How could this have all rolled on by me? I wish I could say I was one of those studs with so many rock-hard lovers that they can't remember them all. "You are all like indistinguishable Cheerios to me," I would say into the phone, filing a hangnail. This would work if I was one of those people. I am not one of those people. I swear to God his hair was lighter. I was thinking "blond" when I thought of First Josh. First Josh was definitely blond. Second Josh didn't even have highlights.

I thought back to first Josh, now second Josh, now same Josh. We met a few years back at a club. He was dancing with a big group of friends, waving his long arms and bouncing around in a fashion that made him look like a drunk Muppet. It was charming — so charming that my sister, my sister's friend, and I started circling around him. When he inched over to me while dancing, I knew I had won.

But to paraphrase the words of a friend of mine: "You won, but you kinda lost." Personality-wise, Josh was less fetching. While we were making out at a dark booth by the entrance, he mentioned a gnarly sexual act he was dreaming of that involved me and a nearby Heineken bottle. It was the kind of thing you wait to share on date number... never.

We parted ways at the club, and I never heard from him again. Until now. Men should never be allowed to write alone at a table.

There was only one thing to do. Go out again. I could not waste that cake.

He showed up at my door with a promotional CD by his band, a courting move I have never been enamored of. We went dancing at a soul club. Things seemed painless, but I couldn't put of my mind that I was out on a date with the same sketchwad from before. After a little while, I got tired and wanted to leave. Then things took that surprising-but-now-expected turn. We walked out of the club and he kissed me, biting my tongue in the process. "Ow!" I yelled, pulling back. He cackled. Sadist or jerk? I wondered, just as I had a few years ago.

I wanted him to magically turn back into the guy I fantasized about when I first walked into that diner. In my fantasies, we would walk down the street years later and happen upon the diner where I first sent him the cake. "Ho ho! There it is," I would say, grabbing his hand. "Ho ho!" he would respond an hour later, as we sat in a gigantic tub of chocolate cake.

I was clutching at the crumbs of a dream. "You can come over," I told real-life Josh as we hailed a cab at the end of the night, "but you can't, like, expect anything." I don't know why I said this. It was not my most excellent of lines.

"Then I guess I'm not coming over." Josh smiled and closed my cab door shut.

I have never been good at remembering faces. Picking Josh up again was an accident. But to go out with him hoping he'd magically turned into someone I could date? That was my cognizant choice. A few years had passed, it's true, but I'm not sure if atrociously bad romantics get any wiser with age. Idealized notions of people and experiences make me return to the same spot I was in years ago. I had to go out with him... because I couldn't waste a slice of $5 cake? The truth is probably more that I was still invested in the fantasy — and couldn't accept that bold gestures can die in vain.