"Yeah, for a dreamer, I just close my eyes and it's all blank; I have you to thank, yeah"

“So, what do I call you? What should I call you? What’s your middle name?”

“Tin-Yu,” he answered.

“Yeah, I’m not going to remember that. How about just your last name?”

He shook his head with a smirk on his face.

I looked at the man sitting across from me, as he served me a home cooked meal of spaghetti with meatballs. He said a friend had given him the meatball recipe and he was stoked to share it with me. He had set the plate down on a coffee table, next to a garden salad without dressing in a blue plastic bowl. I sat on a loveseat in which the cushions sunk down to the base of the frame, the spring exhausted from years of doing its job.

To date, we had kind of landed on “Petey,” but even that sounded odd.

On our first date, the conversation flowed and the atmosphere so comfortable, neither of us found it necessary to introduce ourselves as we sat at a two-person table at The Cheesecake Factory in West Hartford’s Blueback Square. At the end of the dessert, he walked me to my car. I invited him to sit inside as I turned it on to warm.

We exchanged phone numbers. As I plugged his into my mobile, he followed it with his name, “Pete.”

I stared at it for a moment. Then, typed “not Perrotta.”

“Oh. Well, that was fun, but I don’t think I can date you."

He looked at me questioningly as if I have just spoken to him in his native Mandarin Chinese.

“No, I’m serious. Because my brother-in-law is named Pete and … we don’t get along. I can’t date a man named Pete and be comfortable calling his name out in bed. I just can’t.”

“Well, can’t you call me something else?”

By the fourth date, we tossed around several names, including Charlie. My mom had suggested it as a cute name, which she would one day like to name a canine companion.

Nothing quite stuck.

After we finished dinner, we watched bits and pieces of five movies. The last one, “Hitch.” As the movie rolled its credits, we talked about the lack of diversity in movies. “Hitch” stars a Black man and Cuban-American woman. The supporting actors are both white. But where are the other races, particularly in a flick that takes place in Manhattan?

In this instance, Asians are in the background working behind the deli counter in one scene.

“Did you ever notice that?” He asked. “They’re ‘Token Asian Guys.’”

“Oooh!” I said excitedly. “I can call you Token.”

“Or, Tag.”

For eleven years, he was my Tag. My six-foot one-inch Taiwanese man who I met on a whim to see if he really was as tall as he claimed. He became my love, support, and other half.

But Peter Chang, he was a stranger. He is a stranger.