How Dare He!

My senior year of college crush, a poet, and I will leave it at that, a talented poet, I will say, a clever and charming and shiteating grinning poet, a writing teacher, has a girlfriend.

I am somewhat disappointed by this discovery, which is totally irrational, because, um, I

a) have never so much as shaken this man’s hand;
b) have not seen him since Grace Paley spoke at UMass in June 2007, and we sat beside one another (and I might add, I was as much moved by him as by her);
c) maintain no contact with this man whatever;
d) have not so much as a platonic friendship with him;
e) think that poets are the third worst kind of men, or fourth, after lawyers, musicians, and artists.

Still. I hate it when men I have no legitimate claim upon, men I barely know, even, men I have never so much as touched, men I merely carry a pseudo-torch for based on a college crush-have girlfriends. He didn’t even ask my opinion. A hell of a nerve, that man has. A hell of a nerve.

And my current crush, if I can call him that, he has a girlfriend too.

So did the table-palming object of my summertime affection, as Woman, my summer roommate and favorite person in all of Tejas, can attest. (Did he ever! Non sequitur: the table palm is the hottest thing anyone can do in public, at least without breaching common decency.)

Sigh.

And I went out last night with a man, a perfectly nice and easygoing and clever man, and I couldn't get it up for him.

Okay, truth be told: it didn't come to that.

But I know: if it came to that, I would never be able to get it up for him. You just know these things: I have more chemistry with my very grandmother than I do with this dude.

And I am supposed to be on a solitary year, I don't know what I am doing. I don't. But I know this: I cannot go out with anyone else. Not for a good long while. It is exhausting, and I just can't suffer myself to do it. He had no nerve.

I need a man to lie on top of me, please, please, please Jesus bring me exactly that, amen.

I want a man, not the aforementioned poet, but another man, one I cannot have.

We don't speak, or see one another. We are, once more, at my insistence, technically incommunicado.

I don't want to be incommunicado.

I want this man in my bed.

But he is an old man, with a girlfriend! I can't go near that.

Still. He has a hell of a nerve. And so do I.

The writing is on the wall.

I am seriously unhinged.