As long as I can remember boys have been my distraction and my muse. Life has played a quirky joke on me, be obsessed with boys and one day you’ll have three of your own.

The smart boyfriends learned quickly how to appease my father by watching football with him or by offering to do our chores of cleaning out the gutters and raking the lawn. Some would get too drunk at dinner parties in order to get the courage to talk to him and others would remain sullen and disturbed that they had to deal with such an obtrusive obstacle.

My first love was Jason, the most spiritual and wonderful boyfriend that I could ever have wished for. My father had a hard time accepting that his baby was madly in love at the age of 18 to a 19 year old. He gave Jason a hard time but he was strong and kept loving me regardless of the obstacles.

I tried to resist the attention that started coming my way after Jason went to college but what was a nineteen year old to do? My mother’s words of wisdom became the soul of my existence. Relationships are like traveling, the more men you meet in your life the more life experiences you will have.

I imagined that living in New York City would be the ultimate place to meet some of the most interesting people in the world so after college in Boston I moved to the Big Apple. It was there that I fell madly in love with Brett . His love for me was equal to his love for partying and he plunged me into the psychotic world of obsession.

We would go to Dockers, have chilled white wine and oysters on the half shell and he would maul me in the middle of the dark, New York City street and then we would go out dancing all night together. He made me feel more alive than I had ever been. If he wasn’t happy at a party he would throw me over his shoulder and take me to Raoul’s, his favorite watering hole.  Passing all the people romantically eating their meals at the sidewalk Café’s, he kept me slung over his shoulder pleading for him to let me down. I was careless and blinded by love and was in complete denial that Brett was unable to stay loyal to me.

Everybody has a Brett in their life. I just happened to allow the relationship to drag on for six years since he kept coming back. It was never boring with him and he could make me laugh like no other. He sang African songs in the shower and he was a charmer. All of the women in my family adored him. He was bright and as silly as we were juggling tomatoes over the Indian carpets and playing scrabble with my mother until the wee hours of the night.

The reality came crashing in on me one day when Brett stepped out of the apartment for a cup of coffee. My sister called reluctantly giving me the bad news, rumors were flying that Tom had taken another woman to a hotel for a fling, a few nights back.

As I rocked myself back and forth on the floor of my apartment our relationship flashed before my eyes. Just days before his alleged affair we had been walking through Central Park completely wrapped up in each others arms. He loved me, this I was sure of, but he was a wounded boy seeking attention from anybody who would give it to him. I looked up and saw  his watch and school ring laying on the table. It occurred to me that he was at that moment doing something illegal. Three hours later he returned from getting his coffee, stoned out of his mind. Man that Harlem coffee must be strong. Booted!

I fled from Brett and the city and moved in to an A frame cabin leftover from the minors in the 1800’s in Aspen, Colorado. I had the room with no heat which suited me just fine since I was never there. I worked for National Geographic Photographers and went out dancing every night. This was living. Who needed Brett anyway?

The party life in Aspen does not leave one lonely for long. After leaving Brett high and dry in New York City I started dating someone four years younger than me, but who was counting. In my foggy haze I spotted Max inhaling shots at the crowded bar at Aspen’s most raucous dance dive, The Tippler. He was wearing a cool black leather motorcycle jacket and had mischief written all over him.  The song, “Groove is in the Heart”, by Deee-Lite was playing. With my body lit up with energy and my head swimming in tequila, I was ready for another adventure and asked him to dance with me.

It was refreshing to date an engaging California boy with a charming ability for self-humor and Aspen provided the ultimate playground for our romance. We hiked or skied all day and returned to warm each other up in my freezing room in the cabin. John turned me on to Social Distortion and the Lemon Heads and I introduced him to Alan Ginsburg.

Six months after I spotted Max embraced in the arms of another women in the bar where we had met, there came a knock on my door. Standing in front of me was Brett and my knees buckled.  I listened to his pledges of love for me and let him back in. Big mistake! Soon after, I was waiting up all night for him to come home from his DJ’ing job at the most prestigious night club in town, The Caribou Club. How blind we can be.

Once again, my sister had to break the truth to me but it was worse this time. My whole family had witnessed Brett kissing a cocktail waitress, from the club, on a street corner. I went home, put on my pointiest cowboy boots I owned and kicked his pretty little white ass forever out onto the streets. Good riddance!

The next day my boss at the Dance Institute asked me why Brett’s BMW was heading West out of town filled with boxes. I told him that he was going back home to his lily white town in Connecticut and we would see him no more. Of course, he returned to torture me for a few more years. He was attracted to me like a rat attracted to cheese.

There were many more after Brett and my poor sisters endured them all; the French boyfriend with black teeth who wrote me love letters that I could barely understand, the spoiled, wealthy boy with a communication problem who went away for the weekend to Crested Butte and never came back, my neighbor who repelled down to my balcony on his climbing rope with his guitar slung across his soldier, the intellectual New Yorker who found me as an irrisistable drunken bat holding up my corner of  the elevator on Halloween. Everywhere I turned there was always somebody willing to entertain me.

I decided to move and get more serious with my life after a traumatic traveling experience to Turkey with a part time boyfriend from San Francisco. I walked the pier in Turkey looking for an out but when one was offered to me I thought better of it and decided not to become a statistic in the headlines of missing American woman in foreign countries. What was I doing with my life? Aspen was too trivial and transient. The boys were untrustworthy and shallow.

Into my life walked Wade. His handsome face and beautifully soothing pine green eyes seemed so familiar to me. Strangely, I did not know immediately that he was the one. This I cannot explain. I used to laugh when people would say, when you least expect it, it will happen. I was always expecting it. Who wasn’t? always searching for love?

Just a few of my favorites