I sat up. “Sold!” Architects have a certain cachet for me: They’re creative but more practical and stable than the writers and artists I usually fall for. “Hook me up.”

“Well … it’s not that easy. Because, also like you, he can be a little neurotic—”

“Me, neurotic? Why’d you say that?”

“See?” she groaned. “Anyway, I think it stands a better chance if there’s no romantic pressure and you get to know each other as friends first.”

Then I groaned. “Get to know each other? Become friends first? That’s so inefficient. So horse-and-buggy. Wasn’t Internet dating supposed to do away with that crap? You look at a picture, read the profile, do the meet-and-greet over cocktails—then you take him or leave him. Right?”

“Let me ask you: How many Internet dates have you been on?”

“Yeah, how big is the new national deficit? That many.”

“And how many have turned into a lasting relationship?”

I saw her point.

“Come cat-sit for me in a couple weeks,” she said. “And I’ll ask him to entertain you—but that’s as far as I’ll go. I refuse to bill it as a setup.”

“I don’t want another friend,” I grumbled. “I want sex.” But when the time came, I sucked it up and drove to the college town where Sylvia lives to tend her felines and have a platonic beverage with the architect.

“Frank Lloyd” came by to take me out the night I arrived, a Thursday. Opening the door, I saw a blue-eyed blond—not my usual type, but so adorable that I could be flexible. Plus, I liked his style: Euro glasses, a plaid button-down with cowboy snaps, jeans, green Pumas. Hip without trying too hard. Before he put his key in the ignition, my crush was on.

But over drinks at the bar in an old unmarked Victorian, he started telling me about a girl he’d just met—which obviously meant he had zero romantic interest in me! As if to emphasize that point, he asked if I’d be his temporary dating guru during Sylvia’s absence. Suddenly, I was grateful she hadn’t officially set us up; therefore, I hadn’t been officially rejected. Trying to be a good sport, I said to him, “Tell me everything.”

Two nights earlier, he’d gone on his first date with some Ph.D. student he’d met through Nerve personals. They ended up at her place. After a little smooching on the couch, she went into the kitchen and returned with two beers—completely naked.

I was dying to know if she’d kept her heels on. (I would have!) But I blurted out the more pressing question: “So did you guys—” I did a disco-roll with my hands. “You know. Did you?”

“Let’s just say enough happened that I feel weird about our second date. Which is tomorrow. Am I a jerk? Or a prude?”

“Neither,” I said. “Being slightly freaked is understandable. But give her another shot. First dates can be hard.”

Frank and I kept talking: trading stories about relationships, careers, our big dreams. It was more fun than I’d had in a long time, and though I was still bummed that I’d never be his babe, I was strangely excited about being his friend.

Later, I was getting out of his car when Frank asked if I could do dinner Saturday. Could it be—a date?! “Sounds great,” I said—and then I impulsively hugged him.

Without lifting his hands from the steering wheel, he gave me a deer-in-the-headlights look. “My best friend Andrew’s around,” he mumbled. “And his girlfriend’s not. We’ll all hang.”

When I met up with the guys that weekend, Frank tersely reported that date No. 2 with the Ph.D. hadn’t gone so great. Our “boys’ night out,” on the other hand, went fabulously: After tapas and sangria, we stayed up late drinking beers and listening to music. The adventure continued Sunday, with brunch in town, a drive to the country, a hike and a picnic dinner. But as much as I enjoyed it, I couldn’t help wonder what things could have been like if there’d been only two of us.

After we’d dropped Andrew off Sunday night, Frank asked if I’d like to see his place. That old line? I thought. He wants to make out!

Well, no. He wanted to show me his architect’s portfolio.

The next morning, I spent my trip home reminding myself that I never liked blonds anyway. But 24 hours later, when the blond in question e-mailed asking if I’d rabbit-sit for a pal of his so we could hang out again, I knew I did care. A lot.

On the evening I arrived for bunny duty, Frank came over to where I was staying with Thai take-out and microbrews—along with his best female friend and her sister. Both were smart and funny, but I was too distracted by disappointment to really enjoy their company.

Around midnight, the girls left. “Maybe I should take off, too,” Frank said as we watched their bumper lights disappear from the driveway.

“Whatever you want,” I said, thinking, If you’re not going to manhandle me, definitely leave—and go straight to hell.

Instead, he went into the kitchen for another drink. I followed him and flopped down cross-legged on the floor, feeling too polite to kick him out but too exhausted to make any effort. He mixed a gin and tonic and hopped up on the counter. Then, lit only by the glow of the orange moon coming in the skylight, he asked if I was seeing anyone.

Hadn’t Sylvia told him that I was—how do you say—between men? Then I realized she wouldn’t have had any reason to mention it, because she hadn’t set us up.

“Oh, I’m single,” I said. “And if I read one more online profile by a guy looking for a woman who’s ‘just as comfortable shooting pool in a dive as using chopsticks at Nobu,’ I’m going to scream. Enjoying exorbitantly expensive sushi is not exactly difficult, people! And another thing—exercise doesn’t count as an ‘interest.’ It’s like … calling flossing your teeth a hobby.” I sighed. “I think what I’m trying to say is I’m really sick of Internet dating.”

“Me, too,” he said. “The more I do it, the more I’m convinced it’s no way to meet someone.”

“Totally,” I said, undoing the strap on my stiletto.

“Sylvia’s theory is that you should get to know someone slowly. Become friends first.”

Frank took an audible breath. “I guess that’s why I haven’t kissed you yet.”

I was still fiddling with my heels when that sunk in. “Wait. What?”

“I figured if you and I became buddies first, we’d have a better shot at—at becoming something else later. What should we do?”

“Maybe we should start slowly. With a hug?”

He nodded and pushed off the counter, then helped me up. In the middle of the room, we put our arms around each other. Since I had one shoe off, I had to put my other foot on his Puma to stay balanced. And then our lips finally touched. It was worth the wait.

No, I wanted to bolt because my pseudo-boyfriend had suddenly become incarnate, and I preferred him in disembodied form: as a voice 3,000 miles away.

He’d first contacted me through a dating site, of course. When he wrote to say my smile was killer, I was flattered enough to check out his profile. Except, uh-oh: His face was pretty much hidden in his picture—a sure sign, I figured, that he was ugly, disfigured or, who knows, toothless. I was about to click away when I noticed he was in the film biz. Hmm, inter-resting. So I cavalierly broke online dating rules No. 1 and 2—Thou shalt not engage with long-distance suitors, and Thou shalt not e-mail anyone who doesn’t post a decent pic—and told Rose he could phone me, why not.

He was funny, inquisitive and sweet … so when Rose kept ringing, I broke rule No. 3—Thou shalt not engage in more than one meaningful call before meeting face to face, lest thou get invested in someone thou hast no chemistry with. And before I knew it, we’d fallen into a strange intimacy: He was calling me nightly to ask how my day had been and to talk writerly shop.

Then, suddenly, Rose was planning a trip east. Ostensibly, that was because he needed a break from La-La-Land and all the phonies there—but, as he himself said, “If we don’t at least pretend that’s the reason, we’ll put too much pressure on ourselves.”

“While we’re at it, can we say we’ll meet as friends instead of potential make-out partners?” I asked. “Even less pressure. You know.”

“Absolutely,” he said. “We’re just transcontinental pen pals finally getting together for a friendly meal.”

A couple weeks later, the fateful evening arrived. While putting on lipstick in the mirror, it occurred to me that I wasn’t feeling any butterflies—not even caterpillars—and I was forced to admit I’d never be attracted to Rose: Though I’d become attached to him because he was the only person who called daily to check on me, I’d never felt the all-important emotional spark. I’d never said to myself: This might be the person who understands me like no one else ever has, and isn’t scared or baffled or disgusted by who I really am. Rose and I had never discussed stuff that made my heart and head (and maybe one other body part) surge with excitement. With the guys I’ve fallen for in the past, on the other hand, there was always talk of our childhoods, our dreams, our heartbreaks; discussions of literature, philosophies—the biggest topics we could come up with. With those other guys, it was always the conversations that got me more than how they looked or even how they touched me.

And the reason those kinds of supernova dialogues have been so important to me is because they’ve always seemed like the most potent evidence that maybe I’m not ultimately alone in the world.

But while Rose knew plenty about my career and my daily errands, he didn’t know much about the things that really define me—not about my mother’s death when I was a kid, about my formative experiences and escapades, about how I hope I’ll write a novel that people will fall in love with.

By the same token, I’d never heard about the person who’d had the biggest impact on him, his first love or, I dunno, what’s dysfunctional about his family. We’d never read each other our favorite lines from, say, Rilke and Roethke; never talked about Susan Sontag and Edmund Wilson; and—even though he was Mr. Movie—never compared and contrasted Fellini and Fassbinder. (What the hell had we talked about, anyway?)

So … should I even bother with the date? Why put either of us through the hassle? Problem was, I wanted to hold on to the friendship because, as much as I crave those big moments of emotional connection and think that they’re all I really need or want, I’d gotten hooked on something: the mundane comfort that came from our quotidian how-was-your-day chit-chats.

So I packed myself off to the W, hoping I’d figure out a way to handle it, realizing it could be a bad scene.

After I pushed through the revolving door and greeted him, Rose kissed me on the cheek. “Wow!” he said. “You’re even better in person. Those dark eyes. And that hair!”

Freaking a little, I pointed at my head. “I told you I’m totally prematurely gray underneath, right? One-hundred-percent dye job, baby.”

I only felt more awkward when he handed me the dreaded flower. “Mind if I pull off the stem and put the head in my bag?” I asked. Without waiting for an answer, I went ahead with, uh, castrating it. He was cool about my lack of graciousness, which made me realize I should try acting like a grown-up for dinner.

But it’s never easy to be relaxed and friendly while sending the message that nothing sexual is going down. So I told an inappropriate story about a drunken hook-up. I also sent coded hints: I stopped drinking after two Sancerres; offered to split the check; said I wasn’t up for dessert or a nightcap. But then, before I told him I was ready to head home—alone—he swooped in for a kiss. “I just can’t,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I’m not into it.”

Awkwardly, civilly, he put me in a taxi. Before it pulled away, I said out the window, “I’d really like it if we could stay friends.”

The days passed without a word from him. A week later, though, when he called, I picked up. “I met someone else,” he said, “and we have our first date tonight. Maybe she’ll help me get over you.” He went on: “Question, though: Do I bring her a rose?”

I laughed. “Just bring yourself. And be yourself, because—” But I stopped before launching into any platitudinous bullshit. Because I hadn’t exactly been honest with him or myself during our cellular courtship, had I? No, I’d fooled us both into believing I was romantically interested in him because he’d been such a good palliative for my loneliness.

So I continued: “You know, this poet I like, Rilke, he says life isn’t any less painful for lovers, only they keep using each other to hide their own fates.”

“What’s that mean?”

“We all die in the end, I guess.”

“Oh. How lovely.”

“I think what I meant to say was … well, have fun tonight. I hope it works out. Call to tell me how it goes, will you?”

We’re friends again now, Rose and I, and both as lonely as ever.

But before I agreed to do it, I needed one key bit of information. Or rather, non-information. I wanted to confirm that no one I knew knew Charlie—so I could make sure the whole thing stayed on the down-low. Not that there was anything wrong with Chuck. And not that I personally thought there was anything morally offensive about a little assignation with a single guy. But I worried what other people might think, and I’d been in New York long enough by then to know how fast word got around.

Every person in the city—myself included—has an unofficial rap sheet that is maintained and updated by the old-fashioned word-of-mouth method. (Sites like Friendster and MySpace have only made the system more efficient.) Therefore, my secret encounter with Charlie could very well become public knowledge if he was in any way linked to my network—which he probably was, since everybody seems to know everybody in the circles I run in: This person’s worked with that one; what’s-her-name grew up with who’s-his-face; so-and-so went to school with such-and-such.

Take the party where I met Charlie: There must’ve been at least three or four hundred people on two floors at this thing, which was thrown by a group of 10 and held at a warehouse-esque film-production studio. Yet, despite the size, I actually thought I wouldn’t know anyone there, because none of the hosts were in publishing and all of them were seven or eight years older than I was. Plus, the guy who’d invited me was someone I knew only tangentially.

But during the course of the night, men I’d been in some way or other entangled with swam around me. There was the biologist friend-of-a-friend whom I’d blown off. (He suddenly seemed so much cuter with that hot Lebanese girlfriend in tow). There was the venture-capitalist buddy-of-an-ex whom I’d gone out with a few times, before it ended ugly. There was the magazine writer I’d met on a blind date; we tried it for a couple months, till things mutually fizzled out. Not to mention the newspaper guy I’d picked up one night at the Ear Inn on a dare, only to realize the next morning that he worked with my boss’ husband. And then I saw the freelance hack ….

Well, you get the point. But as if to drive it home, suddenly the crowd parted and a brown Afro appeared: It was Malcolm Gladwell—the New Yorker writer who wrote about the six-degrees-of-separation phenomenon—appearing like Moses to remind me of the law of urban incestuousness.

That party wasn’t unusual. And the more I realized how small my dating network was, the more I worried about my romantic résumé: the hypothetical document I was convinced would make or break me for some potential boyfriend. “Well, well,” I could imagine some scrutinizing suitor saying. “You’ve made it this far—I know you have an impressive, um, skill set. But I’m worried about your hands-on experience. You did a lot of jumping from one thing to the next. A lot of—how can I say this politely—messing around?” I’d feel the sweat forming under my pits. “Let me explain!” I’d beg, but he’d put up a hand and continue. “I also see that, on a number of occasions, you’ve drunkenly gone home with people you then failed to have any—how can I put this— follow-up with. What do you have to say for yourself?” Silence.

My batting average when it came to healthy, well-adjusted adult romances was just about zero, and trying to pretend otherwise was sure to backfire.

Of course, mine was not the only invisible laundry list of conquests, breakups and indiscretions floating around out there. In fact, maybe the thing that convinced me it was time to give up my single-girl-in-the-city high jinks (or at least try to hide them better) was an incident involving that freelance hack I mentioned briefly before. He and I would flirt when we ran into each other at media parties. But when I asked around about him, word was toxic to the point of ozone depletion. “He cheated on my college roommate with her cousin,” one person reported. An e-mail from another said: “My girlfriend’s sister dated him—till she found out he was sleeping around on her.” Someone else weighed in this way: “Bad, bad news. Dude’s a jerk, with a capital jack-ass.” All right! I’d heard enough: I’d take my business elsewhere.

But the truly shocking evidence came a few months later, after I’d forgotten about him, one late night when I was waiting impatiently for some stuff to come out of the office printer. The first documents to appear were e-mails from the Hack-Ass himself. “What happened between her and me was totally meaningless,” he’d written. “Let me make it up to you”—but that was all I had time to read, before a red-eyed co-worker appeared and plucked the pages out of my hands. He’d gotten to her too!

The whole incident disturbed me. If I could stumble across such damning proof of H.A.’s scarlet behavior, who knew what kind of embarrassing evidence might be floating around out there about me?

Although, of course, in Charlie’s case, I was the one hunting. Once I’d found that his name didn’t ring any bells with my sources, we booked my ticket.

Cut to L.A. My transplanted New York pal—we’ll call her Lucy—took me from the airport to Charlie’s, where we examined the buzzers for a second before spotting the right one. “C. Hollywood/D. Rosenberg,” it read.

“‘D. Rosenberg’?” Lucy said.

“His housemate. I think his name is David.”

“Wait. Charlie went to Harvard? And graduated like seven or eight years before us?”

I nodded.

“So did David Rosenberg,” she said.

“Wait, what? Who?”

“Josh’s older brother.” Josh was some guy who’d just gotten engaged to one of Lucy’s best friends.

“I bet that’s who lives here,” Lucy went on. “Josh’s brother David.”

“No way,” I said. “This is L.A., remember? Not New York. Besides, there’ve gotta be like three billion Rosenbergs in the world. Right?”

Then Charlie appeared. As he and I watched Lucy maneuver her Cabri out of the driveway, he grabbed my hand and kissed it. “Your housemate,” I said. “Rosenberg. First name David? Went to college with you? Brother named Josh?”

“How the hell did you know all that?” he said.

I thought about chasing down Lucy’s car. But then I decided: What the hell, I could wait another week before I started cleaning up my player portfolio. I turned and gave Charlie a smooch.

But before I agreed to do it, I needed one key bit of information. Or rather, non-information. I wanted to confirm that no one I knew knew Charlie—so I could make sure the whole thing stayed on the down-low. Not that there was anything wrong with Chuck. And not that I personally thought there was anything morally offensive about a little assignation with a single guy. But I worried what other people might think, and I’d been in New York long enough by then to know how fast word got around.

Every person in the city—myself included—has an unofficial rap sheet that is maintained and updated by the old-fashioned word-of-mouth method. (Sites like Friendster and MySpace have only made the system more efficient.) Therefore, my secret encounter with Charlie could very well become public knowledge if he was in any way linked to my network—which he probably was, since everybody seems to know everybody in the circles I run in: This person’s worked with that one; what’s-her-name grew up with who’s-his-face; so-and-so went to school with such-and-such.

Take the party where I met Charlie: There must’ve been at least three or four hundred people on two floors at this thing, which was thrown by a group of 10 and held at a warehouse-esque film-production studio. Yet, despite the size, I actually thought I wouldn’t know anyone there, because none of the hosts were in publishing and all of them were seven or eight years older than I was. Plus, the guy who’d invited me was someone I knew only tangentially.

But during the course of the night, men I’d been in some way or other entangled with swam around me. There was the biologist friend-of-a-friend whom I’d blown off. (He suddenly seemed so much cuter with that hot Lebanese girlfriend in tow). There was the venture-capitalist buddy-of-an-ex whom I’d gone out with a few times, before it ended ugly. There was the magazine writer I’d met on a blind date; we tried it for a couple months, till things mutually fizzled out. Not to mention the newspaper guy I’d picked up one night at the Ear Inn on a dare, only to realize the next morning that he worked with my boss’ husband. And then I saw the freelance hack ….

Well, you get the point. But as if to drive it home, suddenly the crowd parted and a brown Afro appeared: It was Malcolm Gladwell—the New Yorker writer who wrote about the six-degrees-of-separation phenomenon—appearing like Moses to remind me of the law of urban incestuousness.

That party wasn’t unusual. And the more I realized how small my dating network was, the more I worried about my romantic résumé: the hypothetical document I was convinced would make or break me for some potential boyfriend. “Well, well,” I could imagine some scrutinizing suitor saying. “You’ve made it this far—I know you have an impressive, um, skill set. But I’m worried about your hands-on experience. You did a lot of jumping from one thing to the next. A lot of—how can I say this politely—messing around?” I’d feel the sweat forming under my pits. “Let me explain!” I’d beg, but he’d put up a hand and continue. “I also see that, on a number of occasions, you’ve drunkenly gone home with people you then failed to have any—how can I put this—follow-up with. What do you have to say for yourself?” Silence.

My batting average when it came to healthy, well-adjusted adult romances was just about zero, and trying to pretend otherwise was sure to backfire.

Of course, mine was not the only invisible laundry list of conquests, breakups and indiscretions floating around out there. In fact, maybe the thing that convinced me it was time to give up my single-girl-in-the-city high jinks (or at least try to hide them better) was an incident involving that freelance hack I mentioned briefly before. He and I would flirt when we ran into each other at media parties. But when I asked around about him, word was toxic to the point of ozone depletion. “He cheated on my college roommate with her cousin,” one person reported. An e-mail from another said: “My girlfriend’s sister dated him—till she found out he was sleeping around on her.” Someone else weighed in this way: “Bad, bad news. Dude’s a jerk, with a capital jack-ass.” All right! I’d heard enough: I’d take my business elsewhere.

But the truly shocking evidence came a few months later, after I’d forgotten about him, one late night when I was waiting impatiently for some stuff to come out of the office printer. The first documents to appear were e-mails from the Hack-Ass himself. “What happened between her and me was totally meaningless,” he’d written. “Let me make it up to you”—but that was all I had time to read, before a red-eyed co-worker appeared and plucked the pages out of my hands. He’d gotten to her too!

The whole incident disturbed me. If I could stumble across such damning proof of H.A.’s scarlet behavior, who knew what kind of embarrassing evidence might be floating around out there about me?

Although, of course, in Charlie’s case, I was the one hunting. Once I’d found that his name didn’t ring any bells with my sources, we booked my ticket.

Cut to L.A. My transplanted New York pal—we’ll call her Lucy—took me from the airport to Charlie’s, where we examined the buzzers for a second before spotting the right one. “C. Hollywood/D. Rosenberg,” it read.

“‘D. Rosenberg’?” Lucy said.

“His housemate. I think his name is David.”

“Wait. Charlie went to Harvard? And graduated like seven or eight years before us?”

I nodded.

“So did David Rosenberg,” she said.

“Wait, what? Who?”

“Josh’s older brother.” Josh was some guy who’d just gotten engaged to one of Lucy’s best friends.

“I bet that’s who lives here,” Lucy went on. “Josh’s brother David.”

“No way,” I said. “This is L.A., remember? Not New York. Besides, there’ve gotta be like three billion Rosenbergs in the world. Right?”

Then Charlie appeared. As he and I watched Lucy maneuver her Cabri out of the driveway, he grabbed my hand and kissed it. “Your housemate,” I said. “Rosenberg. First name David? Went to college with you? Brother named Josh?”

“How the hell did you know all that?” he said.

I thought about chasing down Lucy’s car. But then I decided: What the hell, I could wait another week before I started cleaning up my player portfolio. I turned and gave Charlie a smooch.

My obsession with brainy men probably began in 1999, when I moved to Manhattan with dreams of (zippety-do-da!) becoming a novelist. But sometimes it seemed I was more dedicated to honing the art of picking up writers and other intellectuals … in the city where the brightest of them lived.

I was finally driven to swear off the type by one mental masturbator in particular—a young philosophy professor who was working on a novel himself. Smart and sexy, Phil constantly used surname adjectives: He was always describing things as Marxian, Kantian, Jungian. Being with him made me feel both Sontagian and Monroevian, until the day he announced he didn’t “believe” in fidelity. (I thought: You don’t “believe” in it. You just do it.) It was unrealistic and self-defeating, Phil said, to expect a single person to be your ultimate sexual, psychological and intellectual match. Suddenly, I felt dumb and ugly. Bridget Jonesian. I bowed out.

But I wondered: Why do I always end up with his kind? Why am I always drawn back to men who prefer a world of the mind to the real one? Do I hope their brilliance will rub off on me? Am I hooked on that nervy feeling of always waiting for the next intellectual lob? Is it because my father is a construction-working Irish immigrant who barely finished grade school, so I’ve always felt like a literary-world impostor, and I think these jokers can legitimize me?

I hadn’t come up with a satisfying answer by the time I went to Martha’s Vineyard for a July weekend, where, one night at a bar, I met a handsome Irish landscaper named Mike. We flirted near the pool table. Feeling slightly Pinoted, I squeezed his biceps.

You’re objectifying him! I heard Phil say in my head. Besides, can’t you see it’s Freudian?

A few minutes later, Mike held my hand as we walked down the moonlit cobblestone street. We went back to his place and made out a little (PG-13 style). When I ferried away the next morning, I was sure I’d never see him again.

Except that Sunday night, Mike called … just to chat. And did it again the following night. A few easy and pleasant conversations later, Mike suggested visiting me in the city for the weekend.

I balked. We barely knew each other! Besides, when I decided to aim for “anti-intellectuals,” I was thinking more about hedge-fund managers, movie execs, maybe even dentists: men who were educated—just not overeducated to the point that it infected every thought. Men who could simply make it through a meal without worrying about the Foucaultian implications of their relationships to the waiter.

But hold on a second, I told myself. Isn’t Mike exactly the kind of person you’ve been wanting? Someone who leads with his heart, not his head? Someone interested in making plans for the future? (Phil had trouble agreeing to dinner a day in advance.) Someone more interested in you than in philosophical B.S.? The anti-Phil?

So, that Friday, Mike arrived. After setting ourselves up in the posh apartment a friend had loaned me for the occasion, we headed to Wallsé in the West Village for dinner; drank too much wine; bopped over to Turks & Frogs; went home. It all felt exactly right: like the start of a romantic weekend with a guy who was clearly committed to me.

But by the next afternoon, in the bright and slightly hung-over light of day, my attraction to him did a quick fade. Mike and I had already told each other our lives’ stories, and, as we walked lazily around Central Park, I found I had nothing to say. Worse, I wasn’t the slightest bit interested in hearing from him. I actually tried to send him to the American Museum of Natural History by himself so I could have some downtime, but he was—understandably—slightly offended by my suggestion. So I agreed to go with him to a bar.

After a few, he started ranting about his parents’ divorce. Though it had happened more than 10 years earlier, the emotional wounds seemed uncomfortably fresh. “Why’d my dad do it?” Mike kept saying, rhetorically. “Why?” I wondered if there was something passive-aggressive going on: Was he expressing his anger with me indirectly by talking about how furious he was with his father?

I thought about how Phil knew exactly why his father had divorced his mother: because she was more successful than he was, and his father felt emasculated. With Phil, there had always been a tidy answer, an interesting way of talking about it. But Mike’s messy meltdown was making me feel seriously nervous. Something in me turned off completely. I’m sure he wasn’t surprised when I slept on the couch that night.

By morning, we both seemed to know the spark was gone, but to have silently agreed, nevertheless, to make our last 24 hours as polite as possible. When I suggested multiplex-hopping—in other words, being together without talking—he agreed enthusiastically.

After two big-screen movies, we stopped by the apartment to shower and change, but when we headed out for a third flick, Mike couldn’t open the apartment door. “That’s funny,” he said. “Seems to be stuck.”

We called the super, who tried opening the door from the outside: No dice. Mike attempted to jimmy the thing using a knife, while I thought, I can’t believe I’m trapped in here with him! Though at least Mike was trying to do something. Phil would have paced around quoting passages from No Exit and muttering about absurdity. Then he’d demand sex (which didn’t sound so bad at that point).

Finally, I ordered a locksmith. Not only had the weekend totally sucked, but it looked like it was going to cost me two or three hundred bucks.

I’d just hung up when Mike shouted, “I did it!”

I high-fived him giddily. We skipped the movie in favor of celebratory drinks and burgers, and Mike grabbed the check—as he’d been doing all weekend.

He’s a good guy, I thought. And you’ve been a real jerk.

Sexual tension didn’t suddenly reappear, but a camaraderie emerged: Mike told me about his ex-girlfriend, and I talked about Phil, as well as the hordes of others like him I’d been involved with.

“Why d’you date so many wankers?” Mike asked.

“Great question,” I said. “I’ve been trying to figure out the answer all summer.”

But it wasn’t till the next night, when I was delighted to be home alone—to be back to writing my novel, to be making a snow angel in my huge, clean white bed that I didn’t have to share!—that I started to wonder if maybe I was the wanker. The commitment-phobe.

Did I like writer types because they, like me, only really care about one person: their inner scribe? Did I fall for Ph.D.’s because they kept an intellectualized distance from their experiences, so that, while dating one of them, I’d never have to witness anything as psychologically unpleasant (for me) as Mike’s meltdown? Maybe that’s why I became a fiction writer in the first place. Rather than getting emotionally involved with real human beings—unpredictable, frightening, capable of betraying me—I only get wrapped up in my characters, who will never do anything I don’t make them do.

How fascinating! Needing to discuss it further, I called … Phil.

Having a lesbian affair, you ask? Nope. Nor am I a Single White Female trying to take over someone's life. I'm not a cat burglar, a dog-napper, a couch-surfer or a freak-nothing so exotic. I'm just enjoying that very Manhattan summer ritual: apartment-sitting.

I'm good at it. In fact, I've thought of making up a home-minder résumé. Competition for these jobs can be fierce-it's New York, after all-and I have top-notch qualifications. I've taken care of abodes in the West Village, Chelsea, Tribeca and Turtle Bay; off Central Park; around the corner from Barney Greengrass on the Upper West Side; and even in two D.C. neighborhoods. I've looked after multiple cats, a poodle, a mutt, a shorthaired Lab and a chocolate one. But maybe most importantly, I'm a writer with a flexible schedule and an impoverished existence-this is the only way I can take a vacation anyway.

Whenever I arrive at one of my temporary pied-à-terre, I inevitably find some kind of missive waiting for me on the kitchen counter. One included a long paragraph on the "personality" of the hound I was tending: "I began calling him Dale Peck after he, as a baby, pissed on a pile of Rick Moody novels," it started. Another note detailed essential facts about the neighborhood, like "It's worth walking the extra couple of blocks for Murray's Bagels." The laid-back friend I'm currently sitting for usually leaves this: "Have fun! Eat anything and finish the opened wine."

Anything? After solemnly noting that "Max enjoys having his belly brushed while he lays on his back and chews his rawhide," I sack the fridge. Leftover pizza, blueberries, baby carrots, poached salmon, home-made chocolate-chip cookies-but only things that would go bad before the owner's return. I guess I could replace those gourmet fat-free brownies, but what if they cost as much as a decent pedicure? What if I can't find any place that sells the same kind? What if the apartment's rightful owner realizes I ate that entire bag of blue-corn chips and thinks I'm a gluttonous pig?

And, most importantly, never asks me back!

I hiccup guiltily as Max stares at me, his tail thumping amiably on the floor.

In Raymond Carver's famous apartment-sitting short story, "Neighbors," a discontented couple's sex life perks up after the husband begins sipping from his friends' booze bottles, masturbating on their bed and trying on their clothes-including a bra and skirt.

I've never done anything as transgressive as wearing other people's undies.

But I have tried some pretty fancy beauty products. Like organic free-range egg-yolk conditioner, which was in my hair before I noticed the water-corroded price tag: almost exactly what I spend on my haircut. With tip. But it's O.K. to use that stuff-right? I think so. After all, I'm helping these apartment owners out; they couldn't possibly begrudge me a little soap or some shampoo. Still, sometimes I've wondered if I should fill the Bumble and Bumble bottles with water to hide how much I've used, like a teenager would doctor her dad's gin.

I probably crossed the line when I once squeezed someone's high-end L'Occitane hand cream on my legs (with a strange splurge of pleasure, I might add). Spritzing perfume seems downright illegal. A particularly tempting French variety sat on the bathroom vanity table of a friend, Z., who actually owns her charming Chelsea one-bedroom, which features hardwood floors and exposed brick walls. I held out against the call of that eau de toilette for five days. But by the sixth-a Friday night-I greedily grabbed Z.'s bottle and promptly dropped it on the hard tile floor. The impact smashed the dispenser.

I took that Pandora's perfume to the jeweler; he couldn't fix it. I tried to find a replacement in shops, online-anywhere! But the more I looked, the worse my fears became: The broken thing had to be exotic and expensive. I couldn't find it.

When Z. finally returned, I confessed, offering to repay her, silently imagining myself washing dishes, selling my hair, perhaps scrubbing floors, to make the money I owed. I felt like a character out of a Maupassant story. Z. laughed and told me to forget it: The stuff was some discontinued model she'd gotten for free at the magazine where she worked.

But the single most terrifying experience of my sitter existence occurred one night while I was in a video store. Before entering, I'd tied Henri-my poodle companion, who shares a lovely West Village three-room walk-up with a friend who was out west on a ski vacation-to the parking meter. I figured that since every dog owner in the city seemed to do it, it must be O.K.

(On poodles: When W. told me her dog would want to sleep with me, I thought, Not over my L'Occitane-smeared body. But by my second night with Henri, I was so in love with him-he was polite, smart, affectionate; so different from all the other men in New York; so French!-that I was soon pounding the duvet for him to jump up next to me.)

So I was considering Fellini versus Fassbinder when I saw a woman undo Henri's leash and walk off with him. I dropped the VHS boxes I was holding and bolted over the store's turnstile.

Skidding onto the sidewalk, I screamed "Fire! Fire!" (Isn't that what you're supposed to say in emergencies?) People looked at me like I was crazy. I shouted, "She's stealing my poodle!"

The vigilante halted and, after informing me that she was a friend of W., publicly scolded me. Henri was a pricey, rare breed, she said; leashing him to the meter was emphatically not allowed. Never again, I told myself as I walked away, cooing at Henri. These gigs are not worth the anxiety!

Yet here I am again-in an enormous, deliciously air-conditioned apartment in an elevator-and-doorman building-escaping from my life. Why not? I can't afford a summer place. But for a few weeks, while the Hamptons set is off enjoying their second homes, I'll enjoy mine.

And I'm sure my friend will never find out I fed the dog an extra cup of food this morning so I could sleep in.

Whenever I used to watch Da Ali G Show, I'd wonder where the hell British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, posing as a popular hip-hop talk-show host, found his credulous idiots. To me, a longtime New Yorker and therefore a reflexive blue-state snob, the answer to that question was obvious: Ali G found his dupes within the ranks of the Republican vanguard.

But was it really possible that many Middle Americans were so clueless-not only about things like tolerance, but also about one of cable's biggest stars!-that Borat Sagdiyev, the journalist from Kazakhstan, could almost effortlessly make fools out of them? The show's been out for two years.

Think, for instance, of the time Borat got the participants of that New Age dance class to smell each other's crotches-which they did without any sense of irony or absurdity. Or remember when he treated the crowd at an Arizona country-and-western bar to his outrageously anti-Semitic tune "Throw the Jew Down the Well" and, instead of tossing him out on his rear, they joined in the chorus and cheered? I occasionally found myself wondering, after an episode ended, what it might be like to live in the kind of town where Borat went to film his segments-where, perhaps, regular book burnings occurred in the town square.

Then, in September, life took me to a small city in southern Virginia. To live. People seemed to be casually, frighteningly politically incorrect. And I don't just mean the elderly couple who told friends of mine in all seriousness last fall, "We like everything you've done with your place-except that John Kerry banner in your window." I'm talking about the guy on my campus who proudly sports a T-shirt that has a red "X" over the female circle-and-cross icon (the message, I think, is "feminism prohibited"). And I once overheard two very drunk men in a bar discussing an alleged attempt by the United Nations to prevent Americans from owning guns. "They'll see what'll happen if they do it!" one of the upset parties shouted. "Towers have been known to fall!"

So I wasn't totally surprised when I got a call one Sunday morning in January from a local I'd dated. "Some crazy foreigner sang the national anthem at the rodeo Friday night," he said, "and they think it was Ali G!"

This was the rodeo that sent director Todd Phillips running for his life.

Oh, the dubious distinction of a visit from Borat! I thought. In New York, I'd shopped for fruits and vegetables in Chelsea alongside Bjork; I'd lived in the same neighborhood as Uma Thurman and Gwyneth Paltrow; I'd spent New Year's Eve a few tables away from Ed Norton. But unlike the typical Manhattan brush with stardom, living in a place where Borat had come to visit was a sign of being utterly unsophisticated.

Not surprisingly, the story was picked up by newspapers like the New York Post. But down in Virginia, no one was laughing. On the local paper's Web site, I found a breathless story that described the unidentified singer like some renegade out of the Wild West: "No one knows … who he was, that Middle Eastern man in an American flag shirt and a cowboy hat …. But he sure shook up this town before leaving in a hurry. Introduced as Boraq [sic] Sagdiyev from Kazakhstan, he was said to be an immigrant touring America [and] doing some sort of documentary …. Speaking in broken English, the mysterious man first told the decidedly pro-American crowd … that he supported the war on terrorism."

It wasn't until Saturday-a whole day later!-that the name Ali G was even raised publicly as a possibility by a local disc jockey. No one else had any idea who he was! I thought, amazed.

The paper reported that the "Kazakhstani" went on to say, "I hope you kill every man, woman and child in Iraq, down to the lizards … and may George W. Bush drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq." People booed. But the so-called Boraq continued his performance anyway, singing something he called the Kazakhstan anthem before going on to a mangled version of "The Star-Spangled Banner," which ended with the phrase "your home in the grave." That was the final straw: Event organizers herded him away. As the rodeo producer told the paper, "Had we not gotten them out of there, there would have been a riot. They loaded up the van and … screeched out of there." His wife put it more colorfully: "It's a wonder one of these cowboys didn't go out there and rope him up." Word around town had it that a lot of people thought the unmasked man was a terrorist, and some of the spectators were in a panic, worrying he'd bomb the audience. Apparently, some women and children were even crying.

I started to feel bad for my neighbors. I thought of all the kind people I've encountered around here-like the neighbor who carried my bike into my basement when he saw that UPS had left it on the curb; my sweet landlady, who sent me a birthday card and bought me a Christmas present; the post-office clerk who gave me a chocolate Easter bunny. And besides, maybe I should give the folks around here a little more credit-they booed when he talked about decimating the entire population of Iraq, after all!

Then I remembered another line from the newspaper article. One rodeo-goer said, "If he had been out there a minute longer, I think somebody would have shot him." On an HBO message board, one observer reported that the mystery singer "wanted to go back out and apoligize [sic] to the crowd and the rode [sic] manager told him he wouldnt [etc.] make it back out on the dirt without getting killed by the real american flag flying people here in VA. Ali-G Suxs." Another said he was ready to jump the wall and attack Ali G, but "lucky for Ali," the spectator was ejected by the police. That put me right back where I started: Where the hell am I living?

But another note-poster helped put things in perspective. "I was at the rodeo," he wrote. "The press is making a huge deal out of this. Most people just stood around, trying to figure out what was going on. Personally, and I may get lynched walking down the street for saying this, but the song he sang … was a riot." As far as I know, this Virginia man was not in fact lynched for liking Borat. So I feel a little better about my new home.

But more importantly, I'm very excited to see the Ali G movie. When it comes out, I can tell my friends in New York that they shot part of it in Roanoke, Va.-and I actually lived there. I'll just make sure to check it out in a Manhattan cineplex.