Welcome to The Man Chronicles, a series at THL. Or more accurately, an "occasional series" because my dating life is very Miranda Hobbes circa her panic attack aka sources for post subjects are scarce. I really get my flirt on with the Chinese food guy, though.
Series motto (for now!), methinks: "Do any of you have a completely unremarkable friend or maybe a houseplant I could go to dinner with on Saturday night?"
Before I write this, I want everyone to know that I just went to mail some letters to my friends. I needed stamps on all but one of the envelopes, so I handed that one to the man behind the counter and told him it was all set. He looked at the stamp - it was of Professor McGonagall - and he said, "That's an awesome stamp!" I then noticed that his brown shirt was not actually just a brown shirt, but a Chewbacca shirt. I was going to tell him I liked it, but I worried that we'd exceed the acceptable level of geekiness. (Also, I was nervous.)
Point is, I walked out of there like, "Damn, what if he was my soulmate? Why didn't I compliment his shirt and/or ask him out? Come on, Char."
Because you know, same taste in literature and movies means LOVE.
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Yes. Logic.
Reality be more like:
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But, on to Chuck.
Ah, Chuck. A memorable date.
My one and only talent (and I'm not even that spectacular at it) is being funny. I was given many opportunities to put this talent on display my sophomore year of college because I was very depressed and not handling it well, so I was always late to class. And when I was late to class I got called on to answer questions much more frequently than normal. And since there was nary a class that got my full attention, I didn't always know the answers to these questions. So, like with most hard topics in life, I had to avoid the question at hand by making some sort of funny remark.
Chuck sat right in front of me in one of those classes, and I guess my often-macabre sense of humor (it was a criminal justice class - this kind of humor was appropriate) charmed him because he asked me out in a painfully awkward Facebook chat. You know, "Hey, so we should get together." "Oh, like to study for criminal justice?" "Well... yeah but also like we should hang out." "Oh, okay yeah I guess we can hang out after." "No, I mean do you want to go get coffee or something?"
I wasn't 100% sure he was asking me on a date until I asked my friends to decipher whether or not he was asking me on a date.
(Male readers - specify!!! It's so awkward to go to dinner, lunch, the movies, etc without knowing for certain whether or not it was supposed to be a date. [...I've asked guys to "hang out" with intended vagueness so I'm a little bit of a hypocrite, but I'm a fan of the old-school man asking the woman on the first real date, so...])
Back to Chuck.
So I agreed to the date, but I probably shouldn't have. At the time I was not super interested in dating, and the one person I was interested in was... not Chuck. I don't think that physical attraction is necessary for a first date, but I think it helps and well, there was none. Or at least, I don't know how he felt but I was not attracted to him. Obviously people can develop attraction over time, but I went on this date even though I didn't really want to, I wasn't interested in a relationship, and there wasn't an ounce of physical attraction to help. Which all meant... I went into it with sort of a bad attitude. But he was such a nice guy, so I didn't want to say no.
The day of, I tried to be less pessimistic about it. "Hey, free coffee, a nice guy - it could be fun."
Except it wasn't. I don't really know why. There was no chemistry and we spent about half an hour talking about cartoons (and not even the cool cartoons) and then another hour talking about more stuff and just.. it didn't work out. He was very nice, I like to think I was pleasant even though I wasn't interested, the coffee was fine. But the date simply sucked.
He drove me back to my car and he went to park and get out, but I didn't want to do the whole thing with him opening the door for me so I grabbed my bag, said, "Right here is fine, thanks" and took my seat belt off. I took the handle and turned to say goodbye when he leaned in to kiss me. I pulled the door handle and backed out of there so fast I almost fell ass backwards out of the car. I felt a little bad but it was clear to me that I didn't want to date him and so I wasn't going to kiss the guy, especially since I knew then that he was still interested.
This is the part of the story in which I'm a huge jerk.
The date wasn't enjoyable for me, but I suppose it was for him because he kept pursuing me. And instead of being mature, I kept putting the conversation off. He'd ask me if I wanted to "hang out" (SPECIFY, DAMMIT) and I'd tell him I was busy studying. He'd suggest going to the movies and I'd go back to LI for the weekend. So for probably a month I kept up the "oh yeah, maybe later, I'm busy" thing and I'm sure it wasn't fun for him and I regret it now. I wish I'd have been more thoughtful and just told him I wasn't interested instead of letting him think I might have been into him, but was just incredibly busy.
Ugh, Charlotte.
If Chuck ever reads this: I'm sorry! I was a jerk. You were very nice.
Lesson learned:
Communicate your damn feelings.
Til next time.
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Charlotte
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