Number Two

I got over Latin Muslim quickly. A week and a half after our jailhouse breakup, I had a new instant boyfriend, just add water.

Let's just call him Number Two. He was a security guard at Wawa, the convenience store where I stocked up on junk food and cough syrup. He was tall, slim and good-looking, in a soft, pouty-mouthed kind of way. He was 27, but looked 21.

Our affair started on a day when I was looking and feeling especially cute.

I'd somehow managed to scrape up enough money to get my hair done, something I hadn't done in months, thanks to my hoopty Ford Escort breaking down twice in less than two months. On top of the cash I had funnelled to Abusive Psychic in a vain effort to turn my bad luck around.

So there I was with a short, sophisticated "European" cut that made me feel sexy, when I bumped into him on the street. I told him I was about to go eat, and he invited me to dinner. Take-out Chinese at his place, a squished, dark, roach-infested basement studio apartment near the Yale campus.

He had landed there, he claimed, courtesy of his gold-digger ex-girlfriend "who didn't even have a fork when I met her." He set her up in a deluxe apartment, and she repaid his kindness by inviting other lovers there. Then, she lied to the police and claimed he "scratched" her and took out a restraining order that barred him from his own apartment. So in a haste to find a place to lay his head at night, he'd landed in this little shoebox.

Part of our date consisted of me driving him to his old apartment to pick up some of his things, only to have his ex refuse to open the door.

No matter.

We bought ice cream and candles and watched The Simpsons and laughed.

And as the night wore on, the platonic turned into the predictable. I asked if he had "protection," and he did, so we did it. Then in the morning, we did it without protection, because of course protection is only required the first time you do it with someone. After the first time, you are magically protected from pregnancy and AIDS, because anyone who wears protection the first time would never, ever be capable of giving you an incurable condition.

Or at least that's what you hope when you're 19 years old, you've only done it once and you're not very good at standing up for yourself.

(Number Two Diaries Part 1 of 8: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 | Lessons Learned Parts 1-3: 1 2 3)