I met this week's victim, ahem, I mean date, through a friend of a friend. She kept telling me how great he was and how I must meet her friend and so I told her to have him give me a call or drop me an email. At this point, what did I have to lose?

His first email to me was pretty funny- albeit a bit spastic (the man had a love for the exclamation point and used it anywhere he could)- but funny all the same. It was a crazy energy that seemed to be addicting, because when I would respond to his emails, I found myself using the exclamation point more than usual!!!!!! See! How annoying is that? Makes me sound like I just told you I won the lottery, and all I was talking about was punctuation.



Our first date was at a really cute little Italian restaurant in Roscoe Village. We arrived separately, and when I pulled up, I saw him standing there, and I couldn't believe it. He was beautiful. He was very tall, had broad shoulders, great dresser - the epitome of masculinity- tall, dark and handsome. I couldn't believe this was my date! He was perfect, and I had a feeling I would be talking with a lot of exclamation points about him to my friends later. That was until he opened his mouth to speak. His voice was about 6 octaves higher than I would have expected coming out of the mouth of a man that looked like he did. He sounded a bit like Jack from Will and Grace, except much, much louder.

He greeted me with such enthusiasm that I could literally see the exclamation points forming around his head like in the cartoon bubbles. At that moment, I would have bet a hundred bucks that my date was gay. There was no doubt in my mind, that once we got to talking, there would be wrist flinging and the word "fabulous" being thrown into every sentence...and I was right.

The minute we sat down at the table, he took my hand and looked at my nails. What the eff? I looked at him with a scrunched up face and said, "Umm...what are you looking for?" He responds, "Uh, huh. Just checking to see if they are real. Fake nails are so last season." I couldn't help but laugh at this exchange, and if my mouth weren't full of wine, I probably would have said, "Yes, yes they are. Kind of like 34 year old men who haven't come out of the closet yet."



The date turned out to be a really great time. What girl doesn't love hanging out with a gay man? We ended up going to another bar after dinner, had some drinks, played music on the Juke Box, and danced. It really was a wonderful date, you know, if it was with someone I thought would want to make out with me at the end of the night.

The icing on the gay cake came when we started talking about how I was going to see Grease at the Movie In The Park series downtown, and his face lit up like a Christmas tree. He enthusiastically yells "Grease 1 or Grease 2, because Grease 2 is sooo much better!!!!!!! I have all the lines and all of the songs memorized!!!!!!" Right about then was when I snapped out of my vodka haze, and realized I had to leave, so he hailed a cab for me and gave me a hug goodbye and called it a night.

He called me a couple of days later, and because I didn't have any other dates on the horizon at the moment, I agreed to go out with him again. We ended up going out in my neighborhood, which conveniently enough is right around Boystown. I thought I would test the waters. We go to dinner and oddly enough, he only had eyes for me. I mean, even I was checking out the hotties around our table. Weird. Throughout dinner he was very affectionate and shockingly wonderful, yet I couldn't seem to ignore my gaydar going off in the back of my head (in case you're wondering, it sounds like Madonna- circa Like a Virgin era, not Ray of Light era, although that would be rather fitting too).

This guy had me stumped. One minute he was talking about fake nails being so passé, and then the next minute, he's holding my hands and giving me compliments. Pick a side dude, would you? I decided I needed to call in reinforcements, so I called my friend Kim and left her a message to come and meet me with her girlfriend, because I needed their opinion on whether or not this man played for their team.

We met them at a bar around the corner from the restaurant and everything was going swimmingly, until I see Kim's girlfriend Lauren talking to my date. The next few minutes played out like this: I'm giving my friend Kim the quick rundown of my concerns when out of the corner of my eye, I saw him pick up Lauren's hand and inspect her nails. My heart dropped into my stomach because I knew his fate was sealed. While my date was in mid sentence, Lauren turns her head towards me and says, "Gena! Your date is clearly gay. You know that right?" Then she turned back around, and continued her conversation with him without skipping a beat. I was mid swig of my Kettle and soda, and instantly spit it out all over the table. I KNEW IT!

Shortly after that we decided to call it a night. He ended up missing the train back to the burbs that night, and had no other choice but to spend the night. I figured it would be safe since I didn't have a penis. Let me tell you, for a guy who likes men, he definitely didn't lack enthusiasm for finding out what was under my clothes. In the middle of the night he tried waking me up by kissing my shoulders and neck and I rolled over, looked him straight in his face and mumbled, "Stop it. I refuse to be your beard."



That was the last time that I saw him. In a parallel universe, if we had met on different terms, for example at Hydrate, or Spin, or any other gay bar in Boystown, I would have been this man's friend, and we probably would have sat up all night talking about boys, and then had a pillow fight or something, but since he clearly has yet to realize that he doesn't actually like women, I had to cut him lose. No need to thank me gay men of the world, you're welcome.

