I was a hopeful romantic living a city-girl existence, but yearned to quit my VP job in corporate America to indulge my inner artist. I had just turned 40, my parents whose relationship I’d idolized my entire life had separated after 42 years, cancer stole my 33 year-old dear friend, and my goals of working in entertainment had segued oh-so-subtly but definitely someplace I didn’t want to be. I refused to age another day without attempting to pursue my dreams.

During one exquisite summer, I was 28 again.

After quitting my 24/7 job, I was overjoyed at the prospect of taking classes. Euphoria overtook me at the thought of doing homework, wearing jeans every day, sleeping late, and deleting the Sunday night blahs.

Drama foreshadowed our entire relationship, since we met in a theatre workshop. Out for drinks after class, “Rex,” the brilliantly funny cast-mate with huge blue eyes and killer dimples, heard my story and with his hand on my knee joked, “Just spend the summer with a 28 year-old!”

True love is like seeing ghosts. Many claim to have experienced it, but very few do, I read in the NY Times VOWS column moons ago. What I’d wanted, and feared, but in an unexpected package. I was always drawn to outgoing, entertaining, smart guys … but never guessed he’d be 12 years younger, not fully formed yet. We told each other who we were in the beginning: he didn’t want a relationship and I was not casual. Yet, we proceeded …

We’d been dating a few weeks and he was kissing me goodbye in my living room. At 5’8” he was not tall, but my mere 5’2’’ meant I had to stand on tiptoes. “Shit, I lost a contact lens.” Trying to keep my balance and not fall back onto the 1940’s chaise, I cooed, “Maybe it’s in my eye!” He hugged me, “Yes, maybe, we do seem to be in sync.”

Later, I was making my bed and found his scrunched up contact lens beneath a pillow. Sigh! I was enjoying the fantasy of being a 1950’s housewife who stayed home all day while her husband went off to work. Okay, we weren’t married, and it was over half a century later, and my new boyfriend had an entry-level finance job and I was doing homework, not housework, all day long. These feelings were as anathema to me as the desire to cook. My former self had no idea how to turn my stove on, and the new me was fantasizing about cooking a chicken for him. Who am I? I wondered. Who was he?

This creature, part of a technically advanced generation, propelled me into modern times. At first we didn’t realize that he was 28 and I had just turned 40. The first time he texted me, it took five minutes to open it. Who knew texting could be orgasmic? Thanks to his non-demanding job and my not-in-an-office job, we’d have all-day-long text conversations.

This was my first time texting in the park, oh my…
Wow, your first time. I guess I should feel honored …
I never text and tell
Never confirm nor deny, never text and tell, you are quite the vixen. Stocks are
down … should have stayed in bed.

One night after last call, we had food munchies and were holding hands and nibbling the same French fry when he interrupted the salty kiss to whisper delicious words. McDonald’s in Union Square was my new favorite place. I’d eaten in the best restaurants around the world, and not one of them generated the transcendent ambiance that this neon haven would now always symbolize.

Flashbacks from professional life: Le Cirque with clients. Meeting Madonna. Dancing with reporters during conventions at chic Mexican resorts. Shaking hands with Prince Andrew at a cocktail party. Coordinating press conferences at Gracie Mansion. I’d experienced stellar moments via my work life, but nothing compared to this, whatever “this” was. “It” was fun.

The next morning, I opened my eyes to find Rex lying on his side facing me. His eyelids twitching, he looked ill. The sun shining on his pale face aged him. Sometimes I thought he looked older that I did. “I know you’ve mentioned that since we’re together we shouldn’t sleep with other people.”

The numerous vodkas plus late night McChicken sandwich started to make my stomach gurgle. My head hurt. I needed coffee.

He said it meant nothing; just some girl at some bar during his business trip.

I tried to get dressed, but the jeans were tight so I grabbed them and went into his living room to pry myself into the new size 2s. Wearing jeans and black bra only, I was sitting on the floor buckling strappy sandals when he appeared at the doorway holding my tee shirt. I grabbed the top, screamed at him, and slammed his front door.

I was getting out of the shower when my phone rang.

“Hey.” The only reason I didn’t hang up was because I loved the cadence of his voice. We rarely spoke on the phone because texting was his main mode of communication, so even my wild anger couldn’t negate this slight pleasure.

Unfortunately, I made a whimpering sound, “I guess we did tell each other who we were. You were quite clear that you weren’t looking for anything, and I told you that I feel things deeply, maybe deeper than most.”

“I’m not ready to dip my toes back into that vast pool of intimacy.”

My honey had a way with words, but I was pissed. "That line sounds fake. I’m sure you’ve used it before.”

“I just couldn’t stay away from you. The competing value is that I really like you and am attracted to you. You’re an amazing person, more lively and vibrant than most I meet. I never would have had the constitution to do what you did, I admire your strength to change your life. But saying all that, this “thing” happened so quickly and so unexpectedly.”

The only time Rex communicated his feelings was either via the safety of text messaging, or drunken pillow talk. This was new. It also wasn’t good enough.

“What do you want me to say? I fell for you. There, I said it. At 8:45 a.m. In the light of day. Sober. And I want more.”

“I’m not ready for marriage or kids, we’re in totally different places.”

“Who said that’s what I want? I just want a boyfriend. A loyal boyfriend. And I’m person-specific, I just wanted you.”

“We never said anything about that. We’re just dating.”

I knew one of us would have to quit the workshop.

We couldn’t stay apart. Despite the constant dramas, we completed the workshop that culminated in live performances. After yet another heated exchange, his exhaustion and intoxication took over while I replayed every poignant sentence he said to me over and over in my mind. He loves me, I got too close, and I had detected the real problem.

“Are you going to stop drinking?” I whispered.

“No, I’m not ready to deal with it yet.” Tears flowed, from his eyes this time.

The morning after the final show, his devilish sweet face was peacefully asleep, oblivious to the havoc his conscious self caused. I inexplicably felt only tenderness and for the first time, didn’t wake him before I left.

I never thought I’d heal. Fast forward. After shyly repelling unwanted attention and surviving zillions of dates in between numerous conflict-ridden but lovely interludes with Rex, someone finally got in. Unexpected, it was a friend whom I’d adored and admired. Truly unavailable. I didn’t mean to fall for him. The instant we kissed, I emotionally attached and couldn’t breathe and haven’t felt quite solid since. Our electricity was tantric. No happily-ever-after, but the magic of that connection made me believe that love will find me again.

I know there will be a right one. He will get my overly romantic soul, will not be scared off that I'm quirky and confident in an insecure kind of way … he will be the one who can catch me.

We talked and talked about the music that moved us and we shared what movies scared us the most. Christina gave me the first mix-CD that had any girl had made for me. Finally I had met a girl who appreciated music that wasn't on the Billboard charts. We shared a common love of zombie and slasher movies. I remembered saying to myself I can’t possibly find somebody I have more in common with. How naïve of me of course, I was punch drunk in love.

I spent my fall semester driving to Upstate NY on the weekends to see my new love. I was happy to make the hour & fifteen-minute drive up to see her. I remember one particular day that we spent together. We were lying on a wooden dock on the Hudson River staring at the sky on a beautiful end of summer beginning of fall day. We held each other’s arms so firm that day.

And so the story goes, like the seasons we changed. Suddenly minor distractions were starting to interfere with our relationship. Ex boyfriends seemed to pop out of nowhere to talk to Christina. Weekends that I could not make the trip to NY, Christina found her way into bars. Of course this was no problem. There’s nothing wrong with a night out with friends. I soon found out that Christina was not one for telling drunken bar boys about her boy back home. Christina craved attention not only from me but also from any man that would give it to her.

One weekend while I was back at home Christina found herself out with friends again. This time Christine had taken her flirting too far. She had kissed another man at the bar. I never saw this coming from Christina, since she knew how much this same type of deceit affected me in my last relationship. From that day on our relationship was never the same. She could never even muster up the sincerity to sound sorry over the phone or in person. She blamed her cheating ways on too many drinks. I realized why should had become so cold and distance those coming weeks. She found it easier to cheat on me, than to sit down and tell me things weren’t working. It was stupid for me to take her back. I fooled myself into thinking things could work out. But the night she betrayed me never left my head. I eventually did take her back. People can be cruel; but sometimes the situations we put ourselves in are much worse.

After the cheating disaster the ex boyfriends and all the other men that were intrigued by her never stopped bothering me. One weekend my suspicion got the best of me and I looked at her txt msgs. Lets just say I saw enough. She had taken her flirting with her ex’s to an all new low. Her response to me looking at her msgs was that I was jerk and I should not be looking through her stuff. She was right in some aspects. But she wasn’t angry with me, she was angry that she was caught. We decided to take a break for the sake of our relationship and ourselves. During the break we didn’t see each other and we barely talked. I grew distant and angry. And my attempts to hang out were met by a cold shoulder. This same cold shoulder came from a person who believed we should still work on our relationships problems during the break. Of course once again I found myself discovering the flirting she was doing with her ex’s. This was the final straw for me. She still does not understand why I hold a certain ill will towards her. But maybe someday when somebody does the things she did to me to her.

I had replaced one bad ex girlfriend with another. I didn’t learned from any of the mistakes I had made the first time around and I paid for it. I paid for it with a sunken heart. Its funny how Christina used to tell me how bad my ex was treating me. Christina suddenly became the mirror image of the ex she talked so critically about. I still believe both girls don’t deserve the courtesy of me being their friends. Maybe one day…..

We found Bailey, on our first visit to California Pets in Orange County, CA, not too far from home. We made the initial calls and inquiries, in search of Shih Tzu puppies. You know my brother and his wife have two of these lap dogs, and my wife, while not claiming to be a big animal lover herself, loved those two. And so we agreed, a Shih Tzu pup would be the call. As luck would have it, Cal Pets had three pups.

I’m not sure if you have ever been to a “pet/breeder” store, but it’s not the most pleasurable of an outing. The poor animals look so sad in their cages. You want to rescue all of them. The big, sad eyes and yelps of attention fill the sights and sounds of the store. It killed me, and still does.

The first one out of the cage, and let free in the “play pin”, was a 3 month old female. She was white, brown, caramel, and black…all mixed. With her big hair, and “chase the ball” playfulness, we had seen enough. This was the dog. We proceeded to fill our shopping cart with a crate, a small dog bed, puppy pads, food, treats and the list goes on.

To be truthful, I, the conservative one, began buyer’s remorse prior to sliding the debit card through the pos (point of sales) unit. We hadn’t paid yet, and I was already asking “do we really want to do this?” An animal takes responsibility. My wife, knowing her for 20 years, was not one for being “pinned down”. “What will we do with it when we want travel?” “It’s going to tear up our model home”. As determined as my PhD wife was, she knew this was the right decision, and convinced me that all would be Ok. She furthered her support of the purchase by using the old “the dog would be great companionship for you” when she (wife) traveled for work.

As life would have it, six months later, my wife had found that 2 years of marriage was more than she could do. She, in fact, made the regrettable decision to carry on with alternative relationships, outside of our marriage, before and after the pup came into our lives. I guess, as I stand now, there was a bit of a calculated agenda within the decision to purchase of the dog. Do you remember the “companion” part? I do believe that was part of it, companionship, but I also believe there was a “compassion” element, supplying me a gift of a friend. Maybe she knew what was to come? Maybe it eased her into making the break, knowing I would not be alone. And from that nightmare day in February, Bailey and I started our lives together.

Bailey was in my arms, all the while packing my bags to leave my home. She stayed with me, and comforted me, while my brother and fiancé tried to help heal deep wounds. Like many of us divorcees, there have been good days and bad. As time continues on, most all the bad days are gone now. Bailey’s now 7 years old. She’s a bit rounder, but so am I. That little dog, with those big eyes, still looks up at me with anticipation, loyalty, and I’d like to think love. It’s a mutual appreciation.

Here’s the thing. The realization I have come to. It has occurred to me that I have received something pretty special. I received a gift from someone I have not spoken to in over 7 years and, in fact, really don’t care to. But…If it were not for my x-wife, there would not have been a Bailey and me. And so I recognize the compassion, after all the pain of that one has caused. She gave me a gift that I will always have. Having Bailey in my life has taught me love again, and it also reassured me that love is a good thing. I am a better person because of a gift of a little, unconditional friend.

It’s taken 7 years, but thank you X.

So what's a modern lesbian to do who lives in the Bay Area, or any area where packs of lesbians live, have L Word dinner parties, and go to the same two bars on every other Friday or second Thursday? Or who yearns for the yearly dyke march so we can have those lovely ex-girlfriend run-ins on the street while screaming into our cell phones to find our friends who used to be ex’s and are now official friend status again?

That's a long way of saying: when a new bar opened near me, I was thrilled. I knew that every Wednesday, dyke night, I could go and find a new date. However on my first night there, enthusiastic and hopeful, I entered Charlie's, a neighborhood bar where everyone knows your name and your business. I saw not two but three of my previous exes. Actually, the situation was more like three x two = six happy coupled-up ladies. I was thinking next time I go, I should just park it at the bar and do shots for every ex that comes in. And then an extra one for the new soul mate I was sure to meet that night.

The answer? FOB! The Festival of Babes, a marathon of soccer by day and parties by night, when athletic wear gives way to naughty nurse's uniforms and Catholic boarding school skirts. FOB is designed to be about free and easy jello shots and free and easy lovin'.

The first night a few party girls and I all drove home from the games and then the post-party together at 11pm singing "We are Family" while wondering when the action would start. What I got instead of action was an appearance of my latest Nerve.com date, the one who thought, "Let's see in my closet: I have 10-year-old Teva's and yoga pants, I think that's a great outfit for my first date." OK, she was very nice. And we had some fun. But Teva's?

Night two: lots of sweaty lesbians, the same hip hop song from the 90's on heavy rotation---but no love. Good thing my Teva-wearing lady was there and bought me a drink---while she downed her thirteenth Long Island Iced Tea and slurred her words. It was charming, really. I think she took dance lessons from her favorite episode of Seinfeld (you know the one where Elaine stole the show). And as I was leaving, Nerve.com gal leaned over in a whiskey-laden whisper and asked me to go kayaking.

Not all was lost, I did see one girl I wanted to kiss. I asked her out the next sober day via email. Naturally, her current girlfriend is my ex's tenant.

I grabbed the ticket and the package and continued to my door. Ran up the stairs, dumped the tools and into the bathroom I went. I threw down my pants, tossed the package on the floor, let out a sigh of relief or what ever it is you do at the moment, and stared at the package. That package was my kryptonite.

It had been about a year since I had had any sort of contact with my ex. And that is how I wanted it to stay. We had, or, in truth, I had, a very tough break up (she dumped me) and it took just about forever to get over her. In order to do so, I did the normal guy thing: went out and got laid as much as possible. If I wasn’t getting some, then I was at the bar getting loaded. I ended up meeting a fat kindergarten teacher who was real easy and I got way to into the “kindergarten teacher” thing. Met another woman at the bar. She was “bi” and I felt like I had to tame her in some sort of way and started to work my magic.

In other words, the last thing I needed in my new life was my ex. I sat on the toilet for about a hour staring at the package until I finally had enough courage to open it. It was a plastic little kid’s wallet with a letter that essentially said she really needed to talk to me and did not like the way things had turned out. I collected kids’ wallets (did you know they don’t fit real money?) and she had picked it up in her travels with her new man. I had heard she met some older more “adult” guy who took her on a trip around the world. He had been to every Chart House Restaurant in the country and won some around the world trip because of it. What a dork!

After about a week of going back and forth with myself I gave in and gave the ex a call. She wanted to come over and relinquish herself of the bad taste in her mouth of our breakup. At first I refused, thinking she just wanted back in my life to ruin it all over again. I was just now over her and back on stable ground. After the begging and crying and whatnot I agreed to meet her.

She came over the next day and we sat down to talk and hash out our breakup. It was weird and awkward at first, but after about three hours of talking things started to change, and I started to see what I fell in love with the first time. Then it happened: the two-hour dry humping make out session that kept us both wanting more. See! She really was wrecking my new life of ladies that took so long to build. The problem was we both wanted back in—and seemed to be headed down that path.

But I had more problems, I was just in the middle of dumping the kindergarten teacher and moving to Mexico to open a bed and breakfast with the bisexual chick. There was no way I was missing out on that.

So I went to Mexico to meet up with her (she had already been there for a month). She greeted me with her new girlfriend, and to my surprise I was already out at the time of arrival. I spent the next two months living the ex-pat bachelor life, and madly writing letters to the ex in the local Internet cafe. Two days before I left, a cab taking me home from a club crashed into a Mexican cop car, and much to my dismay I was sent to a Mexican prison. In that prison, I met two 90210/Melrose Place writers which was lucky since on their way out they slipped me a crisp $50 bill that I used to bribe my way out. Man, I could go on forever about that prison experience.

It is now seven years later and that ex and I are happily married with a wonderful three-year-old boy. Thank God she came back and wormed her way back into my heart with that gesture of kryptonite. Let’s just hope that my son has a thing for little kid wallets. I’ve got quite a few.

None of this equaled happy, and yet I had never been more in love, or less willing to face the truth that the relationship was dead.

When we did the tour of New York two years earlier, friends had confirmed it; he was the one. Not only because he was intelligent, attractive, a New York ex-pat and 33; but he also meditated. After dating a parade of men self-absorbed in their art, their music, or their looks, I had finally hit the jackpot with someone devoted to Buddhist meditation. I believed then that a spiritual path—particularly an eastern one—would erase or at least soothe most difficulties in the human experience. So when conversations about the future wore circles in my mind, I had faith. When we argued about which was the deeper path, hatha yoga or vipassana meditation (my practice is more intense than your practice, he once implied), I rationalized: we’re connecting on levels more intimate than most of my relationships. Isn’t that better? Our arguments were complex and weird, and so therefore more significant, yes? Possibly with karmic repercussions. We could be fighting about window treatments and the mortgage. It may sound naïve, but our shared faith grounded my soul in unprecedented ways. So did our great sex. I couldn’t imagine anything better in this lifetime.

We drove to Chicago where I hoped to work for the summer. There were many “ifs,” conditions full of potential, contingent on things going right. If you come back to Tucson, he said, we can get a house together. If I adjuncted and lived below the poverty line, he said, I could build my academic resume—and wouldn’t that be great, because eventually we could both teach at the same small, community college in the northeast and he could meditate during the summers. “While you do what,” a lawyer friend had asked me, “wait outside the yurt with the kid?”

Those details would work themselves out, I told myself. Spiritual life transcended bourgeois, urban needs like high-profile jobs and two week vacations in Europe. We sped through the red rocks in Utah, “We Won’t Get Fooled Again” blasting on the radio, dog panting in the backseat. I chose to focus on what we had (yoga, Buddha, and sex) to think positively, since I had once been told by a spiritual practitioner that I was a very powerful manifester. You might say that this is where the magical thinking began.

As great as Eastern Spiritual Practices have been for our culture, they can be misused just as any other religion. It depends how badly the practitioner wants to lie. And I wanted it bad.

It’s so much easier, two years later, to see the hallmarks of an ideal turned sour. I am sure ex-cult members say the same thing. I’m neither stupid nor needy—in fact, I am so highly educated and independent, I thought nothing of him leaving me in Chicago while he traveled for the summer. (Why shouldn’t he continue being a carefree grad student while my life fell apart?). I am so mature, I chalked up his constant avoidance of my misery as a phase. I did the same with his new 50 mile a day bicycle hobby that had him leaving my bed before sunrise each morning. With the early, sexless curfews at night. And with his two hour a day meditation practice (except Sundays when he tried to sit for four hours). I made allowances because I respected the spiritual path: it had helped me, I had even written a book about it. A cousin of mine who has lived in an ashram for over 25 years advised me when I started having doubts, “he’s doing what he needs to do. There’s nothing more important than being true to yourself. To follow your calling.” I know alcoholics who tell themselves the same thing.

There is always a point in love when the qualities that first appear charming lose their magic and become insights into character. I remember wondering if his ability to back burner his dissertation and all cares of the “impermanent world” was actually beneficial. Or if his tremendous reserves of focus and energy were best used watching double features at the movie theatre three times a week. Or listening to two hours straight of the left-of-left radio show Democracy Now, and eating an entire pizza (sometimes with sausage) afterwards while railing about injustice. Was it good or Buddhist that, when we argued about intimacy problems, he could (almost magically) meditate all the anger away? That when he called me from his month long stint as a volunteer guide for a Sri Lankan monk’s journey across America, he sounded just as impassive and disembodied as he did earlier in the summer? While I struggled to pay my bills and practice yoga alone in a city where I knew no one, I thought of him enviously. How amazing, I thought, he doesn’t need a job. He doesn’t even need a girlfriend. Like a trustfunder swaddled in inheritance, my boyfriend simply needed the privilege of meditation.

The break up broke my heart, but it also broke my faith. I was shocked that our spiritual connection couldn’t save us. Worse, that it delayed my revelation that I was being strung along. The pictures of the two of us happily eating a coconut in the hammock in Mexico begged the question, if detachment was the best way to avoid pain, how would we ever have achieved this moment of love?

I wanted to consult with my ashram cousin more, but then remembered she had been celibate for two decades. Love and the spiritual path had never meshed for her either.

While I got on my feet in Chicago, the thought of him still crushed me. It was hard to see that my situation had steadily improved once the scorched desert landscape was replaced by neighborhoods and trees, The Art Institute, Lake Michigan, and, last but not least, other people. Even as I went on a friendly date with the man who is now my fiancé, I decided I must give my meditator one more chance in the best way that I knew how. I did the age old trick that I once heard from a Rabbi—write down all the qualities you desire in a mate. I took great care, actually wrote them in a letter, on nice white stationary my mother gave me, and sealed it in the tiny matching envelope. I put it in a safe place amid my strewn clothes, envelopes of bills and phone numbers of people I hoped would help me find a job. I didn’t want to read it more than once after I wrote it. I felt guilty—even like a fraud—because among the qualities I desired, “meditator” or “spiritual” were not included.

Part of my assignment from the Reverend who is marrying my fiancé and me is to write an essay about how and why we fell in love. As I detail my fiancé’s incredible qualities, I am reminded of the tiny white note card in the envelope I wrote two summers ago. Every quality I had desired in my meditator had manifested in my fiancé. He is hardworking, infinitely thoughtful, and kind. He is creative and funny. And though I will not add this in my essay, there’s one more thing: he hasn’t heard much about the Buddha.

He played Lysander— the dashing, romantic lead. I played Mustardseed, also called Fairy #4. In the play, Lysander falls madly in love with Helena. In rehearsal, Steven fell madly in love with Jennifer Kaiser, who played Helena and had red hair. Nobody fell in love with Mustardseed.

But Steven and I became good friends. We exchanged letters all through college — he was halfway across the country, doing ROTC to pay for school. There were visits. Lunch in Chicago when he passed through to see his brother. Salsa dancing in Austin when I was there for work and he was stationed at Ft. Hood. And while we each dated others over the years, I always held my high school crush. He was so different from the bad-news-musicians I gravitated towards. He was kind, stoic and old-fashioned. I realized: This is the kind of man I should marry. But nothing ever happened between us.

And then one recent Friday afternoon, he emailed me:

Are you around? … I’m coming to NY to see friends. I just got called up to active duty. In support of current operations. Not sure exactly where or when, but I got a pretty good hunch.

He was still in the Army Reserves. I had no idea … panic …. I called immediately … His voice was steady, as always … How about dinner tonight?

I hung up the phone and it crystallized in my mind: I am conveniently single; Tonight’s the night.

I MEET HIM AT PENN STATION and I look good. We haven’t seen each other in years and for the first time, I feel beautiful and confident and worthy of him. He’s heavier than I remembered, more gray hairs … but gorgeous as ever; that warm smile, his strong arms embrace me.

One Italian dinner and bottle of red wine later, we are at my apartment. He’s going to sleep on the pull-out sofa. Kiss me, I try to tell him telepathically. I don’t want to make the first move; I want this to come from him. I start making up the sofabed. Again, telepathy: Kiss me. Nothing. Are you really going to make me go through the motions of making the bed, when we both know what’s supposed to happen next? This is absurd! You’re going to fucking Iraq — KISS ME.

But I say nothing and I smile and give him a pillow and we hug goodnight.

I lay in bed, wide awake, my heart pounding. Is this it? Should I get up and pretend to go to the bathroom? I feel the loom of Iraq, I think of him dying, I think of our 16-year history. I feel immobilized. Maybe he just never liked me. And then — a knock on my bedroom door. I leap up. YES?! He asks me if I have another blanket. This must be a move, right? Or does he really need a blanket? Is this how he plans to approach his military endeavors … a hesitant knock on the door of an al Qaeda bunker? STORM ME! TAKE ME NOW! I am so tired of this dance — yet I pretend to look for a blanket, knowing full well I have none. And, finally, I say, why don’t you just sleep in here. I barely finish my sentence when those arms which had, hours earlier, embraced me at Penn Station, are now hungrily enveloping my entire body. He kisses me — my lips, my face — there’s this relief, this freedom, in finally having the green light.

He backs me in to my bedroom, kissing me all the while … How long I have been waiting for this…

We make love.

It is horrible.

It is quite possibly the worst sex I’ve ever had. Steven is inept and awkward and the whole five minutes of it is so unsatisfying. But I can’t say anything — he is going to Iraq — I might never see him again. And, of course, in the final seconds, the condom comes off which he kind of fails to tell me until it is over.

As he’s holding me so lovingly after, all I can think is: I’m pregnant. As he traces lines on my back with his fingers, I imagine myself being interviewed by a CNN reporter as I stand on the port with a thousand other wives, waiting for his ship to come in … Holding a stupid sign in one hand: “Welcome Home, Steven,” holding his child in the other. He’s kissing my hair and telling me how beautiful I look and I think: tomorrow’s Saturday — will my doctor be in?

The next morning, he visits college friends, leaving his suitcase in my kitchen. I call my gynecologist.

I’m pissed. I’m pissed the sex was so bad. I’m pissed I might be pregnant. But I still love him. My doctor tells me it’s “highly unlikely” I’m pregnant, but prescribes Plan B to be safe. I spend the entire day trekking around the city to find a pharmacy that will fill the prescription. I buy saltines and ginger ale to ease my stomach as I brace for the vomiting that friends who had taken the pill warn me of.

I go home. I cancel my dinner plans. I look at the calendar. Highly unlikely that I’m pregnant … just to be safe. I take the first pill. Plan B is two pills taken at 12-hour intervals. They sometimes give you a third in case you vomit up the first. I stare at his stupid suitcase in my kitchen as the pill works its way through my body. I go to sleep. I wake up. I take the second pill.

Steven comes over the next morning. I killed your stupid baby, I want to say. But there is no baby. I’m being dramatic. I say nothing. When I see him, I melt. I love him. I don’t want him to go to Iraq. I want to take care of him. I want to make him soup.

Over lunch he talks about everything he has to do before he leaves. See his parents, cancel his cell phone … It is suddenly so real. That he might not come back. He kisses me and I kiss him back and he carries me into the bedroom.

The sex is still bad. I pretend it isn’t. I want to be close to him and this is the closest we can be. I feel a little like a whore. Not in a good way.

When he leaves, the goodbye feels real. He kisses my lips and then my forehead and we both start to cry. I want to tell him I love him even though I know I don’t love him the way a woman loves a man. I love him as a friend, which is really all we ever were. “Until next time,” he says. Until next time? What the fuck is that? I’m pissed again. But I let it go. Because he’s going to war.

Note: Some names have been changed due to national security concerns.

I should have stayed away. I should have fled into the arms of the nearest fraternity brother the moment he mentioned his undying devotion to his girlfriend back home. Does anybody ever do that, especially at 19, when they could instead torture themselves breathing the same air as their unattainable object of desire?

I met Patrick the day he bounded into one of my college classes, looking more cheerful than is generally acceptable before 10 a.m. I had a history of falling for troubled artist types; his sunniness was an intoxicating change of pace. We quickly became friends. Friends, in this case, meaning that I drained away a portion of my academic career trying to seduce him, while he treated me with all the ardor of a noogie-wielding big brother.

I might have been able to get past his devastating good looks-the broad shoulders, the big smile, the unjustly beautiful eyes. But the clincher was that he was genuinely sweet-generous, friendly, and profoundly goofy. He never cheated on a test, never cheated on the girlfriend, and steadfastly rebuffed the temptations of all but the mildest vices. Needed somebody to quiz you for an upcoming exam, let you rant about a tyrannical professor, or buy you a consoling Friday night beer? He'd never let you down. Needed an outlet for your wildly overblown lust? You were on your own.

I never doubted for a moment that he enjoyed my company. I also never got the merest signal he entertained even a mildly dirty thought about me either. I've had male friends my whole life. Even in the most platonic of relationships, it's common courtesy to throw each other the bone of mild flirtation now and then. A little wink or a nudge to say, "It's not going to happen in this lifetime, but we're a male and a female here, and in another reality, we'd be smoking hot." I gave him every possible opening. He gave me bupkis.

Eventually, he headed to another university. At an end of the semester party, I watched him from afar as he dazzled the assembled group with amusing banter and talk of his next big plans. It dawned on me then that he was destined for greatness, while I was a working class chump from New Jersey. I must have been delusional to think he'd ever noticed that I'd been throwing myself at him all this time. He was, simply, too good for me.

I considered that this would be a fine time to get roaring drunk and openly declare my worship, but something held me back. Game over. So in one of my first moments of true maturity, I put on a brave smile and gave him a big, chaste kiss on the cheek. "Good luck," I told him. Then I ran out of the party and didn't stop running until I got home. I never saw him again.

In time, I got over it. I flirted, I dated, I had flings and real relationships. I even had the good sense to eventually fall in love with a guy who loved me back. And marry him. Years went by without a thought of Patrick. Then a few months ago, I got an email from fellow alumni, about a proposed reunion for a group of us who'd spent a semester abroad together. Patrick hadn't even been part of the group. Yet when I opened that note, the college memories came rushing on back. And his face was the first thing that popped into my mind. I pulled out an old photo album, and there he was, smiling right at me. He really had been that handsome, that authentically warm and charismatic. What had happened to him, I wondered? What corner of the world was he ruling, in his inevitably benevolent way?

Such questions are what Google was made for.

I typed in his name and instantly got several hits, including one for the company he now works for. I clicked on it, and a moment later, heard the sound of myself gasping. There was a photo. The thick, wavy hair that I once fantasized about burying my face in was all gone. The smile was replaced with a stern, businesslike grimace. The eyes were still piercingly beautiful, but the spark behind them was gone. I couldn't tell if this was a moment of victory or tragedy. True, any hold he may have ever had over me was loosened the moment I saw that picture. And there's some bitter comfort knowing that the hottie who rejected you has morphed into a shlub. Yet I mourned the loss of him too, that lovely, happy man who'd disappeared into a scowling drone.

It probably wasn't really that awful. This was a corporate photo, not Glamour Shots. And I'm not exactly the same miniskirt-wearing Bangles wannabe I once was myself.

Then I read the bio. It got worse. Apparently, he appears frequently on MSNBC, CNN, and the evil suckage of bandwidth that is the onanistic variety hour of a particularly facts-challenged, right-wing blowhard. Prior to assuming his current position, he worked in the office of one of the most morally inept, taxpayer-dollar-wasting, conservative gasbags of the past decade. Oh, and he'd married his college sweetheart.

I'd gone searching for Cary Grant, and found Dick Cheney. Had this buttoned up tight-ass always been lurking within the affable lummox I'd once adored? Or had he been the victim of some soul-scarring accident somewhere around the Clinton era? Would he be different now, if he'd ever once kissed my liberal lips? I felt like I was in my own private version of Star Wars. One day you're besotted with a handsome Jedi knight. The next thing you know, he's a mouth breather in a black cape.

I had to know just how bad it was. I clicked around a little longer, reading transcripts of his television appearances. Amazingly, even though he had some seriously dubious affiliations, he didn't come off extremist or scary, and he definitely didn't appear to be another cynical obfuscator for the regime. He even had, on more than one occasion, come down quite firmly, ass-kickingly on the team of righteousness. He was just a guy whose ideals had put him in a particular place, very different from my own. He hadn't gone completely over to the dark side. He just wasn't my Prince Charming anymore either.

I could look at him now and see him as he was, an imperfect middle-aged man with a receding hairline, still living, as he had all those years ago, according to his own firm ethical code. If he so desires, he will no doubt one day bowl over the red states as easily as he once did me. I believe in his life he's made some questionable decisions. He was right about one thing, though. We really never were cut out for each other.

As I caught up on his life today and the things he's accomplished, it was clear that whatever his choices and however unflatteringly he may have aged, he's undeniably a smart man. Smarter than I'd given him credit for. Though I'd always believed he was completely clueless about my feelings, he'd probably known all along exactly what they were. This was, after all, a time in my life when I had all the subtlety of a horny, frequently inebriated college student. He'd just been decent enough to let me think he'd remember me as his pal, not the love-struck obsessive I really was. Decent enough not to use my infatuation to feed his ego. It was I who'd been the clueless one. No matter what he's done in the intervening years, he really was a good guy. But he hadn't, it'd turned out, been too good for me.

Mary Elizabeth Williams is the host of Table Talk, Salon.com's community hub.