Unfortunately, even though Ryan and I had had a great first date, it became really obvious that he was still hung up on his ex-girlfriend. I was 75 percent sure that she was a lesbian, and I figured that since he dressed like one maybe they were meant for each other and I shouldn’t get in the middle. Either way, it was clear he was involved in an on-again, off-again relationship that always seemed like it was about to be on-again.
I was visiting my dad in Palm Desert, where he’d moved so that he could play golf on a regular basis. We went out to dinner and after five drinks I ended up telling him about Ryan.
“Sounds like a good guy,” my dad told me.
Given my dad’s track record, I made the decision to break things off with Ryan the next day. I called him on my drive home and told him we could just be friends.
“It’s obvious you and Mary are still talking, and I don’t really have an interest in dating you while you try to figure that out,” I told him flatly.
“I understand. This is sad, though, Sarah. I really like you.”
“It’s not sad. It would have been sad later, but I stopped it before it could get sad,” I told him calmly while I repeatedly blinked in order to stop the tears from flowing. “I have to go, the freeway is a mess.” I hung up and coasted home. I’d never seen the freeway so empty before.
Ryan and I became really good friends after that. I still had a huge crush on him and hanging out with him only made it worse, so I did it on a regular basis. Obviously I’d learned nothing from Andy, Patrick, and the list goes on. I continued to break my own rule of not hanging out with an ex. Since these guys were friends first, I had found a loophole.
When Ryan got back together with his ex for a while, I retaliated by dating a customer I met at Formosa. I know.
The first night I met him, Gavin was cryptic about what he did for a living. I was bartending and he was drinking—so I wrote down the name on his credit card and went home and Googled him. I quickly figured out why he wouldn’t tell me what he did for a living. Not all porn editors are proud of their jobs.
The next time that he came in I told him I knew what he did. He was definitely pursuing me and I needed to let him know that while my standards might not be high, they were higher than porn.
He explained that it was just a way to make money. He wanted to act and he wanted to edit real movies, he said, but for now editing pornography was paying the bills. He made it seem like it wasn’t a big deal. I decided to lower my standards. I needed someone to date so that I could show Ryan that I was so not interested in him. I know.
Gavin didn’t have his own place. He lived with an old man who used to be an acting teacher, or something like that. He said the old man needed help from time to time and he offered to let Gavin live in his house rent-free if Gavin could lend him a hand. So far Gavin was turning out to be a real catch. I opted to stick it out and just not tell Ryan any of those details.
I stayed the night at his house one time after we started seeing each other. It was creepy and musty and old, just like the acting teacher. He was certainly making enough money to get a small, shitty apartment, so clearly he was either really cheap or secretly involved in a twisted gay relationship with the old man.
He had two dogs and two cats and they all stayed in his bedroom with him. Apparently that was the only room that was really his. The fucking dogs were the size of grown men and they slept in his bed with him. His room was covered in Superman posters and dog hair. I still didn’t run. I know.
The Superman obsession didn’t stop with the poster. He had the giant S logo in the form of a sticker on his car. He also had a Superman tattoo. I guess I was dating a Super Loser.
Unfortunately Superman Returns came out while we were dating. I had never seen a Superman movie and I had hoped to keep it that way. Gavin, on the other hand, behaved in the days leading up to the release of that movie as if Jesus were about to pay him a visit. He even pulled one of those really annoying moves and got tickets to the first showing at midnight the day it opened.
“I waited in line for five hours for these,” he said, beaming.
“That’s great,” I lied. Then I called Jackie and asked her if that was normal behavior for a man in his thirties.
“No, it isn’t,” she scolded me. “He’s ridiculous. Why are you still dating him?”
“Have you broken things off with that prick Colin yet?” I asked.
“No.”
“When you stop seeing him, I’ll stop seeing Gavin.”
“God, maybe I should move back onto your couch. At least then we were having some fun.”
I bought four airplane-size bottles of vodka and met Gavin at the movie theater.
“You want anything from the concession?” he asked. “We should get it now and go get a seat right up front.”
Up front at a movie? Worse—at a Superman movie. We really had nothing in common. “I just want lemonade,” I told him. “But only fill it up halfway.” It was going to be a long two hours.
The movie was horrible, and to make matters worse it was in 3-D. Twenty minutes in, I had already finished all of the alcohol I had with me and was trying to figure out if there was something in the seat that I could kill myself with. I looked over at Gavin. He was grinning from ear to ear. I don’t think I’d ever seen anybody look so happy. Oh my God, he’s retarded.
I broke things off with Gavin two days after the movie. I would have done it the next day, but I was so annoyed about the movie that I couldn’t even talk to him long enough to break up with him.
I decided to invite him to lunch and told him I thought we were going “in different directions.” He got really upset, which I wasn’t expecting.
“Is it because of the porn thing?” he asked. “I want to get out of it. It’s just that right now it pays the bills.”
“It’s not that. It should be, but it’s not.”
“I don’t believe you. It ruined things with my ex-wife and now it’s ruining things with you.”
“Your ex-what?”
“Didn’t I tell you I was married?”
“No, you didn’t.” It wouldn’t have mattered if you did. If that whole acting teacher/animal situation didn’t run me off I doubt an ex-wife would have.
“Well, I was married. For almost three years.”
“And she didn’t like that you edited adult movies for a living?”
“She didn’t care about that. But she was in some of them, so it just got weird when I’d have to cut her scenes with some other dude.”
I stopped chewing my turkey burger. I looked for a place to spit it out. I couldn’t find one. I swallowed. I assumed his ex-wife did, too.
“Your ex-wife was in porn? She was a porn star? She had sex with people on camera and you watched?”
He didn’t really say much after that, other than “yes” when I demanded to know if he’d been tested for HIV.
“Well, this has been great. I came here to break up with you, so I’m going to stick to that and get on out of here. You can go ahead and pay the bill. Don’t forget to leave a nice tip.”
Much like Nico, Gavin lived within walking distance of Formosa. He continued to come into the bar and have drinks long after we quit seeing each other. I really need to get a new job.