Still feeling weird. Weirder and weirder, actually. He picked me up and we saw "L_ost in Translation," which I liked a lot and he didn't like at all. He likes plots. I'm okay with that.

So we're walking away from the theater, and he has his arm around my waist. He is nuzzling my neck, and in a very sexy voice he says (right in my ear), "There are two things I want. Two things." Long pause. Long enough for me to think, "Oh, goody!" because I think he will say that I am one of the two things.

Well, no, not at all. The two things? Food and sleep.

Oh. So that was the first time I wanted to hop into a cab and cry all the way home.

We were in the touristy, expensive part of town, but I happen to know a couple of good, less-expensive restaurants there, so I steered us to one of them. All the while he was apologizing for being so tired, he felt really bad about it, he was sorry he yawned all through the movie, etc. I didn't know what to say, because I was still slightly miffed that I didn't make the list of things he wanted. Dinner was great, he was very happy about that, and then it was 11:30 and he said he'd drive me home. That was the second time I wanted to hop into cab and cry all the way home. We walked the ten or so blocks to the parking garage, with me fighting back tears and the urge to run away as fast as I could.

Finally we were in the car. I don't remember now how the subject came up, but I remember saying, "You know, it's very unfair. You know all about my most recent . . . entanglement. And I know jack about yours." And he said, "You're right. You should know about mine as well. Well, there was So-and-So, divorced with two kids. Before that, What's-her-name. Then Whoever. Then . . ." One of them broke up with him. One of them I actually met at the party; she got back together with her old boyfriend. One thought they would get married but he had no interest in marrying her, and so on. It didn't go on too terribly long, but long enough for me to feel clammy and nauseous. I could see myself appended to the end of that list. For the third time I wanted to hop into a cab and cry all the way home. Unfortunately, this would have meant hurling myself from a car traveling at approximately 45 mph on the Outer Drive.

Then he asked me if I'd dated a lot of men between my divorce and my relationship with J's father. I gave him the bullet-point version and he said something about not letting the grass grow under my feet, or some such.

Whaaaa . . . ? My list isn't that long, especially considering that it covers a ten-year period. I'm willing to bet that his ten-year list is longer than mine. So hmph.

Is it possible that my list made him just as uncomfortable as his list made me? I've been operating for a while on the assumption that men are really shape-shifting alien beings here to torment and vex womankind, so I don't know. Sometimes I think maybe I'm wrong in that assumption; maybe he envisioned himself appended to my list and started to feel cold and clammy too. It's impossible to say.

Well, whatever. The dating-history discussion is always unsettling, I think. No one likes to think of oneself as the next ex.

I'm going to allow myself a good cry now because I still (1) feel scared and insecure, not to mention cold and clammy, and (2) haven't had any relief from the PMS yet. (I'm so unhappy about that, I can't even go there.) And after that, I'll just look forward to Tuesday night. Because even after the Litanies of the Exes, we still made plans to cozy up together then. I'm taking my friend Lisa's advice to heart. When I told her that I didn't know what's supposed to happen next, she said, "Just keep seeing him, and see how long you two can keep liking each other." It sounds so easy, doesn't it?

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