Charming, but single

Sunday afternoon I was minding my own business, shopping at the Pricey Fancy Grocery Store near my house. I try to avoid doing much grocery shopping at a place that has such reasonably priced wares as $8 bottles of maple syrup, $6 loaves of sandwich bread and $19 a pound mushrooms, for obvious financial reasons. But I love the smells and the tastes and so I sometimes splurge on Rosemary Sourdough bread and fancy cheese and the best damn salad bar in the world. Just because.

I was dressed for the grocery store, wearing those jeans I wear when I’m not out to impress anyone – they slide down my hips a bit and they’re a touch too short to wear with heels – and a T-shirt from a football game in 2000 (I swear, there’s a date on it), with flip flops and my hair in a messy bun and no make-up whatsoever. I was there for goat cheese, not socializing.

I’m shuffling through the aisles and getting some veggies from the salad bar and I look up and there he is. The Nurse. I wasn’t sure it was him until he looked up and I made eye contact with him, the guy who gave me butterflies and then took them away without reason or explanation or apology.

Now, I’m not saying that there’s a right time to run into the most recent man to drop off of the face of the earth and reject you, because there isn’t. (Though I did have this fantasy involving me in a short dress with shiny hair on the arm of a Hot Doctor, but it was immature and unrealistic.) But Sunday, when I was in my crappy Around the House clothes with my crappy Around the House hair, I couldn’t think of a less right time to see The Nurse. Couldn’t I have least been in my nice jeans or in a cute shirt with cleavage? And brushed hair and lip gloss?

I don’t know why I care about looking unkempt for someone who’s seen me first thing in the morning with bad breath and worse hair. And while in my fantasy I walked up to him with my stilettos clicking to punctuate each step and sexily say hello, in the cold hard reality of my grocery store nightmare, I rolled my eyes and headed quickly down the center aisle and away from the salad bar, past a case of frozen edamame, around to an aisle of fancy root vegetable chips. I flipped open my cell and called friends until The Lawyer* answered.

I kept the conversation peppy as I checked out and loaded my bags into the car, but as soon as I was safely alone in my car, I spilled the beans.

“[The Nurse] was in the store. I just saw him and he saw me and he hasn’t talked to me in weeks and he just saw me and IT WAS NOT GOOD,” I said, describing my old T-shirt and jeans and the pint of Ben and Jerry’s resting in my basket. “And so I had to be on the phone with SOMEONE to distract me.”

The Lawyer commiserated with me and offered up this suggestion, “Maybe it wasn’t him?”

“Maybe, but no, we made eye contact, I’m pretty sure it was him,” I said as I put the car in reverse and drove through the parking lot. I turned down the next row, heading to the street. And The Nurse was walking toward me with an older-looking woman and I had to laugh.

“It is definitely him,” I told The Lawyer. “And he just saw me. He is walking in my direction looking at me in my car driving right by him. And he’s with a woman, but he’s not being affectionate. So it could be his mom or something.”

I paused.

“I could run him over.”

She persuaded me against this choice and said, “You know I bet he calls you this week.”

I just laughed because I knew this would never happen.

“You laugh,” she said. “But boys forget. And now that he’s soon you, he’ll remember.”

I appreciated her sweetness, but knew she could never be serious.

BFE called me later and I told her about seeing The Nurse.

“God, what was he doing in MY NEIGHBORHOOD,” I fumed. “That store is three minutes from MY HOUSE. He lives a ways away. There is another PERFECTLY GOOD grocery store near HIS HOUSE.”

She laughed.

“I mean, this is CLEARLY my grocery store,” I continued.

“CLEARLY,” she agreed.

“I should have run him over when I had the chance.”

“Nah,” she said. “Messy.”

* Things with The Lawyer are fine now, thanks for asking.

Though BFE is not yet engaged, we’ve been gossiping quite a bit about wedding details and plans, which is still kind of fun to do now because the reality hasn’t set in yet due to her nonengaged status.

Witness the following text message exchange:

Charming: So, all those years that you talked about orange bridesmaid dresses. You weren’t serious, right?

BFE: We’re hoping that the color of the wedding is going to be red-orange, yes.

Charming: I think orange is probably going to look bad on me. Are you absolutely sure I can’t wear black?

BFE: I’m not going to be a Bridezilla, but absolutely no black. I’m pretty firm on this.

Charming: I just want you to know that you’re the only person I love enough to wear an orange dress in your wedding.

BFE: I know, and I love you too. And you’re going to look beautiful and having you around me will make me look beautiful too.

That boy of hers better pop the question before I lose my willingness to wear orange.

Apparently I get an itch every six or seven months to open the floor for questions. In case you have not noticed, I am a touch extroverted and I like to share. Also, as I am on mandatory rest this weekend, which means no men, no drinking, no going out, no eating out, no parties, no shoe shopping, no anything fun except for DVDs and orange juice and soup. Responsible Me has grounded Wild Child Me for letting Us get so fatigued.

So you asking me questions is really just a way for me to have something to blog about without having to actually leave my apartment or stop watching Grey’s Anatomy, the McDreamy/McSteamy/McVet Season or risk doing something that involves make-up, a flat iron and a bra.

Plus, I know people have questions – I always have questions for bloggers I read, but it seems in appropriate to just blurt them out. I am giving you permission to blurt them out.

So rack your brains for good questions and leave them in the comments. I reserve the right to not answer them should I think they are too personal or mean-spirited. Yes, the PR person in me knows that “No Comment” equals “Guilty” or “You caught me!” or “Bite me.”

Yet the woman in me doesn’t care.

Previous question-and-answer sessions can be found here and here, so go see what y’all (the Royal Y’all, my reading public) have already asked me.

The other day I was hanging out at my parents’ house before a family dinner. Talk turned to my still-in-high-school sister’s dating life, which annoyed her to no end and thrilled me, since it stopped my mom from asking me for the 400th time if I was being careful with the “men from that –ahem!—’service’ on the Internet.”

“What happened to that guy from formal last year?” I pried with glee. “He was cute!”

He’d been a set up, a friend of her friend’s boyfriend who went to another fancy school in town. They’d hung out several times and went to both of their schools’ formals together, but it was clearly more out of mutual necessity than actual romance or chemistry.

(This is all fine and dandy with me because the child is still so young. She has all the time in the world to follow in the neurotic dating disaster footsteps of her fair sister.)

My parents ribbed her for his not calling. Just the way they’ve joked with me from ages 16 to 26. They mean to be playful, but it stings from time to time.

“I think he died and no one told your sister,” Dad teased.

My sister narrowed her eyes at my parents and with turned a defiant gaze in my direction.

“I think he died and no one cared,” she smirked to me.

The Friday night text messages started after I was already half in bed. I’ve been trying my best to rest and failing to do so each weekend. I’ve been sick off and on since July and I need to stay in for an entire weekend and lounge on my bed and drink orange juice and eat healthy food.

But this wasn’t to happen on Friday night.

Prom Date was at a bar that is right near my apartment and he suggested that I meet him for a glass of wine. He casually mentioned that The Blackberry was there, but quickly pointed out that they hadn’t spoken about me.

I figured that one glass of wine wouldn’t kill me, so I slid into jeans and a flowy maroon top with some copper accents. I twisted my hair up and pinned it in a messy bun against my head, accessorized and added a light dusting of makeup.

I didn’t really want to see The Blackberry, since he hadn’t made a move to ask me out even though he’s viewed my Match profile several times recently. But, I figured I had Prom Date there to entertain me.

I found Prom Date and his friends quickly and ordered a Pinot Gris. Prom Date invited me to sit in an empty bar stool and as I did, he said, quite devilishly, “I’m sure [The Blackberry] won’t mind if you sit in his chair.”

I giggled because The Blackberry was nowhere to be found. So I settled in with Prom Date and we talked about work and such for a while. The bar we were at is divided into two main rooms – the back half is darker and louder and home to a band most nights – the front, where we were, is a cigar bar. It’s brighter and quieter and more relaxing.

I saw The Blackberry come into the front room, but I didn’t budge from my seat or my conversation with Prom Date and company. The Blackberry had a woman with him. She looked young and kind of drunk. He hung all over her while he talked to someone. Prom Date mouthed “I’m sorry” to me. I just giggled and shook my head. Truth be told, I couldn’t fault the dude for being with a woman, as we’d never been on a date or formally hung out since he started messaging me on Match. He had no idea I’d be at the bar, so no harm, no foul, right?

It did feel kind of awkward that he hadn’t spoken to me. At one point, he was standing right next to my barstool and I didn’t even seem to register to him. Did my picture look that different? Did not having my hair down make that big of a difference?

He was propped against this woman and made sure she’d agree to bring him home – but pointed out that he had to be up early to go out of town in the morning.

I rolled my eyes for her.

As soon as his Female Companion went to the back room again, he made reference to visiting his girlfriend out of town, noting that Female Companion didn’t know about that with a very hearty laugh.

I rolled my eyes for both of them.

Then with me, it was a different story. He turned and pretended to recognize me for the first time and made this show of asking if I remembered him. I smiled and said I did.

He was drunk. Very drunk. For a guy who once bragged to me via instant message that he had one glass of merlot a night and that’s all, he was slamming back mixed drinks like a pro. I humored him in conversation, but I was pretty closed off to his advances – he’d been hanging onto another woman and joking about some out-of-town girlfriend. And my perch on my barstool put him at perfect eye level to leer at my chest, which he did without regard to if I’d care.

He sloppily draped an arm around my shoulder and leaned in close to me to talk. I was trying to be polite but short to his flirtation, knowing full well he’d run back to his Female Companion as soon as she returned because she was a Sure Thing.

“Remember when we used to instant message?” he asked. “On my Blackberry?”

He patted the device, which hung from its holster on his belt. Cell phones are not accessories and should not be worn as such, except by doctors or others in times of crisis. This is a firm rule I abide by, although I must say that many men I know are phone-wearers, presumably because they don’t carry purses.

“Of course, I’m not on it tonight,” he said, patting it again. “No Blackberry for me tonight!” He went on about how he’d been wined and dined by a contractor for work earlier in the evening and more about the Blackberry.

He was trying to show off.

“Well, I never bring my Blackberry out to bars,” I said. “Who needs to work that much?”

I motioned to my personal cell phone and shot him a smug glance, because it takes more than a fancy cell phone to impress me.

“Also, I never trust people who try to get me drunk.”

Clearly, I was not going to play into his self-importance.

Recognizing such, he tried another flirting tactic – “You look even prettier than in your picture,” he slurred.

I rolled my eyes, for me this time.

A few minutes later Female Companion came back. His hand flew from my shoulder and quickly went around her waist.

I rolled my eyes for the both of us.

He made a big show of flirting with her, even leaning her back onto Prom Date’s lap to grind against her and kiss her neck. Prom Date shot me this look of total pain and disbelief and mouthed, “I’m sorry” again.

I just winked at him.

Soon The Blackberry and Female Companion returned to the other room to dance. He didn’t even bother to wave to me or say goodbye.

“I am so sorry about that,” Prom Date said. “I had no idea.”

“He’s drunk,” I said. “Trust me, I’m amused. My married girlfriends depend on me for good stories like this one – they live vicariously through my single girl adventures. And I’ve never had a guy try to play two girls at one time so blatantly. And so poorly.”

I kissed Prom Date on the cheek and headed out into the night.

“You’re not going to tell [The Blackberry] goodbye?” he asked.

“Hardly.”

“He would be all about you normally. He just really wants to sleep with that other girl tonight, I guess.”

I laughed.

“I don’t need that. I have too many other prospects to deal with that.”

And I walked out like I believed this was true.