style="font-size:15px;"> “Must come from working in a bank. All that repression needs an outlet.” He eyed Dan over his cigarette. “So we’re not talking about straying, then. Not if you were both feeling fulfilled. Because that is the usual downfall of relationships in this cheerless little ghetto of ours.”
“Not this time. But after a few weeks of dating, I started to get a creeping sense of disapproval from him. About little things, usually. I’d suggest doing something, but he wouldn’t answer right away. After a minute, he’d hold my suggestion up for examination and revise it. The time we would meet or the movie I suggested. As though I couldn’t be trusted to make the right decisions.”
“Of course not. He’s a project manager. He’d taken you on as a project. You had to be corrected and revised. That was his role. Not a bad idea in concept, but in reality you can’t project-manage your boyfriends. They just don’t co-operate.”
“True.”
“How about environment? What was his home like?”
“Big condo in the sky. Pricey. Lots of décor elements.”
“Like mine?”
“No, yours is artistic.”
“Ah!”
“His was fussy. Lots of art reproductions on the walls — nothing original. Oh, yeah — and artificial flowers in tall vases.”
Donny shivered. “The kiss of death.”
“He said they were expensive.”
“No doubt he said it many times, since you probably didn’t look impressed enough when he pointed them out the first time. That sort’s always impressed with price tags.”
Dan laughed. “True. He kept fishing for compliments every time I came over. He’d show me the latest cherry blossom branch or whatever it was. I’d tell him they were nice, but not my thing.”
“Which of course pissed him off.”
“If it did, he didn’t show it. Well, maybe he did. He showed up at my place once with a big pink-and-white branch covered in blossoms. Silk, I think. He spent half an hour filling a vase with shiny balls and arranging the leaves till it dominated my living room from the fireplace mantel. I didn’t know how to say I didn’t like it.”
“And now you don’t have to.”
Dan smiled. “When we broke up, he asked for it back.”
Donny’s face was pure outrage. “You’re kidding! Did you give it to him?”
“I said if he wanted it he’d have to come over and get it. He accused me of acting like I was in high school.”
“He asked you to return a gift and he called you high school? Sheesh! How did you last an entire month with this idiot?”
“I smiled a lot. Mostly during sex.”
“What did he think of your profession? Did he like dating a missing-persons investigator? Because it sounds like there was a lot missing in his life.”
“I told him what I did when we met. He was impressed that I was my own boss. He seemed to think that being a private investigator implied power. Nothing like the reality, of course. Then I mentioned how hard I work for how little I make, and he pulled back. He said it was too bad I wasn’t a success.”
Donny slapped a hand against his thigh.
“He actually said that?”
Dan nodded. “He wasn’t very subtle.”
“I’m shocked.” Donny checked himself. “But of course he would think that way. He works in a bank where success is measured in money. And you still went back for a second date?”
“I thought I could reform him. Besides, I was hot for him. We’d already agreed not to sleep together on the first night.”
Donny rolled his eyes. “How quaint. But it just goes to show, that’s how these relationships take root. If you’d slept with him on the first night, you’d remember how rude he was to you the next morning, then punch him in the nose and leave.”
Dan laughed again. “Probably. Even though I was insulted by his comments, I was dazzled by the sex when we finally got around to it. I got completely hooked.”
Donny frowned.
“Which proves you’re a relationship junkie with sex addiction issues. If you’d just fuck them and toss them aside, you’d waste far less time and get hurt less often.”
“Yeah, well …”
Donny shrugged. “Of course, perhaps I’m being too brutal.”
“I really thought it would last. We had things in common. He had an abusive father, too.”
“Not exactly the kind of thing you want to bond over.”
“No, but it helps to understand the psychology.”
The teacher sighed, impatient with the folly of his student.
“You already understand the psychology. I’ve pointed it out to you many times. You fall for emotionally damaged men who were psychologically wounded by their fathers when they were children. Case closed.”
“But I need to get close to figure that out.”
“And once you get close, do you like them more for it?”
Dan thought this over.
“No.”
“You see? That’s why I say relationships are dangerous. They lure you down into the deep end and leave you stranded.”
“True.”
“But that’s only part of the picture.” Donny looked over his shoulder at a wall clock. The skyline seemed to have lost its allure. “The other part is that you’re positively cloistered. You live like a monk. You’ll never meet anybody staying at home. When was the last time you went out and had a bit of fun?”
“I can’t recall.”
“Does Ked let you do this?”
“I don’t think he notices. He’s too busy dating. Apparently he’s becoming popular with the ladies. Besides, you know kids.”
Donny did, indeed, know kids. Dan could vouch for that. Donny had taken on a temporary, support-a-kid project the previous year when Dan roped him into helping out with a stray he was trying to get off the streets. Lester, a lost boy from Oshawa, was a gay outcast on the run from his abusive parents. The rebellious teenager proved to be just what it took to turn Donny into a respectable parent. Donny and Dan were now on equal footing as fathers, although Donny’s transition had been “without all the messy stuff,” as he liked to put it.
The relationship had transformed Donny from a man at odds with himself to
