1128

Note 1: It’s sort of been an unspoken policy of this blog not to recount intimate details of dates, or my thoughts about someone I might be dating, or even talk about girls all that much. Except in extreme cases. Certainly the first two will remain in effect, but I’m going to break the last one right now. (Oooooo)

Note 2: If you find nerd boys writing about a girl they saw but never talked to as eye roll-inducing as I do (did I just give away the ending?), I would suggest skipping this entry.

Last night I went to see Aimee Mann play at the Atlanta Botanical Gardens with my friend Jess and Joe’s parents, Bob and Vicky. It was a perfect early summer evening, the sun setting behind the trees as we sat on the lawn, the temperature just right. We were chatting about the difficulty of finding quality low-slung chairs and Bob and Vicky’s experience running into the band earlier that day when she appeared.

She sat down and joined a blanket of couples just a few yards in front of us. She was perfect. An angel, I kept thinking. She was beautiful in that wonderfully ordinary sort of way. (I think this is what lots of you call “girl next door appeal”.) I shifted on our blanket as the inexplicably sunglass-wearing, wine-drinking thirty-something in front of me moved to block my view.

As Aimee Mann came on stage the sun had fully set and she could not be seen anymore. This is probably a good thing, as it allowed me to focus on the reason I was actually there. The show was quite good, although they did seem a little hesitant to rock out the appropriate sections of songs, likely due to the serene surroundings. That perfect evening air somehow made it difficult to really punch the guitars until late in the encore.

How do you meet someone in these conditions? How do girls react to a guy wearing a t-shirt with a picture of a cartoon dog wearing headphones that says “What We Need More of is Science” on it walking up to them and telling them he thinks they’re incredible and asking to call them sometime?

When the show was over the blankets were packed up and we paused, reflecting on the show and getting our things together. She was saying her goodbyes to the rest of her group, and then set off across the lawn with another woman. If I ever had any chance, that would have been it. You know what happened, though.

I got one of Match.com’s daily e-mails today, complete with photographs of “new singles in your area!” I normally delete it without so much as opening it (I haven’t even finished my profile on there), but today I actually opened it. Do you know why? On the off chance she was one of them. Yes, I did this. (She wasn’t.)

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I’m a lot different in some ways now than I was a year ago. The idea of approaching a girl out of the blue now seems almost doable (but apparently not quite enough). One day I’ll actually do it. I think. I know that I’d rather have been flat-out rejected than spend the next day gazing out the window from time to time, wondering what might have happened if I had attempted it. It’s not every day, or even every week or month (maybe I need to get out more) that you see somebody who really turns your head, who you think is somebody you’d actually like to know.

Posted: Friday, June 17th, 2005 at 9:44 am; Category: 1128, Audio; Comments feed: RSS 2.0.
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