"They can't play this," I said with the self-righteousness of a drunk when the Spice Girls came on. No one was listening. I peered at Tim, who along with me, was trying to choose a song from the karaoke list. I gazed at his shirt and admired his shiny shoes. "Tim?" I asked, and I backed him in a corner. "Let's kiss." And so it was that I suddenly found myself up close and personal with that now notorious nose. Up to that point Tim had seemed like a fairly interesting if offbeat person; at least, his chit-chat was above the standard party fare. Moreover he was amusing, and got more so in direct proportion to my intoxication. After three drinks, even the shirt that began as reprehensible now seemed merely representative of that flashy Los Angeles hipness that wouldn't work in any other part of the country.

Ah, vodka. We kissed for another minute. He put his hands on my hips and I reached up around his neck. But there was something tentative to his kissing, something gentle and kind, as if he were kissing a stuffed animal. I felt a tiny prick of annoyance when a slice of clarity, like a break in the clouds, beamed into my sodden thoughts -- it didn't matter what this kiss was like since this event was not real. Besides, the floor was moving underneath like a Tilt-a-Whirl. "This is very nice," I said, breaking away and stepping back an inch. "But I'm going to go home now because -- well, just because."

"OK," he said. He was looking at me intently. "Can I see you again?"

"Well, I guess," I wondered why I said that. I knew full well that I was booked for the entire next three days. "I'm only here for the weekend. It's going to be tough." But suddenly there was something so tender about him I didn't want to hurt his feelings.

"I'll call you tomorrow," he said, scrounging around for a pen. "We can have lunch."

"That sounds fine, maybe," I said, thinking I'd deal with it later. I had liked kissing him but knew it wasn't going to go any further. Really, he probably wouldn't call. Most likely he'd just be satisfied that he'd met this chick who made out with him, who didn't live here and wouldn't be pursuing and calling and wanting to go down the whole dating lane.

"You have a message," Ray said accusingly the next morning, holding out the phone to me so he could replay the voice mail. He'd turned off the phone so we could try to sleep off our hangovers.

"Oh." I was surprised. "Well, I guess I should call him back." I left Tim a message -- wonderful to meet you, you're very sweet, I really can't meet you again because I just don't have time, will get in touch again sometime. I felt a little flustered and began to ramble until Ray drew a line with his finger across his throat. I hastily hung up.

I thought that would be it. But later that afternoon, Tim left another message. And another that evening. Each time, after listening, Ray would calmly hand me the receiver, then punch the rewind button on the phone, with a look on his face that said, see, this is what you get.

Twice more the next evening, and twice the next day. "Please do something," Ray said. "My voice mail is going to break down. Just call him again. Just tell him you can't meet him. Anything."

"I did call him." Now I was starting to feel hostile. "For God sakes. I told him I couldn't see him again. It was a kiss, Ray, not a vow of marriage." I peeled off in the Beetle in a huff to see some friends in Malibu.

"He called again," Ray said flatly when I opened the front door that night. "I talked to him. I said, 'Listen I know she thinks you're a really nice guy. She was attracted to you. But she's incredibly busy. And it was just a fun kiss. Can't you leave it at that? She doesn't even live here.'"

"What did he say?"

"He said -- no, he sneered, 'Oh did she say that to you? How incredibly convenient for her.'"

I put my head in my hands.

"He also said," Ray continued over my groans, "that he'd try you at work in San Francisco since he doesn't have your home phone number."

"What work?" I asked. I lay on the sofa. "Maybe I am being very naive, but I do not get this. One would think this is the kind of situation many men would consider ideal. You meet a girl at a party. She finds you attractive, funny even. She kisses you -- really kisses you, even though you yourself act a little uncertain. And then, she leaves town. Certainly not the stuff that movies are made of, but then again, sometimes you take what you can get."

"Actually," Ray said, examining my scuffed sandals with some distaste, "can I interject something here? You're behaving just like a bad boy --"

"Oh, here we go," I groaned.

"You go out looking for a one night-stand, find one, use them for that night, don't want to deal with them anymore, and are uncomfortable when they look for some kind of commitment."

"It was a kiss!" I shouted. "Since when does a kiss constitute devotion? It wasn't even a grope! Or a feel-up over clothes!"

Annoyed as I was, I tried to think back to a time when I had done the same thing -- pursued someone intensely, oblivious to their lack of response. Apart from my teenage years, it hadn't happened -- and not because of a lack of interest on my part, but because after one unreturned phone call I usually backed off in a fit of insecurity. It was enviable in a way, Tim's armor of self-esteem and confidence.

Maybe that's where I'd erred. Los Angeles is such a glossy, puffed-up metropolis -- it's CandyLand to New York's Monopoly. And San Francisco ... well, that's just a small town with big buildings. Tim had seemed no more real to me than the dancing brooms in "Fantasia," which made his insistent phone calls all the more jarring. "Ray, don't you wonder about a person who would take a kiss so much to heart?"

"Maybe it was a great kiss."

"No, it wasn't," I said. "Really. I know that. I was too drunk."

"Why don't you want to go out with him?" Ray suddenly asked, as if it just occurred to him.

I thought for a moment. "Well, I can't really say." I chewed on a fingernail. "I did like him. But, different cities -- it seems way too complicated. And sometimes you just know. You just know it's not going to work. I liked kissing him, but it was not going to be." I threw up my hands. "I don't know why."

"He said you were a coward --" He stopped as the phone started to ring. We looked at it as if it were a foreign insect that had just crawled into the room and made its presence known. "You should have slept with him," Ray said severely, over the ringing. "If you'd slept with him, there wouldn't be all this urgency -- if he'd had an orgasm anywhere near you, on you, inside of you -- then this wouldn't be happening." The voice mail kicked in and Ray sat heavily on the sofa next to me. "You said you were looking for trouble." He put his feet up on the battered coffee table. "Well, you got it. Just not the kind you were expecting."

"Next time when I look for trouble, just put me on the next plane to San Francisco and send along a karaoke machine," I said. "That will suffice from now on."
SALON | May 13, 1998

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