NY Diary #5 - Dating terminology

In the city a wide range of definitions circulate to mark the intensity of a relationship and, when it's time to define yours, it's not always easy to find the right term.

At a party in Upper West Side I introduce Jenny:
"This is my girlfriend Jenny."
She, after having raised a strained smile, catches my arm and takes me to a corner of the room saying to me:
"Are you crazy? I'm not your girlfriend, we are just friends ok?".
I find myself ingenuously surprised by such precision for definitions, seeing that Jenny usually expresses herself in random terms.
"Ok baby! relax. We are only friends. gotcha. But do you have sex with all your friends?"
Jenny turns so red with anger that, for a moment, I think she's going to slap me in front of the whole room, but luckily, she takes it out on me screaming:
"You asshole! Who do you think I am?"
"Jenny please don't take it personally and calm down. People are looking at us. I'm just trying to understand what kind of relationship is going on between us."
"You are a friend with benefits" she answers me.
'Friend with benefits': at least now I know what I am.

I had been seeing Eileen for a while when, one evening, by chance we ran into some friends of mine in East Village.
Preferring not to risk a definition and avoid any misunderstanding, I simply began saying "What's up guys! This is Eileen".
Eileen didn't say a word till we left them.
With an unpleasant sensation of deja-vu, I ask myself where I did wrong this time.
Then Eileen begins:
"We've been dating for a long time Nick. Why don't you introduce me as your girlfriend? Are you hiding something? Is there somebody between your friends who is not supposed to know about us?"
Here we go again, I think to myself. Then I tell her:
"Sorry sweetie, I just didn't think about it."
"What do you mean? Do you have to think to remember that we are a couple? You are an asshole!"
While we are walking gloomily in Saint Marks, I realize that, even if my love affairs always have different definitions, at least "asshole" is a constant epithet that gives continuity to my identity.

When I began seeing Marilyn, everything went fine, till, one Sunday afternoon, I caught sight of her embracing another man on a bench in Union Square.
I called her that evening to vent my discontent, with that slightly sadistic pleasure of being in the right, but, to my great surprise, Marilyn was more angry than me:
"What! Now you are following me? You are a stalker! Leave me alone." And she rings off.
When we saw each other again, she calmly explained me that, in New York, till you decide with your partner to establish an exclusive relationship, "multiple dating" is legitimated by tacit agreement, exactly what she was doing.
It has been a while since I quit giving an exact name to my affairs. After all, aren't 'simple friends', 'special friends', 'friends with benefits', 'bf and gf' and also the extreme 'multiple dating', really just useless labels?
'Whatever it is, just have a good time, which is the only thing that matters' I repeat to myself every time I lose myself in the infinite dating terminology.

Nick Landucci