Comings and goings.

First of all, my crush is, by all appearances, not gay. Ho hum.

Wasn't the first time and won't be the last time. So anyway.

Matt, this cute, 24-year-old gay tourist from North Carolina, came into my store tonight looking for a guide to gay Atlanta because he'd apparently gotten lost on his way to find the gay community.

"All I saw today was Lenox Square," said the lanky, clueless blond kid with wide eyes and a stomach so flat it was apparently concave. "And then I ended up on Peachtree Industrial. And I just started driving on it."

Apparently, he ended up in Gwinnett County before he realized that he was going the wrong way.

"Didn't you notice you were outside of the city?" I asked him, looking on the bottom shelf while on my knees before him - a detail that made him giggle.

"I have a map," he said. "But Atlanta's a big place."

Apparently, he was looking for gay clubs, bars and Swinging Richard's.

"My friends told me I HAD to see the strip club," Matt said to me, smiling.

"Yeah, it's hilarious," I said.

The boy needed help. Not help he could find in a guidebook. He needed a gay friend to tell him where to go.

I grabbed a piece of scrap paper. I wrote down the words "Blake's," "Outwrite Bookstore" and "10th and Piedmont." If you're a newbie looking for Atlanta's gay community, start at 10th and Piedmont.

Matt sounded encouraged.

"That's where the parade is during the festival," I said.

"Ooh, I really want to be there for that," Matt said. He's in Atlanta for about a month, and that boy's probably going to find himself involved in a whole load of messy fun before his vacation ends.

He knew what he was looking for. It was my duty, as someone who's been there, to give him proper directions.

"If you see yourself moving away from tall buildings, you're going the wrong way," I said to Matt.

(Other people, more than likely, would suggest other places. But I was the only one there.)

As he was leaving, that's when he told me his name was Matt.

"Maybe I'll see you around," he said to me.

He was funny.

And, yes, I told him how to get to Swinging Richard's.