2009 was a dark, strange year. It will stay a year I prefer to forget, but I cannot because it shaped me. In ways I do not yet even know.

I caught up for lost time in having sex. Sleeping with strange men who now I do not know, or never did. The year passed in a blur of body parts, whiskey, and stolen cigarettes. The tastes of different tongues, different skins. The smell of different sheets, different borrowed shampoo, different disappointment.

It was a year of Js, most disappointing.

The first was my first, now married. Now expecting to be a father. Now preparing for war.

The second took my heart in his hands, weighed it and found it wanting, and told me that he could no longer see me. Told me as I stood about to board the L train on my way to work. Told me as the smell of our sex still lingered on us.

There was another like this, who does not matter.

The third, the one in between the second and the one who doesn't matter, taught me. It was a lesson I took my time in learning.

We met on a rooftop in brooklyn. Fourth of July. He brought me pbr and gave me his cigarettes. We flirted. We danced at union pool, awkward hipster dancing that put a smile on my face.

Later we went to a dank bar in brooklyn where he played pool with D. D who is another story, but as I watched them play pool I was deeply, sickly satisfied with knowing it was up to me who I went home with that night. I could have had either. I maybe could have had both.

I went home with this third J. We shared only two nights together. That first because I did not want to sleep with him. Because I was fond of his hands and his voice and his dirty blond beard and wanted to see him again. And I had learned that with men I cared for, it was best to make them wait. Because more often than not, they left after sex. So I stole time from them by delaying their inevitable ejaculation, their inevitable leave taking.

The second time we were in bed, in his bed. He was hard, and full of wanting. He kissed me, hard, deep, and told me he didn't want to have sex. I told him I didn't believe him. I asked him what else he could want from me. What I was doing there.

He held me and told me that he liked me. That he would have wanted more from me. That he didn't want me to sleep with him because I though that was all there was.

He was moving to Chicago. There couldn't be much more for us. But he wanted me to know that I had more to offer a man than my body. More reasons to be desired than my breasts.

It took me a while to learn this, for these words of his to sink in. But I finally found it. I had to change jobs. I had to move to a different city. But I found a man who loves my body, calls it wonderful, but sees me as so much more.

Thank you, J.