Monday, September 13, 2004

Reading Rossetti Reversed

What is it with getting pick-up-ed at the bookstore? It’s starting to become such a common occurrence it’s no longer any fun.

I bumped into the guy I used to dance Salsa with. He looks young, but has hair that’s so white you’d think he was nearing 60. It was a pleasant surprise nonetheless. He told me I was still as beautiful as he remembered, and that he’d like to hire me to do some negotiating for his company over dinner and drinks. He was sure I could do it, all that was required was to get the investors drunk enough so that they’d be willing to pump in a few million dollars to build a factory that striked me as something straight out from China Miéville’s New Crobuzon.

I told him it sounded strangely like something out of a SF novel. Me, set up as a Moulin Rouge burlesque trying to get a bunch of Germans drunk, in order to have them invest in a plant that produced a highly classified substance that he initially told me he couldn’t reveal (He did so in exactly 30 seconds after he said that).

But in the mean time, I could start of by asking him out for dances more often.

It was great meeting him again, he helped me get through a rather difficult celibate period early on in the year (before I rekindled the affair with Mr. Big). He’s an all-right dancer with an incredible expertise when it came to flattering women.

My daddy was with me (had the obligatory Sabbath Brunch with him yesterday) and he’d wanted to visit the art gallery. I didn’t know what to do, since the Guy I’d flirted with was working yesterday, and I really didn’t want to be with my daddy and have to say hi, and… it would be terribly awkward. I managed to escape the ordeal, but he caught sight of me walking past the gallery’s entrance, and we stared at each other for the 5 seconds it took for me to do that. That was weird.

***

Contemplated buying a collection of poems by Christina Rossetti. I’d lost the one I had previously, but decided I had far too much un-read material I had yet to plough through.

There was a crappy looking guy in a crappy looking clothes in unwashed pastel colours looking at me and following me about. He didn’t creep me out, but it was most certainly annoying. I have nothing against Asian guys chatting me up, as long as they look presentable. This one looked like, well, an unwashed sack of laundry.

He was obviously trying to get my attention, and I was obviously trying my best to show him that I wasn’t going to give it. Then, out of some insanity, he sat right in front of the shelf I was browsing. It would have appealed to the little malicious Minnie in me to have told him to get his ass off, can’t you see I’m trying to shop? But it would be a bad idea to have even said anything. So I shut up and walked on to the shelf behind.

He got up, stood half a foot away from me, and asked me in Hokkien, where could he find poetry in Chinese. My dialect’s terrible, but I could pretty much guess the words that referred to location and mandarin books. I pointed out the right direction rather crudely, implicitly saying, it’s over there, can you fuck off now?

But he didn’t get it, and proceeded to sit in front of me again!

I supposed I should have walked off to somewhere far, far away, but this creature was simply too fascinating for me to not to observe. So I stayed firmly planted to where I was, looking like the perfect literary snob with a thick collection of feminist poems at hand. And quite to my amusement, he goes and source the book I was skimming through and proceeded to stand by me and flip mindlessly through it.

Then he said the most fascinating thing to me. Still in Hokkien.

‘This book very good to read’

Basically, that was it.

I did a double take, and it took me a substantial amount of effort not to laugh out loud before I was well away and not within an ear-shot.

Of course I think I’m terribly snobbish. So? Most other girls would have done the same thing anyway. All women are mean *grin*

***

That aside. I have NO idea why I’m so fucking attracted to Martine. I woke up thinking about him, tried not to think about him, and ended up thinking about him even more. He’s really not particularly gorgeous, just extremely stylish, and incredibly funny, in a sort of quasi-serious sort of way.

I suppose he’s got a lot of cash at hand, but that’s not even it. Like I’ve said before, not being broke helps; having the money to carry yourself well, to enrich your life with the finer things. They are all very good for you, and people are naturally attracted to a groomed personality.

I do wish he’d sms me, ask me out, do something, anything. Bleah. I want to satiate myself on him. For some strange reason, his approvals mean a great deal to me. When he agrees to something I’ve said, it’s heartening. Calling me up would be an approval. Wanting to go out with me again would be an approval. What does see you soon mean, anyway.

Hopefully this evening.

Sms me, Damnit.

xoxox

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