Theft

[I found this piece I'd written while packing some boxes in my closet. When Mike procrastinates, you win!]

After the breakup of '99/'00 (complete with commemorative plates, sure to go up in value), I had a series of Very Bad Dates. I didn't set out, of course, to have these Very Bad Dates. The idea Bridget came up with was something called "A Year of Dates." Nothing serious. "You're not ready for serious dating, Mike," she told me. "You're still mourning. But that doesn't mean you can't make other people take you out to places and show you a nice time. You know, movies, dinner. Maybe even a little sex if the situation seems right and the guy understands that this is Year-of-Dating sex, and doesn't mean anything."

Well, the world turned and time passed and turns out, I was only capable of going on Very Bad Dates. I tried going for Good Dates, God knows I did. And sometimes the Very Bad Dates were tricky, and started out as Almost Okay Dates. Soon, though, I'd get blindsided and the date would go horribly, horribly wrong. One in particular was with a guy my brother called Cannibal because he drove a panel van, cut hair, and wouldn't let me look in his 'frig the one night I came over.

"We need a code word," Joe Bevel said. "Something that, if you have to call for help, he won't know you're calling for help. You should use 'toast.'"

"Toast?"

"Yeah -- it's innocuous; toast never raises any alarms. And all you have to do is call and say something like, 'Hey, Joe! Make sure you don't burn the toast tomorrow morning. You know how much I hate burned toast.' And then I'll know that you're about to become a statistic or something and I'll try to send help."

"Try?"

"I'm not promising anything. Just don't take to long to give the toast call."

I never had the chance to use "toast" as a safe word -- though I'd periodically call Joe Bevel and whisper frantically "toast! toast! toast! until Joe said, "You're going to need to use that some day and I'm not going to believe you 'cause you keep fucking around with it."

And the 'frig part of the story is true. On the third date we went back to his place. He excused himself to the bathroom and I said that I'd help myself to a glass of water in the kitchen. "Do you have a pitcher in the--"

"DON'T OPEN THE 'FRIG!" he yelled, hastily zipping up his pants and running from the bathroom. I looked around for a phone to call Joe Bevel on, but we ended up not staying long and he drove me home soon afterwards.

"You got in a car with him after that?" Joe asked. "You're the reason TV movies are still being made."

Admittedly, I wasn't very discriminating about the guys I chose to go on dates with. Pretty much all someone had to do was ask and there I'd be, trapped in a crappy restaurant or trapped in a bad movie or trapped in the back seat of someone's Dodge Dart, trying to pretend that no, really, I love guys who use a lot of spit when they kiss. And stubble burn? I can't stop quivering with the sexy.

I didn't stop dating, though. I didn't even do much to try and make the dating better. Instead, I started stealing their CDs.

At some point during a date where you find yourself back at his place ("his place" ranging from a studio apartment in the city to a mobile home decorated with ceramic kittens holding balloons to his bedroom at his parents' house), he'll no doubt have to leave you alone for a few minutes to pee, maybe, or to bring back a couple of drinks, or to whatever. Sometimes guys aren't clear about why they have to leave the room. And anyway, that's no longer of concern. What's of concern is raiding the CD library.

The first CD I took was an unfortunate impulse steal. I hadn't yet honed my skills enough to not end up with R.E.M.'s Monster. The more dates I went on, though, the more comfortable I got slipping, say, a Eurythmics bootleg from the shelf and into my bag, say, or cool movie soundtracks.

"Why not porn?" my friend Bill asked. Bill was obsessed with porn and with me -- but I liked Bill and liked knowing Bill and knew that if Bill and I ever slept together that would be the end of our friendship. I explained to Bill that porn collections usually weren't as out in the open as CDs were and besides, stealing porn felt trashy. Like it was somehow more illicit than my CD kleptomania.

As I got better and better at lifting CDs, I realized the selfishness of my ways. This stealing was only really serving me, I thought, and not the greater good. I couldn't be so self-centered anymore. I had to think about people other than myself.

In a 4-month period, I disposed of 28 Backstreet Boys CDs, 6 Whitney Houston soundtracks to the film The Bodyguard, over 30 various Celine Dion recordings, 2 Bette Midler collections, and a copy of Patsy Cline's greatest hits. (Not because I hate Patsy Cline but because I didn't feel that particular guy deserved the Patsy Cline CD that he had.) Sometimes I would just leave with the CD in my bag, throwing the offending object out later. Other times, though, I would leave a different CD behind in place of the purloined one. A better CD. Some early Bonnie Raitt, maybe, or Deacon Blue or my favorite Rickie Lee Jones. I no longer thought of myself as a thief (though, to be honest, I don't know that I ever really thought of myself as a thief). Instead, I was unselfishly giving to the world -- or at least the gay world -- what it seemed to be so painfully lacking: taste.

I think I tired of the Very Bad Dates before I tired of the music-stealing. My grumpiness and general apathy while out with someone new usually kept me from being invited back to his place. Plus, I was moving to the East Coast soon, and didn't have a lot of room for extraneous CDs picked up from guys who would probably never even miss them anyway. Instead, I boxed them up and gave them to Bridget the Knitter as a going away present. I figured she would appreciate the gesture, seeing as how the previous Christmas she had given me a stocking full of shoplifted items.

I don't know if there was any sort of deep-seated psychological need I had for stealing. I don't know that I was trying to fill any loneliness or achy-ness with stolen goods. Or maybe it was that. Maybe I was so deeply unhappy that I couldn't see any way to be good at all. Mostly, though, I blame the guys and their bad taste: in the long run, it was really their fault.