Friday, June 30, 2006

I've been mildly successful with the ladies recently. It could be that I'm meeting a bunch of people at the activities I've picked up and just playing the percentages, or my concerted effort at being more social is paying off. Really, I think its the new shirts my mom bought me.

My company is hiring a bunch of buyers and admins and most of these people tend to be young women, young attractive women. One girl stopped me on her first day, she needed help finding her desk. I really wanted to go home to play video games and eat candy bars, but I begrudgingly agreed to help. She was totally cute and could barely speak English. This was weeks ago, when we talk via email now, she says things like, "keep in tuch." I like to believe 'tuch' is some cool sexual thing in her native language.

There are a lot of nice ladies on my company softball team. I tend to banter with one in particular. She's loud and obnoxious. She dances around awkwardly while she waits for the defense to get ready. She throws bats and yells at the other team. And she tells me I'm arrogant and she's surprised when I actually make a play. She's totally bonkers: it's the most attractive thing ever. Of course, just because I'm getting along with these girls doesn't make them any easier to figure out. After our last game, she comes up to me and says, "Rory, I hope you know that I really like you." What the hell does that mean? Ugh... why are women so confusing.

If I was forced to credit my success to some change I've made, I think I've been consistently better at not embarrassing myself within the first 12 seconds of any interaction. Where typically I would make a child molestation joke or tell the girl I'm on medication, now I'm doing things that actually imply that I'm quirky, and not just a creep. I was using our copy/fax machine and had my ass sticking out into the hallway while I bent my ear down to hear if our ever so faint fax signal was making the normal faxing sounds. One of the newbies came walking by and took a quizzical look at my protruding ass. I smacked the copy machine and gave the sitcom style maintenance rap: "The magnetic imprint lever is out of synch with the... reaming belt.. interchange. Just trying to get this think up and running." She wasn't scared away, that's a win in my book.

Out of all of this, the best part is that I finally made a friend. One of the girls who is very married, has got me pegged. One of her favorite things to do is to call me out on the shit I say and do. And not being intimidated by the possibility of dating her, I've found it much easier to tell her random stories, and ask her how her weekend went, or have lunch together. I look forward to the day where I stop over at her place on a weekday night, meet her husband, eat ice cream, and go bowling and stuff.