Can I get turned on by an obscure vocabulary word?

Apparently so. I've been emailing back and forth with R., the charming, effortlessly handsome Ph.D. student (I finally found out what he does) I met Monday night at Sidetrack (see Tuesday's post). Our emails have been filled with the witty, pretentious banter I usually like to lob back and forth with friends, pundits and potential suitors.

And then this morning in an email he casually (and -- of course -- correctly) tosses out Bildungsroman -- which is only my favorite pretentious, obscure-literary-reference word ever (it ranks right up there with solipsism and picaresque). Among us tortured-intellectual English majors, it's words like Bildungsroman that separate the amateurs from the pronouns.

And now I'm not only distracted by R.'s charm, his looks and his personality, but I'm fully carbonated over the way he incorporates his liberal-arts education into his flirting. WOOF.

Of course, I am still contractually obligated to remain single until July. But I still can't wait to have dinner with R. sometime soon.