I ran into this guy on Friday night that I dated for a month, when I lived in DC right after I got out of college.

I was living in this really sketchy building, a shithole hippie rowhouse over in the Columbia section. There were a bunch of people who had gone to UMCP living there, and they were all into the house being a co-op, so we had to put in money for their food, whether we wanted to or not. For the first month or so I lived there, everyone just like, got stoned, and ate all this hippie food all the time and sat around the kitchen. After the first month, everyone hated each other because there was a big pile of dishes, and no one would do them, so we all stopped going into the kitchen.

Also there were two hot Eurotrash bar worker brothers who lived in the basement who were always trying to get me to hang out with them, and even though I thought they were cute, I wouldn't go down there because they lived in the basement and everyone knows: bad things happen in the basement. Every couple of months a new insane, pathological liar would move in to the house (there was room for eight there as I recall), charge up a major phone bill, refuse to pay rent, have a major psychotic scene (usually involving some sort of conspiracy theory against them), and then move out and leave all their totally useless crap behind. Their parents were always calling and looking for them after they had left, panicked and in tears. That's when you would learn what their real name was.

It was this formerly nice four-story building that had fallen to pot (beat-up floors, ripped wallpaper, everything old and rusting) because of an absentee landlord who lived somewhere down south. There were only two people in the house who knew the address of the landlord, which was where you mailed the rent check, so they were sort of in charge and you had to be nice to them, even if you didn't feel like it. They were an organic farmer couple who traveled 45 minutes every day to go to work, and would have to leave before dawn every day. They were insane. Everyone was.

I was, too. My bedroom had a hole in the middle of it. I shit you not. And I had like, a mattress on the floor, and that was it. I could hear gunshots every night, and I am not exaggerating. There was a crackhouse across the street and I used to sit on my front stoop and smoke cigarettes, and watch the crackwhores cackle at each other. From where I sat I could see an empty living room, identical in shape to ours, with a big, worn, framed painting of MLK hanging over the bricked up fireplace.

Rent? $180. Cheapest ever.

I needed it, because I was temping like, two days a week, and then I'd call in sick for the rest of the job. The temp agency would still give me work though, even though I was unreliable, because I had a college degree, and there was tons of shitty temp work in DC. I had this whole psychosomatic thing at the time where I thought these jobs were making me sick, and I would feel like puking every morning, and then I would call in sick to the agency, and then I wouldn't feel sick anymore. Like, the minute I hung up the phone, I was fine. I started waiting tables at a pool hall, and then I never got sick again. Temping is evil. We know that.

Anyway, somewhere in there I met this guys who lived around the corner from me, Brendan, and his roommate, name forgotten. Brendan was super tall and had long red hair and he was a poet, who was going to grad school in Indiana in the fall. His roommate was short, sort of cute, and apparently became some sort of drug addict. For some reason I think maybe he was snorting heroin. I can't remember why I thought that. But he was charming nonetheless. Post-college drug addicts fuckups are usually charming for the first year. Remember Rob Lowe and Demi Moore in St. Elmo's Fire? Everyone loved them.

Brendan and I hooked up a couple of times. I thought he was kind of perfect, and then... he wasn't very nice to me. He wasn't awful, but he wasn't a gentleman, let's put it that way. He wasn't the worst ever, but it left a bad taste in the mouth that I am only just figuring out now.

I ran into him once in New York, maybe four years ago, at 7B. He had gotten his MFA and was working in prisons, teaching writing to prisoners I think. I was drunk, and with friends, and he ended up hanging out with us. At the time, I didn't remember that he was mean to me, just that we had some funky background together. I think I invited him to a party I was having and he never came. Also once I ran into him in Soho, maybe a year later, but we didn't talk very long because I was having coffee with someone. Again, I didn't remember the specifics of our relationship. Perhaps I was blocking it out.

So, last Friday, I leave Alli and her friends and walk down Ave B (again on B we meet), go into a deli because I can (because there are no delis open late night in this neighborhood, at least not one that is reasonably close to my house), and then continue to walk South toward Delancey, in search of a cab. We stand next to each other on the corner, and I sort of notice someone looking at me, but I blow it off, because he's got long hair, and I'm really not that attracted to guys with long hair these days. (Fucking hippies.) Then he passes me, doubles back, and then stops me.

Of course I remember him, when faced with it all. Instantly. Only this time the whole story comes back to me. We made the polite 31-year-old conversation, jobs (he's teaching in Westchester), apartments (West Village), etc., and then I sort of feel like he's checking me out or something, it was weird, so it just tumbles out right there on the street corner, like someone slipping on ice: "You and I slept together once."

And he says - and god, I can't even believe he said this - with bravado, "We slept together more than once. You need to check your memory."

The funny part is, by "once" I didn't mean, "one time", I just meant "at one time we were sleeping together." But I just sort of went with it, the insane ego of this man flaring. It was too cold to explain.

"Whatever. You weren't very nice to me," I said. And I didn't say it in this bitchy way at all. I just said it straight up, because I was looking right at him, with wide, open eyes, and I was remembering.

This stopped him. He could remember the fact that we slept together more than once, but he couldn't remember his behavior. I saw the wheels turn. And then he remembered. He softened.

"We all go through phases in our lives where we behave differently. We change, we grow. "

And there was no apology, no need for it. I'm sure there are plenty of guys (well, three that I can think of) just waiting to run into me and tell me I shafted them.

I just wanted him to remember, that's all. Because I'm never going to forget.

We shook hands, and I walked off and hailed a cab. I felt so light all of a sudden. I had no idea I needed that.

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