I did a day trip for a meeting in London (Ontario) - took the train there, did the meeting, took the train back. The seats all face the same direction but on each car there are two sets of seats that are made for conferencing, where two pairs of people sit facing each other. They get more leg room too, so it's plum seats. When I got on to my car there was a really beautiful girl alone in one of them.
"You're not having a conference here, are you?" I said.
She smiled and said no.
I sat diagonally across from her.
I violated the 3-second rule though, because it was a 2+ hour train ride. In the event, when I did start to chat her up, it was a half-an-hour into it. I also knew that once the chatting started, it couldn't really stop until we got there. Which was how it went, and we ranged over things like school, travel, restaurants, different parts of North America, career plans, movies, and music. It was all very low key and not intense, but I had a good time and she held her end of the conversation when I missed a beat or two, she would jump in with a thought or an anecdote. But I missed something, because when I asked for her number she gave it to me, but with this kind of strange sinking look on her face, and I knew she wasn't going to answer if I called or texted her. I am not sure what I missed. We had been making restaurant recommendations back and forth so I did end up sending her a text on one in London whose name I'd forgotten and found out at my meeting, but she didn't reply. If this were sales or school, I would be asking her for feedback to find out what went wrong. But I don't know, so I can't really ask you either.
Today my mood was lightened though. I went to meet an incredibly sexy lawyer friend of mine (married - sigh!) for lunch, at her office. She was with a client so I waited on a couch in the lobby for her to come out. The doorway was right next to where I was sitting. So she just popped out, a long river of hair, jeans and a pullover. She looked down at me and smiled, and said: "Hi Verbal." And then she ran her fingers through my hair. Now that's a greeting. I purred, and got up and hugged her properly. At lunch she touched my arm repeatedly while we talked about weighty events (like the terrible Mumbai bombings! and the craziness in Canadian politics today) and when I walked her back to the office she wrapped herself around my arm. Lovely. There are enough of these married women that I could totally fall in love with and that like me that I think all I need is to meet one of them before they marry someone else.
(That's when it occurs to me that I already did, a few times. But I just need to meet one more, if I can figure out what went wrong).
Another old friend of mine and I are corresponding using ancient technology - Post! We're writing letters to each other. It really is different than shooting emails back and forth. He's in Japan and wrote me out of the blue. I wrote him back and told him some of the things I've been writing in this blog, about how I am trying to figure out what I really want and what is stopping me from getting it. And he said what I think is a brilliant thing. He said, don't think about what you want from a person, think about what you get from her. What you get, he said, might be even better than what you think you want.
Thinking about people that way has already made me a little more relaxed.
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