Watch out - falling rocks

Maybe I need to sand down some of my sharp edges.

The protection devices you assemble growing up can be hard to take down, and sometimes I think my tongue is too sharp for its own good.

It's fun to be the life of the party and toss off all the witticisms and barbed remarks, but when someone comes in your direction with amorous intentions - someone's gotta get through the barbed wire. Not always easy.

The last guy I had sex with was fifteen years my junior. Maybe that should have been a clue. Red flag, anyone? And we had met on AOL. RED FLAG, anyone? It's rare to find a kindred spirit but despite our age differences we really had a lot in common.

He loved acting and the theatre. That was my whole life.

He had a rather gimlet-eyed world view. Ditto, me.

He had a girlfriend.

.....

Say WHAT??

Ah yes. Haul out all the red flags and slap me in the face with them.

We had talked on the phone for weeks, developing that quasi-intimacy that AOL relationships foster. Turns out he was coming to NYC (where I lived at the time) to house-sit. Actually to dog-sit, for an opera queen and his two standard poodles.

Could this "straight" boy have stuck his toe in gayer waters??

We met one stiflingly humid night and we hooked up at an outdoor mexican joint downtown. Right away I thought, "Help me, Jesus. I'm a-fallin'," but just as quickly thought, "There is no way he's gonna want to sleep with me. He's gorgeous. And there's just too wide a gap."

Well it's funny what a couple margaritas will do. We ended up going back to the apartment (right where John-John Kennedy was living as the time his plane crashed) and ended up lying on the bed. "But nobody will touch anybody. We'll just lie here."

That lasted about two minutes. He stuck more than his toe into gay waters. What followed were three weeks of intense, soul-shaking encounters wherein Straight Boy fell in love "for the first time," and I found myself ready to cash in my Sarcastics Union card.

But after he went home to Miami there were about 2 or 3 days of thrashing about on the phone Should me move here? Would he tell his girlfriend? And finally, inevitably, he reverted back to his old way of life. And left me wondering why I had let myself open up to such a loaded situation.

Then I thought, that's life, isn't it? You let yourself fall in love no matter how treacherous it seems, because love comes so rarely. Okay, you might want to die for a while after it breaks up. But you had a period of time were you felt alive and attractive and vital. Looking back on it, most days it's wrapped up in that kind of philosophical padding.

Other days I want to call his girlfriend and say, "Red Flag, honey. Red flag."