Before our first date, Pam googles “how to date someone in a wheelchair.” I don’t know she does this. All I know is that for years my mostly coupled friends have suggested her to me as girlfriend material. Whenever Pam and I were single at the same time, one of the couples would say — in that particular choral way that couples have, not quite in unison, but overlapping each other’s sentences — that I should check her out. The investment my friends had in ending my years of aloneness was greater than mine, but I did check her out. Pam is a cutie. So at a concert I said hi. She was minimally polite in return. A few years later she was at a restaurant with a group of people I knew. I stopped by their table to say hello. Everyone greeted me except Pam. A few years after that, at a Pride Center reception, I came alongside her in the buffet line and made a comment about the brownies. How many times she could ignore me had become my own private game. This time she looked over my head and said nothing. I’m done, I thought. The game wasn’t fun anymore. My life as a single person continued.