Continuing on from Part I of his Talking About That One Relationship series, in this second installment Jimmy Yitzak discusses those initial, sometimes uncertain moments…

“Let’s go back to your place,” he said. Now, I’m not prude. I normally don’t have any problem bringing someone home after the first date but I wanted this to mean something, to be special. My brain was screaming NO. In fact, I said no. He persisted. He asked again and I brushed it off like it was a joke. “Look we’re obviously going to see each other again, why don’t we wait?”

“Come on, let’s go back to your place”, he continued. “I’m not taking you home with me,” I said with a slight chuckle, but I was also blushing. He asked again and I finally relented. We went back to my place and made out some more. We didn’t have sex but there was a lot of touch. We both got a lay of the land and his land seemed mighty fine.

He woke up really early the next morning so he could get to his very creative job creating things. I had my day job to help pay the bills when I didn’t have any acting work. I worked in customer service over the phone and it sucked. Whatever, I got free tickets to Broadway shows. I was on cloud nine and slightly hungover on the way to work the next day. We texted each other all day. He wanted to meet that night again. I told him I had plans, which was true, but that we should meet another night that week. I was having dinner with a friend and we were going to see a show.

He said he really wanted to see me again and when I told him I couldn’t tonight he said, “Well, I guess you’re not that interested.” There was one part of my brain that said, “Now hold on a second, I have a life and a schedule. I don’t know you that well and I can’t just drop everything to see someone that I don’t know.” I didn’t listen to that voice. I listened to the one that said, “Someone likes you a lot and is giving you attention. Go for it.” I told him I could meet him for one drink after the show. He must know that I’m interested now.

We met up after the show. Went to the same bar. I didn’t drink as much as I did on the first date. I had to keep my wits about me. We had another great date and he ended up coming come with me again. More touching but no fucking. I was really weird about fucking… either topping or bottoming. Frankly, I wasn’t that experienced with either and wanted to do it with someone I was in a relationship with. We continued on like this. We were dating. We talked constantly and we saw each other a lot. We were definitely dating.

I opened up about a lot to the guy I had started dating. My family, my dreams even my sexual fetishes which up until that point I had told no one about. He didn’t seem very pleased when I told him that. In fact he would later tell me that he almost ended it there. See the thing about fetishes is you don’t force them on people. He was definitely not receptive to it so I told him we didn’t have to do anything and I never brought it up again.

After about a month and a half of dating, I wondered if we were in a relationship. Was he my boyfriend? I wasn’t seeing anyone else. I hadn’t been back on Match.com since our first date. There didn’t seem a need to. I spent most of my free time with him. We went to brunches; I took him to the theatre, he took me art exhibitions. All this non-theatre cultural stuff that I had always wanted to do but never got around to it.

Anyway, I decided to ask him what he thought about us being boyfriends. “I don’t really like labels and I’m not really ready,” he replied. Ok, ok, I get it. I get into things quickly sometimes. We haven’t been dating that long. I did, however, ask him if he was looking for a relationship and he said yes, he was, but that he had gotten out of a bad one not too long ago. FUCK… baggage! Patrick Marber has a great quote in his play Closer about men and baggage… “They have none. Then… just as you’re relaxing… a Great Big Juggernaut arrives… with their baggage. It Got Held Up…”

Ok. Again, still early on. He said that he was over that relationship and ready to start anew. My mind was put at ease. I would bring this up again in couple months and would get the same answer. I began to think that maybe we were boyfriends but that we didn’t need the labels. I was pretty secure that he wasn’t seeing anyone else, without actually asking him. There was no shadiness going on. This sense of security only got stronger after he invited me over to his brother’s place to meet his brother and his fiancée.

It got even stronger than that after I was invited for dinner at his brother’s place again only to find out that I would be meeting his other brother and fiancée and his mother. This was big. Meeting a parent. She was in town for a few days and he wanted me to meet her. That means something! That night went great. I knew it went great the next day when all of us met for drinks again in midtown. My guy was taking his family to see a new musical on Broadway. I had already seen it (free tickets, remember) and didn’t want to intrude on a family outing. I was walking the whole group to the theatre when his mom walked up next to me and said, “He seems to really like you.”

To be continued…