Monday, August 22, 2005

there's more to life than being really, really ridiculously good-looking

I had actually taken a post-pool, pre-kickball shower in anticipation of flirting with him. Now, I enjoy everyone on our team for their own unique contributions to our group. The way they catch fly balls, their outrageous stories, their ability to pound Miller High Life like a seventh-year-senior. That said, I especially enjoy chatting with beautiful, if slightly dense, men (not specific to those in my kickball league). I hadn't seen him since the first game day, when I was still incredibly raw and the ego boost of a stranger's hand on my hip and a crinkly, smug smile flashed at me felt fantastic. I may not be so raw anymore, but ain't nothing like the prospect of messing around with a hot teammate to complete the healing process.

"So what's your excuse for missing the game today?" I asked him. Play it cool, EJ, play it cool. He knows he's hot, you gotta make him want it. Besides, you have to make up for the damage inflicted when seven of your friends simultaneously elbowed you when he walked in the door.

"Oh, yeah. I got caught in traffic coming back from Charlotte." OK...

"Riiiight, a likely story." Ugh, are my attempts at being a flirtatious tease really that bad? Granted, he's not giving me much to work with.

"Naw, I swear! No way would I have missed you and the game otherwise." Yesssss. Am Sex Goddess.

"So what was down in Charlotte?" Please say the beach/my brother/a really boring conference for work or something equally neutral.

"Oh, I was helping my girlfriend move."



Well fuck. So much for my scandalous post-breakup fling. Why do guys do this? They wait until they know the girl is interested and then drop the G-Bomb, even though there were plenty of opportunities to do so earlier, saving that girl a lot of time and energy. Maybe the girlfriend could have been brought up when you were telling me about what else you've done this weekend, or why you decided to move to DC or why you should probably leave the bar early because she's at home waiting for you with a seven-course homemade meal and a copy of the Kama Sutra.

(In the interest of full disclosure, I'm totally guilty of reversing the roles and casually mentioning my boyfriend after an indecent amount of flirting with a guy. But as long as women continue to make 75 cents to a man's dollar, we have to get our power from somewhere.)

Since it's silly to mourn what you never had, I moped for approximately .78 seconds and then resumed playing. I was still doing this a half hour later when I caught side of him at the other end of our tables, whipping his head around to-- I shit you not-- check himself out in the mirror behind him. Not in a "do I have something in my teeth?" kind of way, but a full-on "How you doin'?" to his own reflection. It was priceless; a real-life Zoolander moment for the drunken jock set. One of our captains was standing next to me, also looking in his direction. When she turned back towards me, we looked at each other and fell apart laughing. "Did you see?!" "At himself??" "Omigod!" Stomach-throbbing, sidesplitting hilarity. We lost the round because we were laughing too hard to stand, much less drink beer and not spit it out cackling.

Hot guys will come and go, but the joy of catching extreme narcissism in the act will last forever.

3 comments:

I-66 said...

I hate mention of the significant other after you think you've made progress... total buzzkill.

I-66 said...

yeah and the fact that he has a g/f...

Red Photography said...

He did a total double-take. It was like, "who's that pretty boy"? Priceless.