Heart Like a Wheel

Prepare for the Ego to speak:

(ahem)

I have dated -

a billionaire's son, whose father has an entire wing named after him at the Met, but who died in a car crash shortly after our verbal canoodling began.

a former child star, who wiped his ass on the white hotel towel after a quick and apparently insufficient shower in my room at the Prague Marriott. He charmed my number out of the front desk clerk, which he wore on a post-it stuck his forehead. So adorned, he went to find me down into the basement casino, where I was seated between Cole Hauser and Matt Damon, making granny bets at the blackjack table. I didn't sleep with him right away, but the sex was terrible and I always regretted it. He hung himself two years ago for God knows what reason, but he was very clever and highly unstable. I still have the yellow legal paper he wrote all his LA numbers on, along with cartoon doodles and his two favorite lines from pornographic films: 1)"Hello, Kitty!" and 2)"White cotton panties?! There IS a God!"

the son of the Rabbi (who was from something like twenty unbroken generations of Rabbis), and his only boy child, the loss of whom will haunt a webbed attic in my heart 'till I die.

a Jewish construction foreman (that's a rarity on the West coast, trust me), with crackling aquamarine eyes and a taste for vodka that ended our engagement. At this moment, there's not enough time or space to illuminate you on his importance, but he goes on the list of top 5 major transformative periods of my existence.

a French novelist, talented in so many ways, whose Parisian upbringing never blackened his sweet sweet heart. The jury's still out on where we stand.

a freshman, when I was a senior at an Ivy League U., who was a tough, but not poor, New York City boy. He had big steel balls, which propelled him to approach me in the library after watching me for months. We made out that same night and were totally crazy about one another. He was a sweet little pussycat when he was alone with me, and a stubborn arrogant dick outside of that. He played jazz upright bass, smoked to much, wore black too much, hated his father too much, and had to be sent packing for missing one too many of my dinner parties while tripping on mushrooms. He went on to open his own wildly successful, edgy, street credelicious, boutique hip-hop label, just like he said he would back when he was nineteen. A few years after our untimely demise, I saw and slept with him (we did that quite well), during a visit to New York. He, by his own admission, exacted a rather cruel revenge for the break up, refusing to see me ever again. This was odd, because for ages after I left school, he would call me from the east coast to reminisce and dream of a possible future. I guess he really did want to marry me, just like he said he would, back when he was nineteen.

a too shy fellow waiter at The Old Spaghetti Factory - that's right, I said it, The Old Spaghetti Factory. You aren't going to shame me for THAT.

a French-Italian grip who squired me around Paris and Bois de Vincennes on his motorcycle, but who never so much as tried to kiss me until the fourth date. Later he took me to Rome, but didn't touch me the entire time. Maybe it was the scorpion tail constellation of cold sores lashing across my cheek, and brought on by the antibiotics that were helping me barely recover from a raging case of strep throat. I think he was mad at me for getting sick and ruining our trip. Some guys just can't take a joke.

a former junkie and L7 tour manager who had been married to the female bassist of The Smashing Pumpkins (she can deny it all she wants, but I saw the divorce papers). Funny how they only tell you about their needle use after they sleep with you. After we broke up, I endured seven months of self-imposed celibacy, until I could be certain all the HIV tests were truly negative. He still owes me $85.

a very handsome triathalon-ing environmental lawyer who, upon dumping my ass, assured me that with my magical healing powers, I had caused him to "really open up so (he could) now go forward and have a real committed relationship with someone (else)." He said this without the slightest scant of a trace of a wisp of irony. He still owes me money too, but I have his wetsuit, so I guess we're even.

a scrungy punk-rocking carpenter whose bedroom gave me the worst allergic reaction of my life, and had me in the immediate care center for hours on Easter Sunday. There I was, tragically misdiagnosed with scabies, something of a common trashcan diagnosis for those crude rogues they call emergency room doctors. This much I was told by the dermatologist I visited the following week. The insecticidal skin cream alone costs $50, the laundry takes a whole day, but the emotional trauma from the stigma of such an unsavory disorder can last years. It's priceless, really. Anyway, back to Tim: upon being fired for repeated tardiness from our mutual place of work, he was angered and downright shocked that I didn't quit out of solidarity with him. Where is the loyalty, indeed?

a truly lovely Wall Street investment banker type, with the heart of a poet, and to whom I owe ever ever so much. I love you still.

a true English blueblood, pretty like all those Eton boys, with the swishy Edwardian hair asymetrically hanging over his left brow in that insouciant manner wealthy Europeans have. This, by the way, doesn't make them gay. He is one of two boyfriends who had the genetic quirk of three nipples. He tried to take me to the Bahamas for spring break, but I bailed out after realizing that I didn't want to sleep with him. I couldn't see the parity in abusing a guy for a free trip, if I wasn't going to let him abuse me. And this was decided, despite the opportunistic encouragements of many friends, and even my mother. We were meant to stay in Eleuthera with his parents and the American Ambassador to Poland. Maybe I was really just too intimidated. But, that same Caribbean island is where my parents conceived me, so I guess I've already been there. Years later, I saw him modeling in Tattler in a pair of boxer briefs, third nipple and all.

a never realized mutual infatuation and admiration which lives on in the form of a dear if distant friendship. He is a Rhodes scholar, nationally syndicated cartoonist, writer of an historical tome which was published when he was about 28, senior speechwriter to the last two term democratic president, and all around great guy. Full of heart, full of soul, you ARE the true Renaissance Man, and I apologize for crassly flagging around your credentials in this grossly self-congratulatory way, especially as they are the least important things about you. Maybe I'm still just a little sore about not being invited to your wedding. I adore you.

Adam was primarily and formally a very close friend, who for a decade was the yardstick against whom all other men were measured. About a year before he slipped away, he said that back when we were eighteen he had told me he thought we'd be married one day. This was news to me, but he held to this even at twenty-seven. What happened is beyond me. We had no conflict in the end, but he disappeared without so much as a word of 'goodbye.' That's still a hard one. If you see him, tell him I'm sure that silence is the most comfortable place for him, but for Stephen and me, it's like a soft cell of screaming loonies.

But none of this could have prepared me for the surprise of you, Henry. The naked fact of you taught me I was capable of loving beyond what I believed were my boundaries. I never knew I could even be attracted. I'm grateful to know I'm not as superficial as I thought. The heart is a very large and mysterious place. Too bad it ends.