vices

"What are your vices? The things you wouldn't want to tell someone on a second date," he asks.

We're at a very nice restaurant in Brentwood, jazzy and loud on a Friday night. The table between us is small and crowded with crab cakes, steak, a really good bottle of red wine. It's unclear how much my mood has been affected by the heavily poured gin and tonic I just finished, but I'm enjoying myself.

I chew, think about it. "Inertia," I tell him.  "That's my big vice." It's an honest answer. It's why I'm still in Los Angeles at all to have this dinner with him.

But he pulls a face, dismissively. In a minute I'll understand that he was hoping for something a little edgier out of me. "What about you?" I ask.

He smokes, he says. Cigarettes, plus weed a couple of times a week. And he likes to gamble. Regularly, at the casinos. In case any of that is a dealbreaker, he wants me to know up front. Then he stares at me and waits.

The truth is that any one of those three is a dealbreaker. I tell him this. But I can't remember the last time someone was so frank with me, not on a second date, and I'm impressed. I tell him that too. There's a brief minute of awkwardness, both of us considering the wall we've hit. And then (is it just the wine?) the conversation sweeps on with a life of its own. We've written ourselves this policy of suicidal honesty. Now we can say anything we want, pick up any subject, and we do.

Later that night, we end up at a dive bar somewhere in the Valley, listening to a cover band play surprisingly great rock and roll. We drink beer and shout the lyrics to Jet's Are You Gonna Be My Girl at each other, my hand keeping rhythm on his knee. With my big black boots and long brown hair, they might be singing about me.

Later yet, still fully committed to honesty, I say, "I want you to kiss me goodnight."  He lights up like a Christmas tree.

I drive home wondering if I'll see him again. He's already told me that he likes me, wants to see me, but he's leaving the decision up to me. And right now, on this drizzly February night, all I can think about is how attractive it is when someone tells you the truth.