Note to Admins: Damn thread titles aren’t long enough for me to glurge out a properly convoluted description of my situation in the style of Miguel de Cervantes. Please rewrite all applicable code and recompile vCode to suit my aimless whims. Thanx, Stranger.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, I was preparing to describe my encounter with the Dream Girl and my absolute, abominable, and inexcusable failure to actually, you know, say “Hi,” or something. So there I am, at the Whole Foods, attempting not to blow my Whole Paycheck on their All Natural, Super Organic, Not Genetically Modified, Utterly Nutritious Something or Another, when I see her passing by the butcher’s counter. Oh yes, it’s Her; tall, slender, slightly geekly countinence amplified by her librarian-inspired eyeware, the slightly grubbly-looking scrubs, carrying a basketful of produce sticking out at exciting angles, slightly disaffected. Think Julianne Nicholson, but somewhat less freckles, or perhaps a redheaded stepsister of Gweneth Paltrow (who I’ve been mildly enthused about ever since I saw Proof, even though in real life she probably can’t balance her checkbook at mortal threat).
So, as we pass, our eyes meet; a sort of click, the kind movie directors like to represent by slowing down the camera and laying on a thick cello accompanyment. But then the moment is over and we move on; her toward the dairy section, me wondering why I require five pounds of super hemp granola out of the bulk dispenser. Redistributing my load to accomodate my unanticipated breakfast food largess, I weigh my options and move to stealthily intercept her in a manner I hope that is no more than Mildly Creepy in the scale of non-romantic-comedy-embedded stalking. I pause in the deli area to provision up on kalamata olives (or as I refer to them, Og’s Candy) when again I see the Ultimate Picture Of Lovelyness browsing through the wines. This being a forest with whose species I am manifestly familiar, I slither forward in a way hopefully not interpreted as unremittingly predatory and prepare to engage in some vino-related veritas, possibly culimating in my inviting her home sometime to watch The Triplets of Belleville while peering on the screen of my laptop. (Note to self: If I expect to ever be taken seriously by a woman, I need to purchase actual furniture and home entertainment system and otherwise give the appearance of being a non-seriously-screwed up adult human being instead of a fugitive from justice.)
Anyway, my luck–never a reliable quantity at the best of time–doesn’t hold, and she abandons her interest in wine to move toward the checkout. I sigh and count my…well, I guess I don’t really have any winnings at this point, so I count my olives instead. A couple more minutes and a bagette of La Brea sourdough later, I go to the checkout myself, only to see The One And Only Love Of My Life at the next line, still going through the process of checking out. I ignore the stabbing pain in my heart and the mockery that Lady Fate chuckles out and pay for my goods while keening She Who Gives The World Light, and am rewarded with another one of those meeting of the eyes as she glances my way, as she hefts her bags of groceries. Her goods (the food, I mean) paid for and the bag boy urging her out of the way to make room for the noxious crap selected by the next cretin in line, she turns away and moves to exit, while I’m exorably chained by my own, yet to be paid for foodstuffs. My load is fortunately light, being, as I am, completely alone and without anyone to prepare a romantic dinner for, and I’m able to scuttle out rapidly in hopes of catching sight of her escaping for good from my vision.
And alas, Fortune–the unmitigated bitch–blows me one tiny kiss; I spy Her Grace And Beauty zipping out of the parking lot in a silver Subaru WRX. sigh The only way this woman could attain further esteem in my much-fallow emotions is to be carrying around a biophysics text or be muttering lines in preparation for playing Ophelia in a community theater production of Hamlet.
And so goes another opportunity to escape my prison of lonelyness and dispair with respect to romantic engagement. I submit to you, fellow Dopers, the question of what I might have done in place of standing around in a slack-jawed haze like an extra in Deliverance, in full knowledge that the responses will alternate between “You’re a hideous toad and of course no woman of taste would ever want to have anything to with you,” and “You should have walked up to her and said, ‘Baby, let’s hit it!’”, with the faint hope that somewhere in the balance I might distill a few elements of worthwhile advice and speculation. Heave away with your mightiest of blows, your most corrosive of acid comments, your invective and your spite; I can withstand anything…except to fail yet again to make the best effort in the presense of She Who Will Forever Haunt My Dreams without generating a rating of more than 6 on the Creep-O-Meter.
Stranger
And for the record, no, I don’t need your cop brother-in-law to cover me in the infinitesimally unlikely event that I actually manage a date with said young lady. I’ll carry my own drop piece should it come to that. Oh, wait, you said no violence…never mind.