on the couch, all cozy in his fucking PJs, watching sports or whatever with the guys, which just so happened to be exactly where my attention-whore, cock-teasing ass always wound up—wherever the guys were.
Without fail, Ken and I would somehow strike up a conversation. He never hit on me. He was never drunk. He would simply make eye contact, smile at appropriate times, and speak to me like one intellectual to another. We would go back and forth about museums we’d been to, music we loved, and movies we’d seen. In fact, Ken was the manager of a movie theater at the time and had seen every film released since 1995 (except for Meet the Feebles1.)
Ken wanted to go to Egypt one day. I was taking an Egyptian art history class. I wanted desperately to go to Europe. Motherfucker had been twice. He had not, however, been to a Cirque du Soleil show, which I had recently become obsessed with.
I wish I could say it had been love at first sight. But, honestly, I never gave Ken a second thought.
Journal, you know my track record. The friendly-guy-in-the-PJs-without-a-criminal-record-or-a-single-visible-tattoo isn’t exactly my type—at least it wasn’t until Jason’s Super Bowl party.
Hans had just dumped me, and I was soul-crushingly depressed about it. All I wanted to do that night was sit on a couch near other people and get really, really drunk. Jason’s Big Game party was the perfect distraction2.
After being there just long enough to grab a beer and a seat on the sectional, I noticed someone entering the room out of the corner of my eye. Time stopped, a wind machine inexplicably roared to life, and the first few bars of Sugar Ray’s “Fly” began to play in my head. This mysterious figure was tall and lean, had short light-brown hair that flipped up in the front, and was wearing black from head to toe—black dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up, black slacks, and a skinny black tie. My heart stopped. It was as if Mark McGrath himself had just walked in.
(He was still a big deal in 2003, I swear!)
Mystery Man greeted Jason with a sexy perfectly straight white-toothed smile/head-nod thing and disappeared from my sight.
Who the fuck was that??
Not that it mattered. I was going to fuck him. I was going to break him. I was going to have him safe-wording on me by the end of the night. I was going to—
Just as I began to march off in search of Mr. McGrath’s doppelganger and hopefully something nice and firm to flog him with, he came back into my line of sight…and had changed into a pair of running pants and a white T-shirt.
No. Fucking. Way.
I suddenly understood how so many people had been successfully duped by Clark Kent.
I used to think, Really, Superman? A pair of glasses and a tie? Frankly, you are insulting the whole human race with that disguise. How stupid do you think we are?
But there he was. Ken, the quiet, articulate, pajama-wearing introvert whom I’d been having long intellectually stimulating, undeniably platonic conversations with on a bimonthly basis had been able to ignite my libido with as little as a change of clothes and a dollop of hair gel.
I was so confused. Ken was as far from my type as a person could get without having a vagina—nary a tattoo, piercing, warrant, GED, or vice to be found. He didn’t even drink! He’d just sit on the couch, sipping Gatorade in his running pants and Nikes every weekend. But damn, he cleaned up good. And with that tall, fit, lean body, he must actually put those athletic clothes to use.
Maybe he’s a runner? Would that be so bad? A hot, responsible grown-up who takes care of himself and has a decent job and can engage me in discussions about art and travel?
Considering that I was still in the process of unpacking my shit after being dumped by a wannabe rock star who couldn’t scrounge up three hundred and fifty dollars a month to pay his half of the rent because he’d blown it all on nose candy and ladies who probably had C-section scars and facial tattoos down at The Frisky Pony, a guy like Ken actually sounded fanfuckingtastic.
I didn’t talk to Ken at all that night. He sat and watched the game while I sat and watched him, absentmindedly warding off unwelcome advances from the Alexander brothers.
Ethan and Devon Alexander were a couple of good-looking cocky, charismatic man-whores who competed