I like a Healdsburg night out. I always run into at least a half-dozen friendly faces, which is perfectly distracting. Unfortunately on this night, everyone I ran into had read my most recent blog post, and decided they wanted to hug me and tell me they were sorry to hear about my breakup. It was a little like being stabbed over and over and over.
Nevertheless I kept my chin up and powered my way through the night without a hitch, and managed to have a pretty decent time.
Turning down some offers to continue the night with karaoke or bar-hopping, I said my goodbyes and headed toward my car. About a block away I heard a "hey" and turned to see a muscle-bound, chiseled-chinned man jogging toward me. I'd met him earlier, he was a friend of a friend of a girlfriend of a friend, or something. I said "oh, hey," and then looked back to see how far he'd come, and wondered how it was possible that he didn't seem even a little bit winded. Then I looked at his muscles. So many muscles!
He said "hey, how's it goin'?"
"Oh, uh. Fine. Things are fine. Thanks. And...you?"
"Good. Good... So, listen. I was thinking. What if...okay, so wait, this can go one of two ways."
"It can? Wait. What?"
"Yeah. One of two things can happen here. You can either, you know, give me your phone number - that's the easiest option--"
"--uh wha--"
"--or I can just track you down. You know, ask your friends about you, find out how to get ahold of you, where you live, where you work, stalk you a little," he smiled and shrugged. "It'll get creepy."
*blink*.....*blink*
"So it's up to you, really. And hey, I overheard that you and your boyfriend just broke up, so I don't wanna, you know..."
"Um, yeah."
"I thought maybe you could use a little self esteem boost, you know, otherwise I wouldn't have chased you down. I'd have just gone with option B."
"Wow." Self esteem boost? "I don't even...."
"Yeah. But you have to choose one. It's up to you. No pressure!"
At this point I realized I should probably let this guy in on a few things. I could see that he'd mistaken me for the type of lady he might want to date, and I needed to straighten out the facts.
"Oh, that's really...nice. But, listen, I don't usually shave my legs like this. Or wear skirts and cute tank tops. I just went to a girly thing right before this so I dressed up for that. Usually I wear jeans and old t-shirts. Oh! And my hair is not usually styled all...pretty like this. I just got it cut earlier and she put some stuff in it and then blew it dry using a fancy brush. It will literally never look like this again."
"Oh yeah? Well I've gotta say, this look suits you!" I'm not really sure if that was supposed to make me feel good, since I'd just explained that I almost never look that way.
"Yeah, also, you're all, you know..." I waved my arm in a circle to indicate his upper body, "you're all muscly and, I don't know, handsome, and guys like you don't date girls like me." Then I went on, "I mean, I date handsome guys, that's not what I mean. Just not..." I waved my hand around his muscles again. "You know."
"Why, thank you."
"Yeah and I have this new goal in life? It's um, to get kinda fat. I'm trying to get a little fat so that the next guy I date won't care that I'm fat, because I started out that way, and I won't have to worry about whether or not to eat fried cheese all the time, because he's not dating me for my hot body. I mean, not that I have a hot body now, but at least I'll be sure that he likes me for me. It's because I'm lazy, mostly. And I love cheese."
"Well, ha, huh," this one made him pause."Well I was watching you a little in there, and you've got a really great personality. That's why I'm standing here." (Great Personality? I'm no fool. I know what that means).
"I mean, my boyfriend thought I looked fine. Don't get me wrong. We didn't break up because he thought I was getting fat or anything." (Or DID we?!) "Oh, and, yeah, and I also have two kids."
"Oh, you do?"
"Yeah. And they're young." I thought for sure this would be the clincher.
"Is that all? Only two? I usually date women with a lot more than that." *chuckle*
I could see that I wasn't going to get rid of him as easily as I'd thought. So I did the only thing I could think of: I put his number into my phone so that he would go away and I could go home where I could eat some cheese enchiladas in peace.
 |
| sometimes you just have to humor people |
No comments:
Post a Comment