A few years ago I dated a guy named Darryn who always drank when we hung out. I started to worry that he couldn't be with me sober. But it turned out he just couldn't be sober, period. It’s not that I’m anti-drunkenness. I’d feel differently if we were toasting together. But that was the problem; I think he offered me a drink twice during the time we saw each other, and he was sober when we met up for a night out on maybe one occasion—on that occasion, our first stop was the liquor store.

I met him at a poetry reading. He wrote beautifully. Hideous stuff. In his books, there was always a naked doll with a missing head, or a woman with big thighs wearing spandex at the laundromat. I took him home that night. The next day, we had breakfast at Acapulco, and I drove him back home to his warehouse loft in Downtown Los Angeles. He ran upstairs and got me a copy of one of his books, and a book by another author that he thought I’d like. I took this as a good sign, as you don’t lend things to people you never want to see again.

He didn't drive a car, so I would go and pick him up to take him to readings, to dinner, whatever. I didn’t mind, because hearing him read, and watching him write, felt like a privilege to me. When we talked on the phone, he’d sound together. We’d make plans to go out, and by the time I got to the other side of the 4th Street bridge and to his door, he’d be smashed.

He lived in a warehouse in the toy district. During the day the door to his building was almost indistinguishable, for all the dolls, plastic rifles, and various licensed merchandise hanging from awnings and walls in surrounding shops. But at night, it was a frightening ghost town, with vagrants and other nocturnal types hanging around and making me uneasy as I waited for him to come downstairs to let me in. His huge loft had three floor-to ceiling windows that looked out over downtown. You could see The Million Dollar Hotel from the roof, where there was a greenhouse, and a picnic table we used to sit at to smoke cigarettes. He was obsessed with the Beach Boys. I mean, he gave me like a dissertation on Smile. In his place, he had built raised areas to distinguish different spaces, and a loft bed with a ladder. I remember one of the first times we got together, sitting on the sofa on this platform, and it felt like a stage. He took off my shoes and asked if anyone had ever sucked my toes. We had a very close afternoon, it’s the nicest memory I have of being with him.

I don’t know what else it was I liked so much about him. He had gorgeous blonde corkscrew curls. Sort of long, just long enough to fall over on themselves instead of standing up. He was a teacher. Hard to imagine him, not wasted, interacting with other people in a coherent way. But he did display an inexplicably manic enthusiasm for some things, and at those moments he always spoke with clarity and zeal. He loved music. He had turntables and would DJ from time to time. Watching him spin records was less interesting to me than hearing him hash something out as he wrote it, but he loved having an audience, so I obliged. His dad was a wizard, or so he said, and he told me lots of interesting stories about learning witchcraft from him that I never really believed completely, but enjoyed hearing nonetheless. I’ll admit I started being more careful of my hair lying around.

He started drinking more frequently, and more heavily. Where he used to have wine or beer at the place before we left, he started drinking hard stuff before we went out, and would take a flask or a beer in the car to have when we got where we were going. I lost interest after one particularly embarrassing night out at a poetry reading in Chinatown. Darryn took this boom box everywhere, and wore loose pants, and no underwear. He was walking down the alley blasting Pet Sounds, with a beer in one hand (totally illegal, how charming) and the other hand was holding his boom box on one shoulder.

His pants started to sag, and with each step he took they wiggled a little lower. I was disgusted. He was fit, so it wasn't like gross because he had a beer belly. It was gross because he was a drunk slob. I was watching this happening, wondering when he would notice. Some pretty girls walked past us, dressed for a night on the town, probably headed to that bar with the line out the door. They looked over at him and laughed, because his pants had sagged halfway down his ass at that point, and if he kept going, he’d be indecently exposed to everyone outside of Hop Louie’s. I was mortified. And that’s saying a lot, considering I used to hang out with people who hijacked scooters for the handicapped at supermarkets and rode them up and down the aisles. He must’ve felt a breeze, because he finally looked down and said, “Uh-oh.” He stood perfectly still while assessing the situation. He tried hooking a belt-loop with one finger from his beer hand and pulling. When that didn’t work, he put the can of beer between his chin and chest, and pulled up one side of the pants, which fell right back down.

“Here,” I said, taking the beer and putting it down. He stood with his hands away from his body as I took the waist of his pants and pulled it up, then folded it over once so it would stay until we got to the car.

I didn’t say much to him on the way home, and when he invited me up I politely refused. I had already told him that it bothered me when he was too wasted to carry a conversation. I don’t know what made him think he’d be able to do anything remotely resembling the sex act, let alone in a way satisfying to me.

He started calling me and asking to borrow money. At the time, I was a student, and worked only part time at an elementary school as a teacher’s aide. It baffled me that he could even be so shameless. I told him no. He said that if I tried calling him and couldn’t get through, not to be surprised, because if I didn’t lend him some cash, he wouldn’t be able to pay his phone bill.

“That’s a shame,” I said, “but I’m just not comfortable with it.” This was extremely hard for me. Saying no has always been a challenge, because I don’t want to give someone a reason to not like me. I believed that if I just gave them everything they asked for, they’d be happy, and love me. In this case, it was made easier by the fact that I didn’t want Darryn to love me anymore. He stopped contacting me after that.

After months of not hearing from him, I received an unusual email asking me when I was normally home, and then a call. He sounded very flat, but totally coherent.

“I just wanted to tell you I’m really sorry for treating you the way I did, and I’m sorry if anything I did hurt you.”

“Um, okay. Thanks, I guess. It made me feel bad that you had to be drunk to be with me. I appreciate your apology.”

“It wasn’t you. I was in a really bad place.”

“No worries.”

“Well, that’s all I really wanted to say, I won’t take up any of your time.”

And that was it. He must have been going through a program. I love that even his apology was self-serving, and had less to do with making me feel better than achieving his goal.