I last left you during my panic attack. After a night of drinking and a trip to Nathan’s, I’d casually asked Jake, my latest romantic interest, back to my apartment. When he agreed to such a course of action, I found myself experiencing a downward spiral of paranoia:

I didn’t really know Jake. Did it seem too forward to ask him back to my place? Did he think the invitation came with some sort of implied promiscuity? Because it didn’t! But what did I know about his expectations? He was practically a stranger. But I knew I was also being nervous because I actually liked him so impending disaster seemed logical.

We trudged up the stairs of my walk-up in silence: Jake was just beginning to eat his second Nathan’s hot dog. As I unlocked the door, I snapped out of this fog, realizing there was no turning back.

“So, do you want anything to drink?” I immediately asked, my voice dropping to a harsh whisper so as not to disturb slumbering roommate. I pointed to her closed door and explained, “She’s sleeping.”

He nodded, mouth full of frankfurter.

“I think we have some beer,” I continued, walking over and opening the refrigerator door. “Or, some water from our Brita filter. I, uh, think that’s about all I can offer you.”

He walked over and stood behind me. Close behind me. I could hear him chewing the very last bite of his hot dog–you know, the part that usually takes a bit longer to swallow because it consists mostly of the fluffy white bun. Ordinarily, such a sound would have perturbed me, but it was overshadowed by the small thrill of sensing his physical proximity.

“Holy shit!” Jake exclaimed, shocked but still maintaining a whisper. “Look.”

I followed his gaping stare out our window, across the courtyard of our apartment building and into the lighted window of our neighbor’s kitchen.

There she was, an attractive woman in her mid-twenties whom I occasionally saw making dinner, often in a pink bathrobe. However, at this particular moment, she was making something of a different nature with a gentleman houseguest. I’ll admit, it took me a few seconds to grasp the reality of the scene: my neighbor, pinned against her refrigerator door, in the middle of heated, passionate sex.

Jake and I stood there, refrigerator door still open, just gawking for a few seconds. It’s hard to look away from a moment like that, in the same way that I’d be tempted to read a diary if someone was careless enough to leave it open. But the stunned pause quickly transformed into an uncomfortable silence–at least on my part. Would you take someone out to an adult film on a first date? I certainly wouldn’t. Yet we’d inadvertently stumbled upon our very own porno. Where do I go from here? I asked myself.

“Has she done this before?” Jake asked, finally. I looked over at him, eyes locked on the free show.

“Uh, I mean, it looks like she’s definitely had some practice,” I said.

He laughed. “No, I mean, have you ever seen her do something like this. Like, in the kitchen.”

“Oh! God, no. Never.”

“Pretty…hilarious,” he said distractedly, still riveted by the scene playing out in front of him. I fake laughed and shut the refrigerator, unsure of what exactly to say next.

“The show I usually see is more Food Network, less Skinemax,” I said over my shoulder as I walked across the apartment and sat down on the couch. I’d forgotten to whisper.

Jake trailed behind me. “Uh, I assume that’s your bathroom,” he said, pointing to a closed door.

“Yeah,” I confirmed.

Without another word, he disappeared into the bathroom.

For ten minutes.

Initially, I sat waiting to hear a stream of drunken man-pee that would inevitably be audible within the tiny confines of an East Village apartment. But there was only silence.

At the ten-minute mark, my roommate peered out of her room, saw only me sitting there, and shuffled out of her room, still in the tank top I’d seen her wearing at the bar an hour earlier, sans pants.

“What’s going on?” she asked, squinting as she stepped into the living room light. “Did Jake come back with you? Did he leave already?”

“He’s in the bathroom,” I whispered, pointing to the closed door. “He’s been in there for like, ten minutes.”

“What?” she said.

“Shhh!” I said, not wanting Jake to hear any of the conversation. “I don’t know. I don’t know what happened. We came back, we saw our neighbor having sex in her kitchen, and then he disappeared in the bathroom.”

“Oh my God. You saw Pinky having sex?!” My roommate had nicknamed our neighbor “Pinky” because of her signature pink robe. She ran to the kitchen window. “There’s no one there now.” She walked back over to me. “Jake saw Pinky having hot sex in the kitchen and then he disappeared into the bathroom. You don’t think he’s…you know.” Rather than say it out loud she made the standard hand motion.

“Ew. You think he’s…” I’ll admit, the thought had crossed my mind. “I mean, I don’t know. He’s has been in there for ten minutes.”

“He basically just watched porn. I dunno. Maybe it caught him off guard. Maybe it overwhelmed him.”

“Uh, God, I just don’t think he’d do something like that though.”

“Yeah, but whatever. You might like him, but come on, he’s still kind of a stranger.”

“Ugh. I know. But that is really weird.”

“Well, he could just be going number two,” she pointed out. “Not exactly appealing either.”

“The first time over at someone’s apartment? For ten minutes? I mean, if you gotta go you gotta go, but for ten minutes?”

She shrugged.

“What should I do? Should I check on him?”

She shrugged again. I sighed and walked over to the bathroom.

“Uh, Jake?” I knocked lightly on the door. My stomach churned, unsure of what perverted and/or digestive acts were occurring on the other side.

Jake immediately opened the door and looked at me, desperation in his eyes. He was practically green.

“I’m so sorry,” he told me. “I just feel really awful all of a sudden–that hot dog. I–I think I should probably–” And then he bent over and vomited.

“Ew,” I heard my roommate say in the background. I looked back at her. “Good luck with that,” she told me as she disappeared back into her room.

I, on the other hand, was hardly disgusted; I was totally and utterly relieved. He wasn’t a pervert. He didn’t have IBS. He was just hopelessly, helplessly sick. And he remained that way for the next couple of hours until we both fell asleep in my bed under some of the most asexual circumstances I’ve ever experienced. After all, he passed out spooning a metal pot.

***

The next morning, I woke up and, at a loss of what to do, pretended to be asleep for the next two hours. From the frequency of movements on the other side of the bed, I assumed Jake was doing the same. At some point, he placed the pot on the floor. Finally, around 1:00 p.m. we both sat up in bed and looked at each other. He smiled sheepishly.

“I’m so sorry about last night,” he said. “That second hot dog like, put me over the edge or something. I don’t know what happened.”

I shrugged. “Don’t worry about it. I’m sorry I started singing ‘Who Let the Dogs Out’ that third time you barfed.”

He laughed. “No, I liked that.”

“Do you feel okay now?”

“Yeah, actually, I feel completely better. Not even a headache.”

“Good.” There was a pause.

“I do feel really bad about last night,” he continued. “Can I take you out to breakfast right now? Make it up to you?”

Well, I can’t say no to a free brunch. Thirty minutes later, we were at Veselka. As I dug into my stack of banana pancakes, I noticed an amused expression on Jake’s face.

“What?” I asked.

“No, nothing,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s just, up until this point, I kind of assumed that your diet consisted solely of hot dogs.”

“How little you know about me,” I said, smiling.

“And yet we’ve already watched porn together,” he pointed out. “Porn and puking. We have a bond now–you and I. We’ve been through something.”

I laughed. But he had a point. And despite having an image of his head in a toilet bowl, I remained as attracted to him as ever.

An evening full of wieners, live nudes, and violent illness sounds more like a dirty joke than a success story, yet it produced the best first date I’ve ever had. I still feel somewhat bewildered by the series of events, but I suppose stranger things have happened.

“Yeah,” my roommate agreed as I later relayed these sentiments to her. “I mean, thank God he didn’t see me in my underwear. That would have been so awkward.”

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