Box of Mystery

To put it bluntly, I fail to spot if someone fancies me right up until the moment they grab my bottom and start kissing me. All of my major relationships started in this way. I’d be blissfully unaware until it was made either a) brutally honest, or b) a friend pointed out. In the case of the latter, I’d still say “Nahhhh… you’re imagining things” right up until former happened. Oh, I can spot blatant flirting, I’m not completely blind (or I’d still be a virgin, which, I assure you I’m not by a long shot), it’s the subtle stuff that I miss.

I’m not exactly shy, indeed, I’m quite a flirty and social character but on the other hand, I am yellow-bellied enough to rarely go up to someone I like the look of and say “hello”. I need a lot of alcohol to get to that point, and unfortunately, whilst alcohol makes your ears think you’re sounding witty, clever and amusing, that’s your brain playing a cruel trick on you. Oh, you can be sweet, endearing and fancy-able when you’re a mite tipsy, but drunk? Nope. Your dignity is screwed.

I’ll illustrate with an example of my blissful ignorance from over a decade ago. Back in ’95 (this makes me feel old!) I was at a pretty tedious IT related conference in the states presenting a product alongside a bunch of other people also presenting different business products. I got along quite well with the (very cute) girl next to me. We chit-chatted, had a laugh and generally enjoyed the fact that we were next to each other in an otherwise pretty shitty situation (these conferences are a lot less fun than they sound to the un-initiated). But I figured that was all friends-stuff – you know, social niceness, which was a pity because I was single and found her very attractive.

It was my colleague who pointed out that evening when we were having a highly deserved expenses-funded meal with un-necessarily expensive wine that he thought she fancied the socks off me.

Me: Don’t be ridiculous. She just likes me, we get on well together.

Him: Mark my words mate, you should have seen it from where I was standing. She kept sneaking looks at you, she fiddled with her hair whilst talking to you and she tipped her head sideways at the same time. Dead giveaways. You’re in there and I’m prepared to stick 10 bucks on it right now.

Me: Deal. At the end of the conference, you’ll owe me 10 dollars. I’ll spend it on beer. For me.

Forgive the rather blunt man-ness of the conversation, but in my defence, I was only 25 at the time.

Anyway, we get to the next day. Exactly the same drill, except I’ve got super-sensitive does-she-fancy-me o’vision spectacles fully engaged on their maximum level. Nope, I see no difference. My colleague was 10 dollars down, for sure. Later that afternoon, it was all getting quiet and we figured that no-one would notice if we both buggered off from the sales stand for 20 minutes for a quick beer. And so the conversation continued:

Him: She desperately fancies you.

Me: This wasn’t funny yesterday either, I’ve been paying attention all day, and you’re winding me up.

Him: Yesterday, mate, she was wearing a wedding ring. Today, she isn’t. You think she just forgot to put it on this morning? Trust me, I’m married. It doesn’t happen. She wants you.

Me: We’ll see.

I still felt secure in the fact that my 10 dollars was going to remain mine and that I was going to get an airport’s worth of beer out of him on our journey home. Pity though, because I really liked her. I just didn’t see what he was seeing. When the day ended, quite a few of us who were demonstrating products from all sorts of different companies decided to all go for a beer together, the cute girl included. So, we all piled into taxis together to go to some bar that someone said was quite good. She got in next to me. Sat real close. Ok, we’d just fitted a LOT of people in one cab, could be co-incidence, maybe I was just… horny and super-sensitive.

Nothing amazing happened at the bar, so I started to feel secure that my assessment of the situation was in fact completely correct. A bunch of us, her included, were at the same hotel so we all went back together. My colleague spent the entire taxi ride back to the hotel doing the whole nudge-nudge, wink-wink routine. We all ended up in her room and emptied the mini-bar. Gradually, people left. Then there was just a few of us, and then she asked me for a neck massage. Would you fucking believe it, I still didn’t get it at this point. My colleague was the last to leave and did so grinning inanely and there I was massaging the shoulders of a very attractive person who I fancied like mad and if my colleague was to be believed, fancied me like mad too.

I hate to skip the interesting bit (it was really good :-)), but needless to say, I was 10 dollars down and the remainder of that conference was a wonderful experience – one of the very few successful “we both know this is only going to last a few days” relationships I’ve ever had (I guess I should link to this, and post given the context). Oh, and she hadn’t cheated on her husband with me, their relationship had been over for a long time (although I have to confess it wouldn’t have mattered either way when I was that old. It took being hurt myself a few times to educate me on that subject: wisdom is accumulated, not given). For some reason, she’d got into the habit of wearing the ring and wasn’t expecting to meet someone. Neither was I, but if I’d have listened to my colleague from the outset, a few days could have been a few more days. He obviously doesn’t need a girl-to-boy dictionary as badly as I do. Still, those few days rank amongst the huge collection of days that fall into the “thank goodness I’m alive” stack — that stack always has, and always will, outweigh the “arrrrrgggg…. not another day” stack.

So what is it about some men that they can’t see this stuff without an outside observer pointing it out? Am I just being shy? I worry about offending someone and making a fool of myself – probably simultaneously, and that’s not my style. I wonder how many opportunities I’ve missed because I’ve not seen what was bloody obvious to everyone else. I wonder how many opportunities I’m missing right now because I’m not seeing something that is written in letters 20 feet high and 10 feet wide right in front of my face.

It’s 12 years down the line now since my above example (oh, and if you think that example is bad, I’ve got a bloody library of them) and I’m single again. If I can’t figure out this shit, I could be sitting on Miss Right’s lap and not know it. Perhaps I’m just a little rusty on the details, but because I so clearly need help with this whole girl-to-boy communication thing, some advice would be appreciated: it could make a difference for me this very weekend!