“What?!” I say to my friend sitting two stools down from me at the bar. “You can’t be hot without being smart. They’re like the same word.”

The waitress making a drink behind the bar snorts, smiles, and looks up at me. We make the kind of eye contact that only happens when two people connect at last, hungrily, across the endless void that leaves souls cold and alone.

This is important, because after briefly dating the nerdy girl who I had incidentally met several weeks before writing about her, I am single again. It’s okay, I’m fine with it. I’m balanced and stable and centered and ready to start awkwardly hitting on waitresses for your personal enjoyment. So here goes:

“We’re just talking about Miss South Carolina Teen.” I say.

“Oh gosh,” she says. “That poor kid. What kind of question was that, anyway?”

She was short and brunette, so, physically, she was pretty much my dream girl. She continued in a slow drawl that I chose to interpret as a deliciously timed and syrupy. “I watched the thing as it was happening. Most of the questions were idiotic.”

“Exactly!” I said to her, ignoring my friends utterly. They understand. My friends have met me before and encourage such behavior for their own entertainment. “I mean, answer this question right now: 15% of American kids can’t find the USA on a world map. What gives?”

“Uh. Well. Um. I guess give them maps? It’s a dumb question.” Again, she looked into my eyes and smiled, then started to walk away with the drinks.

“Exactly. See? I totally agree with you.” I totally agreed with her jeans as they walked away, swaying intoxicatingly.

I turned to my friends. “She likes me. Let’s have another drink.”

“She’s married. Let’s get out of here,” said the girl sitting next to me at the bar.

“What?”

“Yep. Big ol’ ring.”

“Son of a. I didn’t even check. Why do I always forget to check?”

“I could tell that you thought you had a little bit of a connection, so I checked for you. That’s what friends are for.”

“Okay. I don’t know why I got my phone out too. I guess to look at what my number is?”

“Hang on. I’m in the wrong menu. Wait. Clear. New contact. Okay, go.”

“You mean, now?”

I may have met my awkward match.

—

She was so cute I almost sat down next to her, just after my friend had introduced us. I’m an absolute sucker for huge, clear eyes and shoulder-length brown hair. I am even more of a sucker for girls who share names of spectacularly desirable female fictional characters. Let’s call this one Elizabeth Bennet.

“Sit down right here,” the friend on the opposite side of the booth had to remind me. I guess, sure. If you want to sit at a booth where a friend and a stranger are sitting opposite one another, I suppose politeness requires you to sit next to the friend, even if the stranger is remarkably hot. This is not only less anonymously invasive of personal space, but also has the advantage of allowing you to look at the strangers pretty eyes. “We’re just talking about Elizabeth’s boy problems.”

“I know!” says EB. “I’m such a disaster. Boys!”

Fortunately: “I like talking about emotions.”

“It’s just this one boy I like. I can’t get him to want to go out with me, even though I’ve known him forever.”

Well, look, I’ll have that conversation any day of the week. We instantly delved into details: length of crush, average and maximum level of physical contact, potential other girls who may need to be taken out of the picture.

But I had to try for a little movie magic, too. “If there’s not a lot of physical contact, that’s an excellent place to start. You need to be touching his arm whenever you laugh at a joke.”

“What?”

“Well, just practice. Here’s my arm. Look, I’ll tell a joke: A woman walks into a bar and asks for an entendre, and make it a double. So he ‘gave it to her!’ Ha!”

I don’t know if it gets any worse than that, folks. But, dammit, you go to flirt with the army you have. Then again, she laughed and touched my arm, so maybe you should keep your mouths shut. I don’t see any girls touching your arms right now.

“I just don’t know,” continued EB, as I took a swig of my beer. “It’s just that I’m just the most awkward girl ever around boys.”

I calmly swallowed my mouthful of beer, because I’m as cool under pressure as hexagonal close packed (HCP) solid helium. “Oh yeah?”

“Absolutely. They always think I’m too nerdy.” My beer is in serious danger of being dropped on the table. But like I said: HCP, bitches. I set it down. “I think it’s because I’m interested in things like books and fonts.”

That did it, right there. I didn’t know who this other guy is, but screw him. I was asking for her phone number.

I’m paying no attention to her, thinking about someone else. “Do I still have that girl’s number?” I glance up from fiddling with my credit cards, insurance cards, and ID to make awkward eye contact with the barista. “We’re gonna need a minute.”

“Do mochas have milk in them?”

“I hope I didn’t lose that phone number. I’m going to put it in my phone right now before I screw it up again like I usually do.”

“Yeah, can I have a tall mocha, but with soy? And no whipped cream.”

“Here it is. I’m telling you, she was absolutely gorgeous. Okay Eight Oh Four . . .”

“Wait, do I want cake?”

I poke her in her side, which I judge to be a pretty platonic location for physical contact as long as I keep the poking non-ticklish, but which is much more friendly than, like, a shoulder or an elbow. “Don’t ruin your candy appetite. We already have candy for the movie.”

“You’re right.” She turned to the barista. “No, that’s all then.” She looked back at me. “Today’s Monday. When did you get her number?”

I close my phone. “Saturday. But I’m not going to call her…”

“No, you…”

“…for a couple of weeks. I’ll just wait until I have something to tell her about the team and then I’ll call her.”

“Sure.”

“Because seriously, I’m not trying to jeopardize a potentially good female player for our kickball team just because I want to hit on her. Poorly.”

“Yeah, you have to tell yourself that before you call her. It’s just business.”

“Exactly. You should have seen me on Saturday. I acted like I didn’t even really care if she was on our team. ‘Yeah, you could play on Wednesday or Tuesday, or there’s our team which is on Thursdays.’ And I would look away and stuff. But she wanted to do Thursdays and play with us.”

“…”

“Or like when she gave me her number, I was like, ‘No, give it to that other guy, our team captain, he’ll call you.’ Like I didn’t even want to be bothered by having her phone number. But he told her to just give it to me since I’m assistant captain.”

“When you call her you should be totally serious. Tell no jokes at all.”

“See, that’s where I always screw it up. I try to tell too many jokes. Like this one girl in college. It was just awful, I told like 600 jokes the first time I called her.”

“What, like ‘A guy walks into a bar…’”

“No, more like,” I say as I strike some kind of a ridiculous pose that for some reason my mind associates with being hilarious, “‘That reminds me of the time when…’”

“Sure.”

“…or ‘Yeah, as if that were true.’ Like sarcasm.”

“Right.”

“But that girl just wanted to go out with me on a date, like, I didn’t need to make her laugh at all.”

“Yeah, so, not like that.”

“That girl just wanted to make out with me. But yeah, like, with this girl, the kickball girl, I’ll be the opposite. I’ll pretend it’s not even a big deal.”

She gets her tall soy no-whipped-cream mocha and we start to walk out. “So when this girl you’re going to call is getting married to you, she’ll say, ‘I was so attracted to him because he was disinterested.’”

“Yeah, that’s how you have to do it. That’s what girls like, for sure.”

As we were walking out I was 100% oblivious to the tears of laughter that Platonic Friend claims she and everyone working behind the counter in Starbucks allegedly had in their eyes. But, look. I had important things to be thinking about.

Actually it’s hot, and I am still wearing the very nice shirt which I happened to wear to work today and which I personally like a lot. Bright colors are the new blue shirt (in my closet, at least). Seriously, I have a lot of blue shirts. But I think we’ve discussed previously how freaking colorblind I am, haven’t we? The sheer cornucopial variety of blue tones attracts me so much more than other stupid boring colors do.

Plus, Friday night is the new Sunday morning. I’ve been going out all week, and last weekend was spent travelling. I’m tired!

Oh wait – is this not a personal blog? Sorry, I forgot. Awkward things I say to girls, right. Okay, fine. Here: I predict you’ll really enjoy this one.

—

Exactly one week ago I was just arriving at a massive beer hall outside Cincinnati. It was a bachelor party. Imagine a massive wooden table with bench seats upon which danced a dozen twenty-something ex-frat and sorority kids sloshing massive liters of beer around in huge steins, then multiply that by about a thousand, and you’ll have an idea of the scale of what I am trying to describe.

So, in other words, I’m out with the guys, we’re drinking and laughing, people are hitting on each other all around me, and it’s about time my little mourning period ended and hitting on actual real live girls began again. So I say to the guys,

“You know what I really want? A girl who likes science fiction. I want a really nerdy girl. Let’s be honest.”

Then I start to think. Why not just ask?

—

“Hi, are you a bachelorette party?”

Interested, sweet, and slightly suspicious yet enjoying-the-attention grins are flashed at me from around the table, and I hear a chorus of “Yeah, we are!”

“Well, I’m in a bachelor party. Here’s the thing: are any of you girls nerdy at all?”

Interest turns instantly to dismay. Faces fall faster than the French Directory in 1799.

“No.”

“No, sorry.”

One girl shrugs at me and answers hopefully: “My favorite TV show is Jeopardy.”

“Sorry to bother you.” I respond, and retreat to my friends.

—

“Hi, I have a question for you. Do any of you girls like science fiction?”

These three girls are way too cool for me, the bar, and just school generally. They’re leaning against a wall sizing up the room. They are hot in a way that has gone beyond attractive and become un-, because a key element in attractiveness is attainability. I do not voluntarily approach girls like this, ever.

“Excuse me?” one replies.

“Wait! I like Michael Crichton!” chirps another, while the third motions with her hand for me to scurry off.

I ignore Lilly Allen and Pink and respond to the Crichton fan. I mean, it’s been a while since I’ve really been into that guy’s stuff, and I feel like he jumped the shark the same time that Kurt Cobain died, which, when you think about it, is at least eerie and at most tragic. But I can roll with this.

“What’s your favorite book?”

“Actually I like his movies. I don’t really like books.”

Oh. Yeah, this isn’t going anywhere. “Sorry, that’s not good enough,” I say, and I walked away.

—

“Hey. Are any of you girls nerdy?”

I’ve found another bachelorette party. Those are the most fun to talk to.

“Yeah! We’re engineers!”

Be still my heart.

“Wait, do any of you like science fiction?”

“I do!” shouts a cute bridesmaid with short hair. “I like Frank Herbert!”

“Wait, why?” asks another, painfully adorable brunette. “If I don’t read, does that make me not smart?” In my entire life I’ve never seen a girl that empirically attractive feel the need to justify herself to me. But it won’t do any good, because I know she’s not for me.

“No, it doesn’t make you not smart. It just means you won’t like me.”

“We’re all engineers! Isn’t that good enough?” says the bride.

Hold on a second. Back up the tape. Bride, get the hell out of my way. I am not interested in you tonight.

“Wait, you like Frank Herbert?” I say to the cute short-haired one.

“Yeah! I read all of the Dune books!”

At least I’m honest. “Uh, you do like science fiction. That’s never happened before. Now I don’t know what to do.” Say something smart, Justin! “Um, you can come talk to me if you want later.”

But, then, we’ve already established that I am not good at this.

—

There she is.

In the midst of hundreds of raucously tipsy people, in the dimness of the bar’s light hazy with smoke, an absolute vision in thick-rimmed glasses was making her way slowly from right to left towards the bar’s exit. My nerdar and cuteness-dar go simultaneously insane.

The beer in my glass is still sloshing on the table after I’ve caught up with her. She’s spectacular – long brown hair framing a face that betrays a softness and lack of the un-self-conscious composure I swear these other girls must practice in a mirror. I’m not even nervous, strangely.

“Excuse me, can I talk to you?”

“W-what?” she fails to make immediate eye-contact as she peers through the glasses up at me. In the cutest way ever.

“Do you like science fiction, is the thing?”

“Why do you want to know?” Genuine puzzlement. The other girls had known I was trying to get something from them, and they had a pretty good idea what. Not this one. This fact encourages me.

“Because I want to talk to nerdy girls,” I reply hopefully.

Embarrassed, she laughs a little and rolls her eyes. Like, how did you know, you caught me. My heart yells, “Yahtzee!” and swells.

That is, until she looks into my eyes and crushes my hopes. “Oh. I’m sorry. I’m engaged.”

Are all the good nerds already gone?

She was gorgeous.

In this brief moment at the end of the evening, no one wanted to move. I couldn’t not touch her, so I reached out my hand and ran it through her hair. It was darker and longer than I’d ever seen it before, reaching all the way down to her shoulders before it bent slightly in directions, just barely hiding the curve of her neck. My hand ended on her cheek, and, looking at her eyes, I did what I usually do in this situation.

I froze.

Seriously, a car? I’ve never had a first kiss in a car, and I don’t intend to start now, I thought. But then again, this is the most perfect situation ever. There’s electricity, chemistry, sparks, magnetism, and, hell, Van Der Waals’ forces in her eyes. She’s practically made of charm quarks.

No, something doesn’t feel right. It’s the car. Maybe when I kiss a girl she needs an airbag for her heart, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to have a first kiss with someone while she’s wearing a seat belt.

With that awful joke, the moment ended. I put my hand back by my side, she shifted in her seat, and it was over. And if I’ve learned about first kisses, it is this: when the first-kiss moment is over, you can’t force it back. It’s done. You just have to wait until it comes again, if it ever does, and that time, you can’t hesitate.

Damn it.

—

She had been so excited for me to visit her when she was home in Cleveland from grad school in California. She came up with a whole list of things to do. And then, something occurred to me.

“Are you asking me on a date?” I asked. It’s worth checking, once in a while, just to see.

“Yes. Actually, I think I am.”

I didn’t even blink.

“Well, lets make it a third date, then. First dates are awkward and uncomfortable, and all the fun happens on the third date.”

“Okay! Third date it is!”

Well, now. So much for me being awkward and uncomfortable. Every once in a while I pull off this kind of smooth, unruffled, totally confident flirting-type shit, and it’s like Luke Skywalker getting a glimpse of the force. Watch out, Darth Awkward. I will vanquish you yet.

—

We’d been friends for years, and I’d had a crush on her for a little while, but there were always timing issues, as though Cupid couldn’t quite get the hang of Microsoft Outlook.

When we met in college, I paid her no attention because she was my friend’s girlfriend, and that’s definitely not how I roll. Even when they broke up after he left for grad school, and he convinced us to hang out, it was strictly platonic. We spent time together, we’d knit together and watch movies, but our hearts were each set on someone else.

Even so, there was a moment near the end of that year when, despite myself, I started to feel for her. Aside from writing about it briefly at the time, I ignored it. She didn’t want a relationship, and, like I said, most of my romantic daydreams were directed elsewhere.

After college we went separate ways to separate coasts. We dated other people. But recently, as the frequency and duration of our phone conversations increased, I started to realize one thing:

She’s exactly the type of girl I need in my life.

—

“Oh my goodness, she’s exactly the type of girl I need in my life.”

That’s what I was thinking to myself on that day in Cleveland, as we breezed through our “third date.” There was lunch, some shops, a scenic cemetery, more shops, dinner, and a sports bar for football and beer. And, slowly, piece by piece, she was melting my heart away with sweet romantic nothings. Like for example:

“I’ve been reading this book about physicists lately, and it’s terribly interesting.”

This one was followed, several hours later, by this gem:

“Oh sure, I like football. I used to watch it all day on Sunday. Can you explain to me what linebackers do?”

And, last but not least:

“Let me buy you a Dortmunder Gold.”

Now look. Like I’ve said before, there are no hard and fast rules to making me have a crush on you. Nobody’s perfect, and I don’t expect you to be. But if I already know that a girl is spectacularly fun to spend time with, and she’s definitely the cutest girl ever, plus she’s mind bogglingly smart, the battle is half won.

But then when you start being interested in physics, football, and quality beer, I’m lost. It’s over, there’s nothing more I can do to keep myself from being utterly twitterpated. And it wasn’t long before what I was thinking to myself had changed a bit:

“Oh my goodness, she’s exactly the girl I need in my life.”

—

While I walked her to the house, I was thinking about how much I wished I had just kissed her. When she opened the door and we tumbled inside, I was just thinking about how much I wished she was my girl.

And when she turned and looked up at me, dark eyes sparkling the same way Pop Rocks feel in your mouth when you put in, like, way too many, I didn’t think about anything.

I just kissed her.

I just spent about 30 minutes trying to figure out if answering machines are to me what spinach is to an awkward Popeye, or like what kryptonite is to a socially super-adept Superman. There were pros and cons. I plotted a graph of accuracy versus humor. I was about to make a PowerPoint presentation. But, look, how about you decide for yourself which interpretation resonates with you the most, while I tell you about an awkward phone conversation I just had with a friend, and we’ll just agree to roll postmodern style.

“Listen, you’re a girl, right?” Sometimes I like to check when I’m about to ask something particularly un-guy-like.

“Uh . . . ”

“I feel like I’m not good at calling girls up after I get their numbers. I mean, I don’t know what I’m doing wrong, it’s just that they never call me back.”

“Well, what do you say, typically?”

—

Here’s where we need to pause and have a conversation.

Typically, I’m an answering machine catastrophe. I don’t shut up, is one problem, mostly because I just have a lot to share with the world. The fact that I’ve been encouraged and spoiled is another. Seriously. I have maintained an entire acquaintance relationship with one girl from college through her encouragement (and prompt returning) of my ridiculously long answering machine messages. In high school a girl thought that a message I left her was the “cutest ever.” These bouts of weakness on the parts of my friends have turned me into an answering machine catastrophe, just like grandparents spoiling an unruly child, because the evolution and radioactive spider bite similes didn’t make the cut.

But, honestly. I know how things work. When it comes to new people who don’t know me that well, I generally keep things as snappy, terse, concise, brief, and generally unwordy as my doctor allows without bed rest.

Which, honestly, is the general theme running through all of these blog posts. I know the right thing to do, it’s just a problem of execution. Imagine the League of Nations hitting on girls in a bar.

—

“Well, uh, generally I’d say something like: Hi.”

” . . . that’s it?”

“No, I’m thinking. Shush. Hi. I’m Justin. You might remember me because I’m the guy who talked to you the other night at the bar. Um. Well, you, uh . . .”

” . . . usually, this is what it’s like? Oh, Justin.”

“You be quiet. So anyway, I liked talking to you, so I think we should go out. So. Call me back. Bye.”

“Okay. That’s not going to work at all.”

Wait, I can’t type that with a straight face. It’s a total lie in all possible ways. I am fundamentally incapable of thinking things through from the beginning, which is part of why I think I’m fundamentally incapable of expressing complete thoughts to girls. Ask any of them. This is what I said to a girl last night on the phone: “I’m not so . . . verbally . . . well, you know.” But that’s quite another story entirely.

More realistically, things that I had done to prepare began flashing through my brain in an entirely non-linear sort of way. My car was as clean as it could be. I had reservations at the restaurant. My very favorite indie-rock CD’s were in the CD player, and I had pulled all of my very favorite hip hop CDs out of the car, not because I’m ashamed to own a Dr. Dre CD, but just because I didn’t think it was date appropriate. I was freshly showered and shaven. I picked out my favorite shirt and jeans. Directions were printed and I had my plan for what to do if the date went well and I wanted to get a drink with her afterwards.

My hair was not cut, because not only had I finally figured out what to do when it is long, but it hadn’t occurred to me to cut it until the day of the date, and, seriously a haircut on the day of the date just won’t do, which I finally decided on after some frantic e-mails to girls who I knew would know about these things. But it looked fine. It was fashionably tousled. There was product involved. I was proud of myself.

Okay, I’m ready to go, I thought, and started over to pick up the girl.

—

It’s true, I recently went on a date, as in, with a girl. But don’t get too excited. It isn’t anyone you know, because no girl I’ve written about on this website has ever wanted to go on a date with me. Which, you know, is a thing I’m fine with, much like ending a sentence with a preposition is a thing that I’m fine with. It’s their loss. The girls’ loss, to be clear. I really don’t care about the prepositions one way or another. So, now that I think about it, I guess those things aren’t alike.

No, someone else got me this girl’s phone number, a someone who is probably the most embarrassing someone to get dating help from, ever:

My mom.

Shut up. It’s not as pathetic as you think. First of all, my mom has excellent standards. Second, I talked to this girl a few times on the phone and she definitely seemed like a stand-up young lady. And third, how many of YOU have introduced me to someone I could take on a date? Eh? That’s right: none. So I don’t want to hear it.

—

Don’t think that the social abstraction and comfortable, familiar surroundings that are possible with a phone conversation in any way make me less awkward.

It is Date Day Minus 2. Date Girl and I were talking about blind dates, which, I thought, was a spectacular way to eliminate some of the tension that generally accompanies meeting someone new. Confess your fears, and suddenly the other person will share them instead of being their object.

At least, that was the plan. Instead –

Her: “I think it’ll be fun. You’re nice to talk to.”

Me: “Well, I think there are really two ways it could go. Either we’ll really enjoy talking to each other, or it’ll be, you know, um, like a horrible disaster.” There’s a nagging thought almost distracting me, but I’m focused on where I’m trying to go with this. “As in, it could be, you know, terribly awkward.”

Her: “Wha . .”

Me: “You know. Like, I’ve heard about blind dates before. I feel like it could go south. Quickly.”

The thought finally breaks through. It is this: shut up. Change the subject. Run. Set fire to your apartment building and say you need to call the police. Do anything, just stop talking.

—

It actually was somewhere in the middle, though, and that’s unfortunately where most dates fall. She was gorgeous and smart, and I’m pretty sure I made her laugh at least once. I remember thinking to myself, as she picked up and ate the piece of my tuna steak that I was trying to give to her but instead dropped on the table, hey – this girl is pretty down to earth and made me feel okay about a potentially super awkward moment. I could see asking her out again.

(Not that that exact thing is a requirement from someone I want to date. Maybe I’m just using that as a metaphor for meeting my partially-formed expressions of inner thoughts halfway. You’ll, you know, have to decide for yourself.)

But later, after we admitted hating some of each other’s very favorite books, I realized that, well, I could see her deciding that she just wasn’t that into me. (Again, not that she necessarily has to like the books I like. Liking books I like could, you know, be a symbol of mental compatibility or reciprocal intellectual curiosity. Or maybe she just hated Catch-22. Decide for yourself.)

So I asked, and she wasn’t (“her out again” and “that into me,” respectively). But I mean, that’s fine. She’s a tremendous girl who will have no problem getting guys, and, well, I have a good feeling about my own self in 2007. But here’s one thing I’m proud of, honestly: I think I put on a pretty damned good first date.

But see, here’s the thing. I wasn’t impolite to her, but I said oh, that’s interesting these things that you are saying, but then engaged in conversation with some other people. Honestly, I really didn’t want to even think about chatting up girls at a bar on New Year’s Eve.

Hopefully you haven’t spilled your coffee mug on any important work papers that you ought to be reading right now, but it was true. I have limits. Even though I was drinking and she was quite tipsy, I kind of just wanted to enjoy talking to new friends while letting my mind wander other places. Like, for example, how have my relationships with other people changed in 2006? Some have weakened while others have grown stronger. But overall, it’s been a year where . . .

Oh golly, GWLM (Girl Who Likes Me) just touched my knee under the table I think. Wait, did she? I couldn’t really tell. It was kind of a graze more than anything. Wait – no, her hand is back. Well, you know. We’re all sitting around a table talking, and, in a cold impersonal world where you can’t be sure of a kind word or even the very humanity of the next guy on the street, the warm touch of a new friend is sometimes a comforting . . .

Nope, now her hand is on my thigh. Well, this isn’t going to work at all. I try to keep up a conversation over the table, but under the table there’s a party, but it’s only on the outside of my pants.

Eventually she stops. Which is good – I didn’t want to be rude, but I definitely wasn’t reciprocating the physical contact. Which, you know, I thought at the time, is a microcosm of dating in general – someone takes a risk, the other person either reciprocates or doesn’t, and then you proceed from there. But it requires that initial risk, which has certainly become . . .

Sweet holy balls. She’s back and her hand is dangerously close to the crotch of my jeans.

Okay, I need to put a stop to this. I decide to take direct action that will take care of the problem directly. So I get up and go to the bathroom, and later, when I returned, switched to another chair. Phew, good thing I took care of that, I was thinking.

But, like I said earlier, New Year’s Eve is a great time for reflection, and, frankly, I have a lot to reflect about. Like most everyone else, I have a lot of thoughts about my job that need to be organized and ordered in my mind. There are whole list of things for me to do when I get back home. And most interesting of all (to me), there are girls. I continue drinking, the ball drops, and we toast. We order more drinks, and I continue to chat while thinking about other things. You see, it’s been quite a rollercoaster of a year for me, honestly, and who knows . . .

Oh geez, she’s next to me again, and now she’s trying to hold my hand and playing footsie. Holy hell – now what? I kick my friend. I need to be bailed out, big time. Fortunately, he came through in the clutch:

“Well, it’s time to go.”

1. I have a list of old awkward things I want to get to someday, but it keeps getting longer as I think of a thing to write about more than once a week.
2. I’m running a backlog of current awkwardness, too. I have 3 or 4 (actually, probably half a dozen) stories from the past week alone that I will have to mete out over the month of January, unless something else good comes along. We can play it by ear, you and I.

And, hell, if worst comes to worst and I start dating someone and have nothing new to write about on Mondays, I am still toying with the idea of serializing that feature-length Awkward Adventure I’ve alluded to a few times. I mean, my friends sure know that I never get tired of telling that story.

Wait. Who am I kidding? If I start dating someone, this will become a daily blog. Anyhow, here’s your Monday awkwardness, because, baby, you know I treat you right.

–

Imagine that there are seven friends sitting around playing a board game. We’re all chatting happily, enjoying the good company, awash in the good feelings you get spending time with good friends during the holiday season. There’s a contented, excited buzz of conversation floating about the room. Everyone is having a noisy good time.

Now imagine that, all at once, everyone finishes what they’re saying and there is a lull of silence. Well, there’s a lull of silence for everyone but me. (Imagine that.) I had turned to the girl sitting next to me to look into her eyes and say, over-loud in the sudden conversational vacuum:

“Are you saying things to me?”

A girl sits down with us who my friend knows and who I don’t. She is definitely pretty, but she seems really distracted. I wonder to myself: what is she distracted about? She looks over at my friend and asks the worst question ever.

“Do you think I’m good looking?”

Yikes. I think the only way to deal with this situation is to induce vomiting and call a doctor. My friend takes the safe route and punts, citing his marriage to a wife.

But not me. I’m dumb.

“Oh! I’ll tell you. Hang on, let me think about it.”

Awkward silence. I’m actually thinking about the question. I’m serious, there are gears turning in my head. They are stupid, idiotic gears, but they’re turning away.

“If you have to think about it so long, the answer must not be good.”

What? Oh, no. She’s misunderstood me.

“No, I’m trying to think about how good looking my friend would think you are. Personally, I think you’re beautifully gorgeous. So, what do you do?”