I somehow found myself at a Christmas formal for the MassGen hospital’s cardiac unit, surrounded by shiny-haired couples wearing red ties and black velvet. Nat King Cole crooned from behind sparkling trees, and somewhere, someone made an inside joke involving prosthetic limbs.

“How do I wind up in these fancy things,” I thought to myself, poking at the salmon. I’d worn a dress that had been a big hit at the latest public radio party I’d gone to, but which seemed strangely out of place in my current location. I felt kind of like a twelve-year-old spy.

Meanwhile, my former roommate was fending off questions about her sexuality. “That’s what you get!” her boss laughed, “for bringing her as a date!”

A few weeks ago, Geoff and I decided to meet up at a bar after work to catch up on one another’s lives. Neither of us go to bars very often: I can count on one finger the previous times I’d gone to a bar before 9pm, and neither of us are real drinkers, but the concept struck us as “grown up”. We decided on Toad, a bar that is, for me, notorious for squeezing far too many people into far too small a space to play far too loud a gig.

“Holy crow!” I cried as we peeked in the window. “It’s completely empty in there!” Two men sat at opposite ends of the bar, reading newspapers. The bartender was lazily polishing a glass. We wandered inside as if we were entering the Bermuda Triangle, hesitantly ordering drinks and then . . . we sat down at a table. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten a table at Toad before. It doesn’t take too many customers to create this problem: there’s probably a grand total of four two-person tables in the place.

“So!” Geoff said, squeaking in his chair. “How are ya, Addy.”

He is the only person in the world who I let call me Addy. It’s a remnant from our very brief dating career, before I felt comfortable enough to be honest with him. It’s funny, the secrets we can choose to keep: to this day I haven’t told him that I prefer to be called by my full name (because it’s my name, and I like it) but a little over a month into our dating I felt comfortable enough to tell him that our relationship was “fun and all” but it wasn’t “going anywhere.” We were in the car and he started talking about getting serious. “Look,” I said, “here’s the thing: you’re always going to be number two for me. I like this other guy a lot. More than you.”