contacts, and a fresh-faced co-ed that went by the nickname “little big booty girl.” They dated for just a few months, but in Columbia time, that was long enough to forever brand her as “Oh, who used to date Calvin?” And when he switched from mechanical engineering to modern dance, it became “Ha, who used to date Calvin!” Long after we were formally introduced to his “friend” from the Dance Theatre of Harlem, he’d still leave Adrienne messages on Facebook about how she’d gotten better with age, “like a fine wine.” All that coupled with a protracted “pretty boy” phase had chipped Adrienne’s credibility down to negative gazillion when it came to deciding who was down-low or just too slow.

Anyway. Stella.

She called me in the middle of the day and in tears because of some books she’d found of Eric’s. He likes settling down with a good murder mystery? Not sooo gay. No, she said. These books were on something called “sarging.” They’d just moved in together, and Stella was going through discarded boxes, not looking for evidence of his sexuality, mind you, just for the kitchen stuff. We immediately consulted Google. Sarge (verb): to go out for the explicit purpose of either: (1) working on skills to attract the opposite sex; or (2) putting those skills to effect. “Well, that could mean a lot of things,” I said, hoping to sound confident while mentally placing this bit of hard evidence in Eric’s G.H.E.I. file (the lad doth overcompensate too much, methinks). Stella thought he might be cheating. “With who?” I asked in a gentle child predator’s voice, not wanting to sound too menacing as I primed her for my next line: “A man?”

She said something about a girl from work before I got the chance.

It was probably better that way, since we’d had trust issues in the past. Stella and I met at the 1998–99 CU cheerleading try-outs. I liked her long, curly hair and told her so. “Thanks, yours are cute too,” she said, already fingering the Poetic Justice–style braids I was wearing then. Stella was from the valley, an auxiliary member of the Chicano Caucus, who for reasons that are still unknown almost exclusively dated black guys—correction, idiotic black guys. I was a virgin then, and she was…not. Once we were dating these two guys on the football team, roommates, and were listening to rap music in their dorm room when someone decided to cut the lights off. I left in a huff and heard about how funny it all was the next day from Stella. Right, hilarious.

Another time she called me at two in the damn morning crying about this midget with an African name who ran track. According to all the black girls on campus, he had a thing for white girls, and Stella was close enough. This was the same guy who told Stella that I’d called her a “white girl” behind her back. What I said was, “Why is it that you only date white girls?” Anyway, he dumped her for a Persian chick who looked just like her, and she was upset about it. “Crying over some retard is not okay,” I was saying while some cabdriver yelled at her from the curb. “I-heehuh-did-heehuh-’nt-heehuh-have-heehuh-any-heehuh-money-heehuh.” Of course, he’d broken up with her in the middle of the night, after doing it, in Harlem, and she’d made a dramatic, if penniless, exit back to Morningside Heights—a $6 ride. I told her to go upstairs to bed. The cabbie would get tired eventually.

We’d gotten over “white girl”–gate, but I always had the feeling that she had the feeling that I was secretly hating from the sideline—you know, since she was stealing all of our amazing black men. So I knew to keep certain opinions—the gay ones—to myself, even if the black guys Stella dated were fucking idiots. Take Herb, who firstly is named Herb, and who secondly was hideous, and thirdly lived in Jersey, and fourthly cheated on her with some fat girl. Stella had gone to his apartment—in fucking Jersey—unannounced one day and seen “fat white feet” from under the door. She left without knocking. I wasn’t hating on her; I was trying to help.

Now there’s Eric. I got this e-mail from her about a week ago: “So anyway, we’ve been going along nicely. Yesterday morning, we planned a date night for the evening. I took off to the library to work. Okay, now hold on to your seat, you are not going to