Fresh out of a long relationship, I was at Chateau Marmont with my friend Cookie when we met Mark at the bar. Mark and his friend Jorge invited us to join them for a drink. We chatted with them about whether we should all move to Sweden as soon as possible to take advantage of their socialized medicine, or move to Central Asia and try to solve that ongoing 4000 year old crisis. (Okay maybe it was Brittany Spears’ latest meltdown, the Octomom and Michael Jackson’s newly announced tour.) By 1:00am we had said our goodbyes and exchanged numbers on Marmont matchbooks.
A few days later, Mark called. “We already sort of had half a date when Jorge and I met you. How about we make it an official real date?”
We went to The Red Lion Tavern in Silver Lake, and while inhaling some hearty brats and a couple pitchers of Hefewizen, Mark must have uttered the name “Carla” more times than I could count. From what I could glean, this Carla person sounded an awful lot like a girlfriend. To get to the bottom of things, I asked a couple of questions worthy of Dr. House:
A. How often do you see Carla?
B. What do you two do when you get together?
C. Are you fucking her?
He answered, “Oh, we get together three to four times a week. We go to the movies, grab dinner, sometimes we just hang out…and of course we’re fucking.”
Yeah, my B.S. radar was in the red, too.
I thought it rather odd to be out on what appeared to be a date - after all
A. We met at bar
B. He asked me out
C. He picked me up at my place
D. He insisted on paying for dinner
E. (All of the Above) = DATE
Yet this guy had what anyone would consider a girlfriend. But when I suggested that Carla was, in fact…(I’ll whisper) his “girlfriend”, he laughed and shook his head and said, “ No, no, she is my… Activity Partner.”
Needless to say, that was our first and a half and last date. Whether he knew it or not, Mark had a girlfriend and I moved on.
The next time I saw him was three months later. We ran into each other in Beverly Hills, where I had just come from a self-help seminar called “How to Make Other People Rich By Going To Their Seminars” (well that’s what they should have called it, because the only one getting rich that day was the seminar swami). Mark had just come from a preparatory class for the GMAT.
He asked if I was seeing anyone new, and when I said yes, he told me he had similar news: He had a girlfriend. “Carla?” I blurted out.
He looked at me like I was psychic. “Yeah - how did you know?”
“How do I know? Mark, I’m the one who told you she was your girlfriend, three months ago!”
Two weeks later, I found myself in a situation not so different with my anyone new. We’d met last December, and by February we had gotten around to one of those conversations, and while making a point, he said something that struck me as strange. “Look, it would be different if we were dating….”
Huh? I thought we were dating! In three months, we had spent a lot of time together, I had introduced him to my friends, my family – what the hell were we doing if not dating?
So, here’s the question – Why are these men completely comfortable being in a relationship, but denying that it is one? How on earth would Mark and Carla’s time, together or me in my new, uh, unlationship, look any different if these men were to admit that they were “in” relationships?
Does the label change what it is? And if you don’t label it, does that change what it is? Especially since Mark and Carla were already together, and today, the guy I’m with admits that we are together as well.
The postscript is that Carla and Mark were together for about a year, but as fate/cupid/karma/Carla would have it – they didn’t last. It’s too bad, I really liked Carla, and Mark has turned out to be a good friend. I wish them both the very best, and hope that next time Mark does not need another woman to tell him that the person he sees multiple times a week for more than sex and “activities” is indeed… a girlfriend.
