Fifty Last Dates

Back then I genuinely believed that every next man was the last one.

There was the census taker and the narcoleptic actuary and the brother of a friend. The guy operating a Sesame Street puppet; the guy calculating the universe’s rate of expansion; the guy whose grandmother died halfway through our date but who insisted we stay because the house guac was dynamite and he and Meemaw weren’t that close. The checkout boy. The crossing guard. The chief designer of Macy’s 2009 Christmas window displays. I slept with them all, in penthouses, roach-infested walk-ups, and, once, an industrial freezer that was supposed to lead to a speakeasy but didn’t.

Usually, I felt a fierce pity for myself. I even cried sometimes, chin pressed to my chest during rides home from my boss’s boss’s place or the sweat-soaked sheets of the oral surgeon who yammered on about the ethics of installing vampire fangs. Whether I was caught in the hot press of bodies surging toward the subway’s open doors or watching a discarded bottle sway in a semicircle with the train’s motion like an arrow in a busted gauge, I was numbed by the familiar conviction that I’d always be alone.

And yet, within days, a stubborn hope always took root again, marching forward like children out on the summer asphalt with their buckets of chalk the moment the rain ends. I’d find myself in another cab, sitting up straight with some new sense of possibility. Back then I genuinely believed that every next man was the last one. Once, it was a radio host who played aloud his interview with this controversial preacher. There was nothing differentiating the host from the dozens of men preceding him; still, I allowed his hand on my thigh. There’s something about the promise of a midnight taxi ride.

Before us, the Manhattan Bridge’s red lights dug sharply into the surrounding black, wayward glitter clinging to the night’s soles. Over the tinny speakers, the preacher preached.

“God hates faggots,” he reminded us.

There were times I convinced myself I had only to work harder. A man folded my dress before tugging me into bed or tenderly cupped my elbow as we wound through a nightclub and I’d think, I could make myself love you. Many were kind to me, which made it harder.

There’s something about the promise of a midnight taxi ride.

I encountered the ghost of one such man this afternoon, while Drew and I lazed outside the corner café. I didn’t recognize him until he walked right up to us. Ten years had passed since I’d sat across from him, picking at the expensive food he’d ordered, busy trying to tally the good.

He was kind to waiters, had a winsome smile, wanted to really know me. He bought overpriced lemonade from the kids on the street corner and smacked his lips theatrically like it was more than pure powder. He spoke often of being grateful for his health, the way most of us swear we will when a vicious flu befalls us and we’re bargaining for a return to normalcy, only to forget our promises the very moment we can breathe freely again. There was so much about him that was tender and decent; everything about him added up. I prayed he’d trip up, cause me irreparable harm or commit an egregious, unforgivable act, but he never did. In the end I gave no reason when I slipped away from him, and he, in his goodness, let me.

This afternoon, after so many years, he looked at me, at Drew, then back at me. He pulled me into a hug so abruptly I gasped. But it was a genuine hug, a recognition, and with his scratchy cheek against my smooth one, I felt a tightness in my chest I can only describe as grief.

That night, the kids asleep, the two of us sat on the porch breathing in the soothing, grassy scent of citronella. Drew, curious, perhaps at the hug’s intimacy or the way I had let myself sag in his arms, asked, “Did you love him or something?”

It was dusk and humid, the sort of gentle heat just heavy enough to remind you that you have a body, that you take for granted how hardily it carries you through the world. The man, like the others, meant nothing. I interwove my fingers with Drew’s and stroked the simple wedding band I bought for her eight summers ago.

“No,” I said, “but I really, really tried to.”