where were u? demanded the Blue Light Special when i picked up the phone late Tuesday afternoon . . . i looked for u at the gym but they are so stupid at Columbia that they couldn't tell me if u were there or not. in Germany they can page u. don't u usually go swimming around noon?

i wasn't quite sure how to react to the news that i was being stalked . . . U wouldn't ride your scooter all the to 116th Street looking for me would U just because i slept thru your 1 a.m. message and decided to wait a bit before returning your call? . . . it's true, i might have been at the gym if a job interview hadn't been moved up but still . . . i told u when we were there the other night that u couldn't get in without me anyway . . . yes, i know, but i thought if i told them i was a student at NYU they might let me in.

lying bothers me, what can i say? . . . so instead of confronting him about what he had done, i took him to task for what he had said . . . but it turned out there was more: he had gone to the Ramble looking for me, too, after he had stopped at my apartment . . . i wasn't sorry he had a class that night . . . a little breathing room would do us both good.

i groaned when my buzzer rang around 11 p.m. . . . the Blue Light Special stood at my door with his bike and an irresistible smile . . . yes, i had a rehearsal in lower Manhattan he said as if he had been just around the corner instead of 5 miles south on a night when the temperature already had dropped to 26 degrees . . . we need to talk i said.

the smile disappeared when i began expressing my concerns . . . u can't just show up at my door without calling or try to track me down at the gym. . . . so do u want me to leave? he asked . . . i didn't, really, but i did want some answers . . . what do u want from me? what's going on here? . . . at first he didn't respond, he just looked hurt.

u are like some Frankfurt banker he said everything has to be on your schedule. i am an actor. if i feel like doing something i do it, no matter what the time or how cold it is. i once flew 100 miles to see a boyfriend without telling him. he was glad to see me.

did U ever see Sunday, Bloody Sunday? . . . it's about a bisexual love triangle with Peter Finch and Glenda Jackson . . . he's a gay doctor, she's a childless divorcee and they're competing for the affections of a much younger and more attractive artist, a free spirit who takes advantage of what each has to offer . . . at one point in the movie, which examines the compromises we make in our search for love, Peter Finch observes we can get by on very little.

U see it's like this: i have been getting by on very little . . . sure, there has been a lot of sex, some of it great, but romantic gestures are about as common to my experience as tsunamis in the Indian Ocean . . . which means they can have a similar impact . . . call it sad, if U like, but when i watched Sunday, Bloody Sunday not long ago for the first time since 1971 i lost it after Peter Finch gently delivered the line to a couple whose daughter might live but never fully recover after she took a turn for the worse under his care . . . i felt like i was watching the Rosetta Stone for the kind of gay life that i have led and it devastated me.

so now there's adorable guy telling me he just had to see me . . . i caved . . . he made it easy, too . . . u weren't expecting me tonight so i will leave he said around 2:30 after we cuddled and talked . . . and i know i must call. what are u doing tomorrow night? . . . i watched him leave the warmth of my bed and walk down the stairs, insisting it's not that cold and refusing my offer to lend him a pair of gloves.

as soon as he was gone, the little voice in the back of my head--the one that does sound like a Frankfurt Banker come to think of it--reasserted itself: are u out of your fucking mind? u just know there's gonna be hell to pay.