Kenny was a forty-year-old businessman, so he'd been around the block. He knew how to run a company, how to treat a man, what to do in bed. Which is where we ended up after two dates, two fancy restaurants, and two thoughtful deliveries from 1-800-FLOWERS.com. Our lips wrestled in the throes of passion as our hard bodies pressed together and he slowly backed me toward the bed. When my knees hit mattress, he grabbed the middle of my shirt with manicured hands and tore it open. Buttons flew like champagne corks.

Kenny lowered his lips to my shoulder while conflicting feelings swirled inside my head. As a poor college student I was socially awkward and bitter, so the first had to be "Hey, asshole, you just ruined my goddamn shirt!" Being young and horny, though, the second was, "Holy Jesus, dude -- take me here, take me now!"

I decided to deal with my feelings in the order they'd arrived. Kenny just scoffed at my complaint. "You liked that shirt?" he asked in disbelief. "It was old and out of style, plus it already had a tear in it." All of which was true, but that didn't stop me from wearing it. "Besides, I just couldn't wait to ravage you."

I forgave him pretty quickly, and we had some of the hottest sex I'd ever had in my life. I've always had a problem losing myself in sex, but when your clothes are in tatters around you it's like a Harlequin romance come to life. At three A. M., grinning from ear to ear, I floated all the way home with my jacket zipped.

Our third date took us to another fancy restaurant, and then back to his place. Once again he backed me up against the bed and tore my shirt open. The same feelings reappeared -- faster this time, since the neural trails had already been blazed. "Pit stains," Kenny said, reading my thoughts. I was only mildly miffed. This shirt-tearing was the hottest thing I'd ever run into, boosting what would otherwise been an ordinary sexual encounter into something previously experienced only by overheated Bronte characters on wind-whipped moors. Again I wandered home with an ear to ear grin and a jacket over bare chest.

By the time our fourth date rolled around, though, I'd sobered up from the hormone high. I decided my wardrobe had taken enough of a hit, so I slapped on a t-shirt. Naturally, Kenny wasn't having it. He liked taking me to fine restaurants, he said with parental disapproval, and he couldn't if I couldn't dress appropriately. I replied that he'd popped the buttons from all of my appropriate shirts, and in three days I'd be meeting him in a dickie. Kenny promised that he'd watch himself, but on our next date I said adios to a vintage Versace.

I stomped all the way home that morning, and I made up my mind once and for all. I wanted this relationship. I wanted the hot sex. But I also wanted my wardrobe. I'd spent quite a bit of effort picking it out, and didn't like watching it bite the dust in a flurry of hairy hands. I resolved in the frigid moonlight that even if it meant confining our dates to Red Lobster and Olive Garden, I'd never dress nicely around Kenny again.

And so when he called and asked if he could whisk me away for the weekend, I knew what I had to do. I ran to the Dollar Store and grabbed t-shirts at random. One advertised Budweiser. Another had a picture of a rocky coastline and the word "Viecques!" scrawled across it. I congratulated myself as I packed my luggage. I wouldn't be sorry to see these things go, I thought as I threw on a R. E. O. Speedwagon tee.

Unfortunately, our destination was the 32-room Tudor mansion in Connecticut where Kenny's parents lived. Craggy and patrician, the couple tried to appear interested in me, but their occasional glances at my clothing said they just weren't up to the task. At dinner Kenny's father gamely asked me about R. E. O. Speedwagon only to discover that I knew even less about them than he. I was immediately demoted from being poor and ill-mannered to being a total mess.

That night Kenny stayed on his side of the bed, and my shirt stayed on my body. I felt like an idiot. Clothes made all the difference, I realized. Rhett wouldn't have pursued Scarlet if she'd worn an "Official Bikini Inspector" t-shirt. Heathcliff wouldn't have chased Cathy if her blouse advertised moustache wax. Sadly, this revelation came too late. After Kenny dropped me off on Monday, I never heard from him again.

Once again I've got a closet full of clothes, but also more than my share of regret. To this day when I walk home late at night, I keep an eye out for guys wearing jackets without shirts and goofy grins. I resolve to offer them the voice of experience, to them that I was once in their shoes, and that belatedly I learned my lesson.

I'm thinking maybe the rocky path to eternal love could be paved by, like, Velcro.