Feast or Famine
I’m not sure what’s happening to me here.
I was dreading the age of forty with a passion, but it’s beginning to seem as if my 40th year will be my most interesting.
So, I’ve got the ongoing (and sometimes off-going) thing with Seamus. As a sidenote, I’m going to have to stop reporting on every “break-up” since it seems that none of them are permanent. Most times that Seamus is through with me, it’s because he’s drunk and surly at the world in general, and he turns his rancor on me because I’m available. The next day finds him repentant at best, and at worst he simply acts as if nothing happened or nothing was said. But the important thing is that he seems to always come back.
The thing with Joe Picamosca seems to be heating up as well. There’s just something about him…the way he walks into my cubicle and looks at me (make that “looks me over”) with a little smile, nothing really to say…it’s an intensity that sort of spooks me but piques my curiosity as well. I’ve always enjoyed my geeky boys with whom I can play my part as a sexually agressive woman. This one, though, is most certainly not geeky, nor is he a boy. He’s all man, and he looks like he’d be just that in bed. It sort of scares me a little bit…I feel like a little bunny in front of the slavering jaws of the big bad wolf, yet secretly hoping he’ll eat me up because I think I might like it. So very weird.
And I can’t stop flirting with him, either. I cry foul like he’s the one pursuing me, but I encourage it. For example, I happened to spot a really nice formal dress on sale at the mall while I was walking around on my lunch hour, and I knew I could use it for the formal dinner at a professional conference that I attend every year in the fall. So, I bought it and brought it inside the office to show my girlfriends. Afterward, I covered it up but left it hanging inside my cubicle.
Joe Picamosca starts to walk by, he see’s the dress bag hanging (the store is called “Torrid”…plus the hot pink bag…that must have really caught his eye), and he stops and picks the bag up in his hands. “Oh, are you going somewhere?” he asked. “No,” I told him, “I just bought this for the conference dinner this fall; it was on sale and it was perfect, so I couldn’t pass it up.” He kept holding onto the bag, looking at it lingeringly. So I said, “Would you like to see it?” “YES!” he exclaimed. So, I untied the bag, showed him the dress (which was a long, black and white halter dress, backless and with a deep plunge in the front), and said “Very nice, elegant, simple, you should look good in it, but then you looked good in the one you had last year.” Well, he knows this because of the group picture that was posted from last year’s banquet. Still, I know I must have flushed a little because my face felt hot. He smiled at me in a way that suggested that he knew that he had that effect on me, and also in a way that continues to suggest a sort of mutual attraction.
The next day, my co-worker, cubicle neighbor, and really good friend Barbara tells me that my “buddy” was looking for me. Playing dumb, I asked her who that might be, and she gave me a knowing look and said “Picamosca.” I laughed and said “Yeah, I knew who you were talking about, I just am still in denial because I can’t believe he’s flirting like this. By the way, I didn’t plan on showing him that dress, but he picked up the bag and kept looking at it.”
Just then, here comes Joe around the corner, carrying my paycheck stub like a good supervisor should. He smiles that smile at me and hands it over. And what do I do? I say “So, do I need to do anything special for this?” He stopped, turned red and started to chuckle, and said to Barbara “Notice I’m staying silent in response to that question.” I had to laugh, and said “You know it’s sometimes dangerous to come over here. You never know what I’m going to say.” I could tell I had gotten to him, and he truly did not know what to say or do, which is funny for someone who seems as agressive as he does. I don’t think he’s used to women like me, just as I’m not used to men like him. But it seems that he likes it.
By the way, Seamus, when he was in the building on Tuesday, saw Joe hanging around my cubicle. I’m going to cover the topic of our phone conversation Tuesday night in a subsequent post, but he didn’t seem especially upset by it. Perhaps that would be the reasonable response, and I’m just not used to Seamus being reasonable. However, I have a feeling that I haven’t heard the end of it yet, and when Seamus gets drunk and/or angry he’s going to attack me for it, at least on a verbal level (I hope that’s all, anyway).
Maybe I’ll cast both Seamus and Joe aside and move down the row to a little boy who’s a trainee. Juan is a trainee, Mexican-American who’s more Americanized than Chicano, although he does speak Spanish. Juan is 35 or so, and still lives with his parents. He’s amazingly, painfully shy, and he’s looks soft and innocent…just how I like ‘em. He looks like I could blow his mind in bed with minimal effort. He’s just average looking, average height, maybe a hint of love handles. He looks very sweet, and I keep trying to catch his eye, which is incredibly difficult with a shy guy. Everytime I talk to him, he flushes a little bit and giggles. It’s hard to get him to speak. I don’t know how successful that particular venture is going to be.
Maybe I should stop being attracted to guys at work. Maybe that’s the secret to success. But I’m at work more than I am anywhere else, and I seem to have a whole lot of admirers lately, where before there were few. I guess when it comes to guys, it’s either feast or famine.
