“Married twice,” he says. “And one woman tried to murder me.”
I laugh out loud.
“No, seriously,” he says.
“Wow,” I say. “Seriously? You might have more red flags than I do.”
Offhandedly, I mention to him that dating has changed since I got sober a few years ago.
“You too?” he asks. “This April it’ll be fifteen years without a drink.”
Synchronicity. I did not expect this. I veer into my dump of inappropriate background information.
“I was crazy when I drank,” I say. “So, how many guys do you think I’ve had sex with?”
Pat jokes, “I don’t know, like a hundred?”
“Oh my God, no!” I say, and then, without thinking too much about it, I blurt out, “I mean, I’ve probably sucked a hundred dicks.”
The sentence just hangs there. There is no taking it back. I sit there, flushed, recoiling in quiet horror at myself. Okay, maybe this won’t be the two-minute date. Maybe it’ll be the two-minute-and-two-hour date.
“You have great stories,” Pat says, not taking the bait. “You know, I’ve always been a fan of your writing.”
He doesn’t respond with lewdness, but instead offers . . . respect.
That’s about the last thing I expected. There is no trace of judgment or leering dismissal. He treats me like a peer.
We are quiet for a while, and then he says, “You’re a lot sweeter than I expected.”
“I am?”
“You are.”
As I’m talking, without realizing it, I am nervously ripping the napkin in front of me to shreds, and little bits of detritus are covering the table, my food, everything.
Without a word, Pat removes the napkin from my hands and sets it aside. He places his hands on mine, holding them with gentleness and warmth.
I stop talking. What is this sensation flooding my body? I feel giddy. High.
“Jesus,” I say. “I feel like I’m in the seventh grade.”
This guy makes me want to drop all of the bravado I’m wearing like a costume on Halloween. Even if it makes me look like a fool, I know I need to communicate what I’m experiencing inside right now. Because I haven’t felt something like this in a long time.
“Listen,” I tell him hurriedly, “I know I come across kind of . . . strange. But I feel like I should tell you . . . I would date you.”
The urgent rush of sincerity is embarrassing. Like I just wet my pants right there at the table.
“Thank you,” he says, his face softening. “I’m glad you told me that.”
We walk back to my apartment because I tell him I need to get a photo to write about the date—and I’ve forgotten to bring the photo release form with me.
“Sorry,” I say. “I realize this whole thing is so weird.”
We enter my tiny studio, and he looks around to take in the view.
I’ve “decorated” the place with a pile of clothes in one corner and an unwieldy stack of letters, packages, and assignments in another.
Most of the place is inherited from the girl who lived here before me, and it shows. A green suede headboard hints at a cute frilly girliness that I have never embodied as a single woman. You can even see the slats in the wall where she once displayed her vast hanging high-heel collection. The pièce de résistance, however, was her framed wedding announcement next to the sparkly stiletto-heel trinket she had hanging on the door.
This studio was her true-to-life Sex and the City paradise, and I’ve tarnished her tradition by filling it with wrinkly clothes, a paltry kitten-heel collection, ungodly stacks of reporter’s notebooks, and the near certainty I will never achieve her endgame.
“What do you think?” I ask Pat.
He looks around at the disarray and says, “All your place needs is a woman’s touch.”
I laugh, and Pat walks over to the side of my bed, next to the scratched-up black desk I also inherited. Atop my desk is a side-by-side display: an unwashed Bullet vibrator, a half-empty plastic carton of orange juice, and ten gold and silver plastic boxes of “S&M kits” a publicist has sent me. Pat sidles over to the assortment, and, as if making his choice in a Showcase Showdown, lifts up the orange juice and takes a swig.
His total authority over my apartment turns me on. I hand him the release form to sign, and then we go out into my stairwell to snap a photo for the blog entry I have to write. I extend my iPhone to capture the moment, and Pat puts his arm around me—then turns to give me the best kiss I’ve ever received.
It feels like a slo-mo sequence of chemical reactions, from excitement to lust to a little bit of fear.
“Do you want to come inside for a little bit?” I ask.
When we sit on my bed making awkward small talk, Pat encircles his fingers around the Belle Knox scarf and plays with it for half a second. When she gifted it to me, Belle wrote on her card, “Hopefully, you can use this for something dirty and fun.”
Belle Knox gets her wish.
Pat pulls the scarf toward him and kisses me again in a way that is slow, deliberate, and done with a confidence I haven’t experienced in a lifetime of kisses.
We fool around for a few more hours—but don’t have sex—and as he gets up to leave, I expect this will be the last time I ever see the guy.
“I like you,” he says before heading out the door. “I want to see you again soon.”
“You do?” I ask.
“I really do.”
WE DON’T HAVE sex until a few dates later, because I’m trying to incorporate the lessons from mistakes I’ve made in the past. When we do, there is a physical connection that feels like something swallowing me whole.
Maybe because we’re both sober. Maybe because we’re both aware of every breath and kiss and move we’re taking. There is nothing more intoxicating than total awareness of every little thing going down.
Pat is the only man I’ve ever been with who can quickly go from kinky to tender to
