On the last New Year’s Eve before graduation, I went out drinking and dancing with my best friends, the girls I loved most in the world. In the cab to one of our friends’ houses, where we were all spending the night, Janet leaned in to me and whispered, “What would you do if I kissed you?”

I thought, “Does she think I’m a lesbo?” But I said nothing. I couldn’t think of what to say.

“I think you’d let me,” she said.

That night, I had sex with my friend’s brother.

Six months later, on the day before we left college, Janet and I went to the Palladium to drink martinis and feel mature and then, when no one was looking, I said, “What would you do if I kissed you?”

I felt a spark inside, both for what might come and for how brilliant it was to repeat word for word what she’d said to me a few months before. This time she stayed silent, and it was my turn to say, “I think you’d let me.”

Janet kept 10 feet between us the rest of the night no matter how hard I tried to get close. The next morning, in the middle of a crowded parade commemorating the college’s 250thanniversary, Janet said, “I don’t want you to think I was ignoring what you said last night.”

The spark inside me lit up like Las Vegas. I said, “You wanted to kiss me. You did!”

Janet didn’t say a word, but the way she looked past me and smiled sort of crooked told me everything I needed to know. Her face got all red, and I knew.

Janet was about to move away. After the parade, I went back to her apartment to help her pack the last of her boxes. She walked me to her door to say goodbye. I looked into her eyes. She looked away. Her hair was shaggy, like mine. And her lips were big, like mine. We both wore wire-rimmed glasses and I could see why people asked if we were sisters.

Many years later I’d recognize this phenomenon and name it Lesbian Narcissism. I’d spot a girl. I’d think: “She’s cute. I like her hair cut … I have that hair cut.” Straight people are attracted to people who look like them, too, but with lesbians it’s more obvious because we start looking exactly alike.

But at the time, I only felt giddy and excited to be so close to her. I almost laughed, but instead I leaned in and just before our lips touched, Janet ducked her head and curled up into my chest. I hugged her and said, “I’m sorry.”

I marched into the daylight. I had a proud feeling that I could not quite articulate, but as I walked past a house where I had taken an American history of the 60’s class, I actually said out loud: “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty I’m free at last.”

After college I moved to New York City to organize the Reproductive Freedom Ride, a cross-country bicycle tour for women’s rights. I’d created the project myself, inspired by the Freedom Rides of the ‘60s. It was at one of the fundraisers that I met Jillian. She had short salt-and-pepper hair, like nothing I’d ever seen on someone so young. She wore all black and fire engine red lipstick. She had shiny green eyes and a dimple when she smiled.

Someone told me Jillian was a lesbian. I couldn’t believe it. I had never seen a lesbian like Jillian. Jillian was model beautiful.

I went home that night thinking about the one lesbian I knew in college, Lois, who managed to work her sexual orientation into all conversations. My friends and I called her Lois the Lesbian. She sat across from me in my women’s studies seminar and proclaimed the truth about all lesbians because she was an expert. She said, “First you experience pre-lesbian tension or PLT. You feel a little stirring and take a keen interest in the life of a lesbian.” At the time I thought: That’s crazy. I didn’t feel any stirring, not for Lois, and I was interested. But I was also interested in Chinese history, and that didn’t make me Chinese.

“There’s denial before acceptance,” Lois said. “But being true to yourself is your path to freedom.”

Please.

Six months later, 10 bikers and I set out across the country. Jillian was one of those bikers. Two weeks into the trip, we rode 65 miles to Youngstown, Ohio, right into a press conference where Jillian spoke on behalf of the Freedom Riders. She stood in her bike shorts and helmet and explained the state of reproductive rights in America. I watched her hands, tiny but strong. The tan line on her muscular thighs where her bike shorts rode up a little. Her face. She was so pretty.

I understood, finally, why I never had a crush on Sean Cassidy like all of my friends did. I got why I never wrote boys’ names all over my seventh-grade notebooks.

We rode from the press conference to the Zeta Tau Alpha sorority house, where we would stay the night because one of the Freedom Riders was once their president. The sisters set up a picnic on the sorority house lawn and we formed a circle, 40 of them, 11 of us. They had big hair. One woman in our group was shaved bald.

It was my turn to lead the discussion. I said, “Let’s go around the circle, say your name and a little bit about how you feel about your vagina.” Three women got up and left.

I wanted everyone to say “vagina” — to stop pretending we didn’t have body parts. I made a career of it that summer. I needed to do it, too.

One woman said, “What does this have to do with reproductive freedom?”

“Everything!” I said. “How are we supposed to get decent healthcare if we can’t even say the words that describe our bodies?”

Another woman said she’d never really thought about her vagina and felt weird talking about it.

“I know, I know,” I said. “We have a lot of work to do.”

We went around the circle. The conversation moved from the vagina to how being true to ourselves was the path to freedom. Finally, I realized: This is what Lois the Lesbian was talking about.

Later that night, we walked to a campus bar and cheered for Jillian, who had appeared on the 11 o’clock news as part of the press conference. I was playing pool, lining up my shot, when Jillian came over. “You were great today,” she said.

I smiled. She smiled. “Thanks, you too,” was all I could say. My pool cue was shaking.

I was exhausted, but we stayed until they flicked the lights. Jillian and I headed back to the sorority house and found a room with one empty bed next to a girl named Kim, who was already snoring. We took off our clothes, down to our underwear.

I was so nervous I knocked over a vase of roses and stale, stinky water spilled over half the bed. So Jillian and I shared the one dry pillow. I was on my back, her left arm pressed against my right. I smelled Jillian’s perfume, a mix of honey and vanilla and grass. I was still. Stiff. I stared at the ceiling.

Finally I thought of what to say. “Jillian, do you think anyone can hear us?”

“No,” she said. “We’re not talking.”

Then we kissed.

“He’s not sure how he feels about you?!” I shouted. “You are smart, beautiful and kind. For God’s sake, you play piano for old folks at nursing homes and knit hats to support children in Africa! You’re borderline perfect. What’s he not sure of?”

Katie told me to take a deep breath. It would all be fine, she assured me. She explained that John was a nice guy whom she enjoyed getting to know, but ultimately they had very different interests. They lived on different coasts. It could never work.

“But … he was so cute,” I said, pouting.

I asked if Katie wanted to ease the heartbreak by cracking open a fresh pint of Chunky Monkey and playing an endless loop of Amy Winehouse. She did not. I offered a marathon of cheesy romantic comedies so we could sob together at all of the sappy bits, even though she didn’t seem very sad. She declined and said she had to finish her position paper for Junior Model United Nations. I stared at her, incredulous. Was she having no reaction to being text-dumped by her first boyfriend? Maybe she needed a maternal embrace to just let it all out.

“Do you need a hug?” I asked.

“Uh, do you?” she replied.

In fact, I did. Katie told me that there would be other boys. “If he can’t see what a great mom I have, he’s not worth it,” she joked. Then, more seriously, she explained that this was not a rejection, but two people realizing that they aren’t right for each other.

I held her shoulders, examining my daughter at arm’s length. “Are you sure you’re 14?” I asked.

“Are you sure you’re 45?” she retorted.

I felt a bit guilty that my protracted adolescence might force Katie, in response, to grow up too quickly. She may have felt that one of us had to be mature, and since I’m clearly not up to the task, it fell to her.

I wondered if I was cheating her out of something precious and irreplaceable by becoming too emotionally embroiled in her private life. Did my romance with her love life short-change her experience?

Later, I confessed all this to Katie, who told me that I mustn’t overthink things. She said she knows how to establish boundaries and she would certainly let me know if I’d crossed any. Katie returned to her homework; I turned back to my novel, the pink one with the cupcake on the cover.

I realize that becoming involved with my daughter’s love life is a somewhat pathetic attempt to dip myself into the Fountain of Youth. Because the reality is that being the mother of a teenager is a reality check, a constant reminder that I am no longer young, nor will I ever be again.

I miss the simpler life of my teen years when I’d spend hours on the phone twirling my hair around my finger and giggling about boys. (It’s not quite the same with graying hair.) I miss the days before my feet needed their own doctor. I miss the time when I truly believed anything was possible. Now, I’m not so sure it is. After 45 years of living, there has been too much disappointment. Hope is alive, but it’s taken a few hits and may be a little worse for wear.

As much as I admire Katie’s ability to feel whole outside the context of a romantic relationship, it poses a painfully stark contrast to who I was at her age. In fact, I’m not certain that I’ve come all that far. My need for validation is bottomless, and I am both astounded and grateful that I haven’t passed on this character defect to my child.

My husband of nearly 20 years tells me he loves me every day. William humors me by making grand Shakespearean-style proclamations of his affection. (Sometimes there is even a horn involved.) He has been known to playfully throw down his jacket to demonstrate his chivalry. It is a loving gesture with an added layer of meaning: Is this enough? Are we there yet?

Katie’s first boyfriend was special to me for several reasons. The two met at my 30-year summer camp reunion, the place where I shared my first kiss with Finn O’Lee under a crabapple tree near the playground. He had a mop of red hair and carried a basketball everywhere he went. It was true like.

Camp St. Regis closed in 1981, but the owners, the Kennedy family, kept their 15-bedroom home and a large waterfront lot in New York. Through the miracle of Facebook, a camp alumni group was started and plans for a summer reunion began.

At the event, the flag was lowered by two grandsons of the long-deceased “Papa Don” Kennedy, and the sun began to set on the bay. I’d spent 10 summers at Camp St. Regis and each sunset was a spectacular display of either fiery orange brushstrokes or sheets of pink cotton candy against the sky. This one topped them all.

An hour later, a bonfire was blazing and old friends were singing Simon and Garfunkel classics with the usual suspects strumming their guitars. I was chatting with my old friend John when our heads instinctively turned toward the grassy area leading to the beach. We saw two silhouettes, a girl and a boy sitting 4 feet apart, their backs toward the rest of us. The tension between them was palpable as they looked out toward the water.

“Who’s that girl with my son?” John asked, almost giddy.

When I told him it was Katie, he did a little gallop-in-place girly move, which I took to mean he approved. We wondered how long they’d been sitting there and noticed that they had inched closer. Soon they were sitting just close enough that their arm hair touched.

The youngest Kennedy grandson scurried to join us, and asked if John and I saw what was going on between our kids. We told him we had money on what time they would kiss. We had become helicopter cupids.

Ultimately, the mutual first kiss never happened, and I honestly don’t know which parent was more disappointed. The elder John managed to snap a photo with his cellphone, which was such low quality that it wound up looking like a sonogram of twins.

Katie and I returned home to San Diego, and the texting with young John continued for months. He added to his Facebook profile that one of his interests was waiting for Katie to return his texts. I thought that was the cutest thing I had ever heard. Katie shrugged and said she thought there were more direct ways to communicate that he wanted a quicker response. I looked at her like she was out of her mind. “Yeah, but none half as adorable!”

“Want to Facebook stalk him?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

I collapsed in a sigh of exasperation. I had so much to teach this child. “We check out his page and see what’s he’s doing, where’s he’s been, what’s on his wall, whose wall he’s writing on,” I explained. She looked blankly. “We can see photos,” I said stressing the word to entice.

“This is really creepy, Mom.”

I chose to see it as investigative. Remembering that she had an interest in joining the CIA or FBI, I tried to show her the parallels between Googling boys and saving the world. She wasn’t buying it. She gave me some lame response about how if she wanted to know something about him, she would simply ask.

Days after the breakup, John and Katie were texting each other again. They were buddies now, and he told her he had a big date with a new girl. If his intent was to make her jealous, he missed the mark and instead hit me. Hard. “He has another girlfriend so soon?” I spat.

“Why not?” Katie shrugged. “She sounds like a nice girl. They seem well suited for each other.”

My love and admiration for Katie grew even more. I closed my eyes tight and I wished that she would never know heartbreak. I knew this was impossible, but in this moment, her life was perfect and I wanted to keep it this way for her.

Katie reminds me of the delicate glass Christmas tree ornament I am always terrified of breaking. It is a clear, paper-thin glass teardrop that catches the light and sparkles on our tree perfectly. Each year when I pack it up, I am always surprised and relieved that it hasn’t fallen.

John will probably always have a special place in Katie’s heart. He most definitely will have one in mine. He was the first boy with the good sense to adore my daughter.

Even in his breakup text, John acted with integrity. He didn’t lash out or get mean. He didn’t play games. He told her the truth and I respect him for the way he handled the relationship from start to finish. He was a sweet kid. I miss him already.

“He told you he played soccer in Germany?” She stifled a laugh. “And you believed him?”

I believed him. Over the next two weeks, as the bizarre story of Todd unfolded, this was the humbling phrase I would be forced to repeat. Yes, I believed him. I believed that he was a wealthy entrepreneur who had started his first company at the age of 20. I believed that he got a soccer scholarship to a liberal arts college in upstate New York and later traveled all over Europe. I believed that he had a daughter, and that she had sparkling blue eyes, and that she liked cats and pirates. I believed these things because — well, because he told them to me. (Todd is not his real name, by the way.)

But staring at the ceiling that night, doubt took root. It blossomed and grew vines. Once you begin to suspect someone is lying, it is hard to stop suspecting them. I felt like I was caught in my own version of “Catfish,” the 2010 documentary about a New York photographer who falls for a woman he met through Facebook only to unravel an epic deception. I loved that movie (I saw it twice), but the film came under fire for its own narrative sleights of hand. “That guy would never fall for that girl,” a friend complained to me, and maybe he had a point, but I think we will all fall for anything if we want to believe it badly enough.

Still, we are in a complicated house-of-mirrors moment with the truth. Just ask Mike Daisey, whose tale of Apple hiring underage workers was debunked last weekend on “This American Life.” It’s a breathtaking hour of radio, not only because Daisey is lying, but also because he is lying to himself. The nature of truth has always been slippery, but technology has given us so many tools for deception, and such a powerful megaphone, that we are constantly forced to defend against it.  What can we believe? Who can we trust? It’s like we’re all suffering a giant crisis of authenticity.

This is the herky-jerky place in which I found myself with Todd. Although to be precise, I never “met” him. Ours was a thoroughly 21st relationship that unfolded through the Web, email and iPhone, a drama in which the two main characters never actually shook hands. It was one of the strangest romances I’ve ever had, not simply because I did not know him in person but because I truly came to believe he did not exist.

It was the evening that he canceled our second date when I decided to confront him on this. “So I have to tell you something,” I said to him on the phone. Mine was the low, shaky whisper you reserve for difficult conversations, like how you cheated on someone or want to break up. “I kind of don’t think you’re a real person.”

Todd’s charming Texas drawl grew strained. “What the hell does that even mean?”

It’s a good question. Honestly, I don’t even know where to start.

- – - – - -

I dragged my feet to online dating. I spent most of my 20s and early 30s in bars, where my entire dating strategy could be boiled down to this: Get drunk, and see what happens. It worked pretty well.

But at the age of 36, I quit drinking and moved back to Dallas from New York. My life was lovely, for the most part — quiet, low-key evenings spent with family, or a handful of amazing female friends, or a marmalade tabby loved beyond all reason. But I was aware that some key part of existence was missing. I longed for the kind of companionship I once found in Stella Artois.

“You need to start online dating,” my friend Jennifer told me. It wasn’t a suggestion; it was a command. I didn’t know if it was my age, or our age in general, but the whole discussion about online dating had shifted from, “Why don’t you try this?” to, “This is what people do now.” I hated it. Why couldn’t I meet my future husband in a coffee shop, or in the produce section of a grocery store? (“You like kiwis? I like kiwis!”) When I told Jennifer my usual complaints — that online dating made me feel hopelessly awkward, that it depressed me in some existential way — she gave me a little pat on the knee.

“Well, maybe your mom can set you up with someone nice,” she said.

Two weeks later, I had a personal profile.

By now, most of us have tried online dating, or at least know its narrative arc: The agony of creating a personal profile (what picture should I use? What should my profile name be?), followed by the rush of adrenaline that arrives when emails begin to pile up in your inbox. It’s such a funny mix of insecurity and power to be a woman on those sites. Some days I felt like a little lost puppy scratching on anyone’s door: Please love me, somebody love me. Some days I felt like a queen who could cast aside suitors with one click of the mouse. Yes, yes, you think I’m pretty. I’ve heard that before. Next! I have the requisite number of anecdotes about men who were comically unsuited for me. The guy whose profile picture featured him shirtless and flabby, shooting a rifle. The guy who answered the question “What I’m doing with my life” by saying: “I’m just working at Staples, living life to the fullest.”

I was contemplating pulling down my profile entirely when Todd emailed. He wasn’t exactly my perfect match, either — a sports fanatic and a business type who peppered his emails with unnecessary ellipses. But he was funny (my weakness) and fluent in HBO programming and Monty Python and the kind of pop culture that allows me to speak freely without ever revealing too much (my crutch). I also felt uncommonly drawn to his pictures. Two included his 18-month-old girl, and I liked that he frontloaded this fact, much like I had my own sobriety. This is me, and it’s the non-negotiable part.

One afternoon when I should have been working, we engaged in one of those zippy back-and-forths that can turn a drab afternoon into a Billy Wilder comedy. Looking back, I can see that he was way too quick to lavish me with compliments. He would say things like, “You are so amazing,” and “If you are half as funny in person, I am going to fall in love with you.” That makes me cringe a million times now, but in the moment, it was fuel for my ego. It’s not like I thought we were going to get married; I wasn’t even sure we should date. But I did believe that I was being hilarious and clever in those exchanges, and it was about time some random good-looking dude on the Internet appreciated it.

Todd and I spoke on the phone the following day. I expected to chat with him for 20 minutes; I hung up three hours later and was so wired I couldn’t fall asleep till 2.

“He played soccer in Europe,” I told a friend over IM the next day.

“That’s hot,” he said. (He’s gay.)

“It’s a little too hot,” I said. In fact, a crucial shift had taken place during that phone call. I had gone from thinking Todd was not good enough for me — too Texas alpha male, too conservative — to worrying I would not be good enough for him. I am nothing like the generously embellished, long-legged trophy wives that populate the Dallas society scene. Beside them I can feel so dowdy. There is still an insecure 12-year-old inside me, and in the days leading up to my Sunday coffee date with Todd, she held center stage. I tried out three different outfits for my mother. I wore the outfits with heels and without.

“What if I he doesn’t like me?” I asked her.

She smiled. “What if you don’t like him?”

But all the anxiety was for naught. Two hours before we were supposed to meet, he sent me an email. “I am bearing bad news. I have ended up taking my little girl to the fall carnival today, as her mother is sick. If we can reschedule this week soon it would be wonderful. Can I call you later?”

He did not call that night. And in the space where that conversation might have gone, a conspiracy theory grew. I should mention, at this point, a few suspicious details about Todd: For one, I could not find him on Facebook. Now, I have dear friends who have decided against the slavering jaws of social networking, so on its own this didn’t raise red flags. More troubling was that I could not find his “successful marketing company” online. Or rather, the site existed, but it had a banner that read “under construction” in a chintzy font that no successful marketing company would ever, in a million years, actually post. I figured he was exaggerating his accomplishments, which would make him no different from any guy I’ve met in a bar, ever.

But there were other weird things, too. Todd told me he had sold a reality television show to Mark Cuban’s HDNet, which is based in Dallas. His reality show was inspired by “Top Chef” (he was obsessed with cooking shows), but it was set in the Dallas strip clubs, which are ubiquitous around here. The concept was rather head-exploding: Strippers face off in a competition to open their own restaurant and thus leave behind their cash-strapped, pole-dancing days. The working title for the show: “Topless Chef.’”

This is the part of the story where my friends can’t stop laughing. They bang on the table they are laughing so hard. They say things like, “I can’t believe you fell for this!” And, “God, I always thought you were smart!”

First of all, I never claimed to be smart, particularly not in romance. Second of all, I know diddly about Mark Cuban’s HDNet, but “Topless Chef” sounds exactly like the kind of programming that would be purchased by an eccentric billionaire who owns the Dallas Mavericks and made a city of silicone and steakhouses his adopted home. Was it bonkers that I thought the show was kind of genius? Like, in a really evil way? When Todd told me that anecdote, I was not thinking, “This is completely made up,” I was thinking, “Can I really date the guy who invented ‘Topless Chef’?”

But then he canceled the date, and it all seemed so obvious. He was a complete phony. The pictures were fake. The little girl was fake. (What a convenient smoke screen, what brilliant chick-bait.) How could I be so stupid?

As the embarrassment subsided, though, I began to sense the flutter of a different kind of romance. After all, I am a journalist and a personal essay writer always on the lookout for new material, accustomed to shaping the hurt and disappointment of my own life in an attempt to tell some greater truth. As an online dating prospect, Todd was a flameout. But he had given me something just as thrilling, something I’ve chased for many years: I had a good story.

The next day Todd asked me on a sushi date for that Friday. I agreed, and we talked on the phone for the next three hours.

- – - – - -

I’ve never been an online stalker. I have friends who will cannonball into the deep end of Google for any prospective date, but I am far more interested in the crackle of our conversation, the speed of my heart when we are sitting across the table from one another. Maybe it’s because there is so much dirt online about me — my drinking problem, my credit issues, the time I accidentally sent a promotional email to 900 people — I tend to be uninterested in what’s available on anyone else. Still, I had to make an exception for Todd.

I didn’t find much. He was, indeed, a leading soccer scorer at that college in New York. But all other roads went cold. I was excited to come across an actual picture of him from the society pages of a local magazine — finally, confirmation of his real appearance — but the link was broken, so that the photo only displayed a tiny blue question mark. How poetic.

I popped his phone number into one of those “people finder” search engines advertised all over the Internet. (“Find everyone and anyone!”) When it came up registered to his mom, I fell down the rabbit hole. I spent $50 and two hours on that site, excavating any shred of evidence on him I could find. A personal bankruptcy, a DWI. Then there was the part that chilled me. It listed “known aliases.”

My friends, of course, were hooked on this saga. They all had their own theories. He was a troll living in his mother’s basement. He was married. He was an alcoholic who spent his evenings in fantasy land with women he met online. I did not usually tell my friends about the “known aliases” because I knew it showed an extraordinary lack of caution on my part to find out that information and go on a sushi date with this guy anyway. Any person in her proper frame of mind would have called it off. Indeed, she would have pushed the ejector button long ago. On this count, I can only say that I believed this story would be incomplete if I failed to meet Todd in person. But also, since giving up drinking, I have been drawn to risk in surprising ways. I have come to crave the flood of adrenaline, the lump in the throat. (As one friend recently told me, “You really need to start jumping out of airplanes.”)  But there has long been a part of me chasing a bad romance, wondering how close my hand can get to the flame.

It didn’t matter, though, because Todd canceled our sushi date that day. His text message came at 3:30, right after I’d blown out my hair: “May day may day u may kill me. I have a 102 degree fever.”

So that’s when I called and told him I didn’t believe he was a real person. My heart was a kick drum, but my voice did not waver. It was fantastic. Todd was all over the map in that conversation. He sounded angry, and then wounded. He backpedaled from all of that and became apologetic. “If I weren’t so sick you know I’d be excited about seeing you tonight,” he said. “But I want the first time I meet you to be special.”

Oof, the nerve of this guy.

I spent that Saturday sifting through public records with the help of lawyer and cop and journalist friends. I also discovered — to my relief but also to my disappointment — that the “known aliases” were benign, probably nothing more than clerical errors, a name misspelled in a courtroom late at night and mistaken by a computer system as a nom de guerre.

As my attorney pal put it, “What you have on your hands is less of a criminal mastermind, and more of a garden-variety asshole.”

I figured I’d never hear from Todd again. Accusing a person of being an Internet fabrication has a way of dooming your friendship. But once again, I misjudged Todd. He emailed me on Sunday night, which I discovered following a date that had been fine, but a little boring: “I’ve been thinking about you,” it read.

I stared at my email for a long time, trying to figure out how to respond. “That’s funny,” I typed back. “I’ve been thinking about you too.”

- – - – - -

I made another date with him. A third date. This imbroglio was acquiring a disturbing meta-quality, like the moment in the reality TV show where the characters have stopped being themselves and are now existing purely for the camera. Everything I said had quotation marks. It’s good to “talk to you.” I’m glad your “daughter” is well.

But there was a twist, too: He actually did have a Facebook profile, and he friended me as we spoke on the phone one night. I paged through picture after picture of him with his little girl, and his short-haired, petite mother. I did not realize at the time that Facebook allows you to hide your profile so that it doesn’t come up on searches, and for the briefest second my certainty about him unraveled. How could I miss this? What else did I get wrong? I wondered if it was possible — if there was the teensy, tiniest possibility — that I was the one being duplicitous.

On the Wednesday morning we were supposed to meet for coffee, he texted me that a planning session for “Topless Chefs” was running late. Apparently it ran really, really late because he didn’t get out of that meeting until 6, when he told me the day had been a nightmare, but did I want to meet now?

Oh, what the hell, right? I told him I’d meet him in 30 minutes. He responded that, actually, it had been a helluva day. Rain check, maybe?

There is always a part of these real-life stories where the reader goes: This is ridiculous. This never happened. But I don’t know what to tell you. I wouldn’t make this up, because it sounds too preposterous: Who would believe that, after all this, he would still be trying to fool me? Who would believe that, after all this, I would still be responding?

I was spelunking deep in his Facebook account when my mother called that night. By then, I knew his friends. I knew his friends’ friends. One of his many pictures was from a local magazine’s society pages — the broken link that had eluded me online. And get this: It was the same picture he’d used in his dating profile. The ultimate reveal: He looked exactly like he said he did.

My mother sighed. “How much more time are you going to give this guy?”

I didn’t know the answer to that. I understood there was more to life than this man’s pathetic deceptions, but I needed to find something. I needed to get something. Some piece of information that would bring the whole sorry mess screaming into focus, like the last scene of “The Usual Suspects.” I had invested so much time and energy into this. Could I really leave so unsatisfied?

“He has a perversion,” my mother said. My mother is a therapist. “He likes to meet women online and see how long he can string them along. It gives him a thrill. What more do you need?”

Didn’t she get it? “I need to know why.”

“Sometimes ‘why’ is not a valuable question to ask,” she said. I hate it when my mom whips out heady little aphorisms like this. “People’s motivations point back into the past in so many ways — there’s usually not one reason why. And if there is one reason, chances are Todd doesn’t even know it.”

I knew she was right — about Todd, and about every other busted relationship I have tried to solve like the end of an Agatha Christie novel. I was always searching for some moment when it would all make sense. Why he did this, and not that. Why he liked her, and not me. I was always in search of the smoking gun. But real detectives rarely find a smoking gun. Real life rarely comes with neat and tidy explanations. It is a hopeless tangle of confusion and desire and mysteries left unsolved.

“So what do I do?” I asked my mother.

“You get on with your own life,” she said. “And you never speak to him again.”

It was a relief to discover how quickly Todd collapsed into an anecdote. For a while, I told everyone about the huckster I met online. And then I told no one, because with time and perspective came a certain humiliation. What had I been doing?

One Saturday morning, I dashed into the grocery store a few miles from my house for cat food and coffee when my eyes were snagged by a handsome guy in the checkout line. He was holding his little girl in his arms, an adorable blond toddler I recognized from dozens of photos, and she was playfully batting his head with a stuffed animal.

There was no doubt about it. It was Todd.

He was as handsome as his photos, although his eyes had tired gray circles around them. I watched him call over to his mother in the line beside him. I recognized her from photos, too.

I stood there, slack-jawed, unable to move. I could not shake my disbelief. What were the chances that I would run into him like this? In a city of a million people? In a checkout line on Saturday? I wondered if I should say something. I wondered what on earth that would be.

He was playing with his little girl on the coin-operated rocking horse near the exit doors when I finally left with my grocery bags. I saw him look up, but I don’t know if he saw me, or recognized me. I could not stand to look at him. I passed him as if he were just another stranger. And I guess, in a way, he was.

The cashier removes the Diving Dolphin from its package. It’s a complicated-looking thing with two vibrating eggs, each fitting into separate rubber compartments. She inserts two double A’s and pushes a button on the little plastic control panel. The Diving Dolphin hums loudly. “I might argue,” she says.

I laugh. “Yeah,” I say, “but what I need is something that makes a woman, you know … want to, you know … in the first place.”

“We don’t carry anything like that,” she says. “But I know where you can get something.”

“Where’s that?” I say.

She motions toward the door. “Coralville liquor store,” she says.

“They got something there?” I say.

“Yeah,” she says. “Liquor.”

Most guys don’t want to talk about vibrating sex toys. We’re ashamed. But I don’t know what there is to be ashamed about. If a guy could cut an hour off his commute time, he’d spare no expense to do it. And he wouldn’t be ashamed to tell everyone how he did it. Yet everyone keeps quiet about a vibrating sex toy. The vibrating sex toy is the time-saving device of the century.

There will come a time in your relationship when you will look your wife in the eye and say, “OK. You know I want sex. And I know you want sex. Right? OK. So what do you say we take our clothes off and both just … get the job done. All right? And then we’ll get some sleep. OK? Because I’ve got to be in Cedar Rapids at 7 o’clock tomorrow.” Of course this approach will fail. Your wife will refuse you. No woman wants to hear these things. But just because she doesn’t want to hear these things, doesn’t mean she isn’t amenable to the spirit in which they’re spoken.

A sex toy can do lots of things that your penis can’t do. A vibrating dildo, for example, can remain in the same rigid shape for years upon years. A vibrating dildo can also vibrate. Not a bad trick, I’d say.

I told a friend of mine one time that he really should introduce the idea of the vibrating dildo to his girlfriend. He, of course, didn’t want to talk about it. But I pressed the issue. “You should,” I said.

My buddy said, “Yeah. I’m sure she’d be just thrilled if I pull out some giant plastic thing in the middle of sex.”

“Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll bet you a hundred bucks right now. I’m serious. A hundred bucks. That if you do pull out that giant plastic thing at the right time, she won’t complain at all.”

“OK,” he said, “let’s look at it another way: Say she likes it. Then, when I go at it the old-fashioned way again, it won’t be enough. We’ll have to kick-start the dildo every time. What about that?”

To me, this argument holds no merit. What we’re talking about here is a vibrator. It has no soul. It runs on double A’s. It’s not your rival. It’s your helpmate. Think about the guy who rows out to sea every day. And then, after 10 or 12 hours of fishing, he rows back to shore again. One day, someone hooks him up with an outboard motor. If the guy wants to row, he can row, for Christ’s sake. If, on the other hand, the guy has grown older and he is getting tired of rowing for 50 or 60 minutes from shore to fishing ground and back again, he can go ahead and crank up the Evinrude. His choice.

All the pressure is off. If you’re afraid you won’t be able to make it to the shore, you have your helpmate. If your paddle seems inadequate, you have your helpmate. Your helpmate will never leave you. Your helpmate will never cheat on you. Your helpmate is there for you whenever you need it. All you need to do is remember the double A’s. That’s all.

When I went shopping for my first helpmate, I ended up buying a model that was an exact duplicate of an actual penis. Only larger. And purple. It was embarrassing to look at and to buy. When I brought it to the counter, I couldn’t look the cashier in the eye. As if she had never sold a vibrator before. As if her shop didn’t have 500 different types of vibrators to choose from. Ones with big bumps all along the shaft. Little eggs with remote switches. Gigantic ones with hand cranks.

When I got home with my prize and pulled it out of the bag (right before dinner), Deb seemed put off. She didn’t want to look at it. She didn’t want to think about my fantastic, purple vibrating dildo. She wanted to feed the baby and give him a bath and get him to bed. In hindsight, I know I should have waited. But at the time, it seemed like it was too important to put off. I wanted her to see my vibrating dildo. Our vibrating dildo.

Now that I’m older, I’m much cooler about it. I don’t need to buy the enormous vibrator anymore. I know that a medium-size vibrator will do just fine. I even ask the woman at the counter if she can plug batteries in so I can try it out. I’m like a wine connoisseur checking out an expensive bottle of Bordeaux. “Ah. A fine, tingling vibration on this one. But somewhat lacking on the lower register. Very nice. They’ve done a really nice job with this model. They’re improving. Improving. But I think I’ll pass. This time. Can you bring me another vibrator? Something with more, I don’t know … range? Yes. Exactly. Thanks. You’re a doll.”

I hide the Diving Dolphin in my gym bag. I figure I’ll smuggle it inside and wait for the right moment to produce it.

Last August I earned my master’s degree from Northwestern University. I have now been unemployed for six months. I realize now that life with a liberal arts degree is self-inflicted. It turns out that few job descriptions list a base understanding of semiotics or rote memorization of the oeuvre of Alfred Lord Tennyson under necessary Skills/Qualifications.

But give me a Break, Break, Break.

It seemed like worthwhile knowledge for those of us naive enough to believe English, history and philosophy were rewarding academic pursuits. What else could allow me to play the sophisticate at parties, wearing tweed jackets, or quoting Nietzsche on nihilism when someone asks if I’ve seen last week’s episode of “The Walking Dead.” What I didn’t realize is that first you must earn the money to buy that tweed jacket, which is damn expensive.

Instead I have discovered I am over-qualified, under-qualified, wrongly qualified. At this point I just want a job to resent. Late at night, lying belly-up on the mattress, I long for the discordant beep of a malfunctioning fax machine or a bumbling secretary to diagnose a case of the Mondays.

Day-to-day, the single-most intimidating obstacle I face is not the unemployment rate or another round of hapless job interviews, but attaching an identity to the man I make eye contact with each morning in the vanity mirror. Every tee ball trophy I was given as a child, all those words of blind encouragement in the classroom — be whatever you want to be — were just another ingredient in a soufflé of grandiose expectations.  And every day the gap in my job history expands is another day I struggle to find myself.

- – - – - -

My girlfriend was more practical than I. She is an engineer, and was offered a job immediately upon graduation. In Cincinnati. So I followed. Every morning she scurries out the door at 7 a.m. to enjoy a concrete career while I watch the “Today” show in my underwear. Stationed in front of my laptop, I refresh my email on 30-second intervals to the soundtrack of Kathie Lee and Hoda sipping syrah and discussing Justin Bieber.

As an unspoken agreement, I keep the dishes washed, the carpets vacuumed, the mantel dusted. Hot meals are attempted on a nightly basis, but my range has yet to exceed pasta and the occasional chicken sandwich. Though not treated as such, I can’t help feeling like the lonely house pet, whimpering at the door when she leaves in the morning and standing sentinel at the window when she returns at night. During the day I fetch staples like bread and milk from Kroger, and at night, if I’m good, she’ll take me out to the all-you-can-eat pizza buffet at the local bowling alley.

The hand that feeds, shelters and clothes me is hers, and for that I’m sincerely grateful. Between rent and food, gas and cable, my financial debt to her will soon match my student loans. Which, for frame of reference, can best be described as a ton. Yet she is supremely sympathetic, never begrudging me a cent.

For five years we’ve been together, and I hope we stay together for the next 60. But a healthy relationship should be symbiotic — not parasitic. I want to be the anemone to her clownfish, not the barnacle to her boat hull.

I am with her because I love her, but also because if I left now I’d have no choice but to move back into the childhood bedroom in my parents’ basement, with posters of Monty Python and the Simpsons still adorning the pale blue walls. And I would owe Stephanie $10,000. It’s the most pure-hearted, indirect, unintentional form of blackmail imaginable.

- – - – - -

My peers and I have been donned the Boomerang Generation for the frequency with which we migrate back home to our parents after college. I’ve managed to evade that cliché, and feel especially fortunate that despite my unemployment anxiety, I have only myself to worry about. I can’t imagine the drain of opening rejection letter after rejection letter while your family looks on with bated breath.

Personally, I temper expectations by anticipating the worst, daring each voice mail from a recruiter to surprise me. On average, it takes about 17 seconds to inform a candidate they didn’t get a job. Six months ago Stephanie and I would read through letters together. Now I refuse to even discuss them with her outside of concise text message: HEARD BACK FROM SOUTHLITCH MEDIA – ANOTHER NO.

In January, the national unemployment rate fell to its lowest level since 2009. While experts debate whether or not this is indicative of a sustainable trend, those of us represented by that rate remain unconvinced. There will be no collective epiphany. Each of us within the 8.3 percent will have a personal moment when we realize the economy is turning: when a concrete job offer appears in our inbox.

For now, I find value in the menial. I forge forward by finely slicing each day into a series of self-contained moments, focusing so attentively on a task that it cancels out the noise in my head. For instance, every Thursday morning I clean the bathroom, and for a half-hour my thoughts do not stray beyond the singular objective of making sure that porcelain is immaculate. With a sniper’s precision I assassinate yellow grime beneath the shower head with an old Colgate toothbrush, somehow achieving solace in the vacant beauty of clean white ceramic

Time is divided between home and the coffeehouse down the street, where I am a Norm Peterson-like staple. T.S. Eliot measured his life in coffee spoons; I measure mine in espresso shots. As for our apartment, Dante could’ve used my living room couch as an allegory for purgatory in the “Divine Comedy.” It is the command center of my apparent mission impossible, the table before it littered with pink Post-its, empty cereal bowls and crumpled copies of Fast Company. I’m a vigilant housekeeper in every other respect, but to clean this slovenly island would be to somehow admit defeat.

Self-expression is another dump valve. Just as Dark Age healers used bloodletting to expel contaminants from the body, I purge my mind through writing, blogging, reading and drawing in an attempt to tease out some sense of self. I create micro-goals. Today that means reading 30 pages in “Infinite Jest.” Yesterday: applying for four jobs. Tomorrow: alphabetically sorting my DVDs (“40-Year-Old Virgin” through “V for Vendetta”).

At times I reflect on the chain of decisions that have led to this point. I could have stayed in Chicago or canvassed the country with my résumé. Sought employment in New York or San Francisco with no strings attached, letting ambition and aspiration eclipse my desire to stay with Stephanie.

But then she smiles across the dinner table and takes a bite of undercooked linguine, and I remember why I’m here. Losing her would leave me with a void no company car or 401K could fill. And maybe that decision defines me more than I ever realized. Let it have my pride and my sense of manhood. But love – that’s something no recession can take from me.