I used to say that I wouldn't sleep with a man unless I loved him.  This really just meant that I had to fall in love with every man after sleeping with him.  And sometimes we didn't even sleep.  Sometimes I would crawl out of the disheveled bed, slip his socks on, pull my boots on, and go home to sleep.  My boyfriend was probably wondering where I was anyway.

I was a cheater.  And a liar.  A thief of hearts and a banker for bad reputations.  Yes, they could cash them in with me, I would redeem them for full support.  I loved the bad ones for the good I knew they were.  The rest of society would not say they were good.  They were drug-dealers and doers, without college educations, with junky cars, smoke on their breath, and wide grins.  They all shared something in common, other than me - they had a secret look in their eyes that said they new something about the world that maybe I didn't.  Years with them taught me street smarts while I stayed secretly married to academia, filling up on anthropology, literature, philosophy and Spanish.  All along I've been writing an anthropology of men.

In retrospect, I have been writing my own ethnography of my maturation and relationships.  Friends, foes, fucks.  I like to play this game in my mind when I am feeling low: I imagine all the men I've really loved (not just slept with) standing in a row, looking at me.  I look each one in the face and decide who I want to go to.  If my current man is trumped by an old one, I know the search isn't over yet.

Well, with Edy in the line up now, I see his face and RUN and JUMP and WRAP myself around him.  Our smiles match - ear to ear and leaking laughter.  Of course I have not actually physically stood next to Edy in more than 4 years.  But in my mind, we are perfect.