To All the Men I’ve Loved Before...

Well, okay, not everybody that I’ve dated is on this page. And not everybody that I’ve dated has been a man (surprised? hey, I’m experimental!). But this is a brief overview; oddly enough, I don’t have a lot of pictures from most of my relationships (some I don’t have any, even after months of dating!), I guess because I never think to take photos until after the relationship is over, at which point it’s just a lot easier to write psychotic poetry or nasty advice columns. Tee hee hee...

This is my first girlfriend in high school, Lori Crawford. We had a wonderful time ushering in the New Year in 1988. She’s a great kisser; in fact, I still rate her as one of the best kissers I have ever encountered. Once we had an argument and I wrote a song about her. Tee hee hee...

I’ve heard that she’s married now, and has a baby. I’d love it if she contacted me (hint hint, Lori, if you’re out there, you know you want to do ten years’ worth of catching up!).

This was the first guy I ever dated, Jim Frier. He’s a real schmuck. Totally psychotic, but I was young and sufficiently governed by my libido to fall for his looks, and innocent and insecure enough to endure the head games he played and the lies he fed me. Later I found out that he had basically dated all of gay State College. At least I didn’t have to purchase any special de-lousing ointments as a result of our relationship, but many others were less fortunate. Many, many others. His “game” is that he finds boys who are just coming out of the closet and haven’t had time to find out about him and who don’t know what to expect from a man-to-man relationship, then he pursues them, sleeps with them, then gets totally obsessive and psychotic.

Okay, some of you are probably thinking, “Do you get some sort of kick out of being vindictive?” Well, yes, but that’s not why I have him on this website (although it’s icing on the cake... in fact, I would love it if I didn’t feel compelled to include him at all). I want to warn any potential victims to watch out for this guy! Listen, youngsters, do yourself a favor, and stay away from him! He’s a player! Don’t believe a word this guy says! (If you are wondering what a date with him is like, save yourself the psychotic joyride -- I can provide you a word for word transcript, complete with what he will [unsuccessfully] attempt to cook you for dinner and what movies you will watch, as well as some references from other people who have also dated him and can confirm that the transcript is a verbatim account of what you would have received if you succumb to his charms and date him.)

Rob Ramos was the first non-psychotic guy I ever dated and an all-around nice guy. We’re still friends, years after breaking up. He finally left State College and moved to Pittsburgh now; we still occasionally call and write each other, although he has a kinda weird work schedule and is usually asleep when I call.

Matt and I dated for a few months back in 1994. This is at a cook-out on the front porch of the old house where he lived at the time; I think it was probably homecoming weekend and the barbecue was a reunion type thingy. That house had a long history, and a lot of the old tenants would come back for football weekends because everyone always knew each other; there was always an overlap of tenants. Unfortunately, Matt’s roommate Todd broke the tradition by inviting complete strangers to live there, and since then the house has lost its living link to all former tenants.

Anyway, Matt is a meteorologist, and as such has lived in such fabulous places as Alaska and Colorado (not to mention, Antarctica!).

Hey, Chad, wassup! Chad is from around Williamsport, Pennsylvania, but please don’t hold that against him, he’s a real sweetheart. We met at State College’s one and only dance club, Players, on “alternative lifestyle” night. After an evening of playing eye games, I finally got up the nerve to ask him to slow dance (I had never asked anyone to dance with me before!). At the end of the evening I walked him part way to his car and we kissed under a street light... unfortunately, by a very weird coincidence, a woman who knew his mother just happened to be driving through State College at 2:00 a.m. on a Monday morning and saw us, and reported it to his mother. Whoops! Anyway, we’re still friends too although we don’t get to see each other too often.

This is Ben. We dated for a little over half a year, and boy was that a roller coaster ride! I like to joke that I drive my ex’s to the ends of the earth... Matt went to Antarctica, and Ben went to Boston, although he’s trying to get to either Paris (he’s ridiculously fluent in French, it just makes me sick with envy) or San Francisco (or possibly Rio now I guess... he was down there on vacation early this year and now he has a boyfriend in South America that I guess he’s pretty wild about). Ben and I had some great times, and I got to know Pittsburgh pretty well in the process. Ultimately I think our relationship was done in by the resentment that starts to well up in a long distance relationship -- it meant a lot of travelling for each of us, and then we’d be trapped together in a house all weekend and, well, I get on everyone’s nerves about as quickly as everyone gets on mine (yes, I’ll admit, I’m peevish and selfish and difficult to manage). I’m glad that we’re still close friends.

In the background, you can see the Pittsburgh skyline -- it’s one of my favorite cities (up there with Boston, San Francisco, and Copenhagen), and Ben showed me just about all of it. He lived in a beautiful old rowhouse on the North Side, in the old Spanish War streets (on Garfield), and this was the view from the deck on the roof. That winter was so weird! One day we’d have eighteen inches of snow, the next day we’d be up there sunning ourselves in seventy degree weather, or walking across the Allegheny in shorts and heading down to the point. How bizarre.

I haven’t dated much since Ben and I broke up in May 1996 (there a nice guy I met just before going to live in Greece, but that didn’t work out, and I’m afraid he doesn’t exactly hold me in high regard as a result of the inevitable fallout; and a few short-lived relationships right after returning to the country); I guess Ben and I both must have learned a lot about ourselves during our time together, because we’ve been a lot more selective since then (not that either of us were settling when we dated each other; I just think we let our optimism outweigh our ability to give the future a long, hard look). It’s amazing though how well we still talk about our relationship with each other -- it’s like we’re one another’s best therapists, so I guess if I really had to scrape for good things to say about what we had (I don’t, but if I absolutely had to), I’d say that whatever emotional damage we may have done to each other, at least we’re saving on therapy bills now by analyzing each other for free (well, okay, AT&T takes a percentage, but it’s still less than paying a Ph.D.).