ROVER'S RETURN

They say a dog can always find its way home, and the same is true with Argentine guys. I've talked about it before, but every time it happens, I get a slight jolt of shock. If you meet a porteño boy you like, and he drops off the face of the earth, don't worry too much. They always come back. It might take a week, a month, or even a year or two, but eventually, that message arrives via IM or SMS (instant message and text message, respectively, their favorite forms of communication), and the song is always the same: "Tanto tiempo!"

This morning, the following SMS arrived:

"Hola como estás? Tanto tiempo! Soy Zacarias te acordas d mi?"

Though I was impressed by his use of punctuation (sometimes) and an accent mark in "estás," as a matter of fact, no, I didn't remember him. But how could I forget a name like Zacarias? In a country full of Alejandros, Fernandos and Martins, you don't meet Zacarias every day.

I thought long and hard, and finally it came to me in a flashback. Zacarias! He was this really cute guy I met in the nightclub Amerika eons ago, so long ago I can't even remember exactly when. But it must have been sometime last year. We'd hung out all night and parted ways outside the club after exchanging phone numbers. Two days later, I invited him over to my apartment for some good beer, good conversation and a maybe a little more.

We enjoyed all of the above, but midway through our third or fourth kiss, he received a phone call. Abruptly, he announced that he had to leave. Was it something I said? Was I a bad kisser? Did I have bad breath? In the end, I just chalked up his rapid, unexpected exit to the fact that he was a typical hot-and-cold Argentine.

He did send me a text message a few days later to say hi and see what I was up to that night (nothing that involved him!), and we ran into each other twice after our truncated date, but I never again attempted to make any kind of plans with him, and I haven't been to Amerika in ages. Then this morning, his text message arrived. After a bit of back-and-forth small talk, I decided to throw caution to the wind and invite him over for a second date.

I'm not expecting him to spend the night (he's already said that he has to leave at a decent hour because work beckons early in the a.m., and I've grown to hate when guys sleep over), but let's hope this time his visit lasts longer than a few sips of beer and several innocent kisses.