lawrence

i was working at a busy, trendy restaurant when an older man walked in. i was just a lowly busser type then, helping the servers make hundreds as i took my sad $50 home. he needed a table for two, his son was parking the car.

moments later, as i passed their table, i saw him. a mop of curly blond hair framing a smiling face and impossibly gray eyes. *swoon* the server was busy, could i get their order? yes, please.

what is my name? the father, clearly a lothario in his demographic, asked casually. then, what are yours, i asked? i was told to guess the son's name. it starts with an 'l'. liam? lawrence.

pause. my father's name. awkward. moving on. too hot to get discouraged by daddy issues.

could i wrap up his food, it was just too much!

i went downstairs, knowing i had to do something brave. as i scooped his food into the takeout container it occurred to me. egged on by the kitchen boys, i grabbed the nearby sharpie and scrawled my name and phone number (pager number, actually) on the inside.

the very next day, i received a page from a number i don't know. i called. it's him. he couldn't believe i had done what i had done, loved it.........but had a girlfriend.

two weeks later i got a page. the number looked familiar but i couldn't quite place it. it was him. they'd broken up, it's been a long time coming, could we hang out sometime?

we all met at a bar, my friends and a couple of his. a band was playing, the music so irrelevant i can't remember what it was. and he asked me to dance.

this, my friends, is my kryptonite.

when we slept together, i felt a need to please that i never had before. don't get me wrong, i was never a lay back and think of england type. but this guy, oh man. i just wanted him. i wanted him to love me and never leave me so it was acrobatics and blow jobs galore. it seemed to be working...

i was a goner. but a mere month after this, he was off to europe with promises of fidelity. i of course didn't believe him as far as i could throw him, especially assured by my worldly 19 year old girlfriends of the impossibility of this. at 19, i had never dated someone who had the resources (he was 21!) to travel abroad. what did i know of the power of actual french girls?!

i started up something with a friend of mine. turned out, a friend of his. it all imploded on my face after too much booze and a bit of lying on my part...and off he went, my gray eyed dancing prince that was the very last man i ever had the guts to really lay it on the line for. this, i have discovered, was the beginning of the end.