I live so much in the moment that sometimes it is difficult for me to remember what I was thinking when I make a decision. Like, for example, the trip to Maine for Memorial Day weekend. Maybe I was thinking that it would be nice to see the Marmit. Maybe I was thinking of all those wonderful summers I spent on Moosehead Lake with my parents and their friends, the Mandrakes, two professors and their daughter. Maybe I was thinking it would be nice to get out of the city and just veg in the country and not think about the job I was leaving or the writing I was trying to get done. Maybe I was thinking it would be nice to finally take a group trip instead of travelling alone. Maybe I was thinking it would be nice to get drunk in a different setting.

The odds are that whatever was going through my head when I agreed to go to Maine for Memorial day, the word thought can only be loosely applied.

It was only a week before I was scheduled to go that I actually began to think about what I had agreed to. I was going to travel with two couples, both of whom had just started cohabitating, and a closeted homosexual for an idyllic weekend in Maine.

As Steve Martin once wrote in Wasps, " You will stand in the grass with your palms upturned. You will be saying something over and over again. 'What have I done? What have I done? What have I done?'"

I told both the Amazon and the Model my concerns. That I would be left out while they enjoyed couple-y things. Canoe rides.Long walks. Dancing. Which wouldn't be so bad. I had things to keep me entertained, or I could entertain myself. But I didn't really need my continued single state to be pushed into my face...again...on vacation. Or worse, I would become the "date" of the closeted homosexual (from here on out he will be referred to as CQ).

To make things worse the night before I left, my non-boyfriend, B Negative, sent me a particularly unfortunate email. I'm not going to go into details. Not because they aren't important, not because I know it would piss him off, but because I really don't have the strength to relive it. Let's just put it like this; it isn't what you want to get right before spending a weekend with two happy cohabitating couples. Imagine an email like that and you probably will come pretty close to what I'm hinting at. About as close to a break up email as one could get without doing it, which he can't since we aren't dating.

He called to talk about the email. He had been in a bad place when he wrote it. He didn't feel that way now. Well, great. "I hope it won't ruin your weekend."

Now I teach argumentation for a living. And I was pissed. Not just at him. At myself for agreeing to this trip. At every happy couple of think of, which really wasn't that long of a list, but was long enough. At Maine for being there. But he was the one at whom I could direct my rage. A designated victim. More importantly a justifiable victim. I could have torn him apart and put him back together again without even thinking about it, and no one would have faulted me about it. But I managed to hold my forked tongue.

"You don't have that kind of power" I told him. "Of course, I'm going to enjoy this weekend."

And then I made myself a promise to prove it was true.