The Real Catty World (Part 4: Crush Crash)

Crush. Crush. Crush. Orange Crush. Grape Crush. High School Crush. Crushed Velvet. Crush from Demolition. Crush. Crush. Crush. I've had every sort of crush imaginable. Hot boys with no brains. Smart boys with no asses. Big dicked, boner-brained hipsters, hippies who've met every criteria associated with the word thick you can imagine, I've even crushed on dorks with overbites so big you could hang them from the Sears Tower by their upper jaw. Does anyone remember Strawberry Crush or Watermelon Crush? Back in the days of Fresca and Tab you could get any type of Crush you wanted. The options were...well...crushing. I've been all kinds of crushed. Emotionally, physically, spiritually, agnostically. I crush. You crush. We crush. I have been crushed.

The two people I've fallen hardest for, I haven't been able to write about. MAMIP and Liam. Liam was a pretty typical crush for me: cute nerd who everyone thinks is quiet, but is secretly a jaded neurotic type with a killer body and hot nerd tongue. Not that we ever kissed, but the ex-girlfriend who stole his virginity, then did the whole "I think I'm pregnant" routine with him TWICE when he tried to break up with her, she told me the things he could do with his tongue were amazing. Unfuck her for torturing me that way.

MAMIP was far from typical. Sweet, charming, sincere, honest, sexy. He has a voice that makes women (and ten percent of the guys) orgasm from fifty feet away just by saying the word "Oy." His Portuguese Oy has often caused me to give a Yiddish Oi. His voice. A man that hot, but so sweet and shy shouldn't have that kind of voice. He should have to talk through JAWS...with a lisp. But no, he's got Voice.

Imagine my pants splattering surprise when, after seven months of not talking to each other, he called me. When his name showed up on Caller ID, I dropped the phone on the sidewalk, then scrambled to pick it up, elbowing two old ladies, and a toddler with a clear learning disability. "Hey (let's for the fuck of it call him Mark) Marc!"

"¿Stevie?"

He had dialed the wrong number. "No, it's Safey."

"Oh, hey Safey. I'm sorry I was trying to dial someone else."

Imagine how disappointed I'd be if that's how the conversation had actually gone down. It didn't.

After seven months, I'd had all the silence I could take from him. So I called him when I KNEW he'd be at work. How did I know? Certainly not because I called his work first to find out if he was there. What kind of desperate psycho do you think I am? Surely not THAT kind.

When his voicemail picked up, I smoothly left him a message: "Oh, Marc, I'm sorry I was trying to call my friend Martin. Hey, I haven't talked to you in ages. I don't know what you've been up to lately, but I miss hanging out with you. Maybe I'll stop in and visit you at work one of these days. Happy Holidays."

Oh, yeah. I'm smoove like Smoove B. I combined my awkward lack of social skills, creative dishonesty, and free cell phone minutes into a looooooooooooooooove trap. And that's why I dropped the phone, and beat up a couple of septuagenarians and an infant to get at my cell.

"Hey, Marc, how are you?"

"I'm good." And the way he said good was just...soooo...gooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooood. It was twenty-someodd degrees and I was melting. "How are you?"

Well, I was, if not depressed, very much apathetic. No Internet access, I'm not fully moved out of my old place or into my new one. I've been couch surfing by request. A few nights with Zuzu, a few with Cali, now with Celeste. All in all this week has gone from not very good to wow, this is going to suck. Until the call.

I'd regale you with all the sensual details of our conversation, like how we're going to get together for coffee, even though neither of us drink coffee, but that sort of thing is boring. Instead I'll talk about all the sex we aren't going to have because he's probably still not out, and he lives with his close-knit family, and I now live with...

Ahhh, the new house.

The Landlord is The King of Signs. The door tells the mailman where to leave which letters. There's a sign on the bottom stair telling you to watch your step, and clean your feet. At the top of the steps, each bedroom door is marked with which roommate lives in the room. There wil be four of us, including the landlord. We certainly don't want to get all confused thinking someone lives in the wrong room. The kitchen tells you which glasses The Landlord would rather you use, as well as which spices go with which kind of food, and how long to dry each type of dish. Don't even ask about the full colored manual in the washing room. It has graphs. Plural. GraphS.

The first night that I crashed at my future house, there was a note telling me how to turn on the lights. Unfortunately, I couldn't see the sign because all the lights were out. This caused me to stumble into Roommate #1: The Frat Boy, who was stumbling drunkenly down the stairs. He gave the typical Frat Boy Mating Call "What the Fuck?" when he bumped into me. I introduced myself, he went to the bathroom, and then to bed. I haven't seen him since.

Roommate #2 is on The Real South Beach Diet. Pills. Many many many pills. Even Barry Bonds has called the house asking Roommate #2 to stop taking so many goddamned pills. It's freakish. The way he hunches over when he shuffles downstairs to smoke or take some pills. It's the only thing he leaves the house for: to get more pills from the pharmacy. Luckily, Roommate #2 will be gone in two weeks. I'm not sure who will be replacing him. Frat Boy will also be gone in the new year.

Roommate #3 is...I didn't get his name. He was talking to me for about ten minutes, but the entire time he was talking, all I was thinking was "pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty pretty", which I'm pretty sure means he's straight.

Which beings us back to Marc, who isn't straught, but who plays one in his social groups. I've missed him like astronauts miss gravity. He wants to see my new place. In my mind this means we're going to fuck all day, fall in love, make beautiful Brazilian-Irish-American babies. But I know in his mind, he's just curious about where I live. I'm fairly pessimistically certain that he's incapable of loving me with the furor that I love him.

Next week, I'll be back in his orbit. He will pull every bone, muscle, and organ into a new alignment. I will be so atrophied that the gravity of his kiss will tear through my body, leaving me as a pile of bones on the carpet of my new place. Crushed. Again.