You bike home from the coffee shop in the crisp early fall drizzle, your legs pumping the pedals as fast as they will go, which is not very fast. You have a rainjacket on but you also know that you’ll be soaked by the time you get home. This was not a Good Date. It started inauspiciously anyway, when he told you that he just came from another date. Having a date tell you he just came from another date is like watching someone coming out of a bathroom stall chewing on food.

You settle down that evening to the first grilled cheese and soup of the season, light some candles, wish you could smudge your entire dating life with smoldering sage. You log onto Facebook. Oh yay, that hot guy on the East Coast who tricked you into friending him because he wants more followers is safe from the hurricane. How are you attracting all these losers? It’s like you’re The Fuckboi Whisperer or something. You have a dream that night of your ex, you wake up bummed and cranky and horny.

Your friends Justin and Mark invite you to a movie with them a couple days later. You haven’t hung out enough with them this year, they’re a couple who you met through Instagram the year before. You all sneak wine into the movie theater and laugh your asses off. Afterwards you all go to a bar, and then their house. You’re on their couch, you’re all giggling playing Cards Against Humanity. Mark puts one hand on your shoulder as he passes by to the kitchen and you flinch reflexively, look at Justin with wide eyes. He grins, then you remember that their relationship has become open since you last hung out with them. You smile back shyly, look in Justin’s eyes first, then Mark’s.

You grew up going to Catholic school in Albuquerque, New Mexico. From your earliest memories during puberty you knew you had crushes on guys, but you also learned to not mention these out loud. From your romantic feelings for the handsome cello player in middle school, to being mesmerized by your biology teacher’s thick hairy forearms, there was always something furtive but pleasant about the urges you had. All this time though, you always knew you were “old-fashioned”: you wanted one man to hold close, and only one. You were a hopeless romantic even then, and with every crush you imagined your wedding day, your kid’s names. You would practice how your last name would sound if it changed to his or if it was hyphenated.

Justin gets up and sits closer to you. You put your drink down and smile nervously. You start talking nervously about anything: how that morning the MAX doors you were leaning on opened and you almost ate shit, how someone should conduct a scientific poll on why gay men like sweatshorts and basketball shorts so much, how you love your cat a lot but are honestly surprised the two of you are even related. Justin and Mark laugh, then Justin sets his drink down. Your stomach clenches, but also there’s that pleasant feeling lower down; you’ve always found Mark attractive, and Justin is really funny and makes you laugh a lot. Combined, they’re the perfect man for you: your type is a handsome guy with kind eyes and a beard, and if he can make you laugh then you drop your pantaloons posthaste.

You played upright bass in a youth symphony starting in middle school, acted in Albuquerque High School (singing Lancelot’s part in Camelot was a highlight of your senior year), and studied Theater Arts in college. You always knew that your perfect match would be someone creative and driven, and you found that match with your first boyfriend. He was the first guy you ever slept with, and you ended up being with him monogamously for two years. After the relationship ended, you experimented sexually for the first time. One night after a play you attend, you met a straight couple at a cast party. The three of you instantly clicked, and then another couple, a gay man and his friend joined your group. Flirtation, conversation, and alcohol made a heady mix, and later the five of you found yourselves literally at the straight guy’s cabin in the woods. I cannot emphasize this bad decision enough.

A while later, all five of you were on two mattresses on the ground, tangled in clothes that had been shed and each others’ bodies. An imbalance formed: the gay man was interested in only you, you were interested mainly in laying the straight guy, and his focus was only on the two women, because of course it was. When you tried to pull his focus and failed one last time, you quietly excused yourself and retired to the next room. The gay man followed shortly, made a halfhearted pass at you, you politely declined and fell asleep. You assume everyone in the other room had a pleasant evening. You had never even considered being with a couple since then, although there had been other opportunities.

“I do want this, but I need to be honest about why.” you say to your hosts. You elaborate: it’s been almost a year since your breakup. You loved David more than any man you’d loved in your life, you thought the two of you would be together for a long, long time. While saying this, his ghost appears there, on the opposite chair, next to Mark. As usual, the ghost says nothing, he just sits there and looks at you.

You continue: when he broke up with you so suddenly and unexpectedly after such an intimate weekend, after such a whirlwind romance of ten months, you felt abandoned. There was a huge vacuum in your life where he existed and the wind rushed in where he had been moments before. You got back into the dating world but soon found yourself seeking parts of him everywhere: this man had his eyes that crinkled when you made him laugh. That man had his legs, thick and strong like an Earthbender’s. This one had his talent, his intelligence. Maybe this is how you are saying goodbye to him, the goodbye you never had a chance to give to his face.

“Maybe,” you say quietly, ” what I thought I wanted was to be in the presence of love like I had, like I thought I had with him. Maybe that’s why I considered sleeping with the two of you. That’s what’s missing from my life now, I’ve said goodbye to the other physical parts of him I loved that I can’t ever touch again. I miss him and I railing each other and gasping that we loved each other so much, whispering that we were literally made for each other. If that can’t exist for me, at least I wanted to be in the presence of proof that it exists somewhere, for somebody. Like. Sometimes, when I’m online and a guy is clearly catfishing me, I fantasize that it’s David, secretly checking in on me because he wants to know how my life is going.”

You finish, and somewhere, a cricket chirps.

Strangely enough, this is all a Massive Boner Killer for Mark and Justin. As you leave their place shortly after, you smile. This, this felt good to finally say out loud how you felt in your heart. You expected the grieving process from your relationship to be shorter, you hoped it would, but this world has a funny way of giving you what you need, not what you think you need.

You go home, feed Ned, get ready for bed. As you doze off, you realize you are getting there little by little,  to being fine. You’ll be okay unless you’re not, and that’s okay too. You fall asleep.

You do not dream of anyone. You dream that you are happy again.

Speaking of Massive Boner Killers, read this if you want to read about my 30 day dating cleanse, or this if you want to read about almost getting my ass kicked on a NYC subway platform. Let’s be horrible people together!