Romance Part I

So I just strive to create awkward social situations. It is something I enjoy. It brings me great please to see just how wrong things can get. When it comes to encounters with girls, it is good to be awkward face to face but it is also equally amusing to do it online.

I was bumming around the beautiful city of Burlington, Vermont with my good friend and business partner Josh. Josh is committed. Not to a cause but rather to a woman. Trying to pick up babes when he is around is no problem because he makes me look attractive by association, and he is already taken. We ate dinner out at a pizza joint and Josh was absolutely certain that the waitress had the hots for me. It takes me a while to pick up these things though, so I really can’t act appropriately when the female is on the offense. Example: I will be going through the checkout line at the supermarket and be chatting with the cute cashier; I pay and leave but then realize moments later that the smiles were more than amiable and that I should have totally asked for her number. Anyways, I always feel like I lost out. So I was a bit down as Josh and I rode the bus back from Burlington to my house about 30 minutes away. Lucky for me, this was no normal bus ride… It was far from normal.

On this same bus were four college freshmen. Or should I say freshwomen. I am not often one for older women, but these girls had a particular element of attraction to them. Josh and I kept our distance, although we were muttering to each-other about them under our breath. If fate had not been kind that day, nothing would have happened. We would never have engaged in conversation with the girls. But fate deemed the bus driver to be horribly incompetent and she ended up breaking the bus somehow. So we all needed to get off and wait for another bus to come. So there we were, sitting on the curb, just kickin’ around, and for some reason or another, we strike up conversation with these four girls. Still, probably, nothing would have come out of it at this point. However, this one girl that I was particularly attracted to (we shall call her “babe”) drops the fact that she is from Concord, New Hampshire. It’s a fairly large city, but I go ahead and ask if she knows my good friend Emily, who is also from Concord. And, in the coincidence of all coincidences, Babe happens to be one of Emily’s good friends. Wow. It’s a small world. So I spend the rest of the bus ride talking to Babe until she has to get off. Josh then informs me that Babe was hitting on me big-time during our conversation and that I totally should have asked for her number. Well, silly me, I don’t work that way mentally, I just don’t pick those things up. But wait! All is not lost! I arrive back at my house and go on to the brilliant “social-networking” site that is facebook.com. I log on quickly to tell Emily about the encounter. Hark! What’s this?! Babe has already posted to tell Emily about it! Eureka! I now have Babe’s Facebook account! I pictured a stunning relationship. We would spend out weekends in the city and down by the lake, walking hand in hand along the waterfront. We would be like those two people from the movie Speed. We met during a bus accident and then fell madly in love with one another. With those thoughts in my head I promptly messaged her with these words:
“um yah. just wondering if you might want someone (me) to show you the coolest place to eat in Burlingto sometime. –Pat (friend of Emily)”

Yah. That failed. Horribly. So horribly, actually, that she did not even respond. I was heartbroken. So I talked to Emily about it. She, of all people, could put in a good word for me. Excellent. Much to my dismay, her words of empowerment to me were:
“Ok Patrick - Get some balls and ask her out.”
Ok… Emily was right. I figured that I could do better, so I messaged Babe again with more direct phrasing:
“In case you did not notice, or were unable to infer, I tried to ask you out over facebook. Hmm. That sucked. But Emily says you're a cool kid and I should try harder, so here goes: Can I take you out to lunch or dinner sometime? -Pat... Who is not really that creepy”
I sent that on the 6th of September. I thought I would never get a response. I really stopped caring about it. School was in session and there were other babes to chase (refer to the next two articles). I was content.
Then yesterday (almost a month later) I got a very kind rejection:
“It's sweet of you to ask me out for lunch, but from a realistic point of view I'm not sure if your intentions are the best idea for either of us.”
God that must have been so awkward for her to type up.

Comments