I am totally puzzled by my relationship, non-relationship, friendship, or whatever-the-hell-it-is with Michael.

I just don’t exactly know where I fit into his life or where he fits into mine. This all stems from a phone call. I had called him on Saturday and left him a happy birthday message on his machine. I wasn’t surprised that he was out and I didn’t expect to hear from him.

Around suppertime tonight I sent him and e-mail telling him that the Tony Awards had put me into a New York state of mind. I need a musical fix.

At seven he called me.

This was a wonderful surprise. So he then springs on me that he was out getting engaged on Saturday but it only took a couple of minutes. I asked when the wedding would be, he said they had no plans. He then dropped that topic and told me that he was still planning to come to Boston next week and that he was pretty booked but would like to figure out a way to get together. So I don’t get it.

He then told me that he was going out to dinner with another woman tonight. Some member of the hoi-poloi from one of the NYC music scenes. Just a friend, but did I need to know this?

The conversation continued about his plans for Boston, my plans (or lack of) for the summer, and other ordinary things. He gave me a running commentary on where he was and what he was doing as he walked from his apartment to the subway, and talked to me until we lost the connection. (Cell phones don’t work in the NYC subway.)

He has to be spending a bundle on these cell phone calls he’s been making.

Now here’s my confusion: how can he be talking about being engaged (which I did respond to with appropriate happiness then just drop the subject and talk about getting together with me? He’s done similar things before. Like call me from her place to arrange a meeting, sending me a postcard from Europe while he was away with her, then sending me another postcard when the original never got here, but this one was sent from NYC. I guess I’m a throwback, but in my mind when you are involved in a relationship with someone, then other relationships with members of the opposite sex should stop.

Not that I want it to stop.

Not that we have any sort of a relationship.

I’m not sure what we do have. It’s a friendship and it has a lot to do with liking each other’s mind, but it’s sort of strange too. I don’t know what my feelings are for him. I know I’m not in love, I might be infatuated, or enamored or……I don’t know, I can’t find the right word.

I guess I should be happy that he likes me enough to make the effort to call and to stay in touch, but I don’t know how to define this. And I feel like I need to figure out a way to categorize this so I can put it where it belongs in my life. I don’t know what it is, so I can’t pigeonhole it.

It’s strange. We’ve been corresponding via e-mail since Thanksgiving 1997 and for a long time we were also Instant Messaging. When he dropped AOL he was the one to write to me and say that he wanted to continue to write to me. I didn’t argue. I was damn flattered.

We spoke on the phone for the first time about six months into the correspondence and then finally met after about ten months.

And through all of this he has always wanted to continue to be in touch.

Lately he’s called far more often.

So I just don’t know who I am to him, and apparently if the girlfriend knows about me she doesn’t care. I know I’m not a threat, the physical distance between us makes any kind of a real relationship impossible. But clearly I am something. I am in his life. He does care. He does want to talk.

But what exactly am I?