I found my diary from 10 yrs ago in the basement today:

Nov 4th, 1996

I met Robert at my brother’s U of T Intelligencia party. 14yrs ago he and my brother goofed about for a while and ended it abruptly. Robert stumbles into this party – I’m stoned + kinda drunk and munching out at the snacks when he enters. I will never forget it – all bluster and cyclone like. I’m enchanted.

He’s a comedian, though I have never seen him on TV. Cool outlook. His attention turns on me like car headlights and his off the cuff remark to me makes me feel like a fool. I clam up. He says I seem detached. I’m actually paranoid from the pot and I am worried I’ll say something wrong. He’s beefy. I find him very attractive. His eyes crinkle when he smiles. He’s observant: he reads me like a book. He suspects I can’t be monogamous (try me!), he thinks I’m a bottom (try me!)…he thinks…I don’t really know. He offers to have me over for a sleep over because he feels comfortable around me.

Nov 25 1996

Robert and I still date. But no sex yet. Last night, as we lay beside each other, I read to him from “Kewtee, Santa’s Helper” as he groped my crotch.

It was all in fun. I think.

I will never forget him. I remember after he left with my phone number in his pocket, I couldn’t stop talking about him. He was the kind of person I wanted to be: gregarious, funny, commanding, likable. We broke up on the steps of the community centre where he taught improv acting classes.

The first night I slept over he handed me a pair of flannel pjs and I laughed. This, however, was not a joke. He expected me in them if I wanted to sleep over. I wore them. Once. After that it was t shirt and underwear. I never found out why.

Robert had the best apartment ever. Located in a 4 storey sprawling post-war lowrise, nothing in it was created before 1960. Couches, paintings, working stereo, curtains…all of it in pristine condition. The greatest thing about the apartment was the bathroom: from floor to ceiling were articles, lobby shots, pictures, figurines of Joan Crawford. Complete with JC toilet scrub and Ajax on a shelf by itself. I thought it the most decadent bathroom ever.

He use to call me by my last name. Never by Ted. I could never win an argument with him. He was a wordsmith and a master debater.

We never had sex once in the 7 weeks we went out. Yes I was monogamous.

I saw Robert on TV last year in a PSA. He played a doctor who joyously flipped his pen as The Comforting Government Voice said that health care was in good shape.

Weirdly enough I now work steps away from his old apartment and wonder if he’s still there, living in his shrine to all things 50s.