Parker was also proving my theory. For instance, when Parker and Roger first started seeing each other, Parker got sick. Roger went to his house to cook him dinner and take care of him. That would never happen with a straight guy. If a straight guy got sick and he'd just started dating a woman and she wanted to take care of him, he would freak out—he would think that she was trying to wheedle her way into his life. And the door would slam shut.
"Love is dangerous," Skipper said.
"If you know it's dangerous, that makes you treasure it, and you'll work harder to keep it," Parker said.
"But relationships are out of your control," Skipper said. "You're nuts,"
Parker said.
Roger went to work on Skipper. "What about old-fashioned romantics?"
My friend Carrie jumped in. She knew the breed. "Every time a man tells me he's a romantic, I want to scream," she said. "All it means is that a man has a romanticized view of you, and as soon as you become real and stop playing into his fantasy, he gets turned off. That's what makes romantics dangerous. Stay away."
At that moment, one of those romantics dangerously ar-
A LADY'S GLOVE
"The condom killed romance, but it has made it a lot easier to get laid," said a friend. "There's something about using a condom that, for women, makes it like sex doesn't count. There's no skin-to-skin contact. So they go to bed with you more easily."
LOVE AT THE BOWERY BAR, PART III