Jonathan Levitsky courted me with rhetoric and discounted classics purchased on street corners from Battery Park to Washington Heights. My sex life hinged on a post-graduate education dictated by my lover, a gainfully unemployed philosopher-slash-actor whose twenty-six year old trust fund already exceeded the combined life savings of my parents, grandparents, and a third cousin who “married well.”

In spite of myself, I learned! Leafing through Wuthering Heights, I found that condom wrappers make good bookmarks. I discovered that eighty percent of all readers snack during F. Scott Fitzgerald’s narrative. (Of those, sixty-five percent prefer catsup to mustard.) Even Henry James imparted knowledge. Washington Square’s margins revealed that Bo “fingers” Jordan had buns of steel, Priscilla still loved Evan, and douching will not prevent gonorrhea.

While my beloved Danielle Steele became kitty litter for my roommate’s unrefined cat, and my inferior spelling skills increased (syphilis has one “l”; it is acceptable to hyphenate asshole), I put Eliza Doolittle to shame in anticipation of a good screw. Or, at the least, a dependable one. If Levitsky noticed that my progress increased in proportion to the proximity of my loft bed, he never acknowledged it. Perhaps it was the generosity of a pass/fail system. Or perhaps it was the lack of oxygen in our elevated love nest.

The day I made up my mind--once and for all--to call it quits with Jonathan Levitsky, Princess Diana died. I read the headline story of the New York Times to my lover, extending our foreplay by twenty-five minutes! Humbled by an atypical glow radiating from my loins, I whispered the names of England’s prime ministers from Sir Winston Churchill to Margaret Thatcher into Jonathan’s ear. In exchange, he massaged my cellulite in earnest, kindling my fire with bold images of Buckingham Palace, urging me along with Big Ben’s attributes (eat your heart out, Bo!), and jolting my senses with a tour of Westminster Abbey that convened at my navel and traveled due south. Struck deaf, dumber and blind, I postponed my travel plans indefinitely as I rode the uncharted waters bordering the “o” word (and I don’t mean ”orthodontist”). At the moment of no return, Levitsky raised himself on one bony elbow and casually inquired, “If a tree falls in the forest and there’s no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?”

AHHH! AHHH!

Mistaking my cries for ecstasy, my paramour plunged into the depths of my despair, moaning “HAIL TO THE QUEEN! HAIL TO THE QUEEN!” in an anti-climactic but civil gesture.