My favourite thing about every guy I've dated

• Scott's patience when, informed only by PG13 movies, I gave him my first kiss with an open fish mouth and absolutely no tongue
• Jordan's lovely little mother
• Angel's chronic, irreversible hearing loss, and the way it transformed him into a sponge for sounds ranging from classical music to the simplest voicemail messages
• Paul's promise to send a letter every day, with the proof of having honoured it still yellowing in a box of well-worn West Point stationery somewhere inside my mother's crawlspace
• Lee's truck
• John's fine, old-money fingers and his talent for "tantric hand-holding"
• Andy's swagger and ever-shifting assortment of rugby bruises
• Lee's carrot top
• Kevin's unconscious habit of making soft bleeping robot noises while he thought through my most snareish, jealous questions
• Daniel's easy confidence in complex linguistic theoretical concepts
• John's tutorials on the previously-unknown Sydney underground jazz scene
• There's no favourite for Shannon. He's dead to me.