice, but it's a deeply interpretive one - a voice that bruises even the sunniest of lyrics. In the "The Blue Millionaire," that voice might as well be saying, "there is no such thing but the wrong man." My life is peach fuzz compared to Faithfull's, but after three weeks in the dating pool, I'm beginning to agree with her.

Listen to Marianne Faithfull's "The Blue Millionaire."

I knew I wasn't ready for a relationship with Match Man. In fact, I'm not sure I'm ready for a relationship at all. (In high school I remember hearing that the period of recovery from a breakup lasts half the length of the relationship. If that's true, I certainly don't have the math on my side.) I had similar reservations about H and his love of Middle Earth, but in both cases I could have been wrong. Hadn't Ex resisted me in the beginning, sleeping with me (several times) but hemming and hawing when it came to actually making a commitment? I wasn't his "type." We didn't have enough in common. I had doubts, too, but we still managed to love each other for the better part of 12 years, no matter how fumbling or clingy that love sometimes was.

Why did we squelch our misgivings? The answer probably has less to do with overpowering romantic chemistry than extraordinary stubbornness. I wanted a boyfriend, damn it, and he was sick of calling out a new man's name every nine to eleven months. Our stubbornness was extraordinary, but it was also youthful, pure, tremendously optimistic - the kind of hardheadedness that descends from Mount Sinai, from total commitment and belief. This was the stubbornness that inspired hippies and poets to fight for free love and revolution in the 1960s. This was the stubbornness that resulted in a 12-year union between a self-fashioned swan and a book nerd.

Sometimes I still fancy myself a revolutionary romantic at heart, but most men my age - men in their 30s - seem less inclined to this particular breed of stubbornness.

Take Match Man. I treated him to dinner for our second date and, after dessert, planned to accompany him back to his apartment to return his generosity in the bedroom. But the meal left us both feeling stuffed and sleepy, so instead we parted with a kiss, he heading uptown on the subway and I, back to Jersey on the PATH. Over the next few days we texted skimpily back and forth. Then, last night, feeling guilty for not having communicated more verbosely during the week, I e-mailed him. My opener: "So - I haven't spoken to or seen you in awhile, and that makes me ansy. Are we doomed to the post-second-date doldrums?" His response: "I WILL admit I have been doing a lot of thinking about our dates this week. Both were absolutely lovely - I had a great time during both, and I meant everything I said, as I know you did. (And I don't just hop into bed with anyone, you know.) But I am starting to realize there are one or two things which mean we're not so compatible after all..."

The "one or two things" in question are 1. my smoking, and 2. "nothing [he] can really put my finger on, just a gut feeling." I know what Match Man means; I, too, had that feeling, but I suppressed it partly out of a sense of obligation (the man made me come, after all) and partly because the feeling in your gut can change. Once upon a time my gut craved Ex like food; now it turns at the thought of him. Throughout the relationship, occasionally it would insist on greater variety, grumbling for different men in unknown flavors. Less often it would call for a fast: no Ex, no relationships, just me sitting alone at an empty table, immersed in the introspective silence of hunger. I ignored these rumblings, and I'm glad. I can't remember if they occurred in the months leading up to the breakup. If they did, only then do I regret not taking heed.

I believe in the bubbling of the spirit, the fizzing of the blood, of a chemical reaction between lovers. It's the reaction I discovered with Ex, but not at first - at least not in its purest form. The distillation of our respective elements, the perfection of our chemistry, resulted from trial and error - from sex, embarrassment, laughter, hesitation, awkwardness, acquiescence; in short, from intimacy. Perhaps two people really can fall wildly in love at first sight, but the right combination of elements can also develop slowly, sometimes simply by virtue of the chemists' own stubbornness.

So says my revolutionary romantic side. The realist concedes there probably wasn't much worth fighting for with Match Man. Ditto with H. "Eh," shrugs my inner-realist. "Sure, there was a physical connection, at least on your end, but how much longer did you really want to pretend to be fascinated by Dungeons and Dragons?" Granted, in neither case do I recall hearing this voice until after I was rejected, but my inner-realist can be proactive as well, spurring me to do the rejecting.

Two weeks ago I had dinner with a Malaysian-American accountant at his Brooklyn apartment. To borrow Match Man's words, I couldn't "put my finger on" what exactly wasn't working. It may have been that he was too eager to please, or that he kept kissing me an inch below my mouth and grazing my chin with his teeth. ("What, no tongue on the first date?," he teased in his whispery, boy-man's voice.) For dinner he'd cooked pork tikka masala; I'd brought two bottles of wine and, to thank him for his cooking, a bouquet of miniature yellow roses. The pork was tender and the flowers sweet-smelling, but from the moment I laid eyes on him at the beginning of the night, I knew there would be no second date.

Were I all realist and no romantic - or were I simply braver - I might have said this. As it was, I tried to disregard my first impression - my "gut feeling." I even went so far as to joust tongues with him, probing for chemistry inside his mouth. But no amount of coaching from my inner-romantic could change how I felt. At the end of the evening, as I put on my coat, he asked if we could see each other again. I said I would call him next week, knowing full well I wouldn't.

I shouldn't have said I would call him. Match Man was honest with me - both in his affections and, two weeks and one date later, his decision to look elsewhere. H, too, was honest. He wasn't sure what he wanted, but ultimately he and his gut decided it wasn't me.

Perhaps I should give up searching for the "right man," at least for now. Perhaps, for now, I don't want a new relationship, just sex. Relationships I've done, but I've never had one-night stand, never played the role of gay Odysseus journeying homeward through the Land of the Zipless Fuck. Psychopaths and STD-carriers aside, perhaps only in the land of indiscriminate fucking is there truly "no such thing as the wrong man."

Fans of Kate Bush are swooning over the news: Bush will indeed be releasing a "new" album, and it's only two months away!

The album, Director's Cut, is actually a reworking of songs from two of her previous albums, The Sensual World and The Red Shoes. Few (if any) Kate fans expected this: she's known for pitching herself forward from album to album, pausing only rarely - during promotional interviews, for example - to reflect on her last one.

Still, I'm one happy clam. I also can't help but feel an emotional connection to the idea of this record. These last three months, I've spent a good deal of time reflecting on my own past. As Mark Doty observes, the past is not static; it changes based on new images of the future that play across its mirrored surface. I have no idea what Director's Cut will sound like, but I can't imagine a more fitting soundtrack to underscore my own reflections on a changing past and future.

It's Friday at 12:39 PM, and my first week in workaday New Jerusalem is nearly done. For the past five days, eight hours a day, I've sat here in my spacious, gray-and-cream-colored cubicle. I've met with supervisors and colleague, done "shadow-reviews" of reading passages, selected and typed my own passages from books I brought in from home, read and electronically signed a bevy of confidentiality agreements, begun studying for my scoring license, set up my voicemail, arranged my supplies in the top drawer of my desk, and pinned grading rubrics to my walls. Mostly, however, I've just sat here. I'll be training for the next several months before being assigned test items to write. This plus the fact that most of my colleagues are busy meeting their own deadlines means I have a lot of down time.

My first day was a whirlwind compared to the next four. I left my apartment at 6:50 AM, arriving 20 minutes early for the 8:30 Human Resources and Benefits Orientation. The orientation was predictably dry, but not even a sleepy PowerPoint presentation could quiet my excitement at the prospect of receiving actual benefits. Starting April 1, I would have medical insurance, retirement accounts, even discounted auto insurance! It's asking for the taking! I was coming to the edge, running on the water, blazing a trail of corporate, grown-up desire.

I've spent a fair amount of time this week imagining myself as Melanie Griffith's Tess McGill. Alas, I've yet to find my Harrison Ford.

Still bright-eyed after the orientation, I drove from the security building (where the orientation took place) to the building where I would actually be working. My supervisor led me past a long cluster of cubicles and into a clearing, at which point new colleagues emerged to greet me like so many woodland creatures in a campus casual, Walt Disney adaptation of Working Girl. Some of them I'd already met during my interviews; others said they'd heard great things about me and looked forward to working together.

I shared their enthusiasm. Four days later, I still do. I'm equally excited about the work I'll be doing and grateful for the training I'll receive to ensure I do it properly. As I continue to adjust to my 9-5 state of life, I also find myself feeling thankful for seven or more hours of sleep each night (before this week, I was accustomed to at least nine); two Venti Starbucks a day (up from one); Windows 7 (my computer at work runs XP - on an IBM-branded computer, no less); my new TomTom GPS (which does its best to route me around traffic and limit my commute to a still-daunting one hour and twenty minutes each way); and any leftover energy at the end of the day that keeps me from falling dead asleep the moment I return to my apartment.

The lack of energy concerns me. I need fuel to write, otherwise I feel as though I'm squeezing the words through a pin-prick in my brain, causing them to dribble out in achy fits and starts. I'm also concerned about the commute; two hours and forty minutes is a lot of time to spend in a car, and there are only so many podcasts I can download each day to make the time go faster. Finally, I'm concerned about Genevieve. I've left her home alone for the better part of ten hours a day for the last five days, and while she hasn't peed on any of the furniture yet, she did chew a hole in my pillowcase. At night I'm too tired to toss her ball around the apartment. She lays curled in her bed, chin flat on the cushion, her adorable puppy eyes gazing sadly at the sofa legs.

I've already contacted Ex about changing our custody arrangement: he can take Genevieve during the week (he works three days out of five) and I, over the weekends. The solution to my double-feature-length commute may not be so simple. Notwithstanding the endless dusting, cleaning, and floor-refinishing that I invested into my current apartment, if I can't stomach the commute, I will simply have to relocate. The one matter that really concerns me is my writing. If I can summon the energy to be creative only on weekends, fine. If I can write at work, sneaking in a few sentences here and there between projects, okay. The one thing I absolutely will not do is abandon my writing. I've seen too many friends sacrifice their artistic ambitions and talents to their day jobs. I've stayed true to my own ambitions for 12 years, and I'll keep on chugging for as long as it takes me to write the best play I can.

---

I'm home now, finishing this entry in my apartment the day after I began it in my cubicle.

Last night after work, I saw Melanie and shared my anxiety about not having enough energy to write. She urged me to be kind to myself, reminding me that I'd gone through several, powerful transitions and probably just needed more time before I fully refueled.

It's Saturday night, 10:52 PM. As I write this, I'm realizing it's the first Saturday night I've spent alone in my apartment. Since moving in, I plotted my schedule so that Saturday nights were always spoken for. If I wasn't visiting my parents and seeing H, I was meeting up with a friend or going on a Match.com/OkCupid

Two weeks ago I achieved the impossible. Against the odds of a shaky economy and my own lamentable history as a job seeker, I managed to secure an offer for full-time, salaried employment.

I start my new job on Monday, March 7 - which also happens to be my 33rd birthday. I will be writing questions (or "items") for some of America's best-known standardized tests, including a certain scholastic assessment test that sends chills up the spines (and groans out the mouths) of teenagers and parents across the country. I was joking with a friend; all I need to do is marry a tax-auditor and together we'd be the most feared and groan-inducing couple in America. Badum tish.

Seriously, though, I'm looking forward to my new job. Most of the people I'll be working with were, like me, marginalized academics - adjuncts and non-tenured faculty who, also like me, had grown tired of hustling for a non-living wage. For the first time in my life I'll be working from 9 to 5, but I'll have my evenings and weekends to do with as I choose. Also for the first time in my life, I'll be financially independent - from my parents as well as a spouse. I'll have insurance, a 401(a) and 403(b), a salary in the mid-50s, and piece of mind. Goodbye 1556 - hello gorgeous!

As truly grateful as I am, I'm also giving myself permission to mourn. I'll miss my students. I won't miss grading their work or justifying my expectations during contentious office hours, but I'll miss their presence, their respect, and those occasional moments when I impact their sense of the world and their own agency within it.

I teach - taught - at a community college where so many students mask feelings of worthlessness and disempowerment behind wise-ass, dumbstruck, or apathetic faces. I live(d) for the moments when I crack(ed) the facade, sinking my fingers into the mush of my students' wounded self-esteem. I wanted - demanded - greater things from them, more shape and substance to their thoughts than this doughy ooze of complacency and indifference. Sometimes they showed up to the challenge. Eyes startled and brows scrunched, their faces took on the expression of a stroke patient attempting to regain the power of speech; to say, "I can do this. I can sculpt the mess of my own helplessness and disorder into something worth displaying, something more useful and of much greater consequence than the mask I've spent years, consciously and unconsciously, creating to disguise my insecurities."

Sometimes they became their own sculptors. More often they rejected my challenge or accepted it only superficially, toweling off their hands and masking themselves again the moment they discovered just how rigorous and exhausting the effort would be. Either way, I'll miss the struggle. Today I taught my last two classes. At the end of my second class - Introduction to Dramatic Writing - students came up to me and shook my hand, wishing me luck. During my 10 years as a teacher, I've made my fair share of students cry. This afternoon my students unknowingly turned the tables.

The sun setting on the college parking lot on my last day

My eyes welled up for more than just my students. As I made my way from the Liberal Arts building to the parking lot - the sun literally setting on my full-time adjuncting career - I thought of Ex, now my ex-partner in life as well as my ex-colleague at the college. I thought of what a triumph my new job would have been for us, putting an end to our financial worries and finally casting us as equals. Perhaps we would have bought a house, something my parents had advised us to do the moment I got a "real job." Perhaps we would have even begun to consider adopting a child - a decision that seemed unthinkable in the absence of a respectable, second income.

Today was by no means my final "goodbye" to the college. On Friday I'll be chaperoning the LGBT students' annual Mardi Gras dance, and I plan to continue teaching in the future, picking up a night class once I've settled into my new job. But this was, in a very real sense, my final "goodbye" to the years I'd invested in Ex and in making the college a safer, better place for him.

The moment I realized Ex's tenure was being threatened by homophobic administrators, I set to work doing everything I could to zap our little community college into the 21st century. This was no easy feat. Last year, the LGBT club staged a "kiss in" in the cafeteria to raise awareness of the queer student population. Campus security officers and cafeteria staff shoved participants, accusing them of behaving like animals; student onlookers threw food; the Dean of Student Affairs called me and several students into a meeting where she described the kiss-in as "completely inappropriate" and forbade us from ever staging another one. The editors of the student newspaper caught wind of this and reported on the whole, grotty affair. Their article appeared in print as well as online. A cast member of MTV's The Real World posted it on her Twitter feed, and soon coverage spread to local media and the college was being inundated with phone calls demanding the students' right to engage in peaceful demonstration. The story didn't exactly spread like wildfire, but it gained enough traction to put pressure on the college, as did the intervention of the ACLU, which issued a letter of demand informing the dean that she could not, in fact, legally outlaw a future kiss in.

For better and for worse, the administrators and certain staff members learned to conduct themselves with begrudging circumspection whenever LGBT issues were concerned. Their attitudes toward queer students and faculty may not have changed, but their appreciation of how their attitudes might be perceived by others certainly had. Around the same time as the kiss in, Ex was rehearsing his students in a production of Rent. The year before, he'd staged Angels in America only to be summoned for a sit-down with his dean, who expressed serious concerns about the "gay content" of the play. Rent opened two weeks after the ACLU called "checkmate" on the administration. If Ex's dean had any concerns, this time she kept them to herself.

I've never been prouder of a group of students than during the aftermath of the kiss in. The club officers stood their ground, speaking up for themselves in meetings stacked with administrators who would have cowed even some of our most seasoned faculty. Ex, in turn, had never been prouder of me. The students did most of the work, but I advised, assisted, and, really, donated most of my life to the cause for the better part of two months. He knew I was doing it, at least partly, for him. This was almost exactly a year ago - about 10 months prior to his breaking up with me because, he felt, we didn't have enough in common and would be happier with other people.

In bidding adieu to the college, I am leaving behind one of last vestiges of Ex and me, the "us" for whom I invested so much time while enjoying almost no formal recognition. As if to drive home this last point, the college hardly seems to have noticed my departure. Throughout the week, colleagues stopped me in the halls and congratulated me, sincerely and elatedly, on my new job. But there was no fanfare, no trumpets, no stash-a-supermarket-cake-in-the-mini-refrigerator-in-the-lounge and-surprise-the-departing-adjunct. After five years of adjucting, I knew better than to expect anything so elaborate. Still, I can't help but feel that my footprint in the sandy consciousness of the college is already being eroded.

As far as Ex is concerned, I wouldn't have wanted to see him even at a surprise send-off. I might have appreciated a card; I definitely would have appreciated his organizing a send-off, even if he were wise enough to know he couldn't attend.

He sent a short e-mail congratulating me. That was all.

---

UPDATE: Friday night during the Mardi Gras dance, I got my grand send-off.

The students staged the dance in the college's blackbox theatre, transforming the space into the setting of a laser-lit, 1990s, "retro-style" rave. Two DJs spun (one techno and pop, the other house). The subwoofers sonic-boomed. The ravers puppeteered their glow sticks, painting neon figure eights amidst the magic lantern of colors and darkness.

Old fart that I am, I was about to slip away into the dressing room for some peace and quiet - or at least as much as I could expect with the music thudding next-door. But suddenly the music stopped, and the techno DJ, who was also my soon-to-be my former student, summoned the party-goers to the stage. One of the students in charge of the LGBT group took the microphone and began addressing the crowd. I heard my name. A moment later I was standing on stage as my soon-to-be-former LGBT advisees presented me with an embarrassment of riches: a hand-made, oversized card; a Barnes and Noble gift card; a bouquet of violets and daisies tied with five ribbons, one of each color of the rainbow; and an acrylic award engraved with my name, the date, the college logo, and a commendation for working tirelessly to make the college a more "fabulous" place.

The award is shaped like a cartoon-sized tear. As soon as it was placed in my hands, before my brain even had time to consciously register the shape, I held the award to my face, beneath my eye, and flashed a maudlin frown at the crowd. I was embarrassed, overwhelmed, devastated, and elated.

I lowered the big plastic tear and felt real ones threatening to take its place. The students standing closest to me could see I was starting to cry, but I excused myself to avoid balling in front of the 75 others. I made my way from the theatre to the front entrance of the building, passing other students here and there, my eyes getting redder and wetter. I did my best to stay composed until I pushed through the heavy glass doors and stepped into the night. Then I lit a cigarette, bundled my coat against the chill, and choked out a medley of small, embarrassed, overwhelmed, devastated, and elated sobs.

Last night I came - quivering, grinning, exploding.

I came into the hand of a man I'd met for the first time in person only a few hours before.

He told me I was adorable. He promised even if we hated each other someday he would always tell me I'm adorable. He said he wanted me to feel safe and protected. I wanted to feel safe and protected.

The pain, humiliation, and fear of the past two months slowly began to gather in my abdomen. I kissed and gnawed at him. He would stop, tickle the head, whisper more promises of safety into my ear, then suddenly grip me again as I begged him to make me come.

I didn't think I could do it. I didn't trust my body to get there; how could I possibly get there with this man, a stranger?

We'd met a few weeks ago on Match.com, exchanging a handful of e-mails. Then I met H and stopped communicating, but H ultimately decided he didn't feel a romantic connection. He shared his decision on Tuesday; the same day I found a new e-mail from my Match.com connection in my inbox. I wrote back, apologizing for my silence. More e-mails followed, then he asked to meet.

I asked if he could pick a spot near the PATH train; he chose a wine and cheese bar. I know little about cheese and even less about wine, but I'm assuming we drank and dined extremely well; our bill was 150 dollars for a bottle of white wine and a plate of cheeses and thin-sliced salami. I reached for my wallet. My Match.com connection, who I'll call "Match Man," insisted on treating me. Emboldened by the wine, I asked if he wanted to take me back to his apartment. He hailed us a cab; we kissed and touched for better part of 75 blocks, pausing only as he showed me some of his photographs on his iPad (he's an amateur photographer) and spoke humorously and nervously about the shock he would no doubt experience the next morning when he realized how much he'd paid for the wine and cheese. When the cab stopped at his apartment, I paid the driver.

We parted for a few minutes as I smoked a cigarette outside his building (he hates smoking). Then I rode the elevator to the eighth floor and knocked on his door. We grabbed each other in the doorway, continuing what we started in the cab. He showed me into his large living room and switched on the TV; for a moment it seemed as though we were going to settle down for an episode of Reno 911!. Seconds later, we were kissing again. At one point, mid-kiss, I burst into laughter as I heard Deputy Raineesha Williams proclaim herself "a proud black woman."

Eventually he shut off the TV. I pointed to what looked like a large closet; he opened the door and showed me up to what was actually a loft. As I write this, I'm recalling my pubescent explorations with Sam in his loft bed, but I didn't make the connection last night. It didn't occur to me that I was about to experience my first, non-solo orgasm after my breakup in a loft, just as I had experienced my first-ever prelude to an orgasm in a loft bed with Sam.

The emotions gathered in my abdomen - the pain, the frustration, the fury, the horrible self-hatred, the feelings of loneliness and abandonment. And Match Man whispered to me, "This is my bed. This is a safe bed." His hand moved quickly, and I told him he was kind, that I felt safe. And then I lost language. My whole body seized; my breathing spiked; the emotions in my abdomen seized and liquefied. I came to the gasping, primordial sounds of my own self shaking loose. I was released.

---

He sent me a text today: "Just remembering a lovely pair of eyes and several (hundred) sweet kisses." By now my self has recomposed itself, hesitations at all, and I worry about some of what he said, particularly his promise to call me adorable even in the future if we hated each other. What worries me isn't the idea of hating him so much as the "future" he already seems to be imagining. Last night he made me feel attractive, special, and sheltered. Of all these things, feeling sheltered was what I wanted most. At the same time, I know I must learn to be strong on my own, to shelter and protect myself. I can't rely on someone else for this no matter how glorious I felt in Match Man's bed.

I like Match Man. He's a square-jawed business/management type, bearing the slightest resemblance to Buster Pointexter, and sees himself as a Type A neurotic. Diseases frighten him, particularly the sexually-transmitted sort. He's fond of using the phrase "so there" in e-mails and conversation to put a humorous spin on certain, self-conscious disclosures (for example, I wrote in an e-mail that I have difficulty taking compliments about how I look; he responded with, "I sometimes have trouble taking [compliments] about my appearance as well... so there"). Part of my attraction to him is narcissistic - I'm attracted to the fact that he's attracted to me. But I'm also attracted to his voice - its clarity and attention to final consonants. And his eyes are honest. When he promised to protect me, I believed him.

At the same time, I'm swarming with doubts. For one thing, I can't believe I invited myself back to his apartment and went so far on a first date. For another, I'm almost certain I'm not ready for another relationship. A friendship? Yes. A vaguely-defined romance? Yes. But not a relationship attached to a future. This is exactly what Match Man wants, and while he definitely deserves it, I'm in no position to offer it - at least not yet.

I'm suddenly stuck by the not-so-lofty feeling that I used him.

Last night my therapist and I talked about endings. Melanie concluded our previous session by asking me to consider whether I would take Ex back should he realize he made a mistake. Last night I answered that question honestly and painfully: no. Would I want him back? Yes. But like a recovering smoker tempted by the delicious fumes of somebody else's cigarette, I would know the relationship was no good for me. Loving Ex is a habit. Unlike smoking, it served me well for a number of years. It brought me joy and pleasure; it taught me intimacy, empathy; it delivered some of the most gut-punching shocks and liveliest surprises of my life. But sometime around year 10, I began loving simply for the sake of it. When I first started smoking, I did it half for the head rush and half for the conversations I would have with friends while we subversively shared a cigarette. But these benefits quickly burned away like so much rolling paper, leaving only the chemical need and the ritual that feeds it. Such can also be the case with relationships, only it takes months, years, even decades before the lover realizes he is no longer getting a head rush or good conversation, merely mouthfuls of smoke.

No, I would not take Ex back. At best, I would want him to see a therapist, do some work on himself, then call me if he still wanted a relationship - a new relationship, built on new terms - after he'd worked through our breakup as I'm trying to work through it now....

But all of this is predicated on Ex actually asking me to take him back - something he hasn't done and isn't likely to do. And if he isn't likely to ask me, how will I ever get the chance to assert myself, to write my own ending to our relationship? I've already attempted to write that ending, but the fact is, I'm still grasping for closure. When people ask why Ex broke up with me, I still say, "I don't know."

Melanie repeated something I'd acknowledged myself during our first session: I would probably never know why he made this decision. To this she added, "And even if you did know, is there really anything he could say to make you okay with this?"

I was silent for a moment. "Yes," I said, picking up steam as I continued. "Yes. He could say, 'A while ago I realized I was falling out of love with you. I was scared. I thought about it constantly. I started seeing a therapist, talking about my feelings. I honestly don't know what happened. But I tried everything, I tried falling in love with you again. I talked about my patterns and fears with my therapist; I know for a fact that none of them are what's motivating this."

Melanie raised an eyebrow. "Does that sound like [Ex]?"

It sounded like me, not Ex. Apparently the only person who can break up with me properly is me.

Back at home, I thought about endings. I thought about how ridiculous I was to expect Ex to break up with me in my voice, not his. At the same time, I thought about something Melanie said near the end of our session. "You know him better than most people. You may never know exactly what was going on in his head, but you can guess, and chances are whatever you think will have some truth to it." I've made several guesses already, testing them out in conversation as well as in this blog. Mostly they involve Ex running away from me, specifically from the version of him I reflect back to him. He wants to be perfect; I know his flaws. He aspires to remain forever in his 20s; I know his real age. He wants a full head of hair; I acted as his personal Photoshop artist to ensure he had one, at least in photographs. He wants to be worshiped; I know him for all his ungodly humanity.

Ex spent most of his teenage life vying for love from his adoptive mother, competing for it with his biological brothers, foster siblings, and his adoptive mother's biological daughter. The daughter always won; Ex felt loved, but never in first place. He came to see himself as the archetypal, Hans Christian Andersenian orphan - innocent of heart, gentle of spirit, capable of immense love but doomed to freeze to death alone. The fear of freezing made him work harder than most of us to maintain the love he had. He put up with abusive boyfriends. He put out for almost anyone. He underwent a self-conscious transformation from ugly duckling - big-eared and ungainly - to a swan, a dancer, perfectly proportioned and composed, complete with a plastic surgeon's pinning of his ears. Like Henrik Ibsen's Nora in A Doll House, he learned to do tricks, to delight, to amuse, to seduce, to dance the Tarantella. He danced furiously and indefatigably, only to loose one parter after another, one love-competition after the next, then drop to the floor in abject exhaustion.

It was in this state that I first got to know him. His boyfriend of nine months - my friend - had dumped him, and Ex simply couldn't understand it. Why did this keep happening to him? One boyfriend after another, always at the nine-month mark? He was heartbroken, depleted, facing the terrifying prospect of cold, icy streets. His recovery was slow and ragged. He burst into tears in the middle of class. He gave his ex-boyfriend a blowjob during a party, then proceeded to engage him in a slapping match in the middle of the dance floor.

Ex and I had already begun dating by this point, so I was less than thrilled about the blowjob and the gay-fight. He hadn't agreed to be exclusive - I'm not even sure he considered me his boyfriend yet - but I counted the blowjob as his second infidelity. The first occurred a few weeks before at a party for an out-of-town guest, during which he slipped away with the man of honor for some heavy-petting. Given that Ex was on the rebound, it really wasn't fair of me to hold either of these episodes against him. But hold them against him I did. I was 19 years old. I had never been in a relationship and I wanted one. Specifically, I wanted one with him. I was attracted to him; we'd had sex. As far as I was concerned, this meant I was entitled to fidelity. It also meant that Ex had deliberately violated my trust, and for this he deserved to be punished.

What followed was three months of brutalizing tug-of-war. On the one side, I held firm to my belief that Ex should be entirely mine, letting go of my end of the rope only when it suited me - that is, only when I wanted to see him knocked over by the sudden give. On the other side, Ex pulled for his freedom, but gradually his feelings started to change. He began to like me. Later he would tell me he was drawn to my intelligence and ambition as a writer, that he'd never dated anyone like me before and found himself suddenly drawn to the unknown. From that point on, he simply held onto his end of the rope for dear life. It was the only thing that held us together, and every time I let go, subjecting him to a bruising fall, he got back up, dusted himself off, and did his best to reason with me before I grabbed my end of the rope and started pulling again. I was pulling to keep us together, even as I was doing everything I could to humiliate him and drive us apart.

I'm not sure what happened next. Ex may have finally dropped the rope, refusing to endure the pulling match any longer. I, too, may have dropped the rope, frustrated and tired. Whatever happened, we finally began to connect as lovers at the beginning of a relationship are supposed to connect - playfully, stupidly, romantically. It was Valentine's Day; that may have helped. We were spending the weekend at my parents' house while they were visiting family in Florida. I treated Ex to diner at my favorite Japanese restaurant. To mark the day of love, the staff had placed a pink origami valentine on each table. Ex pocketed the valentine and brought it back with him to school, tucking it into a memory box where it likely remains to this day, a 12-year-old symbol of our new beginning.

I'd never heard the term "memory box" before I met Ex, though it turned out I had one. I simply called it a box, a storage place for old birthday cards, letters, a miscellaneous trinket or two - loose items with sentimental value. For a long time I kept these items in a shoe box. Later, as I accumulated more of them, I traded the shoe box for two fabric-lined, baby-blue storage containers from West Elm. Ex's memories demanded far more space. He has two tins of them - red and orange Lazzaroni Amaretti tins that I gave him, one 16 ounces and the other 14. He also has two large plastic bins of letters, photographs, journals, and memorabilia - one dedicated entirely to his six-months' study abroad in Taiwan, the other to fragments of his pre- and post-adoption past.

For Ex, these boxes contain far more than loose items from lost times. They are the repositories of a lost home and family, full of precious and dangerous clues to his identity. Ex remembers little about his biological parents and childhood home. He may have been abused by his father, or he may not have. His feet are badly burned. As a child, he was lowered into a bath of boiling water. Who had done this to him? His father? Worse - his mother? The mother who he recalls so lovingly, who he has all but canonized in his memory? The boxes are fortune-tellers, all-knowing but never all-telling. They promise as many answers as Ex has questions, yet they withhold as much as they reveal, speaking in cryptic, half-lost poems.

The contents of my boxes are far more mundane. I was reminded of this last night when, after I returned home from my session, I decided to raid them. I told myself I was researching the beginnings of my relationship so I could author the ending I needed, an ending based not only on my own hunches but on whatever truths I could extrapolate from Ex's own words in the letters and cards I'd saved. This is what I told myself I was doing; in reality, I was trolling for a written declaration of love, a promise of forever, that I could photocopy and leave in Ex's mailbox at work to remind him how deeply he betrayed me. I was sure I'd find something. I'd been with him for over a decade. I must have amassed at least a hundred letters, love-notes, Hallmark cards, and random, "I Love You!" Post-its.

Ex and I: The Archive. Not as impressive as I'd thought.

I sorted through the contents of both boxes, taking inventory of every scrap of paper on which Ex's handwriting appeared. My first surprise came when I realized I had not, in fact, amassed hundreds of documents. Playing librarian in my living room, I cataloged a mere 13 cards (four from Valentine's Days), three long letters (from the summer when I was studying abroad at Oxford), six shorter letters on torn looseleaf, one letter on what looks like construction paper that was used as gift-wrapping, and one April Fool's joke disguised as an academic warning notice. (I can't remember how he orchestrated the trick, but Ex slipped the notice into my mailbox and somehow alerted me to its presence. I was baffled and terrified. I prided myself on being a straight-A student. I rushed to the mail room. By the time I opened the letter and saw "April Fool's!," I was nearing a panic attack.) Twenty-four items total, not counting a folded foil birthday balloon. Few of the items are dated, but at least half of them came from the first two years of our relationship. Either I saved less as time went on, or we weren't nearly as epistolary a couple as I'd thought.

My second surprise came when I actually started reading. I found declarations of love - several, in fact - but none of them without accompanying statements of fear, without some element of hesitation or concern about the long-lastingness of what we had. Part of this, I think, can be credited to the turbulence of our first few months, a turbulence still fresh on our minds when half the letters were written. But this doesn't explain the other half of the letters - the absence of a definitive promise of life-long love.

Here, then, is a snapshot of Ex in his own words. This first letter, probably written near the end of year one when we were both still in college, is the closest he comes to making the promise I was searching for.

My Sweet Angel,

Tonight was very difficult for me. Spending this time, a Friday night, away from you and everyone else I care for, but I needed to find out whether I could live by myself. I now know I cannot. I took the phone cord out of the wall and did not answer the knocks. I sat at my computer in a written meditation trying to free my thoughts, my co-dependency. So many times I thought of plugging the phone back in so a voice would lure me out of this room. It was so hard fighting against this urge, it was feeding on my mind.

Around 1:30 AM I heard drums and could not resist. I'd hoped to find you [and your friend] there [at the drum circle], but neither of you were sitting amongst the music makers.

I danced for quite awhile - hoping, praying, begging to free myself to myself, but I could not find me. You've become the you of me and I'm now sure I am the me of you. It is comforting and yet scary, because I'm afraid to admit how much I crave your eternal friendship. I'm easily hurt by you. I sometimes can see and hear you resisting me. I'm lost. I don't know exactly how to be a part of you, a part that you'd cherish forever.

Is it wrong of me to let you know this thought that constantly hesitates and messes up my innter rhythm? My dance feels jagged. Should I resist what I feel? Does it scare you like it scares me?

If you are yet not dreaming open your door. I'll be waiting outside for a few moments. I feel as though I cannot sleep til I hear your voice. I missed you so much this evening.

Love,

[Ex]

Here is another letter. This one dates near the end of the first half of our relationship - probably sometime around 2001, when we were both miserable graduate students.

Dear [Steve],

I'm sorry. I really want to be the good boyfriend and cause you no pain. I hate to see you not feeling well and happy. We have got to find a way of making ourselves enjoy each other's company more - I'm at a loss on how to do that. I think we both are. It's time we had a brainstorming of ideas together.

Do not think that I'm any more happy than you are in our given departments [at graduate school]. I'm sorry that I have a hard time standing up for myself and what I want. It has always been this way since you met me. I grow weak under certain pressures, and what's worse I come away from things even more angry. I wish I knew how to put an end to this, however I do not!

Just know that I love you deeply. I know we will find away of being happy together again.

With much love and affection,

[Ex]

Finally, here is a Christmas card from December 2009 - about two years ago, the most recent document of the bunch.

[Printed on the card:] Your friendship brightens my holidays.

[In Ex's handwriting:] And it brightens my life, my worth, my thoughts, my dreams, and keeps you in my heart at all times.

Love,

[Ex]

What stands out to me most about Letter #1 is Ex's "co-dependency," something that emerges again in Letter #2 when he writes, "I'm sorry that I have a hard time standing up for myself and what I want." His promises of lifelong devotion in Letter #1 - he "craves [my] eternal friendship" and hopes to "cherish [me] forever" - are embedded in fear, built on the idea that he literally cannot survive without me. I knew he felt this way; in fact, even after the end of our tug-of-war, I used his insecurities to control him, to keep him close lest he cheat on me again or realize he didn't need me after all. Throughout our 12 years together, I never completely trusted him. Part of this, again, can be chalked up to our rocky beginnings, but a larger part of it came from my own personal baggage. I felt homely, unfuckable, isolated. The idea that someone as swan-like as Ex could fall for me seemed unfathomable. Little did I know back then that Ex had not been born a swan. He, too, harbored his own fears of being ugly and unlovable.

Not surprisingly, all of this resulted in extreme co-dependency on both ends. I doubted his ability to love me and the extent to which I deserved his or anyone's love; consequentially, I needed him to love me, for if he didn't, that meant my deepest fears about myself were true. Similarly, Ex needed me to love him; either that or  he would be cast out in the cold, facing certain death.

To sustain my love, he put on the charm, romanced me at every turn, and deferred to my judgement on almost everything, from the choice of movies we watched to the rate at which our lives became increasingly intermingled. He didn't "move in" to my dorm room until I was ready, nor did we share a bed, adopt a cat, or purchase a dog until I felt certain it was time. Sometimes he got tired of waiting. Occasionally he would insist on his own choices - especially of movies, since we were both cinephiles. This usually resulted in a fight. I would get hard-headed and arrogant. He would stamp his feet, slam doors, bang on various surfaces, and eventually sustain an injury, usually by flinging himself onto the bed or into a chair and slamming some rogue part of his body into a wall. One time he hit his face against a windowsill and gave himself a bloody nose. I went from criticizing his taste in film to ordering him off the bed, frantically rushing a tissue to his nose before he bled onto the sheets and carpet. We joked about it afterwards. How could I stay mad at him after he bashed his face against a windowsill? How could I find him anything but vulnerable, childish, and adorable as he looked up at me from his bloody tissue, eyes melting with apology?

Those eyes could soften resistance as a hot spoon softens ice cream. Whenever he wanted something from me that I was too afraid or stingy to give, he used his eyes, his baby voice ("Sthephen, pweathse...?"), his cock, his prowess on the dance floor, his infinitely charming, dimpled smile. He did this because his adoptive mother had trained him to use anything at his disposal to get what he wanted, including love. But he also did it because I left him few alternatives.

I'm not the good boyfriend in this part of the story. I loved him beyond the boundaries of my own skin, but I'd also decided that the more I loved him, the more power I gave him to decimate me completely should he one day realize the "truth" - that I was ugly, unfuckable, and didn't deserve him. Of course, this was no more "the truth" than the story of the first Thanksgiving as I learned it in second grade; it was a distortion of bodily-dysmorphic and near-psychotic proportions, but I was only vaguely aware of this at the time, having yet to hit the couch in an earnest attempt to examine my own self-hatred. Around the end of year two, Ex confessed that he'd cheated on me - twice, with two different men. He begged me, sobbing, not to leave him. I was angry, but never for a moment did I consider leaving. I didn't tell him this. As I held him in my arms, assuring him everything would be okay, I thought to myself, "now he'll never leave me." This selfless act of forgiveness would forever put him in my debt. I was trading in the currency of love like a banker; he would never be able to repay the interest on this loan, so now I would truly have him - forever.

So much for that.

I was not a good boyfriend in the beginning - not even for the first three years. But I became a better one as a result of my depression and twice-weekly sessions with my therapist. I'm still self-conscious about my appearance, as my attempt at humor on Day 41 attests. But for the first time in my life, I was finally confronting my feelings about being gay and the degree to which those feelings had been warped by more than a decade of name-calling and hetero-socialization. I was a mess, sad and hysterical to the point of uncontrollable nausea and vomiting. Boyfriends across the world have been scared off by less, but Ex stood faithfully by my side. Actually, the urgency of my depression blindsided him as much as it did me; he didn't so much stand by my side as helplessly look on, sometimes from a distance and sometimes with his arms around me as I cried and panicked and clung to him for support. Gone were my self-defenses, my carefully measured give and take of love and leverage. Now it was my turn to wear my co-dependency on my sleeve. I simply couldn't imagine surviving a night without him.

This marked a crucial shift in our relationship. I was still controlling. I became even more so for a time, bristling at every person or opportunity that threatened to take Ex away from me. But I was no longer the stubbornly dependable partner, the (relatively) hard-hearted and rational yin to Ex's (mostly) emotional flower-bed of a yang. Imagine sharing your life with someone who is both controlling and depressed. I take many jabs at Ex, but the fact is, he stayed. Thank god for his co-dependence and his love. He truly deserved a medal.

In retrospect, I'm grateful for the depression. It forced me to confront some serious demons. It's at this point in the story that I finally begin to conduct myself more healthily, in life as well as in my relationship. I started medication. I applied for my Masters in Playwriting and got accepted to several prestigious programs. At the end of my first year of studies, I secured a teaching fellowship that covered my tuition and paid a modest stipend. Ex, meanwhile, had gotten a job at the college - a tenure track job. Our sex-life had taken a hit, mostly as a result of the meds, but otherwise, these were our happiest years. I still vetoed his movie choices, but he no longer had to injure himself to get me to reconsider. My friendship "brightened his life, his worth, his thoughts, his dreams," and his brightened mine.

Then came the change - the change I've discussed amply elsewhere.

Ex began to hate his job at the same time he was becoming addicted to it. His combination of charm and passion for theatre meant that many of his students worshiped him. For the first time in his adult life, he had succeeded in taking the number-one spot in other people's hearts. It wasn't exactly love he had earned, but respect. His students revered him, and he started going to great lengths to reinforce their perceptions. His training as a dancer had given him perfect posture, but now he seemed to stand even taller, chin forever hovering at a 100 degree angle from his neck, always pointing just slightly towards the heavens. He started dressing all in black, insisting his students do the same. He chose shoes specifically for the sounds they made against the linoleum flooring in the halls - sharp heels that made sharp, threatening sounds, announcing his presence and instilling fear before his students could even see him.

He was developing a classroom persona - something most teachers do. But most of us do it to claim a very specific kind of authority in the classroom, one that's not so much about us as diffusing potential obstacles to students' learning. I was 22 years old when I taught my first college class. Before the first day of the semester, I took Ex shopping to help me pick out a professional wardrobe, one that would make me look serious, professorial, and at least eight years older. I knew my students might not take me seriously as someone only four years their senior, so I worked to develop a persona that would remove this obstacle. From 1:15 to 2:25 every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, I did my best to play the role of a man in his early 30s.

Ex manufactured a persona that masked his insecurities, and in this sense he did well - insecurity on the part of a teacher can be a very real obstacle to gaining trust and respect from students. The problem was that the persona began to take on a life of its own. Ex fashioned himself into an amalgam of his heroes of dance, theatre, and film, borrowing Martha Graham's austerity, Stella Adler's ferocious gesticulation, and Miranda Priestly's whispery-soft but deadly voice and stare, rolling them all into one larger-than-life package. He reveled in reports of students speaking in awe about his "death stare." He concealed the machinery behind his appearance - the hours it would take him to prepare the day's ensemble, spray on some extra hair, moisturize every square inch of his face. He lied to students and colleagues about his age, the origins of certain articles of clothing (a Yohji Yamamoto coat, which he claimed to have received as a personal gift from the designer after Yamamoto plucked him from the NYC streets to model it on a private runway). At a party on campus for students arranged by the LGBT and drama clubs, he danced alone in his very own makeshift cage high in the rafters. At his direction, the students rigged a special light just for him. The DJ announced his entrance, and he shook his moneymaker to the whoops and applause of the 18-to-22-year-olds below.

He had conquered the college, but it was a small victory. He had transformed himself into a demi-God of urbane good taste, but his disciples extended only as far as the circumference of a community college campus in middle-of-nowhere New Jersey. He received plaudits for his art, but his art now consisted mostly of directing students in community theatre productions of Shakespeare and big-name musicals. Added to this, his Martha Graham-Stella Adler-Miranda Priestly routine had begun to get him in trouble. He indignantly cursed out a student via e-mail because she had sent him a viral chain letter. He threw a stack of essays to the floor in front of his students to make a point of just how disappointed he was in their work. He cultivated friendships with some students, opening himself to accusations of favoritism by others. His dean began to threaten his job. Once again, Ex found himself "grow[ing] weak under certain pressures" and "com[ing] away from things even more angry."

This quote is from Letter #2, written at least five years before he started teaching at the college. But the past was repeating itself, as it had done again and again ever since his adoptive mother signed the paperwork but refused to award him equal place in her affections. Here was yet another situation in which he found himself denied the approval - read: the love - he had worked so tirelessly to ensure. For all his missteps, he had invested thousands of hours into his work. He was too weak to stand up for himself, so I - his partner, now also his colleague - did what I had done so well prior to my depression. I stood up for him.

When I began this post, I hadn't intended to write the abridged history of my entire relationship. I was inspired by Ex's letters and my session with Melanie to dig for truth, for the best and most comprehensive understanding I could reach of why our relationship ended. What, then, to make of all this?

First, I did tremendous damage to the relationship during its first half, and I would be stupid not to take responsibility for this and try to learn from it. I was a bully. I spotted Ex's weaknesses early on and exploited them because I was convinced he wouldn't stay with me otherwise. My romance with H might not be long for this world. Already he's concerned by the awkward starts and stops of our conversation, and although he says he's attracted to me (and I'm certainly attracted to him), he feels a certain lack of chemistry, of romance and sparks. It hurt me to hear this, as I wanted so badly to be "onto the next thing," to keep pace with Ex and his two-hour transition from 12-year partnership to tango-dancing underwear model. But if this is the only reason I want H - merely as a "next thing," an attempt at parity with my ex-partner - then better the sparks never fly. Either way, I will not play mind games with H or any of my future boyfriends. I will not manipulate a lover for fear that I am simply too awkward and unattractive to deserve his love.

My second conclusion: our relationship was deeply co-dependent and, in many ways, simply not healthy. This  isn't to say it was entirely unhealthy, but it was built by two very young and deeply wounded people. In a sense, Ex and I grew up together. At the same time, we symied each other's growth, propping each other up when the two of us should have been learning individually to keep our own balance. He taught me so much about myself, and I hope to have done the same for him. But this is the kind of relationship one should grow out of. If only unconsciously, perhaps Ex understood this. Perhaps he realized that we needed time apart, that each of us needed to grow up on his own. Then again, there is Ex's choice of a new partner - a man who never went to college, who is all of 26 years old, who is jack of no trades and master of one; a man who might understandably look up to someone like Ex, perhaps with the same fervor as one of his applauding, whooping students.

This brings me to my final conclusion: Ex broke up with me because he knew we were crippling each other, but he jumped straight into a new relationship because he was afraid of standing, broken-boned, on his own. More than anything else, this is why I'm angry at him. I'm angry that he made such an important decision for both of us, one that I should have made myself at least two years before. I'm angry that I had no control over his decision; I'm angry at myself for continuing to crave control, even as I know I must learn to relinquish this need if I'm ever to mend my own busted limbs. But most of all I'm angry at him for Sven, his second choice. His first choice - to break up with me - was painful but necessary. His second choice - to jump into a new relationship with a saucer-eyed 26-year-old - undermines the value of first. Granted, it undermines the value for him, not me. Really, I have no right to be angry. And yet I'm angry anyway.

Here, I think, is where I must defer to the healing powers of time - those powers which are no less efficacious for being cliché. Here is also where I must dim the spotlight on Ex and his motives. I have no doubt that I will continue to write about him, be angry at him, love him, and marvel at his unconscious wisdom as well as his conscious stupidity. But if our origin story reveals anything besides a deeper look at his motives, it's my own evolution as a caped crusader of control, as Captain Co-dependent. I do not want to repeat the same mistakes, at least not in same way I made them with Ex.

In the world comic books, origin stories can span all of one issue. In the real world, however, human beings continuously re-originate. We are ever-evolving and -becoming, even as we confront and never truly defeat countless variations of the same enemies. My enemy is not Ex, nor is the co-dependence that brought me to him, nor the self-hatred that fed it. That hatred inspired me to love another person as best as I could, and I do not believe our love is any less valuable for its fetid roots, just as flowers are no less beautiful that spring from manure.

Before me lies the next chapter of my origins story. Ex may be trying to ignore his demons, but I will not do the same with mine; I will not allow them to overtake my Metropolis. I must examine each monster, searching for others whose faces I don't recognize because they have changed since we last did battle. In this, I think, lies the key to my next transformation. In this, I think, my only real enemy would be a refusal to look my monsters in the eyes.