A Lady Who Occasionally Lunches (Especially When There's a Cute Man Involved)

Here is my next Mr. Adorkable instalment. I've decided to keep the same format as my last post regarding him, listing the pros and cons, and then finishing up with the very cute ending. 

After the drinks, I decided that I was going to play it cool. I had done well to resist most of my keeno instincts throughout the evening (random social media message aside), and had come out looking somewhat interesting (if a little weird). 

I knew that he was going to our nation's capital for the remainder of the week for work, and I decided that it would be best not to disturb him whilst he was there. So the wait began. You can imagine the number of text message compositions ran through my thoroughly overactive brain during this time.

Finally, the night when he arrived back in the Southern city was upon me and I no longer had to wait. So I settled for a very simple message, noting that his drunken ravings about a particular restaurant he frequented for lunch had persuaded me to go, and indicating that should he wish to join me, he was quite welcome. 

What seemed like the longest hour and a half of my life passed before he messaged back (whilst I was having a minor conniption over the fact that he didn't respond immediately, and telling myself that he was clearly uninterested and likely to reject me forthwith, in hindsight, an hour and a half is actually super fast in man time. Most guys don't write back for at least a day or so, at least in my experience). He said that lunch would be 'great.' Not 'good', 'great!' GREAT!!!!!!!!!! I never thought that that word could cause me so much excitement.

So the day for the planned lunch rolled around (incredibly slowly in my opinion), and we arranged to meet outside the pub we'd had drinks at the week before. Now to the pros and cons. I will start with the pros this time, because one of the cons won't make much sense without them:

Pros:

• He was earlier than me in getting to the meeting place, and I saw him pacing back and forth before I arrived.
• We are sort of beyond shaking hands hello now, but I felt like I needed to do something to greet him beyond saying hi and waving awkwardly, so I went in for the hug right off the bat. This didn't seem to bother him, and he went in for the hug when we were saying goodbye, which was brilliant. 
• The lunch itself was really good. He is, of course, incredibly funny, and chatty, and smart. He asked me a tonne of questions about myself and seemed genuinely interested in my responses. We didn't run out of things to talk about, which is always a good thing.
• The staring standoffs kind of continued between us, but thankfully neither of us were drunk this time, so they lasted only a couple of seconds. I realised that he is a very intense person in terms of eye contact and topics of conversation, which is a definite pro for me, because I am exactly the same, at least when it comes to interacting with guys that I like. 
• We got coffee after lunch, and I'm pretty sure he was making an awkward attempt to pay for me. I wasn't positive though, so I paid for my own coffee in the end. He got a little bit flustered over the whole situation.

Cons:

• I laughed so much at one point that I snorted. Hot. Really, really hot. 
• He got a bit overenthusiastic in his story telling at one point and as he crossed his leg with some force, managed to kick me. This isn't really a con, it's just kind of amusing. But it still demonstrates the continuing level of awkwardness between us. 
• Even though the conversation went very well, I feel like I talked about myself far too much, and that I didn't ask him enough questions about himself. Having said this, I wasn't given much opportunity, I would finish a train of thought, the banter regarding it would end, and he'd ask me another question. I am just hoping I didn't come across as completely self-absorbed, or just weird. I would sometimes go off on random tangents, like I somehow got into talking about how I liked things and places to be clean. That's right, clean. Mid way through talking about cleanliness I had one of my common moments of thinking-out-loud. It went a little something like this- 'Wow, I must sound like the most interesting person in the world. What are you into? Oh, you know, cleanliness.' As I asked this question of, well, myself, he pitched in with the answer of 'hygiene.' Fun times. So I'm now the weird clean girl who snorts whilst laughing (not a good thing when the guy you're trying to impress moonlights as a comedian) and cares nothing for the stories of others.

Now, for the ending, which is, quite frankly, the best part of the whole story. I was in a bit of a rush to get back to the office after lunch, and had discussed this with him. My department is very strict with lunch hours and I was a bit anxious to be back on time. His department is much more relaxed, so he found my haste rather amusing. He joked at lunch that he would be sure to call me as soon as he got back to his office to make sure I was at my desk, and that if I wasn't there he would speak to my manager and tell her why. I found this very amusing, not amusing enough to snort out loud though. 

After coffee, we got to the corner where we had to part and, as mentioned before, he hugged me goodbye. He told me to run back, and as he was walking in the direction of his office, I told him to be sure to let me know if he wanted to hang out with me again. I wanted to leave it open for him to be the next to initiate contact, as I had already put myself out there, and now the ball was firmly back in his court.

I then did in fact run back to my desk. I arrived back rather breathless and was getting out of my coat when my phone started to ring. I was very flustered and may have sworn at the phone in frustration. One of my colleagues offered to take the call for me, but I assured her it was ok, I could grab it. I picked up the phone and proceeded with the standard greeting. 'It's just me,' I heard him say on the other end of the phone. He proceeded to start chuckling. I started giggling. He said 'I just wanted to check you made it back to your desk.' I told him that, yes, I was most definitely back at my desk. 'Well, that's good, because it is currently 2:06pm and it would have looked really bad if you weren't.' I asked him what he would have done had someone else answered the call, and he said he probably would have manufactured a query. I asked him if he had anything work related to ask me whilst I had him on the line, and he laughingly told me he didn't. We ended the phone call and I was a blushing, giggling mess, so you can imagine the reaction of my work girls. It was such a sweet little way to end the whole thing. I'm liking our endings so far, I'd just like our beginnings to become a bit more positive. 


The elation from the success of the whole lunch thing sent me into a rather lalala type of mood for the next day and a half. Then I moved into the next, much scarier stage of lunch aftermath. That, however, is a post for another time. 


Snorty McSnortster,


B. J. Barnes

A Girl, A Guy, and a Whole Lot of Alcohol

I will commence this by apologising to my Irish girls, who may be reading this, as I took most of this from an email I sent to them last week. 

So, I totally attended the birthday drinks for Mr. Adorkable, and, shockingly, things weren't too awkward (at least not for the whole night).

Don't get me wrong, the evening got off to an incredibly awkward start, and almost ended before it started! I arrived with one of my lovely work girls, who had graciously agreed to come in spite of the fact that it was on a Tuesday night (shudder). He was already there, surrounded by lots of people from his part of the organisation (mostly girls, I couldn't help but notice). My friend and I approached him and joined the small circle around him, tentatively joining in on the conversation. It was a bit awkward, there were too many others to attempt to monopolise his time, so we sipped our drinks and joined in where we could. We went to get new drinks and when we came back the circle had closed. We stood awkwardly to the side, and I expressed the desire to sink into the ground. 

I guess the problem at this stage was that the people who work in his area are not the friendliest, most inclusive people. The best word to describe them is cliquey. And we were most definitely not part of their clique.I was looked at as if I were an unpleasant piece of mould intruding on their cool party, and that was if they looked at me at all, most of them opted to stare straight through me. 

My friend was planning on leaving early, and there was no way I was sticking around by myself, standing like the creepy loner in the corner nursing my cider, cackling maniacally as I tried to involve myself in 'the circle.' She was about to leave, and then something absolutely fantastic happened- my darling best friend showed up! She had mentioned that she might swing by for 'one drink' as she was working in the area. When I saw her my heart positively leapt. 

Why, you ask? Aside from the fact that she is my best friend, she is also very adept at infiltrating conversations and making awkwardness go away. This happened almost instantly. We grabbed a drink and within two seconds we were in Mr. Adorkable's circle, talking like we'd all known each other for fifteen years. It was brilliant. 

And then it got more brilliant. Two of Mr. Adorkable's friends from outside of work showed up. Then the clique left. And my bestie's man showed up. So it was me with two of my friends, and Mr. Adorkable with two of his. A much more manageable situation, leading to a less awkward outcome.

We eventually left the pub and all went out for dinner, which was a lot of fun (and probably very wise in light of the amount of alcohol we had all consumed). I'm going to summarise the rest of the evening based upon perceived pros and cons (because I am clearly the Queen of overthinking absolutely everything), and then I'm going to give a slightly lengthier account of the very last part of the evening, as I feel that it is cute and amusing, much like Mr. Adorkable himself.

Let's start with the cons, because they are more depressing and it's good to get them out of the way first.

Cons:

• He is still quite awkward with me. My bestie noticed this. She thinks he at least likes me as a friend, but finds the awkwardness strange.
• There was a point in time very early on at the pub when we were left alone together and whenever someone would walk past he would try to pull them into the conversation, which made me think he didn't want to talk to me one on one. This made me sad.
• Later in the evening when we were alone we were having a conversation about the fact that the suburb I live in is where all the beautiful people are from (ie. tanned, blonde, gym bunnies), and where he lives is a bit more hipster cool. I said 'so, yeah, it's all the beautiful people, and then there's me' (meaning, I am not beautiful in that way and do not fit in), and he said 'I know!' (which I took to mean 'you are not beautiful in any way and I can't believe such a place has accepted you).

Now for the pros, because they're fabulous.

Pros:

• His female friend from uni kept asking me all these questions like 'are you married or anything?,' 'do you like anyone at the moment? Maybe someone at work?' and when I told her things about myself (like the fact I lived in Dublin for a year) she already knew them! Interesting...
• He told me he was going to shave his beard off and I told him that I liked it, and he said he was really torn now and unsure if he'd shave or not.
• He also remembered almost every conversation we have ever had, and really specific details from the conversations, like how much I love my stepdad, and the fact that he was Irish.
• He remembered that I loved Jane Austen novels and that we had talked about them at the Christmas party. And he told me that he went and read Pride & Prejudice over Christmas time. And we had a gigantic conversation about Darcy v Wickham (my argument- a Darcy is what my heart wants, but my head realises that more men are likely to be arsehole Wickhams. His argument- I should always hold out for a Darcy).
• He kept looking at me at dinner (we were sitting across from each other) and I kept catching him, and then we would have an awkward stare for 30 seconds, and then I would break the awkward stare by saying something silly.
• He is disgustingly smart, like one of the smartest people I have EVER met. As a result, he is also disgustingly interesting. And funny, of course. And just ridiculously cute.
• He had the option of getting a cab or a tram from the street we were on at the end of the evening, but he opted to walk with me to the tram stop that I needed to go to instead, and that is where the end of the story kicks in:

We walked together to the tram spot and I sent him a social media message on my way home. The message was following on from a conversation we had at the tram stop. He was waiting with me on my side of the road but had to catch the tram on the other side. I told him it was ok if he wanted to go to the other side, but he said he could run for his tram. I said that made sense, because he has long legs and is probably a fast runner. He laughed at me and told me that I clearly had no sense of sporting prowess if I thought having long legs qualifies you for speed. I told him he would probably beat me in a race. He thought I said he had beat me in a race, and said 'We've never had a race, when have I ever beaten you in a race?' I explained his mistake. We laughed. Then his tram came and he ran for it, and he was running and looked over at me and motioned as if 'see, I'm a terrible runner.' My tram came at the same time, so I got on mine. Then I was drunk, and bored, and forgot that I could listen to my ipod, so I sent him the social media message that said:

I apologise for the drunken, bored tram ride home message but....

I think we should have a race.

You would win, because you have longer legs.

He then sent a text (I had brazenly given him my number in an email a few days prior, but did not yet have his) that said that we would both need to train for the race, and that after seeing him run I probably felt like I was in with a chance, and that he was now having a packing his bag race (he was heading Canberra for four days for a comedy thingo).

I responded that I would need some time to train, and that anyone other than me might feel like they were in with a chance, but that I am not an athlete, but a book nerd and therefore unlikely to win.

Needless to say, I thought this was a pretty successful evening all in all, and the pros outweighed the cons, which is always a good thing. 

There have since been some further developments, which I will be sure to share, all in good time. I figure that this one is going to be a slow burn which will either explode into flames one lovely day, or fizzle out, so I'll keep the posts coming, but you'll have to wait a little bit longer. 

Have I left you in a complete state of suspense? That's exactly how I feel right now, so I don't feel too bad about it. 

Feeling a bit warm and fuzzy, 

B. J. Barnes

A Crush of Awkward Proportions

So, I mentioned in my last post that I had met a rather adorkable man at my work. He remains as adorkable as ever, and the crush is showing no signs of fading. But the entire relationship (or lack thereof) has been fraught with what can only be described as crushing awkwardness. For some reason, every time I see this guy I am transformed into an awkward fifteen year old girl who does not have the social skills to navigate the simplest of interactions. And he's not much better! So chances of us ever getting it together appear slim to none. I joked to one of my Irish girls the other night that she should plan a trip to Oz for fifteen years time when Mr. Adorkable and I finally get married. It really seems like it is going to take forever to ascertain whether he even likes me!

Let me give you some examples of our brief meetings:

• Christmas Party Shame- having met him previously, and both of us being relatively new to our organisation, I spent a lot of time chatting to him. Shameful experience number 1- I had a drunken argument with one of his work colleagues over politics. I became shrill. Shrill is not hot. In any way. Shameful experience number 2- I walked in midway through a conversation between Mr. Adorkable and my good friend. He said something along the lines of 'next time I get a girlfriend, they'll have to not like (insert very famous sci-fi TV show here). All of my ex girlfriend's have loved it, and I think it has something to do with the failure of our relationships.' Appropriate response- 'Hahaha, funny! Good joke Mr. Adorkable.' My overexcited response- 'I don't like (said TV show)!' Sigh. May as well have just shouted 'I LOVE you!' Shame, shame, shame. 
• Random Street Meeting Shame- walking back to my office after a lunch break I saw Mr. Adorkable standing on the opposite street corner. I needed to cross to this corner as well. After a minor heart attack I decided that the best tactic was simply to pretend that I had not seen him, given my rather recent Christmas Party Shame. I had my headphones in so I simply crossed to near where he was standing and had my head turned towards the oncoming traffic. I heard someone shouting my name, and looked around to see him yelling over the heads of other pedestrians. I smiled and acted surprised. We had a quick conversation on the walk back to the office. Nothing weird, nothing awkward, just a friendly chat. But, of course, my inner keeno came to the fore as soon as I was back at my desk, and I emailed him following up on something we had discussed. We emailed back and forth over the next few weeks but this eventually fizzled out on his end, leading, of course, to awkwardness. 
• Avoidance of Shame- I next saw him again at a training session. We were sitting on opposite sides of the room. It would have taken an effort on my part to go to talk to him. I decided that I should repress my keeno on this occasion and left without acknowledging his presence. The next morning I woke up to a 'friend request' from Mr. Adorkable. My unintentional freeze out appears to be working. 
• Close Quarters Shame- I attended another training session last week. Mr. Adorkable arrived and he sat next to me, after a rather awkward exchange regarding whether he actually wanted me to move my bag so that he could sit down. It got even worse from this point. We couldn't really talk during the lecture, so we shared a few awkward laughs at things that really weren't funny. To make matters even worse, he is one of the most fidgety people I have EVER encountered. So for the entire hour he was constantly moving, crossing and uncrossing his legs, doing random things with his hands. I felt positively serene and elegant next to him (two things I very rarely feel). When the lecture finally finished he somehow managed to trap me in the row of seats we were sitting in by standing directly in the exit. He told me how good it was to see me rather than just talking over the phone regarding work related things. I agreed. But I wanted to get out of the aisle, mainly so that others behind me could also get out. The only way I saw to do this was to end the conversation. Awkwardly. I laughed at his statement that he was always calling me, confused. Then I motioned that I wanted to get out of the aisle, said goodbye, and ran. I felt awful afterwards and spent hours (as all crazy keenos do) thinking about how I could make it seem like I wasn't trying to get out of talking to him. I finally settled on a good old social media message. I wrote briefly to him, apologising for rushing out, and stating that I hoped we could chat the next time we saw each other. It felt quite cathartic. 
• Anticipated Shame- a few days passed after my cathartic social media message and I didn't get a response. I wasn't overly concerned, it wasn't the kind of message that needed a response. But then I got a response. And I nearly choked. He acknowledged that I had seemed to be in a bit of a hurry to get out, and then, drumroll please, he invited me to drinks for his birthday! Next week! I waited twenty four hours to write back (resisting all of my keeno instincts), and said that I would love to come to drinks and to let me know when they would be happening. I'm waiting to hear back. I anticipate awkwardness. I'm going to take some of my work girls along for support, and to hopefully help me avoid utter humiliation. I imagine a drunken me laughing loudly at everything he says, or drunkenly confessing to a crush, or talking about The Writer, or other random guys I have crushes on, or falling over, or throwing up, you get the picture. I can also imagine us having a crushingly awkward conversation in which we both make several inappropriate jokes. And then he stands on my toe. And I spill a drink on him. And head butt him as I'm trying to help him clean it up. It seems like we're just those type of people. 

Based on this fact, that we seem to descend into chaotic versions of ourselves whenever we're in close proximity to each other, I wonder if it could ever even work. I mean, say for argument's sake that he likes me just as much as I like him. If we were to hook up, would the awkwardness eventually just dissipate, leaving two nerdy, but ultimately compatible and reasonably comfortable people, in its place? Or would it linger on into a relationship and ultimately destroy it? Who knows really, I guess the hypothetical would have to be played out to figure it all out. 

Here I go again, getting twenty steps ahead of myself. But I am hoping for the best, that the drinks go well, that we don't make complete fools of ourselves, and that I get a better indication of whether he like likes me, or whether he thinks we should be friends. 

In the words of Josh Pyke, gloriously unaware of how this might turn out,

B. J. Barnes