So I went to Cincinnati and he went to California. But this was not something I was planning on blowing off. As I said before, he was my France.

I’d been trying to go on a date for the last year, but all of my so-called prospects were the stereotypical fraternity guy. Rather than pay for a date, that type of guy would invite several girls to a party that he planned to attend. The one who looked the best or flirted the most won his heart…eh-hem, bed…for the night.

I fell for the act during the fall semester, but I was smarter during the spring semester and lost most of the competitions on purpose when I realized the game he was playing. The pattern from guy to guy was unbelievably similar and unfortunately hopeless for girls like me, (i.e. we were stupidly looking for romance at the bar).

I wanted someone to kiss me and hold me for the night. What I continued to find was someone who would hold me down and kiss me to distract from his other motives. I wanted intimacy but all those guys gave was a growing emptiness.

I was convinced that the good guy and the decent dates that we see on chick flicks had become extinct. So when Ed came along, it didn’t matter that I worked with him, that he was a year younger than me, or that we’d be 3,000 miles apart for three months after that kiss. What mattered was how real the kiss felt after a year of empty, selfish attacks in the guise of romance.

It began in May. I had just brought a convertible from home, my first car on campus. Finals were over. The weather was just warm enough to test out driving with the top down. All I needed was a few country roads and some company. He provided both.

We’d worked together all year, but I hadn’t really talked to him before. He grew up here, though, and he knew the roads. If he didn’t, we’d get lost, and keep driving until we found out where we were again…30 miles outside the city. We shared music, talked about our friends and the paper where we worked. But mostly we drove around, through the horse farms and past abandoned country houses, stealing childish glances at each other.

About three nights before I left to work in Cincinnati for the summer, we went driving again and then, as we stood next to the stairs that led up to my apartment, he kissed me. He was wearing a bicycle helmet but hadn’t yet snapped the straps. And he kissed me more. I grinned, he grinned and I turned around and pranced upstairs, thinking the entire night, “He kissed me!”

Somehow the combined purity and passion of a kiss like that is always elating. Whether its the first or the 24th.

Now I know what I’ll write here for whoever stumbles across this page. I’m sorry for those of you who expected something more newsworthy from a journalist; my analysis of local politicians, my thoughts on the continuing violence and rape against women, my critique of mainstream news reports; I have thoughts on all of the above, but this will be about something a little closer to my heart, something human, something sad, and something that you can relate to without up-to-date reports from The New York Times and the local daily.

He was my France. He was unique, a change of pace, exciting but oh-so traditional. What would make a perfect postcard however — like snowflakes in falling into La Seine — is sometimes a bit slushy when you arrive and you adjust to the jet lag well enough to notice.

I’ve adjusted to the jet lag and suddenly realized that not only is the snow slushy, but also that just as France doesn’t miss a tourist when she leaves, he won’t miss me. Which is why I’m leaving him.