Tuesday ramble

"Communities are weird," said a friend/colleague of mine when I complained to him that some dude (not the guy I'd hoped) I'd met at an event the week before, hit on me. He--my colleague--meant it in the sense that, once you become a part of any community, there are added risks and complications to that kind of thing.

If you're wondering why it was wrong, creepy for this dude to hit on me, when it wasn't wrong for JHL to have done so, the strongest answer out of many was that JHL actually bothered to establish a rapport and gauge my interest--and get my personal contact information--before asking me out. This dude, on the other hand, had talked to me for all of five minutes and asked me out at my work e-mail address (I'd handed him a business card, which is hardly an invitation). To make matters worse, he sent the friend with whom I was there the very same e-mail (thoughts about the event that he clearly thought were clever), minus the ask. Because it's not like we would have talked about it? Please. I guess it's debatable whether his invitation was inappropriate, but it sure as hell was based on little probability of success.


And yet, this guy has the confidence to pull something like that. JHL does not (or doesn't give a $hit).

What I've had to do to get rid of dudes: "You are not listening; I'm not interested." "There is no we." "You seem to think we have some sort of relationship that we. do. not. have."

And then, there's the guy I wasn't trying to get rid of at all. I could make all sorts of excuses--and some of them are valid--for having been off, because I was a mess that day, that week, that time in my life. All of that is true. But what it ultimately came down to was this guy made me nervous, and I can't remember the last time I was nervous around a guy. It might have been never. I didn't know what it was like, and it caught me off guard, threw me off.

I can't actually contact JHL; I deleted his contact information (this is the right thing to do when a dude doesn't contact you). More importatnly--I know I keep harping on this--it's his move.