Let's spend the night together...but first, read the small print B Y C O U R T N E Y W E A V E R "if I stay here with you tonight, we're not sleeping together," I said. "Just so you know." One-night stands are not what they used to be. Hardly a revelation, I realize, in this age of AIDS and tight-laced mores. But as I stood in Seamus' sad, little, cramped room at the B & B, the lights blazing, a green-and-yellow flowered spread covering the sagging bed, part of me longed for the days of wild, irresponsible sex with semi-strangers. I'd met Seamus that night at -- where else? -- an Irish bar. He was vacationing, he said, from his native Donegal, where he was a solicitor. "Left the wife and kids at home?" I inquired evilly. Adjusting his gold-rimmed spectacles, he laughed. "Just cut to the chase, don't you? No, I'm not married." I narrowed my eyes. He seemed to be telling the truth. Nonetheless, he didn't live here and what's more, he was on his way down to L.A. the next day to perform his role as best man at a friend's wedding. Despite my fuzzy judgment, made all the fuzzier by Jameson and Guinness, I could see that Seamus was a good egg. I should, I thought sadly, bid him adieu, kiss him chastely goodbye and make my way home, solo, to my comfy bed and possessive cat. In our wilder days, Isabel and I used to go to the clubs in San Francisco and dance to the wee hours of the morn. Isabel sported a blond mohawk and I had various shades of red and black hair, cut in various lengths. Ah, yes, we were very cool. We hung out at the Mabuhay and saw the Dead Kennedys and the Black Dolls and the Circle Jerks at the On Broadway. We went to shows at Wolfgang's on Columbus, where we knew Mel, the doorman and Isabel's boyfriend. We listened to the Sisters of Mercy, Siouxsie and the Mutants. We had a coterie of gay boyfriends who were just as eager to stay up all night and find interesting things to do. We were 16, and no one ever thought to card us. At the Oasis one night, Isabel and I were dancing poolside. In those days, we could hardly be bothered to flirt. She began talking to some guy next to me, whom I remember as looking awfully old. (He was probably all of 25.) He was a cynical, derisive guy; he didn't like the Culture Club kind of music that was playing, he didn't like death rock; he was into the Sugar Hill Gang and rap and said it was the only important music ever made. I asked him if he, as an obviously well-fed white boy, didn't think this was a little ironic. "I what?" he asked. Then we went home together. I didn't even really like this person very much, but it didn't stop me from having sex with him that night. Condoms? Well, it was 1981. Little did I know that in five years' time every single one of my gay friends would be dead. The next morning, I got up and went to my summer job at the record store on Polk Street and left him, sleeping, his hands folded up under his chin. We wouldn't be seeing each other again; why would we? Standing in Seamus' bedroom some 15 years later, I wondered why my erotic adventures these days always come to this awkward point, with me trying to delicately extricate myself from the situation, like the cat in the Pepe Le Pew cartoon. The idea of the comfortable and secure bed at home is usually so much more alluring. But it was four o'clock in the morning. He'd worn me down. "Okay," I said. I began to lay down the ground rules: We would sleep in the same bed, but no fornication. No, it didn't matter that he had condoms. No full frontal nudity. Well, the top half was okay, but not the bottom half. Oral sex would be decided about later, when and if pertinent. No, we would not be going to my apartment instead, despite the added privacy. "Ca va?" I asked cheerfully. Seamus looked tired and... well, glum. "So much for wild and woolly San Francisco." "I think you're about 15 years too late," I said briskly, as I began to unbutton his shirt.

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