a woman friend of theirs. After that, Burgess didn’t date for almost five years, and was just starting to date casually when he was invited to a New Year’s Eve party. He didn’t particularly want to go, but at 10 p.m. got himself dressed and went. Dan had been invited to the same party. Also being single and, like Burgess, casually dating someone, Dan hadn’t really felt like going either, but decided that he would go, help the host, and leave early. The moment Burgess walked in, Dan says that he saw him across the room and remembers thinking, “This is a man I’d want to settle in and spend the rest of my life with.” Burgess remembers also spotting Dan across the room and thinking him attractive, but not really being interested since Dan was not young, hot, dark, and Cuban, the type Burgess was usually attracted to. However, they did get to talking and didn’t stop the whole evening. After the party they went out to a coffee shop and continued to talk until three in the morning. They talked about the guys they’d begun to date, about their problems, and about life, with no discussion of their dating or anything like that, but just as new friends.
Over the course of the next six months, they became fast friends. Sporadically, they would spend a lot of time with each other, talking, doing things together, having meals, and in time they grew to be really close friends, still not making the move toward becoming more. Then one day, as Burgess tells it, Dan called him and said, “I’d like to cook for you.” Now Dan is a wonderful cook, so Burgess immediately accepted. They decided they would have a picnic by the sea, and during the course of the meal, as the sun set over the ocean, Burgess noticed that Dan had taken his hand. Dan proceeded to tell him that he couldn’t hold out much longer and that he hadn’t wanted to push or rush him, but he’d been in love with him and extremely attracted to him since the night they’d met. Burgess was taken by surprise and hadn’t really allowed himself to think that way, but he and Dan went back to Dan’s house and made love, and have been together ever since, which is over thirty years now. And Burgess tells me their lovemaking and their closeness are as fresh and new as they were all those years ago.
Ervin Drake, world-renowned songwriter of such hits as “I Believe” and the Broadway musical Golden Boy, was nineteen when he met the love of his life, who was sixteen. At the time, Ervin was a starving songwriter who was having a lot of trouble finding success. The love of his life came from a well-to-do, socially prominent family. Though they were madly in love, she was concerned about settling down with him, so she broke up with him to play the field. Ervin was devastated to the point of contemplating suicide. So devastated in fact, that he wrote the scathing song “Good Morning Heartache,” which became his first big hit.
Ervin and the love of his life each went on to marry other people. Coincidentally, they both ended up living in Great Neck, Long Island. After twenty-five years, Ervin’s wife died. Around the same time, the love of his life’s husband also died. Hearing about Ervin’s wife’s death, she called to console him and they arranged to meet for dinner. Right then and there they realized that they’d always been soulmates. They got married very soon after, and stayed married for the rest of their lives. So her breaking up with Ervin handed him his career, and they ended up together in the end.
Linda, an aspiring young actress just out of college, had been dating a Hollywood celebrity for four years and had thought that this was the man she would be with for the rest of her life. However, as it gradually began to dawn on her that her boyfriend was unable to be faithful to one woman, she reluctantly realized that she had to end the relationship.
On the day she moved out, she arrived at her new house to find a dog sitting in her driveway. The dog had no collar and no tags, so she went into the house and left it outside, figuring it would go away.
As soon as she went into the house, the dog came up onto the porch, jumped up on a table, curled up, and went to sleep. (She realized later that the dog was sleeping on the table so it could look into the house and see her.)
Day after day, the dog would be parked in front of her house, and night after night, the dog would sleep on the porch. Finally, Linda decided to take the dog in. She named him Charlie.
Linda took Charlie to the vet to have him checked out, and discovered, to her dismay, that Charlie had a serious heart condition. “I’m afraid this dog has about three days to live.” was the vet’s prognosis. “We can try and give him medication, but I don’t think it will help.”
Linda had no money at the time (she was basically subsisting on small fees she would receive from acting jobs here and there) and could not afford the medication. The vet, seeing her upset, offered to give Charlie the treatment and medication for free if Linda would allow the vet to use the dog for a research project after its death.
She took Charlie home, and Charlie lived healthily for three more years! During that time, Linda and Charlie were inseparable. She got a job doing presentations for an advertising company, and Charlie, who was never on a leash but would follow her everywhere, would actually go on stage with her and sit by her for all the presentations.
Linda began dating someone else, but not particularly seriously, because she felt so burnt by her previous relationship. She also befriended a man at work named Bob. They worked side by side constantly and had a wonderful collaborative friendship, but there was no thought of anything more. They were just friends who liked each other a lot and worked well together.
As time went on, Bob began to be interested in Linda as someone he could like as more than just a friend, but because Linda was seeing someone else, Bob felt that nothing could happen between them.
One day, Linda and Bob had a serious problem with their boss. They had done a presentation and the boss was dissatisfied and became unreasonably enraged. On the bus ride back to the office, the boss was screaming at Bob, berating him publicly and threatening to fire him.
When they got back to the office, Bob went to a restaurant next door to try and cool off. Linda found herself waiting around for Bob to make sure he was alright. Finally, she went into the restaurant and they decided to go to a different restaurant and have dinner. During that dinner, as they talked and talked and talked, they both had an unspoken realization that something had changed between them and that something romantic seemed to be in the air.
A few days later, Bob decided to take the chance and asked Linda out on a date. He took her to dinner and to see Beatlemania, and then took her home. He couldn’t come in though, because he was highly allergic to dogs and Linda still had Charlie. But he kissed her goodnight, and Linda reports that after that one kiss, she closed the door, slid down to the floor and thought, “My God. This is the one.”
But still reeling from her four-year relationship-gone-wrong, and seeing her relationship with the man she was presently dating falling away, Linda was reluctant to get involved, so she held Bob at bay. She told Bob that she didn’t want to get serious, and anyway, she had a dog and Bob was allergic to dogs. Basically, out of fear, she used Charlie as an excuse to not get closer.
Bob responded by saying he understood and they should remain just friends.
And then . . . Charlie died.
A few days later, Linda and Bob were working late in the office and were the only ones left. Bob asked Linda if she would like to grab some Chinese food, making sure to emphasize that this was not a date, just dinner between two friends. Linda accepted the
