I never answer calls from unknown numbers. I have a compulsive habit of rushing to the nearest computer as soon as my phone vibrates with an alien request and Googling the area code to get an idea of where in the world the call is coming from. Generally, my geo-search yields solid clues as to the mystery caller.

“Who the hell is calling me from the East Bay?” I say this time waiting for a voicemail that will reveal the identity on the other line.

After his weeklong birthday celebration and our two-time rendezvous, Potential Player flew away on vacation (oh, they joys of being funemployed) leaving me alone and with the impression that he was interested in a one-on-one match upon his return.

What the Player also left was my number with his friend: the tall, hunky blond.

In the voicemail that followed the call from the East Bay number, the friend reminds me of the night we met, one of the nights I spent with the Player. He asks me about my plans for the night. He’s on the Bay Bridge, making his way to the city.

I haven’t gone out in a couple of days, and since most of my friends have full-time jobs, I rarely get to go out on weekdays, by far the most exciting nights to party in a big city. And being quite fresh to San Francisco, I can count the number of gay friends in one hand. So I’m tempted to take this boy up on what sounded like a purely platonic offer for drinks.

Twenty minutes later, and he’s rolling down in his silver Mustang, parking behind the Castro Theatre. I meet up with him and together we walk on over to Toad Hall, an unpretentious lounge with phenomenal drink specials.

He adds character to his corn-fed frame, easygoing smile and baby blue eyes with a faux haw and an eyebrow piercing. He’s like a Ken doll after breaking free from military school. An All-American reject with a tough exterior but deep down, a totally huggable kind of brat.

Our first round of drinks and our conversation is flowing. Even though we had barely spoken the first time we met, it’s easy for me to talk to All-American Reject, joke around with him even, maybe because there’s no pressure coming from either side.

I’d already filed AAR in my friend cabinet, and I make sure to lock him in there as soon as I recognize the pattern on his black shirt: Ed Hardy. That Christian Audigier bastard child of a brand, the Wal-Mart of gaudy couture, now associated with delusions of D-list celebrity status and obnoxious, beer belly, baby daddy, garage glamour.

On an acquaintance, Ed Hardy is negligible. But AAR could never rearrange himself as anything more than friend of a friend, not with that wardrobe anyway.

Getting drunk with him is still acceptable.

As the night progresses, we decide to bounce from the barely crowded Toad Hall to the smaller space of QBar. Just around the block, QBar, the closest the Castro gets to ‘hood, is full-on body heat and hip-hop.

I don’t know if it has to do with the fact that the bar is about the size of an attic and the concept of maximum capacity is meaningless, or with the fact that we’re on our fourth round of drinks, but I start to feel AAR closing in on my physical space, the drink in my hand bumping against his hard chest every time I make a move on the dance floor. There’s nothing wrong with casual flirting and grinding with a friend of a friend, so I don’t make it an issue, but AAR’s intentions are obvious.

Weary that our interactions might get too hot to handle, I suggest we take a break and go outside to catch my breath… and smoke a cigarette. As soon as we step away from the loud music blasting inside, AAR brings up a topic I did not expect to discuss.

“So are you still talking to that Potential Player?” he asks, and I can see in his baby blue eyes that he’s curious to hear my response.

“I haven’t talked to him in a while,” I say disguising my recent fascination with his friend.

“That kid is so wild. I met him at my friend’s apartment one morning. He was just wrapped in a towel. My friend told me later that they had just finished fooling around when I walked in and that he was the best sex he’s ever had.”

I don’t say a word. And it takes all my strength not to show how manipulated I feel. AAR continues telling his story, even though my silence should have been taken as an indication for him to stop.

“I met him the day before I met you. We are not really close friends or anything, but I’ve heard lots of crazy stories. He was really upset on his birthday because he was seeing this guy in Santa Cruz who totally blew him off and bailed on his party last minute.”

And just like that, my image of Potential Player shatters. If AAR met him the night before he met me, it means that in between both nights the Player and I spent together, the Player had the best sex of his life… with someone else. And his weeklong birthday sex game was just a spiteful attempt at getting back at yet another lover. Not exactly the definition of playing fair.

The Player, as it turns out, is not a gentleman but a cheat. And his charm, his boy-like innocence, is nothing more than an act so that, in the end, he can walk away with the biggest prize: an unbroken heart.

We walk back into the bar, and because I feel like I have nothing else to lose, I do what I’ve wanted to since about drink number two. I don’t worry about keeping my distance, I forget about the Ed Hardy galore. I grab on to AAR’s neck and bring him in as close as I can. We start making out amidst the crowd, and I don’t care that it’s all on display.

Because I am done being toyed around with, when I know all too well how to play.

“You should be very proud of yourself,” he says grabbing me as I try to get up from my bed to go and turn off my bedroom lights. It takes some effort, but I finally manage to get up from his arms and walk towards the door. On my way, I readjust my crumbled up boxers over my jeans. “I don’t usually do this,” he says.

“Yeah, I love to wrestle in bed,” I respond, dimming the lights.

“No, I mean, hook up that often.”

I’m confused. I had totally pegged him as a total player. The day I met him at a mutual friend’s BBQ, he had gotten in a fight with a drunken straight guy and called him an asshole. All while hopping around on crutches. He’d broken his left foot jumping down a fence and had to get a cast, but that didn’t stop him from provoking a riot.

So I figured that the testosterone that muddled his temper also filtered down to his crotch and fucked up his libido – encouraging every impulse to “hit that.” It had definitely fucked with mine. I was instantly attracted to this Potential Player and his straight guy-like bravado. And I refused to watch from the sidelines.

But playing with bad boys is a dangerous sport, and I didn’t want to end up getting hurt and calling foul. So I didn’t think much of this guy with the sexy dimples and messy hair who always wore his shirts wrinkled. I wasn’t even expecting him to call me, even though we did have an intense, shirtless make out session on my friend’s couch the night of the BBQ. With his foot in a cast, I had to lift him up and support him on my shoulders when we started to dance, swaying slowly to “Electric Feel."

And then three weeks later, there he was: free of crutches and inviting me to his birthday celebration.

Potential Player has this way of making every guy feel like the only one on the team, which solidified my first impression that he would pitch to whomever was willing to catch. And that’s what caught me at the beginning. He has the confidence of a Casanova, never mind that he prefers LMFAO to MGMT.

The night of his birthday, he brought about 25 guys to his party at Trigger. Impressive considering we live in a city often unwilling to commit. The sexy bartenders flowered him with even more attention in the form of drinks. But I kept sober.

Despite the fact that it seemed as if I were playing Marco Polo in a pool full of men wanting to swim up the birthday boy’s trunks, I felt a little like Michael Phelps, for I had already won. I’d hooked up with Potential Player the night before. See, I don’t do sidelines.

So the next night at Trigger, I felt quite secure in my position as starting player on his team. A little past midnight, I gave him a hug and made up the excuse that I had to meet up with some other friends in the Mission. I didn’t want him to think that he was a starting player on my team. Before I exited the club, he gave my number to one of his friends, a tall, hunky blond.

“My phone is about to die, and I forgot my charger,” Potential Player explained. “I’ll call you tomorrow on his phone.”

And he did, and we hooked up again. But this time with the lights off. And I felt like the only one on the team.

I have to tell him how I feel. And tonight is my last chance.

It’s gotten to the point where I don’t care whether he likes me back or if rejection is the only thing coming my way. We are moving out. Come tomorrow we won’t be living next door to each other anymore. It’s too late for serious us. I just need to know if what I have been sensing this whole time is real.

All of these feelings flushed in right from the very beginning. The week before senior year, I was walking around my front lawn after I’d just finished unpacking. I kicked off my flimsy flip-flops and began pacing barefoot on the cool grass wearing only a loose white v-neck and faded Levi’s. I wiped the few drops of sweat from my brow and took out my pack of Parliaments. I needed a cigarette to help me relax after my grueling moving-in. But September in Chicago is notoriously windy, and my lighter, like most things I owned at the time, was cheap and unreliable. I kept flicking it, cupped my hands around the flame and tried to keep it going long enough to cause some serious damage to my unlit Parliament, much to no avail.

I was starting to get frustrated when I noticed a boy plopping down the steps of the porch next door and slowly heading towards my direction. He was wearing a pair of forest green shorts and a white t-shirt similar to mine except wrinkled and with grass stains, as if he’d been doing cartwheels or wrestling on the grass. His dark brown wavy hair swayed in the wind and from his dry pink lips dangled a lit Parliament. It took me a second to recognize him.

“Hey there, I’m Boy in Color, your neighbor apparently,” he said looking at me and then glancing at my house. I shared a front lawn with the boy who had taken my breath away the minute I had first laid eyes on him at that party not so long ago. And exactly like before, the world went grey as he glowed in multicolor. Being next to me got me in some sort of visual trance.

“Hi,” I said staring straight into his juvenile eyes as he continued to approach me cutting through the grass. “You got a lighter? Mine’s a piece of shit.”

“Here, let me show you a trick,” he said taking my lighter from my hands. “Put the cigarette in your mouth, and pull your collar over it to block it from the wind.” I was skeptical and pictured my white shirt engulfing in flames, but I followed his instructions. “And now light it from underneath,” he said and reached under my shirt, gently gracing my happy trail as he made his way upwards with my lighter in his hand. It tickled, and the sensation stretched from my belly to my back and down my spine.

He got the lighter up to my chest and lit my heart on the very first try.

And in the nine months that followed, our entire senior year, the flame between us continued to flicker in the wind, never dying down. During our late night conversations sitting on the rackety bench on his porch, our knees touching while we waited for the sun to come up, I’d lean on him slightly and feel him applying pressure back on me; while watching cheesy scary movies on rainy Sunday afternoons, he’d turn to me with and flash me a soft smile whenever I made a clever comment no one else understood; or after the brief, silly friend fights we’d get into for pretending not to care, we’d hug as a sign of peacemaking, but our hugs always lingered as a sign of something else.

During all of this, I made sure to guard our flame while he kept fanning it. Because whenever we’d undergo a cold front, it’d only take a longing look, a tender touch or a few words to bring us right back to the warm sentiment I felt we shared.

And now on the last night I'll be seeing him before we both jet off into opposite sides of the country, and I can’t believe I never got close enough to confess how I feel. I have been so afraid of getting burned, thinking that in this fire, a friend is the worse thing to lose.

But I have to know if this is real. Because I feel like I’m burning, and if Boy in Color can’t save me, he has to let me cool.

I have to tell him how I feel. And tonight is my last chance. I think again as I walk out my front door, light a Parliament under my collar and make my way to the sports bar our entire senior class will be at on our last night of college.

[To be continued…]