Irresistible

Chapter 2: Dating Five Guys-1

Chapter 2: Dating Five Guys

My big mistake: telling Gloria that Miller had given me a list of five men to date. Shame on me for being honest with her.

Gloria called me every five minutes on her cellphone until I admitted to her mindful ear, “I’ll call the first one on the list to arrange a date. Will you leave me alone if I do this?”

“Oh, sweetheart. You make me sound like a villain when I’m only looking out for the best interest of your s*x life. We know your d**k needs to be touched, among other things. The list will help you out. Don’t get snooty with me because of your failed love life. Do we have an understanding?”

Of course, we did.

Shame on me again.

* * * *

Byran Carter and I met at the Pill House, an underground art gallery with highbrow philanthropists who made me feel uncomfortable. I don’t know how Miller had become friends with the multi-millionaire, Byran, but somehow, someway, he had. Truthfully speaking, Miller had spent a year hustling, working the streets of Pittsburgh for college money. I figured Byran picked him up, paid him to be a date, f****d around, and the two ended up as friends, which doesn’t always happen when it comes to s****l services rendered for hard cold cash.

The March exhibit at the gallery proved Hilda Bannerman knew exactly what she was doing with Styrofoam and acrylic paints. Hilda had created an army of naked men out of Styrofoam, geared them with plastic machine guns and military helmets, and painted their bodies with colorful boxes, teepees, coffee mugs, stars, and the word Hollywood. There were seventy pieces of art in her army, most of which she had simply titled with colors.

While walking from one piece of artwork to the next, I learned Byran had gained his wealth from a dead uncle who invented a string of computer video games in the early 1990s. The uncle had passed within the last ten years from emphysema and left Byran with seventeen-point-two million dollars, enough for the guy to play around with for years to come.

Unfortunately, my date with Bryan didn’t work out. Money sometimes caused a wealthy man to become arrogant, which Bryan clearly stated to me. Plus, he really didn’t like to take showers, a little fact I would have enjoyed learning from Miller prior to going out on the date.

In the end, we had wine at the gallery, chatted a bit, and parted ways in a polite fashion. Byran returned to his condominium with its million-dollar view of Pittsburgh, and I slinked home to my matchbox-size house, a Tudor built in 1954 with its original bathroom fixtures. Our worlds could never mix again.