“You’re making everyone uncomfortable!” she would shout as he had me by the ankle like a little Greco-Roman wrestler. You could see the conflict on his face, the push and pull between obedience and protection. Right when we thought we had successfully distracted him with a toy, he would leap onto the bed like a secret service agent and position himself between us.

But even Rigatoni had his price — a meat-flavored bone — that could usually buy us 20 minutes. Afterward, he would leap back onto the bed and cast disapproving looks our way until he got sleepy.

Rigatoni wasn’t exactly an aphrodisiac, but his heart was in the right place. If someone was going to stop me from having sex, I was glad to know the effort came from virtuous intentions. It could have been worse. When my ex-girlfriend and I used to visit my childhood home, my family dog would run into the bathroom as if he were hunting truffles, snatch my used condoms from the trash, and then drop them in the most heavily trafficked area of our house.

Courtship has never been easy for me. I have found the process to be high-risk and emotionally exhausting. It hasn’t helped that nature itself seems committed to my celibacy. Lately, my sex life has felt like a reverse Snow White scenario; I’m scared I’ll unbutton my pants and every woodland creature within a 5-mile radius will come crashing through the window, clutching awkward middle school photos of me in their paws and talons.

Whenever I meet a woman, I can’t help but wonder what creature waits in her apartment, eager to make our encounter more awkward for me than it already feels.

I’ve been thinking a lot about a date I went on with a woman between Josie and Rigatoni. We had talked for hours, gone from one bar to another and watched the sunset over a pair of Moscow mules. We laughed. She snorted. I found myself listening to her instead of scrambling to think of a new topic to keep the conversation going. The hamster wheel of my mind actually stopped spinning, and when that happens I get excited because it signals something more serious is on the horizon.