being right can make U feel worse, not better . . . Friday night the phone rang . . . the timing could not have been better, or worse, depending on your perspective . . . that very afternoon i had taken an "affidavit of fraudulent use" of my credit card to be notarized . . . in fact, the guy to whom i had reported its loss had been wrong about the computer records . . . a careful look at the statement revealed that whoever stole it had been using it in Manhattan, not Brooklyn, increasing my suspicion that the Lonely Surfer had sticky fingers . . . but who knew he was stupid, too?

hey growled the unfamiliar voice . . . who is this? i asked . . . your friend from the park. are u coming tonight? . . . which friend? i persisted even though i now recognized the Lonely Surfer's New Jersey accent . . . how many friends do ya got in the park? . . . more than u know, buddy . . . how did u get my phone number? i demanded . . . u gave it to me . . . but i knew i hadn't and that he couldn't recall my first name the last time we had sex . . . i remember what street u live on he protested when i refused to remind him . . . then just call me 88 i had teased.

i called him a lot worse on the phone which probably wasn't the smartest thing to do . . . he denied stealing my wallet of course . . . i'm not a thief . . . but i didn't stay on the line long enough to argue the point with him . . . guilty way beyond a shadow of a doubt, he got my name and address from the ID in my wallet and looked me up in the phone book . . . he probably hoped the trail had gone cold in my mind after nearly three weeks and that i would invite him up to my place on a chilly, cloudy Friday night for some more of the overheated sex we'd been having.

so now what? . . . it's better knowing who victimized U but my options are limited . . . uh, u see officer, this guy pick pocketed me while we were having anonymous sex in the park. i know this because theft is the only way he could have gotten my phone number. can u help me? . . . that scenario just ain't gonna fly, even under the less homophobic Bloomberg administration . . . maybe i should just beat the shit out of Pete (supposedly his real name). . . or not, if a cooler head prevails the next time i run into him on the bench where he stalks his prey.

more worrisome, however, is what further damage Pete can still do with all my vital information . . . like steal my identity now that he has my social security number . . . yeah that's right i was foolish enough to carry my card . . . for sentimental reasons, no less . . . who gets sentimental about their first piece of ID for Christ's sake? . . . that would be yours truly: looking at my childish signature, characterized by an inconsistent slant and big loops in the upper zone, reminded me of a more innocent time . . . did someone say therapy?

even before Pete made his blunder i freaked out upon returning to my building not long ago . . . someone had rifled thru the can where we put our recyclables . . . papers were strewn everywhere, an unusual occurrence . . . did Pete find any of my financial statements, which i routinely discard in bundles of tied up newspapers? . . . remind me if he calls again to give him my pin number and my mother's maiden name.

paranoia is a much higher price to pay for great sex half a dozen times than the loss of $200 and the aggravation of replacing the contents of my wallet . . . i wonder if Continental Airlines serves Antigua? . . . u guessed it, Pete go my frequent flier cards too.

did U ever hear of the Tom Robinson Band? . . . in the late 70s, he sang about toilet sex in Can't Keep Away: Darlington station at a quarter to four/down in the tearoom watching the wall/wait till forever for the boy next door/daylight fading and i'm hating it all/can't keep away - i can't keep away/can't keep away - I keep coming on back for more.

these lyrics were going through my head late Thursday afternoon as i sat on my favorite bench in the Ramble, this time with my new wallet, Mastercard, ATM card, temporary driver's license, etc. all safely at home . . . i barely had pulled the Circuits section of the Times out of my backpack before a tall, graceful black guy in camouflage pants began cruising me aggressively . . . when i put down the paper to indicate my interest, he lifted his shirt to play with his erect nipples . . . Hot to Trot couldn't wait to go down on me as the sun began descending over the Hudson . . . any lingering reservations i had about my compulsive behavior vanished as i played with his eager butthole.

an older black fellow with big arms walking up the hill caught a glimpse of us before we had time to stop . . . when he sat down at the end of the bench and pulled out a cellphone from one of his pockets, a small item fell beneath the bench . . . he didn't seem to notice and the sexual tension discouraged me from saying anything as he began to roll some tobacco or marijuana . . . i hoped Hot to Trot would carry on but he didn't, not until another arrival with slicked back hair sat down on his other side . . . when he lit up a cigarette, i noticed the white patches on his hand and around his mouth but vitiligo doesn't detract much from your appeal when U are in your 20s . . . at least not until U expose your genitals but his condition, even more apparent on his cock and balls, didn't deter Hot to Trot who happily went from my dick to his and back again . . . now if vitiligo were contagious wouldn't we have seen evidence of it by now on Macauley Culkin?

Big Black Arms didn't stick around for anybody's money shot, tho it didn't take very long for Hot to Trot to bring both White and Whiter to orgasm . . . Vitiligo quickly left us alone . . . Hot to Trot got up, walked to the far end of the bench and reached down to pick something up from the ground before asking do u come here a lot? . . . he told me he was on a break from the Ballet National de Nancy et de Lorraine and wanted to know what i did for a living . . . i've been involved in the addiction field for nearly 15 years i said but i'm not addicted to anything except sex . . . he nodded in recognition . . . i don't know if it's me or my family or what but i have got to have it all the time. i like white guys with nice cocks who can come a lot.

we started talking about A Dirty Shame, the utterly stupid John Waters movie he already had seen twice, with Hot to Trot facing me on the bench . . . around this time Big Black Arms returned with another guy and briefly looked around as if he had lost something . . . didn't u pick up something from the ground there earlier? i whispered . . . Hot to Trot shook his head no and asked do they really say "progress not perfection" in Sexual Compulsives Anonymous meetings?

the loss of my wallet Sunday night and my suspicions about the Lonely Surfer rushed back in the face of Hot to Trot's denial but the association took an even stranger turn when i decided to stick around for round two . . . cue up The Twilight Zone theme: Hot to Trot mentioned he would be returning home to Antigua for the holidays . . . i couldn't believe that within a week's time i would experience property loss as both a victim and a witness in the company of two fellow sex addicts from Antigua while sitting on the same park bench in the Ramble . . . am i supposed to draw some kind of cosmic lesson from this coincidence?

lie down with dogs come up with fleas is about all i can come up with today . . . and who knew that Tom Robinson had fallen in love with a woman, gotten married and had a child?. . . maybe he's managing to stay away after all.

okay, okay i admit it . . . i've been guilty of having two contextual relationships (does this make me a bigamist?) and now it's payback time . . . for what, i'm not entirely sure, but losing your wallet on a Sunday night while U thought U were having transcendental sex definitely qualifies as karmic comeuppance in my book, especially when U discover the next morning that someone already had begun a shopping spree using your credit card.

now men in the Ramble can be very territorial about particular benches . . . i have two favorites, chosen because 1) they offer a relative degree of privacy; and 2) if somebody is managing to pay attention, U can see cops approaching and stuff any incriminating evidence back in your pants . . . so if Stogie has claimed his usual bench to light up and jerk off, i'll try the other one at the top of the hill overlooking the peninsula where i first met Silent Movie Villain.

more often than not, late on warm weekday evenings, the Lonely Surfer will be sitting there in his Billabong or Quiksilver board shorts with a Southampton baseball cap covering his long blond hair . . . in the dark he looks like he could be in his 20s but even when U get close enough to discover that he's a Baby Boomer U tend to stick around because of his big, thick dick. . . we did it once long ago, during the Guiliani administration, before he disappeared for a couple of years . . . although our 69 session had been hot and more than a little foolhardy because neither of us could play lookout, i kept my distance when he began hogging the bench again . . . something about him has always seemed just a little off like the way he sits with his arms folded tightly across his chest . . . and maybe because he always carries an oversize, stuffed backpack, i got it into my head that he was looking for a place to crash.

we hooked up again in May when pickins were slim and extreme horniness overcame my better judgment . . . i didn't recall how well Lonely Surfer kissed . . . oddly enough, as much sex as i get, it rarely comes with rock-your-world kissing, the kind that makes U remember how hot U could get as a teenager in the back seat of a car, even with a girl . . . it helped slow the sex down which was a nice change but once we began talking, i knew he wasn't the kind of guy i ever would ask back to my apartment.

yeah, i went to this great party last night for Spiderman. u should have been there, i always go right for the seafood. the shrimp was fantastic, even better than it was at P. Diddy's bash for A Raisin in the Sun a few weeks back . . . he went on and on for several minutes describing several glamorous events he had attended recently, always spending much more time describing the food than the celebrities . . . i used to have a pretty big job at MTV he answered when i asked him how he managed to snag so many invitations.

he also told me he loved to surf at Long Beach Island, New Jersey . . . this explained his get up, his accent, his muscular legs and the weekend bench vacancies in the Ramble but i couldn't tell if he was a guy with real connections or a really good gatecrasher, the kind that drove me crazy when i worked as a publicist at the New York Public Library . . . though he was vague about where he lived, when i told him i was spending most of my summer on Fire Island he said he had a home on Antigua . . . he seemed to be trying awfully hard to impress me so when we started fooling around again and he said i sure would like to get naked with u i decided to take off before i capitulated to the insistent probing of his tongue . . . he could put Johnny Knoxville to (a dirty) shame.

U are probably asking what's not to like? first-class kisser, reciprocal sex and a ticket to Page Six nightlife . . . well, in a contextual relationships it's pretty easy for a guy to pretend he's someone he's not . . . why risk a steady thing in the Ramble only to discover that the Lonely Surfer is full of shit? . . .. . . besides, even if what he says is all true, isn't there something a little pathetic about an older guy who dresses like a surfer in the middle of Manhattan? . . . i'm no Mr. Blackwell, but i do prefer more age-appropriate cruising costumes.

i nearly blew it anyway, so to speak . . . what are u doing Tuesday? he asked one hot July night when i couldn't resist the urge to join him on the bench . . . do u want to go to the premiere party for The Village in Prospect Park? . . . he couldn't understand my refusal . . . it's just not my thing, i demurred . . . i might have been more receptive but his obsessive focus on food had made me more than a little suspicious . . . it almost sounded as if he never knew where he would be getting his next meal . . . when our subsequent encounters ended in silence, i didn't mind at all.

but with Silent Movie Villain out of the picture i began to let my guard down a bit more . . . maybe u shouldn't be so judgmental i reasoned on Sunday night . . . look how sweet he is to the raccoon that shares our bench . . . Lonely Surfer had it eating honey covered peanuts out of his hand . . . u should have seen it go crazy for the turkey leg i brought back from the Taxi party for Queen Latifah . . . kindness to animals ranks pretty high on my list of good character indicators though when Silent Movie Villain had terrorized the animal to prevent it from eating some plums he had in a bag i thought he was being prudent but maybe that was because i was a little . . . exposed.

what about u? he asked after i got him off . . . he hadn't reached orgasm the last time we were together, when a couple of guys joined us and he had some trouble maintaining an erection . . . your turn i responded, relieved that he didn't have any complaints about my cocksucking technique and wondering if he had dosed himself with viagra . . . what are we in, a volley? he teased before launching into more party talk . . . u should have been at the Garden with me on Saturday night. we saw Felix Trinidad, i'd never been to a boxing match and Denzel Washington was right behind us. hey there's another big party coming up for Jude Law. it's gonna be a really big one for this new movie Alfie. Dionne Warwick is gonna be there. but u won't go with me, will u?

can't we just leave things the way they are? i asked . . . we have really good sexual communication. isn't that enough? . . . still he persisted . . . if i give u my phone number will u visit me at my home in Antigua when i go back?

now if modern information technology can be believed, at 11 p.m., right around the time he was saying i won't be returning home until after the holidays because i'm involved in a big federal case against Wachovia bank. i'm suing them because the woman in charge of administering my million dollar trust fund was stealing from me, a more prosaic thief already was charging $40 worth of merchandise in some Brooklyn drug store to my credit card . . . this means that i must have lost my wallet sometime between leaving the Columbia gym at 9:30 p.m., when i had last used it, and hooking up with Lonely Surfer less than half an hour later.

it's true that i had ignored the sensible little voice in the back of my head that warned leave your wallet at home when u go to the Ramble but i had always taken this precaution in the past to prevent theft rather than loss . . . the Mastercard transaction record suggests that my wallet must have fallen out of my shorts and been found by someone between West 116th Street and my favorite bench who then used it to buy a Metrocard and immediately hopped a train to Brooklyn, all within 90 minutes.

unless of course the Mastercard employee i called Monday morning had gotten the time of the first fraudulent transaction wrong when i asked him to review the charges that had been recorded on my account during the previous 24 hours . . . what if Lonely Surfer actually was a cater waiter who lived in Brooklyn and was working all the events that he had mentioned? . . . maybe his overstuffed backpack contained a change of clothing . . . what if he had begun slowly tugging down my shorts after i thought we were done for the night not only to put his finger in my butt while he sucked me off but also to get easier access to my wallet? . . . and what if he made his move when a tall young guy with a tiny padlock on his black leather belt turned our sex into a three-way by moving in closer to feed me his cock? . . . even with his head bobbing up and down on my dick, the Lonely Surfer easily could have removed my wallet and dropped it under the bench and retrieved it after i had ridden away . . . hungry tonight, weren't u? he said when i ejaculated . . . embarrassed by my lust, i pulled up my shorts and left him behind on the bench with the guy in the chastity belt.

did i mention that my father was a warrant officer in the U.S. Army's Criminal Investigation Division at Ft. Bliss, Texas? . . . he used to take me to his office on Saturday mornings, when none of the other agents were on duty . . . he even fingerprinted me . . . occasionally he brought the tools of his trade home, including something called an Identikit . . . it resembled a card file divided into categories of facial features such as hairline, eyebrows, eyes, nose, mustache, mouth, chin, etc. . . . inside each file were dozens of plastic transparencies . . . rather than use a sketch artist, he could ask crime witnesses to reconstruct a suspect's likeness by placing these transparencies on top of each other . . . i spent hours creating men i wanted to kidnap me (funny how they all ended up looking like 70s clones) . . . then, one night after we had gone to a movie with my mother, we staked out a gay bar in El Paso . . . my instincts tell me this private we're investigating is queer, he explained as he parked across the street . . . it turned out Dad was right . . . no doubt the private received a dishonorable discharge as a result of our family surveillance.

of course, it's entirely possible that my suspicions about the Lonely Surfer are unfounded . . . maybe my wallet did fall out of my pants and somebody else did pick it up . . . i'll never know but lack of trust can spoil even a contextual relationship and cut bench competition by half . . . so here i am, single again with the Pines share ending early next week and nighttime temperatures demanding more layers of clothing . . . do U think an investigative trip to Antigua is in order? in the winter i get so lonely that i always go down to the harbor when the cruise ships dock to see if i can find some tail.