I knew Thomas would have a plan. Thomas is a man of action, not a woman of romance and longing like me. I get a crush, and that is the end of the story. Thomas gets a crush, and he has a date on Friday night.

It’s not that he’s super-aggressive; he’s actually quiet and somewhat shy. But in this area, he is magically without neurosis and self-doubt, which may have to do with being a 20-something gay man in New York City, and may have to do with being Canadian, or with simply being Thomas. Once he showed me a text he sent to an old acquaintance he’d run into on the subway. “Good to see you,” it began. “I wonder if you’d like to get together sometime and casually make out.”

People actually talk like this to each other? I felt like he’d opened up his clamshell phone and shown me the surface of the moon.

It’s not that I can’t be forward with men. It’s just that it requires at least four glasses of wine. I wish everyone were half that clear, direct, and relaxed about what they want from each other.

“What happened with the guy?” I asked. “Did the text work?”

Of course it had. They hooked up a couple times. “He’s really nice,” Thomas said, “But he ended up being kind of crazy.” I guess that’s the risk you take when you are a man of action. You’re no longer locked in fantasy: You have to deal with the reality of the other person instead.