“I do. Shit, between my mom and my grandma trying to set me up, it’s like I have my own personal dating service.” He sighed. “But, it’s complicated. I’m still not over Candace, plus depending on where I get accepted to biz school, I might not even be in the city next fall and then there’s the restaurant. I’m working ten, twelve hours a day there, six days a week. A girlfriend is the last thing I need right now. I want something simple.”

“Why not a woman for that?”

“Women want more,” he said, “at the least the ones I meet, and right now I can’t give them more. I like sex with guys and guys aren’t thinking that maybe I’ll propose to them somewhere down the line.” He yawned. “You ask a lot of questions.”

“I’m trying to understand you.”

“I’m not complicated.”

“I have to think about this,” I said, getting out of bed, and searching for my clothes on the floor. “I’ll get back to you.”

“I hope you don’t think yourself out of it, because this was fun.”

Later, lying awake in my own bed, I remembered a conversation I’d had with Larry when we got to step three of AA’s twelve steps.

Step three, Larry intoned, we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him. What does that mean to you, Henry? I don’t believe in God, I replied, so I don’t believe that God has a plan for me, if that’s what you’re asking. No, he snapped. I’m asking whether you can accept the distinction between what you want and what’s good for you and that left to your own devices you’re more likely to choose the first instead of the second. I’m asking whether you accept that fact that you have a deep streak of self-destructiveness in you that you need help controlling. Yeah, I replied, humbled, I can accept all that. Because? he persisted. Because I nearly drank myself to death, I said, and if I hadn’t gone to rehab and met you, I might have succeeded. Good boy, he said. Now, he continued, the bad news is that your propensity to make stupid choices isn’t limited to drinking. Any time you get yourself into a situation where you have a choice of action, and one road leads to chaos, you need to run it by me. Because you’re God, I snarked. No, he said, because I’m not you. Your ideas of what’s good for you, Henry, are mostly wrong, but you can’t see that and you’re so smart you can always rationalize your bad decisions. You need someone to call bullshit on you. That’s my job. Got it? Yes, boss, I said. Got it.