Mr. Unavailable #123: Buddy Holly

Vital Stats: 33, 5’9”ish. He had Buddy Holly glasses and dark hair, which made him resemble, well, Buddy Holly. Aesthetic: He had that 1990s gas-station-attendant look going on. Demeanor: Nice, maybe a little shy.

I first noticed him one Friday several months ago. I was coming out of my January/February torpor and had decided to dress up for an evening out. Once out, I was mingling amongst my friends and, as I crossed the room, #123 and I passed each other. I smiled. He smiled.

Things progressed from there as they usually do: invisible to the naked eye. As the days ticked by, I’d see him out and he’d be helping out with things—putting out snacks, restocking the cups, making sure the speakers were working—and so, naturally, I’d tease him. "Oh, that's right, you're the fluffer," I'd say. For the record, I wasn't the one who came up with the nickname. Otherwise, we were mostly hi/bye friends. Then, one night, we ended up seated next to each other. We leaned our heads together, commenting on some of the people in the room. He pointed out one guy’s “murse,” saying it was a nice one.

“Murse?”

“Man purse. This is mine,” he said and then pulled a bag out from under the chair.

“Very nice,” I said. It was also very nice that he had a sense of humor.

The next night, at Heidi's party at the Gershwin Hotel, it was about 1:30 a.m. and things were starting to wind down. We’d moved the dancing from the dance floor to the lounge and suddenly there he was. He’d been there since 11 p.m., he said, but had spent most of his time on the dance floor. I’d been there since 10 p.m., I said, but had spent most of my time in the lounge. Like two ships....

...Anyway, I did some more talking. “I didn’t recognize you without your glasses,” I said. He did look totally different. In a white shirt, he actually looked kind of suave. “With your glasses on, you usually look like Buddy Holly.”

He shrugged.

I do this sometimes. I have this habit of saying things to people and I mean them as a compliment, but, instead of saying, “You look like Buddy Holly, which is totally adorable,” I say, “You look like Buddy Holly," which, clearly, is an observation, not a compliment. As a result, the comment's target doesn’t know what to make of it. I might as well be saying, “I like broccoli.”

After my Buddy Holly comment, instead of learning my lesson, I kept non-complimenting him.

“The way you’re sitting with your arm across the back of the sofa looks like the opening scene in Mad Men.”

“I see you like to dance.”

“You’re dressed differently from how I normally see you.”

Would somebody please stop me? Fortunately, we did a little dancing and then the clock struck 2 a.m. and everyone headed for the coat check. A girl sidled up to him. I don’t know where she’d been while we were dancing, but I wondered if she was with him. Maybe his indifference was not due to the things I was saying but, rather, due to the fact that he wasn’t exactly unattached.

I put on my coat and waved good-bye as I walked out of the room. He waved back.

Signs of Hope: He always seems interested when I see him.

Red Flags: I felt a vague sense of indifference wafting from his direction. Is he just shy? Does he have a girlfriend? Was he not really interested? Did my non-complimentary remarks turn him off?

Turning Point: Dunno. I don't think there's been enough of a buildup to warrant a turning point. Yet.

Diagnosis: For him: Generally, if I’m attracted to someone, eventually they turn out to be somehow unavailable.
For me: It’s nice to have a little bit of a post-#120/#121 crush.

Mr. Unavailable #121: A Victimless Crime

See Unavailable By Design, He Touched Me, Mrs. Robinson, The Fantasy Reaches Fruition... and Superpowers for the background on this one.

It seems that as we get older, the thing to do is go younger. And, just to be clear, young=sex. Everyone is doing it. Or trying it, anyway. Nora. Me. Thousands of women on thousands of cougar sites. Men, in general. Strangely, however, not all of these young 'uns seem to know to strike when the iron is hot. In fact, they don't even seem to be aware that the iron is hot.

Last weekend, Nora met a 29-year-old hockey player at a party at the Gershwin Hotel that Heidi had thrown. At midnight, it was Nora's birthday. “You should give yourself a little birthday present,” Heidi said to Nora as we left the party. The 29-year-old drove us all home and then he and Nora drove off in the direction of her apartment. Nora texted me an hour later.

“He didn’t want to come in, but he kissed me without tongue and asked what I was doing tomorrow? This is very odd…I think he might be wet brain.”

When he drove us home, from the way he talked he did seem a little brain-damaged. I guessed it was from all the hockey, but, could he really be that brain-damaged?

Sadly, it was the same with my 25-year-old. #121 resurfaced on Easter. I walked up to him and said, “Hey.” We hugged, he looked me up and down like a piece of meat, which, again, I loved, and the conversation went like this:

“How was your Easter”

“Good.”

“How was your Easter?”

“Good.”

“You look cute.”

Considering there was considerable sexual tension, the conversation seemed a lot more engaging at the time. Later, passing him as I was on my way out with Kevin, I touched his arm and said, “See you later.”

A few days later, it was a similar scenario when I ran into him—a hug, a few words, a “Good night.”

But that was it. No texts asking to “hang out” again. No suggestive looks from across the room. Nothing.

In both my and Nora’s case, it’s like they needed it spelled out for them:

F-R-E-E S-E-X

The night we’d been together, #121 had emphasized how he kept who he saw a secret amongst our group of friends. I heeded the warning for about a week and then proceeded to tell a bunch of people. In exchange for the gossip, I got, well, more gossip.

To recap for a moment: The night we got together, the ruse both of used to tip-toe into the situation was to say maybe we’d go to Evan’s show together. Fortunately, we quickly determined that we’d rather “hang out” at my place. When we were done “hanging out” and he left, saying that he was going home because he had to work the next day, I looked at the clock and it was 10—the time of Evan’s show. It occurred to me that I could go and I vaguely wondered if he had gone, but I decided I’d rather call Nora and give her the dirt.

One week later, during gossip session #1, I discovered that, after he left my place, he’d gone over to Evan’s show. A sort of victim reflex kicked in. I felt cheated—used—somehow. But then I remembered that I never had any desire to hang out with him in public. And for us to have gone to the show together would have been just plain weird. Not to mention awkward. Not to mention that if the tables had been turned and I had been leaving his place, I would have let him believe I had to work in the morning and then gone over to the show, too. I would have done exactly the same thing.

During gossip session #2 two weeks after that, I found out from a mutual friend that #121, was, in fact, a player. He’d even confessed to one friend that it was “becoming a problem.” I was disappointed. For the purposes of my pursuit of him, I'd chosen to believe he didn’t “hang out” that much, but it should have come as no surprise. Ok, so he slept around. A small part of me had been hoping that I was just a little bit special. After all, as The Only Man With Whom I’d Consider Having a Meaningless Sexual Relationship, he was special to me.

It was too bad. If he’d just stuck with one woman long enough, so to speak, he might have learned a thing or two about becoming a good lay. I was disheartened for two reasons. One, it meant he probably wasn’t coming back for a second roll in the hay. Two, and probably more importantly, I prayed he hadn’t given me anything.

During the second gossip session, I told the mutual friend the details of how we got together and she said, “He picked you up.”

“That’s funny,” I said. “I thought I picked him up.”

“It must have just been about the conquest,” she said as if she hadn’t heard me. “It makes me want to say something to him.”

Wait. Wait. Wait. But I picked HIM up. He was MY conquest. I conquested him. (You know what I mean.)

If there’s one thing I’ve realized from all of this—aside from the fact that (1) 25 year olds are lousy lays, which means I was probably having bad sex for most of my twenties and didn’t even know it and (2) awesome, protective girlfriend loyalty is still strong in the world (word)—people (including myself, apparently) assume that women play certain parts and men play certain parts.

When friends would ask if I’d heard from him and I’d say I hadn’t, I’d get this look of pity and then an, “I’m sorry.”

And then I’d actually start to feel sorry. And I’d wonder why I was feeling sorry. And then I’d remind myself that there was nothing to feel sorry about and say, “There’s nothing to be sorry for. I only wanted one thing from him and I got it.”

It’s like our starting point is: Men=Evil-Doers. Women=Evil-Done-to-Them. But I was no victim. I had no desire to have a conversation with him, to spend quality time with him, to get to know him, to be seen with him in public, to take long walks on the beach, to have picnics in the park, to have romantic candlelit dinners in snowbound hunting lodges, nothing. What I wanted from him was for him to walk into my apartment, pick me up and throw me on my bed. And he did. If there was a crime here, it was a victimless one.