Flavor of the Week: Men I’m Not Married to

FELIX

Felix was tall and handsome in a scruffy, “I just rolled out of bed” kind of way, except that he normally did just roll out of bed, even when I would see him at my 5 p.m. seminar. He had strong views on important topics and would voice them loudly over the other students’ dissents. Often he was wrong. But he was passionate when he spoke, so some of his peers were willing to mistake his ignorance for pompousness. And that was fine by Felix. As long as he was heard.



We hooked up once in my apartment after we held hands in the backyard of a frat party, and he commented on my tiny hands. We went upstairs and kissed; and his lips, which had looked so debonair on his scruffy face, fell flat against my mouth. I pretended to engage myself with his hands and limbs as we moved from the living room to my bedroom. But when he rose from the bottom of my bed and inquired, “Don’t you like pleasure?” I decided it was a fine time to remember that I had a paper due the next morning and that he ought to be getting home.



JASON

He knew that my shoes were from Manolo Blahnik’s Fall 2007 line.



And he asked to try them on.



ANDREW

My sister claimed that I absolutely had to meet Andrew. “He’s so nice. And Jewish, too!”



Andrew wears blazers and fitted jeans and the type of loafers that girls who notice guys’ shoes would notice and find agreeable. “You can tell everything about a man from the shoes on his feet,” I’ve been told. But I’ve looked. And aside from being able to tell if they’ve just come from a run or have been unfortunate enough as to have stepped in gum, there is not much else to be told, if you ask me.



At a bar, Andrew will order whatever you’re having. He will open the door for you and only try to peck you on the first date. Anyone with whom he has gone on more than six dates with he introduces to his mother, over a lunch of crab and avocado salad, clam chowder, Diet Cokes and fresh artichoke dip to start, at his parents’ country club in Connecticut.



Andrew already has the ring picked out for his future wife. It is his great grandmother’s wedding band. A two-carat princess-cut diamond flanked by two rubies set in rose gold on a rose-gold band. His mother keeps it in the safe behind the section of her closet devoted to golf wear, and she occasionally takes it out and holds it against her chest as though it were the centerpiece on a long, lariat necklace.



PARKER

Wears thick dark-green corduroy pants.



MATT

Matt’s father used to be a professor at Yale University, which is the same university Matt attended over the course of six years. His schooling was divvied up by varying stints in rehab or time off for a “breather,” during which Matt would work on a farm in upstate New York for a week or two. Then he would retreat back to campus to crash on a classmate’s couch and smoke a few bowls of weed that his friends kept in their refrigerators’ butter holders or spare Altoid tins. Kept it minty fresh.



His longer, shaggy blond hair was always hazardously strewn about his face, which was scarred from various drunken falls, one fistfight for which he was an unwilling bystander, and an unfortunate incident that happened while skiing in Mount Tremblant, which involved Matt, a window, blood and stitches. 



The plastic surgeon made him look almost as good as new. But it wasn’t Matt’s looks that were appealing. He was dirty. And admittedly so. His hipsterish tendencies, although more authentic than most of his Urban Outfitters–wearing peers, were nothing short of faded after five years.



When he moved to New York after college, he struggled to set the deadlines that barely kept him afloat during his scholastic career. But every now and then, when you thought Matt was wasting away, he would get an amazing article published in some hip underground magazine or would be having dinner with the latest Hot New Artist to shun the Chelsea art scene for the Lower East Side.



No one really knew how he survived. His articles, though impressive, were few and far between and paid little. His friends, though impressive, were few and far between and gave little.



But Matt would give, as long as he was paid. And he soon developed a reputation as the Ivy drug dealer of Manhattan. He mainly dealt with pot, but he soon moved to cocaine, which was more lucrative and not a temptation for Matt. He had sworn off the stuff three months before. Every now and then he’d do a line, but only on someone’s birthday, or if he got an article published or the weekend finally, finally arrived.



RUSSEL

Reminds me of my father.



ALEX

When Alex was six and his teacher asked him what he wanted to be, he said “money.” Whether he meant the actually currency or “money” as in the slang translation for “hip,” “with it” or “cool,” has never been determined. But I would go with yes, and yes.



What is true is that Alex does have money—a lot more than he did growing up. His bonus alone is five times larger most New Yorkers’ salaries. And he’s only 33.



He lives in a one-bedroom in Tribeca. It’s a bachelor pad decked out by some Midtown decorator specializing in reallocating young, single investment bankers’ salaries into her pocket book, with a fluffy rug or overpriced framed print

to spare.



Alex wasn’t particularly lucky in love growing up. But when he got lucky in the stock market, he could afford to bury his past insecurities in the safety of a brand new Zegna blazer, which he wore out to the shabbiest of dive bars when his less-successful friends would drag him there for $1 draft happy hours.



He was short, which used to be kind of a complex for Alex. Now, most of the ladies he dated had a good five inches on him. And that was without heels. Alex had decided early on that bigger was better, and so if he had to buy his height with diamonds and gifts and expensive dinners, then he happily would.



Alex knew he wasn’t much of a lover. He had tried to learn, reading up on new positions or oral techniques, even once coming so close as to nearly asking his one female friend for some advice or maybe even a practice run. For to his great sorrow, Alex’s height was in direct correlation to the rest of him. He was always surprised that the women didn’t seem to care much when they found out. In fact, he often had to kindly kick them out of his duplex after a long night of wining, dining and some disappointing lovemaking. He had a business meeting to make that morning, or some stuff to finish up at the office, he would say. They knew he was lying. But they were usually the type of women that shared a three-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment with four girls and one long-term boyfriend who had made himself feel at home, and so they always came back. And that was just fine by Alex.



HOWARD

Not enough like my father.



CALDWELL

Caldwell was a cartoon character—if I’ve ever met a cartoon character who made me want to strip off my clothes at an instant’s notice. He had wavy blondish/ brownish hair that flopped around when he got excited and raised his arms and eyebrows and voice in a way that would be comical on its own, if it weren’t for his cut, dimpled chin and aqua eyes.



Caldwell was the type that liked to be active. He was going, going, going until he was gone and going again. When he drank, he didn’t get violent like some of his male peers or overly amorous like his female counterparts who often took the social lubrication as an excuse to confess their true feelings or rub their rears fervently against the crotch of a male counterpart on the dance floor, against the bar, against the wall, in line for the bathroom…



Rather, the intoxicated Caldwell regressed to the mentality of a five-year-old. He would be running around and screaming and dancing and throwing women up over his shoulders in the flirtatiously violent way that would easily offend if you didn’t have the cartoonish good looks Caldwell boasted.



On dates, Caldwell filled the awkward silences with wide, toothy grins. He compensated for ill-timed comments with playful pushes or gentle tugs. He wanted to be an entrepreneur. But until he hit it big, he was content staying put on his old alma mater’s grounds, mingling with the upperclassmen he still knew. Once they graduated, he flirted and chatted and smiled with the underclassmen he didn’t know but, nevertheless, was always very pleased to meet.



In bed, Caldwell’s theatrics were as boisterous as ever. He would roar and moan the ladies’ last names in fits of ecstasy. He is known for once having asked a female friend of his to model every pair of high heels in her closet, naked, as he watched on in awe and glee. He had the energy and deficient attention of a prepubescent middle-schooler in the hormone-hyped, yet matured, body of a late twentysomething manboy who still got his kicks chugging pitchers and chasing girls.



Unfortunately for Caldwell and the women lured in by his boyish charm, he had the bladder of a child, too; and sometimes, with a frequency too great to be called accidental, after a night of drinking and chasing and laughing and smiling and bedding, he would urinate. On his bed. On his companion’s. On his companion. In a closet. Anywhere but the bathroom.

A very bad boy indeed.