I don’t know how much I got into detail about the Irishman I met this summer, but the short of it is I met him on a Friday, we spent the whole weekend together, and he went back to Ireland the following Tuesday morning. He was amazingly cool, a gentlemen, and thanked me with every hug hello for the previous night. He’s 24, the baby in a family of 6 kids, and told me that I was the person who took care of him while he was here. The amazing part is that we still text weekly and spoke on the phone two weeks ago. Yes, my phone bill was $100 extra due to one 60 minute conversation, but it was well worth it because the Irishman is a trip, he’s planning on coming back in June, and there wasn’t one moment of awkward silence in the entire conversation.

     This Friday, I found myself alone at Jack’s for an hour because the friend I met early had to catch the bus, and the one I was supposed to meet later was running behind. The bartender introduced me to an out of towner who had also found himself alone at the bar. This is how I began my brief love affair with England, and cheated on Ireland at the same time.

     The Englishman got me not only with his accent, but also with his brains because we were talking literature within twenty minutes. He was in town on business and had traveled around the world, resulting in some awesome stories. He commented that our president is a “wanka”, that the deep south scared him more than the strict Islamic cities in the Middle East, and that people from China are the loudest group of people that he’s met thus far.

     When the bar closed Friday night, I suggested we go to Tom’s Diner because, well, I am still on the diet but every month I get a hankering for gyro fries and I wasn’t ready to stop talking to the Englishman. It was freezing outside and I didn’t want to walk all the way to Tom’s, so in typical American fashion, I invited myself back to his hotel room.

     I know, I know. And you can believe me if you want to, but nothing happened. We talked alot and kissed alot, but there is no need for me to worry that there’s a little Englishman growing in my uterus or that I picked up some UK cooties. The Englishman, like the Irishman, was a complete and total gentleman and, although he tried, he didn’t push and I remained as chaste as I was when I walked into the hotel.

     I quickly called him out on the fact that he probably has American girls in every city he’s been to, but he assured me that there aren’t that many women in very very rural Iowa and that in Alabama they’ll shoot you if you look at one of theirs, so that combined with his 70 plus hour a week work schedule, he really hadn’t had time to think about women. “I mean, I do get my fair share of attention, but I guess that’s just the accent. Plus I like a girl I can talk to, not one that just asks me to say “water” and “bottle” and tell me how cute I sound.”

     We ended up staying in bed from the time we got in when the bar closed until 5 pm the next day. When we woke up around 11, he rolled over and said “I was wondering if I could take you out for a meal this evening”. He suggested this fancy French place, but I guess he could tell from the look on my face that I wasn’t into it, so we decided to get pizza instead. When we talked about what kind of pizza we liked, I told him that I hadn’t eaten real pizza in months but that I loved thin, greasy pizza with just pepperoni. “That’s my favorite, too… My God, you are officially perfect. It’s driving me mad.” I dragged my ass out of bed, went home, showered, and met him at 7 pm for dinner, which turned into a few beers at 9 pm, which turned into us back at his hotel by 11 pm.

     The difference between this UK experience and my last one was that the Englishman was interested in really talking, seriously getting to know me conversation, whereas the Irishman was more outgoing, friendly, and didn’t mince words (”Jenny, I’m mad to kiss you” will probably remain my favorite pick up line until the day I die… imagine it with a thick Irish accent…). I know it’s odd that I feel I need to choose a country, and there’s a little piece of me who wants to meet a Scotsman and a guy from Wales so I can say I’ve kissed someone from each country in the United Kingdom. But I digress…

     I had Thanksgiving plans with my family on Sunday so I had to be out of bed by noon and, let me tell you, tearing myself away from there, knowing that I’ll probably never see him again was the hardest thing I have had to do to my heart in quite awhile.

     When he woke up, he said “I had a dream, you were in it.”

     “What were we doing?”

     He paused a second, then continued. “We were walking… just walking. In France. And it was beautiful.”

     “That’s it? We were walking?”

     He laughed. “Well, I supposed I can make something up that would be more interesting, but the walking was good enough for me.”

      He told me he wanted me to stay in bed, and I told him I had to go or my mother would shoot me. I told him I wanted him to stay in Pittsburgh, and he told me that 5 years ago that was just the kind of thing he would do. Then he asked me to go to Mexico with him. I told him I couldn’t because I had to work this week. He said some really nice things that I want to believe, and I will believe because, well, it makes for a better story and it helps me believe that not all men are shit if it’s true. And he really has no way of proving himself to be anything other than what he pretended because I’ll never see him again.

     As I was laying there at 11:35 am Sunday morning, knowing I had to be out of there at noon, I was struggling to think of something to say that wouldn’t come off too crazy, but that would let him know that this weekend was something I would never, ever forget. I settled on this: I just wanted to tell you that I won’t forget you… I’m really glad I met you and this weekend meant a lot to me.

     He smiled and kissed me, and replied “I don’t know how I’m going to sleep from now on without you next to me. And I know you think that I do this in every city, but I don’t… I haven’t thought about women since I took this job because there’s just no time and I’m never around long enough, but you… You, I’ll be thinking about when I finally get back home.”

     We exchanged emails and he kissed me good-bye one last time, told me not to frown and that next time I was going to that French restaurant with him. I managed not to cry when I left or for the rest of the day yesterday, but I’m crying now. I’m not sure why, really, it might as well have been a dream.

     But maybe that’s it. Maybe, in a way, it kind of was a dream come true, the princely-polite gentleman with the accent telling you all the things you’ve been dying to hear and saying them in a way that makes you believe it instead of merely wanting to believe it. Being able to connect with someone in a way that, even though you spent hours upon hours in bed, the majority of the time really was spent talking about beliefs and family and trying to find out what makes each other tick. Or maybe it was the way that he looked at me, or rather couldn’t stop looking at me, that made me just want to be that to someone, even if it only lasted nearly 48 hours. Who knows? If anything, it shows me that whatever problem I thought I had that was repelling men is all in my head… because somewhere, someone is thinking about me.

     And that has to be enough.