Oh...Rhett

Last night I thought of someone I haven't thought of in years.

Last week, I had spoken to one of my close friends on the phone about my recent break up. She was telling me that her and her boyfriend were trying to think of people they knew that I might like. She found it hard because she realized, even having had met some of my previous boyfriends, and knowing my most recent well, and knowing me very well, it was hard for her to put together what my "type" might be.

I agreed with her, that I don't even know what my type is. Every person I have dated has been extremely different from the last. One pretty interesting person I liked was this guy I had met, Rhett.

It was my freshman year in college, and I was spending a lot of time at Esperanto Cafe in the west village. It was open 24 hours, so it was a great place to go to get out of my dorm room and read and/or study. After a while, I had met friends there that were regulars that I would hang out with on occasion.

One night, I met Rhett. Or rather, I forced Rhett to meet me. I was drinking tea and reading, and I noticed Rhett sitting at a table across from mine. I thought he was cute and he was there doing the same thing I was doing, so I thought I would introduce myself. (ahh...the confidence of youth).

Rhett and I ended up talking all night. I definitly saw red flags that I, of course, ignored. One of the biggest ones was that he carried around a journal that he would write the names of people he met and he would put some notes in about what they did (or in my case that I was a student, studing art history at NYU and wanted to become either an art lawyer or work my way up to me a museum director). He didn't ask for my phone number or email for his journal. When I asked what the journal was for, he said that networking is very important, and you never know when you will need to contact someone.

He was in law school at the time. He was in his early 30s or late 20s. In college, he had majored in 10 different subjects. He was from Georgia. He was smart and very interesting.

After that first meeting, we ended up seeing eachother a lot in the coffee shop and occasionally he or I would call arranging to meet up. One night, I realized that I hadnt read "Twilight of the Idols" and that I was going to have a test on it the following day.

He and I stayed up all night until about 7am with me and not only explained the entire book, he explained all others books by Neitzsche in detail. This was another red flag. Not that he was smart, but that he was crazy smart. He would talk to me about things that I was interested in, however when he would explain something and drop a name in like Joe Fitsimmons, I'd nod through it (seeing how it was someone that was NOT relevant to the story) and immediately he's stop and say "Do you know who that is?", caught, I'd say "No, but I didn't want to stop you" and he's say something along the lines of "Joe Fitsimmons is the brother of the cousin of this supreme court justice. I can't believe you didn't know that...what are they teaching you in school"? My response was a big smile to which he would role his eyes. (FYI- my answer now would be "How is that relevant?" or something like "look at you cool guy"....actually, I'd probably just still smile.)

One night we kissed.

Part 2 coming soon.... (I don't know why but I have actually been busy and this story has literally taken me days to write...)