I am currently suffering
from what I like to refer to as a super sneaky crush. It's on a guy at
work. Yes, yes, I know, I should avoid work men like the plague after my
last disaster, but this isn't a particularly huge crush, and I highly
doubt it will go anywhere, mainly because I don't care to pursue it in
the same way I did with Mr. A. This guy first came to my attention
because my work girls pointed him out one day as being one of the few
lookers on our floor (there are, for the record, only two). I agreed
that he was cute, but he was a bit too short for my liking and all of my
situational lust was being expended on the Greek god in our midst.
The girls kept talking about him, and I kept shrugging my shoulders in indifference. I saw him very rarely, and couldn't seem to get past the fact that he was only just my height. Then, one day last week, BAM! I looked at him and thought 'WOW! How did I not notice just how CUTE you are?!' Since then I have been the complete opposite of indifferent. I notice him all the time now, and we've been having little conversations whenever we do see each other. It's still just a situational thing, in my opinion, and thus something I'm unlikely to pursue, but yeah, it's definitely there now.
The point of this post is not to talk in any depth about my silly little work crush, but more on the phenomenon of the super sneaky crush and how it has affected me in the past. Casting my mind back, I'm sure that I had a few of these in high school, going from not even noticing that a guy was alive to suddenly being obsessed to the point where I was scrawling our names together in the back of my school books. But they're largely uninteresting stories, and I guess a fairly common occurrence for teenage girls.
The only time that it has really happened to me as an adult was with a friend from university. The first time I met Chinchilla I thought he was a bit of a doll. We went up against each other in a faux debating situation for our degree and were both suited up. Chinchilla is a man who looks pretty amazing in a suit. He is tall, dark, and handsome in a rather Spanish way (which makes sense, as he is half Spanish). We got along fairly well too, bouncing witticisms off each other like they were going out of fashion. So I noticed him, admired him, and made a note to myself to keep an eye on that one.
By this time though, I was in the throes of a pretty significant obsession with the Original Bluck (mentioned in an earlier post as I had the rather surreal experience of seeing him in Dublin whilst I was living there and promptly ran in the opposite direction). Chinchilla and the Original Bluck were friends. I basically lived in the library for much of my degree just to escape my home life, and the OB and Chinchilla were constantly there too. As such, we formed an unlikely little trio and became friends (in spite of my massive crush on the OB). When the OB wasn't with us Chinchilla and I would talk about everything and anything, and I made it pretty clear that I was interested in the OB (I thought that maybe Chinchilla could get me in there somehow). Chinchilla and I were in the deep end of the platonic pool by now, and I had almost forgotten how good he looked in a suit.
I'm not really sure how it happened, but one day I was in the library with the OB and Chinchilla, and I looked over at Chinchilla and felt like a truck had just rammed straight into my heart. 'WOW! Why is it that I'm just friends with this guy again? Why am I so relentlessly pursuing this other douche when I could be with this pretty awesome, politically motivated, smart (did I mention looks great in a suit?) guy?' It was the sneakiest of sneaky crushes. I kept quiet about it though, maybe it was just misplaced feelings, I told myself that it was really still the OB that I wanted and that my weird rush of feelings towards Chinchilla was nothing more than a way of trying to distract myself from the disaster that was my non-existent relationship with the OB.
But the feelings didn't go away. They got worse. And I finally confided in the best friend. She looked at me quizzically, but then agreed that he was someone worth crushing on. And from that point on, there was no stopping the emotions from growing.
The funny thing is, I'm pretty sure that at almost exactly the same time as I first really noticed him, he noticed me too. Things didn't exactly get awkward between us, but the dynamic definitely changed. About a month after my revelation the annual ball held for those studying our degree occurred. I went along with the best friend and her then boyfriend, and showed up realising that Chinchilla was wearing a tie that was almost the same shade of blue as my dress. We said hi, but then spent the rest of the evening away from each other. But every time I glanced in his direction, even when he was on the other side of the room, he was looking straight back at me with an intensity that it was difficult to ignore.
At the end of the night, the best friend and her boyfriend got into a rather epic fight and both left the venue, leaving me somewhat stranded as I was staying at their place. I saw Chinchilla sitting by himself at a table on the other side of the room. He motioned me over. And from then, everything just fell into place. He kissed me, and it felt right in a way that kissing the OB had never done. We left the ball and went to the ever so classy fast food chain known for its golden arches. There we were in our finery, me with his suit jacket draped across my shoulders to ward off the chill of the night, ordering the most disgusting of fast food. We then took a leisurely stroll back to the pretty little park that was adjacent to the Town Hall where the ball had been held, and sat on a park bench together. He told me he felt really, really happy, and that he had known that this would happen somehow. It really was a pretty magical night.
We started seeing each other in earnest and the relationship ended only a few months later. I'm still not really sure why. Maybe it was because he was planning an overseas trip at the end of the year and wanted to be single for that. Maybe it was because I was a bit too honest and told him that I liked him a bit too much and he interpreted that as my way of saying I loved him. I'm not sure if I did love him, but what I felt was unusually strong. It was one of the most intense relationships I had ever had, physically at least. We didn't spend a whole lot of time together, but there was a spark between us that erupted into the most delicious of flames whenever we were alone together.
It's all a bit moot now, because early the next year when he arrived back from his overseas trip I had been dating the King of Emotional Fuckwittery for three months. I ran into Chinchilla in one of the local night clubs in our dreary little city and he seemed genuinely excited to see me, until I told him that I was there with my boyfriend. A friend later told me that he complained that I had 'bragged' about having a boyfriend, which I was annoyed by. He asked me who I was there with, I told him the truth, I was there with my boyfriend. I almost muttered this under my breath, because seeing Chinchilla again brought up a whole range of emotions that I was not comfortable dealing with, I was definitely not bragging.
A few months after that Chinchilla started dating an awful girl. But every time we saw each other it was like a weird electricity was in the room. I couldn't stop staring at him, and he couldn't stop staring at me. And this was often in spite of the fact that our respective partners were in the room as well. I complained bitterly about his girlfriend's barely concealed hatred of me to the KOEF and he told me that the reason I hated her was because I was jealous. I would yell at him when he suggested this and say that I clearly wasn't jealous because I was going out with him and not Chinchilla. But he was right, for once. I was jealous, and I was angry that he would date someone so clearly awful. He seemed beaten down and that made me angry for him.
Our friendship was never the same again, of course, and I do regret losing it. But at the same time, I'm glad that I acted on my super sneaky crush, because it was a brilliant two months. We ran into each other randomly on the train in Sydney a few years later and had a cordial conversation. I was single (although still entangled with the KOEF), and he was still with her. This fact stood as an invisible wall between us. He's living in Spain now, almost certainly no longer with the dragon girl, and up until a few years ago I was still very much in an uncertain state of longing for him. This has dissipated now, and when I do think of him it is with a smile and not a feeling of what could have been.
I guess that this little story just goes to show the power of the super sneaky crush. One day you barely notice the person, the next you're on a collision course of longing that can go on for years. This is not going to happen with my situational crush right now, but a word to the wise- don't underestimate those sneaky little crushes, they might just break your heart.
Crush-a-riffic,
B. J. Barnes
The girls kept talking about him, and I kept shrugging my shoulders in indifference. I saw him very rarely, and couldn't seem to get past the fact that he was only just my height. Then, one day last week, BAM! I looked at him and thought 'WOW! How did I not notice just how CUTE you are?!' Since then I have been the complete opposite of indifferent. I notice him all the time now, and we've been having little conversations whenever we do see each other. It's still just a situational thing, in my opinion, and thus something I'm unlikely to pursue, but yeah, it's definitely there now.
The point of this post is not to talk in any depth about my silly little work crush, but more on the phenomenon of the super sneaky crush and how it has affected me in the past. Casting my mind back, I'm sure that I had a few of these in high school, going from not even noticing that a guy was alive to suddenly being obsessed to the point where I was scrawling our names together in the back of my school books. But they're largely uninteresting stories, and I guess a fairly common occurrence for teenage girls.
The only time that it has really happened to me as an adult was with a friend from university. The first time I met Chinchilla I thought he was a bit of a doll. We went up against each other in a faux debating situation for our degree and were both suited up. Chinchilla is a man who looks pretty amazing in a suit. He is tall, dark, and handsome in a rather Spanish way (which makes sense, as he is half Spanish). We got along fairly well too, bouncing witticisms off each other like they were going out of fashion. So I noticed him, admired him, and made a note to myself to keep an eye on that one.
By this time though, I was in the throes of a pretty significant obsession with the Original Bluck (mentioned in an earlier post as I had the rather surreal experience of seeing him in Dublin whilst I was living there and promptly ran in the opposite direction). Chinchilla and the Original Bluck were friends. I basically lived in the library for much of my degree just to escape my home life, and the OB and Chinchilla were constantly there too. As such, we formed an unlikely little trio and became friends (in spite of my massive crush on the OB). When the OB wasn't with us Chinchilla and I would talk about everything and anything, and I made it pretty clear that I was interested in the OB (I thought that maybe Chinchilla could get me in there somehow). Chinchilla and I were in the deep end of the platonic pool by now, and I had almost forgotten how good he looked in a suit.
I'm not really sure how it happened, but one day I was in the library with the OB and Chinchilla, and I looked over at Chinchilla and felt like a truck had just rammed straight into my heart. 'WOW! Why is it that I'm just friends with this guy again? Why am I so relentlessly pursuing this other douche when I could be with this pretty awesome, politically motivated, smart (did I mention looks great in a suit?) guy?' It was the sneakiest of sneaky crushes. I kept quiet about it though, maybe it was just misplaced feelings, I told myself that it was really still the OB that I wanted and that my weird rush of feelings towards Chinchilla was nothing more than a way of trying to distract myself from the disaster that was my non-existent relationship with the OB.
But the feelings didn't go away. They got worse. And I finally confided in the best friend. She looked at me quizzically, but then agreed that he was someone worth crushing on. And from that point on, there was no stopping the emotions from growing.
The funny thing is, I'm pretty sure that at almost exactly the same time as I first really noticed him, he noticed me too. Things didn't exactly get awkward between us, but the dynamic definitely changed. About a month after my revelation the annual ball held for those studying our degree occurred. I went along with the best friend and her then boyfriend, and showed up realising that Chinchilla was wearing a tie that was almost the same shade of blue as my dress. We said hi, but then spent the rest of the evening away from each other. But every time I glanced in his direction, even when he was on the other side of the room, he was looking straight back at me with an intensity that it was difficult to ignore.
At the end of the night, the best friend and her boyfriend got into a rather epic fight and both left the venue, leaving me somewhat stranded as I was staying at their place. I saw Chinchilla sitting by himself at a table on the other side of the room. He motioned me over. And from then, everything just fell into place. He kissed me, and it felt right in a way that kissing the OB had never done. We left the ball and went to the ever so classy fast food chain known for its golden arches. There we were in our finery, me with his suit jacket draped across my shoulders to ward off the chill of the night, ordering the most disgusting of fast food. We then took a leisurely stroll back to the pretty little park that was adjacent to the Town Hall where the ball had been held, and sat on a park bench together. He told me he felt really, really happy, and that he had known that this would happen somehow. It really was a pretty magical night.
We started seeing each other in earnest and the relationship ended only a few months later. I'm still not really sure why. Maybe it was because he was planning an overseas trip at the end of the year and wanted to be single for that. Maybe it was because I was a bit too honest and told him that I liked him a bit too much and he interpreted that as my way of saying I loved him. I'm not sure if I did love him, but what I felt was unusually strong. It was one of the most intense relationships I had ever had, physically at least. We didn't spend a whole lot of time together, but there was a spark between us that erupted into the most delicious of flames whenever we were alone together.
It's all a bit moot now, because early the next year when he arrived back from his overseas trip I had been dating the King of Emotional Fuckwittery for three months. I ran into Chinchilla in one of the local night clubs in our dreary little city and he seemed genuinely excited to see me, until I told him that I was there with my boyfriend. A friend later told me that he complained that I had 'bragged' about having a boyfriend, which I was annoyed by. He asked me who I was there with, I told him the truth, I was there with my boyfriend. I almost muttered this under my breath, because seeing Chinchilla again brought up a whole range of emotions that I was not comfortable dealing with, I was definitely not bragging.
A few months after that Chinchilla started dating an awful girl. But every time we saw each other it was like a weird electricity was in the room. I couldn't stop staring at him, and he couldn't stop staring at me. And this was often in spite of the fact that our respective partners were in the room as well. I complained bitterly about his girlfriend's barely concealed hatred of me to the KOEF and he told me that the reason I hated her was because I was jealous. I would yell at him when he suggested this and say that I clearly wasn't jealous because I was going out with him and not Chinchilla. But he was right, for once. I was jealous, and I was angry that he would date someone so clearly awful. He seemed beaten down and that made me angry for him.
Our friendship was never the same again, of course, and I do regret losing it. But at the same time, I'm glad that I acted on my super sneaky crush, because it was a brilliant two months. We ran into each other randomly on the train in Sydney a few years later and had a cordial conversation. I was single (although still entangled with the KOEF), and he was still with her. This fact stood as an invisible wall between us. He's living in Spain now, almost certainly no longer with the dragon girl, and up until a few years ago I was still very much in an uncertain state of longing for him. This has dissipated now, and when I do think of him it is with a smile and not a feeling of what could have been.
I guess that this little story just goes to show the power of the super sneaky crush. One day you barely notice the person, the next you're on a collision course of longing that can go on for years. This is not going to happen with my situational crush right now, but a word to the wise- don't underestimate those sneaky little crushes, they might just break your heart.
Crush-a-riffic,
B. J. Barnes
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