I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti (16 page)

“What is this itchy material?” he asked.

We didn’t go far, but there was something about fooling around with Mitch that I really, really liked. It was altogether unlike
sitting across from him at a restaurant or beside him on a train. Here we were in synch while he introduced compelling story
lines that were left uncompleted when he finally said: “Thanks for a fun evening.” We kissed for a little while longer by
the door, then he said, “See ya,” and descended the front stoop.

See ya.

What did that mean? Would I in fact be seeing him again? I couldn’t hazard a guess. The next morning, I met Jen and her husband,
Jeff, at Barney Greengrass for brunch and a fruitless analysis of the date and the possible meanings of the phrase
see ya
over bagels and whitefish salad. Jeff always likes to help me dissect dates and is usually quite astute, but even he couldn’t
make heads or tails of this one, and of course neither of them could understand why I cared so much, anyway. Monday after
work I went running, then stayed home and waited for Mitch to call. Tuesday I went to a benefit at the American Museum of
Natural History and made believe I was someone who wasn’t waiting for a call. Wednesday at 9:48 in the evening, the phone
rang. Mitch and I talked for a while and covered topics that were, to my relief, a little more bourgeois. Turned out Mitch’s
father was a doctor, too: an orthopedic surgeon.

“Do you play tennis?” he asked.

“A little, why?”

“I have a theory that all the children of doctors know how to play tennis.”

Now we were on the same court, as it were—a couple of normal middle-class kids with round-robin in their backgrounds. Mitch
had shed the pose of social deviance he was affecting four days earlier. I was cheered by our smooth interaction, ready to
laugh off the Saturday disaster as simply an aberration. We were both nervous, I thought, we’ll go on another date and it
will be fun again like our first.

“Well, call me if you know of any parties,” Mitch said before hanging up.

I didn’t. I also didn’t know what to do next, so I read his first novel, the one about the girl who wants to have sex with
the guy in the band. When I finished I sent him an e-mail saying that I loved the book. I really did. Judy Blume is still
one of my favorite authors and I love music, so the combination of the two appealed to me. And I am acquainted with enough
writers to know that none lives who can ignore a compliment of their work.

Mitch called me the next afternoon, and I, in a last-ditch power grab, didn’t call back. Monday morning he e-mailed and asked
me if I wanted to go to a movie that Saturday night.

“Yes,” I wrote back.

“Okay. But you’ll have to pay for yourself,” he replied.

This was supposed to be a joke. It wasn’t funny; I did pay for myself—and Mitch paid for himself with a ten-dollar bill, all
the better to ensure that no one—not me, not the ticket clerk, not the guy behind us—would mistake him for someone who might
be buying two tickets.

After
Riding in Cars with Boys,
a movie about teenage sex, Mitch came over and we had approaching-middle-age sex. It was as I thought it would be. Mitch,
for all of his dopey hipster posturing, was incredibly sexy. I became instantly hooked on being with him and hoped we could
develop something out of bed that more closely resembled what went on in it.

And much as he resisted, I could tell that Mitch was getting attached, too. “I can’t believe I slept over,” he said the next
day. “But when I woke up and saw the sun and trees out your windows, I knew I was in the right place.” Naturally, I wasn’t
in the bed when he woke up. I was in the kitchen making coffee and putting together a batter for pancakes. I added a touch
of vanilla, which Mitch disapproved of. He liked his pancakes “without flavor.” Who tastes vanilla? I wondered. It just enhances.
Mitch could. The vanilla was the pea under his pile of mattresses.

Unflavored Pancakes

(Adapted from Mark Bittman, The New York Times)

I would add 1 teaspoon of vanilla or a little orange zest, and you should, too, but not if you’re dating Mitch Smith.

1 cup flour

1 tablespoon sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 egg

1 cup milk

Butter

Mix the first five ingredients until just combined. You don’t want to overwork the batter; Mitch is enough trouble as it is.

Heat a nonstick griddle over medium-high heat and melt 1 teaspoon butter per round of pancakes. When the butter is sizzling,
drop ¼ cup batter for each 5-inch- diameter pancake. Cook until dry bubbles form (about 1 minute), then cook the other side
for about 30 seconds.

Yield: 8 pancakes.

Our intense physical attraction made those early dates feel special, even with Mitch’s occasional grievances. Still, I could
never be sure if I’d hear from him again each time we parted. But I was determined to get something in particular from his
erratic presence in my life, a desire I fulfilled when I ran into Ethan at the gym one Saturday morning a few weeks into my
thing with Mitch. I stopped to talk to him as he pedaled a stationary bike, white, gym-provided towel around his neck,
New Yorker
magazine balanced on the handlebars. I abandoned my exercise to talk to him, and since we couldn’t stop talking (this hadn’t
changed even after the breakup), we decided to finish our workouts and then meet for lunch. While stretching, I concocted
a sly way of letting him know I was seeing someone.

Knowing the topic of music would come up (it’s either that or restaurants in the postdating version of Ethan and Giulia),
I would tell him I was into the Strokes and find a way to let him know who turned me on to them.

“Who are you rocking out to these days?” I asked as we sat across from each other at one of the Smith Street bistros even
he was embracing.

Badly Drawn Boy, a less than rocking singer-songwriter I hadn’t yet heard, was Ethan’s pick.

“Who told you about them?” I asked, hoping that he’d ask the same question when I told him about the Strokes.

He did.

“Some guy,” I replied with a false breeziness that needed no interpretation. Ethan didn’t take it well. He accused me of trying
to humiliate him; I retaliated by blaming him for putting me into the position of wanting to humiliate him.

“My despair is bottomless,” I said, ever the Sarah Bernhardt in his presence.

I took
way too much pleasure in the knowledge that it killed Ethan to know I was with another guy, especially one with such good
taste in music. Clearly I wasn’t quite over him, so I threw renewed effort into worrying about Mitch, who was, as usual, taking
the maximum time allowed by ancient codes to get back in touch.

I heard from him next on election day, and when I chided him for taking so long to call, he told me he wasn’t interested in
a relationship, he wanted to be “friends.” Distraught on the F train on my way back to Brooklyn, I came up with this:

“If we’re friends, why can’t we have sex?”

I tried it out on Mitch when I called him from outside my polling place on my cell phone. The line was stolen directly from
his first novel, which could be why it worked.

“I’ll come over,” Mitch said.

I voted, then went home and whipped up a pear cake to serve him with postcoital coffee.

Pear Cake for Friends with Benefits

(Adapted from Bon Appétit magazine)

2 large eggs

½ cup butter, melted and cooled slightly

¼ cup whole milk

²
⁄
₃
cup plus 1 tablespoon sugar

1½ cups self-rising flour

4 Bartlett pears, peeled, quartered, cored, and cut crosswise into ¼-inch-thick slices

Confectioners’ sugar

Preheat oven to 375° degrees.

Butter and flour an 8-inch cake pan. Whisk eggs, melted butter, and milk in a large bowl. Whisk in 2/3 cup sugar. Add flour
and whisk until batter is smooth. Mix in pears. Transfer batter to pan and sprinkle top with remaining 1 tablespoon sugar.
Bake until top is golden and tester inserted into center comes out clean, about 40 minutes.

Cool in pan, then invert onto a plate and sprinkle confectioners’ sugar on top. This cake is wonderful made with summer peaches,
too.

Yield: 8 servings.

We didn’t even say hello. We just started kissing the second Mitch walked in the door. His glasses fell to the floor and got
a little bent; his iPod, whose earphones were still in his ears for the first few seconds, also hit the ground and took some
scratches. It was like a scene from a teen version of
9½ Weeks.
We did it on the couch with the Strokes playing in the background.

Afterward I made coffee, and Mitch dropped cake crumbs all over his chest and my sofa as he tried to eat a rather large slice
while lying beside me. I didn’t mind; I was happy watching election returns with Mitch, and the cake was pretty awesome, too
(to use a Mitch word). Mike Bloomberg became mayor, and Mitch stayed over. But we were
not
dating!

While I waited
for my friend’s next call, I wondered if alcohol might have had anything to do with the slow approach in getting to know
Mitch. I had never been with a guy who didn’t drink. I craved those relaxed, bonding moments that bloom easily over a shared
bottle of wine. We weren’t going to have any of those. Mitch was committed to his sobriety, which was certainly important
for him but wasn’t doing a whole heck of a lot for me. How could anyone possibly fall in love without grown-up refreshments?

The next week, Mitch invited me to go bowling with “some publishing people.” I like bowling about as much as I enjoy getting
my teeth cleaned, but I wanted to see Mitch, so I went and put on the disgusting shoes and bowled and even got a strike or
two. The friends were more impressive than I expected friends of Mitch to be. There was an editor from the
Paris Review,
a literary scout, an independent film producer. They drank pitchers of beer, but I stuck with Coca-Cola in solidarity with
my sober “friend.”

“What’s going on with us?” I asked Mitch later that evening when we were by ourselves, eating French fries at Corner Bistro.
“We have these amazing times together, then I don’t hear from you for six or seven days. I can’t go on like this.”

“I’m afraid of you,” Mitch said.

“You’re hurting my feelings,” I told him.

Apparently, Mitch didn’t know I had any. I tried to convince him I did (if you can imagine such a conversation, and you will
have to, as I have permanently blocked it out of my mind) and that he had some sway over them. I think he heard me a little.
We got somewhere that night, somewhere a couple of martinis (gin, please) could have gotten us to a lot faster. Out on Waverly
Place, we made a date for the weekend. Before I jumped into a cab, Mitch slipped a piece of Bazooka bubble gum into the pocket
of my denim jacket, where it stayed for five years. Each time I wore that jacket and felt the gum in there, it reminded me
of the first time I felt connected to Mitch outside of bed.

Food wasn’t really Mitch’s thing,
not the way it was with Ethan, but he expressed extraordinary fondness for everything I ever made for him. And I didn’t have
to work very hard at all; even a simple spaghetti with butter (cook spaghetti until it’s al dente, swirl around a little unsalted
butter, add a heaping tablespoon of parmigiano cheese, grind some coarse pepper on top), which is what I made for him that
Saturday as a late night snack, sent him right over the moon. Mitch liked it so much that he licked the plate. He tried to
hide this from me by ducking behind my shoulder to do it as we sat on the couch, watching TV while we ate, but I caught him
and was probably meant to. He thought this was the most amusing anecdote in the world, a confirmation of his belief that he
was a mere hayseed with no knowledge of how to behave in my commanding presence.