Help me score a geek date!

In My Humble Opinion
1

First, a lengthy bit of exposition.

The setting: The Portland advance screening of Serenity.
Dramatis personae: Myself, and a young man dressed like Jayne (“Guy Dressed Like Jayne”)

[8:00 PM. Two hours before the showing. Our fetching heroine, a short redhead in jeans and a sleeveless blouse, walks up to the theater. She is sans ticket for the evening’s screening, but carries $25 in her wallet and hope in her heart. She spies a group of three young men sitting on a bench in front of the theater, one of whom is dressed like Jayne and holding a sign which reads, “WILL PERFORM THRILLING HEROICS FOR TICKETS.”]

TRACY LORD: Hah! Nice sign.
GUY DRESSED LIKE JAYNE: Thanks.
TRACY: [pauses momentarily to think.] Hey, can I – get in on that? I don’t have a ticket either. Ha ha! [laughs in show of ticketless, fannish camaraderie.]
GUY: Yeah – yeah, sure! You guys mind?
OTHER GUYS: No! [scoot over]
TRACY: [sits on ledge] So, how’re the thrilling heroics treating you?

[8:45 PM. Miraculously, all four people scored tickets at no more than fifty cents over face value. Equally miraculously, a few more PDX Browncoats have shown up with brownies, strawberries, and hilarious-to-eat ice planets. As can be seen in the pictures above, nearly everyone present is thwacking themselves in the face with frozen balls of Kool-Aid and having a grand old time. One of the GUYS from the bench has a camera out, and is filming a mini-documentary.]
CAMERA GUY: I’ll put this up on our website!
GUY DRESSED LIKE JAYNE: Ha ha! Yeah!
OTHER GUY: Great!
TRACY: [hits self in face with ice planet]

[9:15 PM. Everyone with a ticket is sitting inside the theater, playing the trailer on some fellow’s laptop, chatting, complimenting costumes.]
TRACY: …so, yeah, I took the bus out here from the boonies, came for the line party, didn’t really expect to get a ticket, and now it’s either take a ridiculously expensive cab home or walk across the river to the youth hostel! [laughs] Totally worth it, though, huh?
GUY DRESSED LIKE JAYNE: You know, I could probably give you a ride home.
TRACY: …are you sure? Because I live, like, forty-five minutes away.
GUY DRESSED LIKE JAYNE: Totally! [to OTHER GUY] Hey, we’re going on an adventure after the movie!
OTHER GUY: Cool.

[9:45 PM. We take our seats. Fortuitously, GUY DRESSED LIKE JAYNE and TRACY LORD are sitting side-by-side. GUY DRESSED LIKE JAYNE pulls out a sheet of paper and proceeds to make his way to the front of the auditorium, lead the audience in a round of “The Hero of Canton,” and sit back down.]

[12:05 AM. The movie has finished. The foursome sits back in our seats, somewhat happily stunned.]
CAMERA GUY: I can’t believe they (MAJOR PLOT POINT)!
OTHER GUY: I know! How nerve-wracking with (OTHER MAJOR PLOT POINT)?!
TRACY: No kidding. [pause] But man, how hot was (MINOR CHARACTER)?
[GUYS nod enthusiatically.]
GUY DRESSED LIKE JAYNE: I mean, talk about your tracts of land!
TRACY: No joke!
CAMERA GUY: …I still can’t believe they (MAJOR PLOT POINT).
[ALL nod, slowly.]

[12:55 AM. After navigating the backwoods of Washington and Clackamas Counties, a road closure, and TRACY LORD suffering brief home-from-college-terrain-change-amnesia, a car pulls up at TRACY LORD’s abode.]
TRACY: So, gosh, thanks so much for the ride!
GUY DRESSED LIKE JAYNE: Not at all.
TRACY: [thinking quickly] Here, I’m going to give you my email, and why don’t you drop me a line when that movie’s up on your website?
GUY DRESSED LIKE JAYNE: Can do, most definitely!
TRACY: And thanks again!
GUY DRESSED LIKE JAYNE: Talk to you later!
[TRACY unlocks the door to her house as OTHER GUY moves from the back seat to the passenger seat. GUY DRESSED LIKE JAYNE honks and drives away.]

**
Now, Guy Dressed Like Jayne has just dropped me an email (perfectly hitting the two-day window, BTW), which was brief and basically consisted of “Here’s a link to the video we filmed. Hope things are going well, and that you like the movie!”

NOW, I have to figure out how to segue from “Yeah, it’s a fun movie” to “Hey, maybe you want to go out sometime?” Because he seems funny, friendly, and generally great college-student-summer-dating material.

Here are my worries: that I’ll be coming on too fast (don’t tell me there’s no such thing :p), and that he’s just a really helpful guy and not actually interested (if he wanted to make a move, wouldn’t he have done so in the email?)

Basically, after all that setup, is “Yeah, the screening was fun, great movie – hey, do you want to go out sometime?” too much of a non-sequitur?

2

Okay, you completely faked me out! I didn’t catch your user name when I began reading the post, and expected you to be the Guy Dressed Like Jayne, not Tracy Lord! From my (easily confused, obviously) vantage, though, I think that you’re on the right track: e-mail should read along the lines of “Hey, great movie! Thanks for the link! Wanna meet for coffee/drinks/lunch/breakfast sometime?” (If you’re worried about coming on too strong, dinner is right out – for some reason, it’s a meal fraught with emotional baggage. I have no idea why, but it is.) Obviously, you have little or nothing to lose: The worst he can do is say no. At which point, you rationalize by telling yourself that he worried that you are “outside (above) his league.”

3

Yeah, this one has coffee date written all over it.

4

Yup – coffee date.

Somewhere you can get to and home from yourself, preferably.

Woo hoo! Tracy scores a geek!

5

(BTW – are any of the pix of you or him?)

6

Yeah, how embarrassing would that be? :smack: :wink:

As for pictures, oh baby, are we all over that! Lessee–

I’m on the far right here, facing Zoe; here’s Guy Dressed Like Jayne and myself attacking a few ice planets; we’re the first three pictures on this page; and here’s a shot of the group where I look like I have something in my cheek.

Well, yeah. :stuck_out_tongue:

All right, I’m dropping a line back tomorrow afternoon! Two-day response window, plus I’m starting my summer job tomorrow and I need to prep tonight. Oy!

7

I’d say it exactly like that. Don’t overthink it. If he was willing to drive you 45 minutes home, odds are incredibly good that he’s at least somewhat interested.

8

Ooh, and he’s cute (as are you) – definitely go for it!

9

Dude(tte)! Other Guy let you ride shotgun! That’s definite kowtowing to the fact that his friend (Guy Dressed Like Jayne) is into you - or at least curious. I wouldn’t start picking out the wedding china yet, but the email sounds like the right way to go.

But wait! Something very important is getting overlooked here. I need more details on how to make Ice Planets, 'cause I could SO be the hit of the fourth of July BBQ this year with those things!

10

How about:
“Yeah, it was a great movie- want to get together and talk about it some more over coffee sometime?”

11

If he’s a true geek, he may have already checked the referral log to the site you linked to and discovered this thread and now is thinking of what he should say to you.

But if he’s only semi-geek or doesn’t have access to the logs then by all means ask him out, geeks are flattered by that.

12

Never woulda thought of that myself, but that’s pure genius! I love the thought of Geek-boy reading this thread and anxiously awaiting your invitation (because I sincerely doubt he’s trying to think of ways to avoid a date).

13

Ah, attractive redheads asking out geeks. Gives me hope, it does. :slight_smile:

What is Serenity?

14

Serenity.

Email him, Tracy. Cute guy dressed like Jayne drove you home, way out of his way? Absolutely!

15

First thing I woulda done, Tracy. You’re so busted.

:slight_smile:

Jealous of the movie and the way you met someone cool there.

I’ll just have to wait till november (though I don’t need a meeting).

Good luck, you two! (noooo pressure)

16

All right, I fired an email back!

"The movie was great! It definitely caught the sort of seat-of-the-pants zeitgeist of Thursday night. :slight_smile:

Would you like to grab a cup of coffee sometime?

Tracy"

nods I think that’s pleasant and direct enough. At least, I hope so! We’ll see in the next few days.

(Wheeeeee! New gentlemen callers are exciting!)

I am so not even close to geek enough to understand what that means. :o hands in membership card

17

On that website where he posted the pictures (heck, on any website) will be a log of what page people were on when they clicked on a link to his site. (Think of a company that wanted to track the effectiveness of their advertising on the web. They’d want to know which of the ads they placed was directing people to their site.)

The idea is that if he knows about this log, and bothers to check it, he’ll find out about this page because of all the people who got to his site by clicking the link posted here.

18

Ah! That makes sense. And in that case, no worries – it’s not his webpage on which the pictures are hosted. (And now I’m definitely not dropping a link to his page here!)

19

I would imagine the gentlemen will give a positive response soon. If he does not, then he will have disgraced geeks everywhere.

20

Hah! I KNEW I must’ve seen you there! I remember seeing you and thinking “She’s a cutie.” :wink:

Wasn’t that Zoe amazing? I swear, she was a perfect white version of Zoe.