Divisions and Precisions

Oblivion

I've come to two conclusions over the past couple weeks. First, when I write in public, I apparently give off vibes that make me absolutely fascinating to other people. Second, the reason I'm still single is because my subconscious is a jealous bitch who wants me all to herself.

Allow me to explain.

In case you don't follow the writing blog (it gets updated far more often than this does, honestly), I've been doing very well with managing to write for an hour nearly everyday. Apparently I can only write in the mornings if I'm not at home. If I'm home, I sit on the couch and go back to sleep. Trust me. I've tried it. So, I've been writing out in public a lot. Twice in one week, strange men approached me while I was writing and started to make small talk. In fact, I realized later that both men were flirting with me (more on that below).

Ordinarily this would be a neat thing, and would make me quite happy. However, one of them was one of my neighbors, a very nice black gentleman who is old enough to be my father, if not my grandfather. He saw me sitting on my patio and started offering to cook me dinner. "Anything you want, I can cook it!" He gave me his apartment number with the recommendation that I come on up sometime so we could "have a Blockbuster night". I should mention that both his pants and his shirt were a brilliant goldenrod color, and he mentioned that he had the summer off because he'd just had a heart attack. Now, maybe he was just being nice, but I got decidedly creeped out, particularly when he mentioned that he'd been watching me through my window, which faces the parking lot.

The other guy was closer to my age, and actually pretty interesting once I got over being irritated at him (again, more on that in a moment). We chatted for a bit. Turns out he's a cab driver who's also an aspiring stand up comic. He was fascinated by my writing (always a good thing!). Alas, I missed his hints for any sort of contact information from me, and I'll probably never see him again.

Which leads me into point number two. The second case there is particularly interesting. I sat and talked with this guy off and on for over an hour. Granted, I was distracted with my writing, but until after I got to work that morning, it never occurred to me that he might have been flirting with me. At all. So picture this. Here's me, sitting and working on my novel in Starbucks. The guy next to me starts trying to chat with me, and the only thing I can think of at first is, "Wow, I wish this guy would leave me alone so I can write!" But he doesn't, and I start talking to him. Then I get so thrilled that this interesting person is interested in my writing, that I completely miss the hints for my phone number or email address.

My subconscious doesn't want to share me, you see. That whole experience really made me start to wonder how many times someone has shown a real interest in me and I've been completely oblivious. I always thought I was the master of imagining interest when it wasn't there. I never, ever thought I was someone who'd miss obvious interest that was right there.

Over and over again it keeps coming back to me that I'm just meant to be single right now. And aside from a few minor bumps (in the form of occasional baby blues and, er, occasional less wholesome emotions), I'm quite content with that. It just makes me wonder... what if Prince Charming was standing in front of me waving his arms and I completely missed it?

Posted by Lisa at April 24, 2002 01:35 PM