From: 96rpg@williams.edu (the Straw Dogs)
Newsgroups: alt.angst
Subject: Re: incredibly stupid shy people
Date: 28 Jan 93 18:41:57 GMT
Organization: Williams College, Williamstown, MA
NNTP-Posting-Host: bigbird.cc.williams.edu

In article <86659@ut-emx.uucp> llama@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu (sine nomine) writes:
>
>i am so goddamned fucking stupid.
>
>okay, if someone's just a friend and it's a no-pressure situation, i
>can babble on merrily for hours.
>
>but if i stop at a 7-11 on the way to work to buy some cough drops and
>run into a guy from work i've been wanting to get to know for a while
>and he waves and says hi, i totally freeze, mumble something
>incoherent, and suddenly get fascinated by the book in my hand. and he
>ends up kinda limply waving again, like he's not sure what to do, and
>goes off to put gas in his car while i pay for my stuff and escape as
>quickly as possible.

if i had a dime... anyway, shall we all share our stories? mine's
twopart, one for each woman:

part one. actor meets stage manager. actor becomes friends with stage
manager. sm's friends tell actor she isn't interested in *a
relationship.* actor says that's fine, i'm not either. but they hang
around each other constantly and the rest of the dorm become convinced
that they are *a couple,* so they (at least he) begin to think so too.
then, of course, the relationship begins to change: he gets more and
more annoyed at petty differences and then so does she. eventually,
after repeated annoyances and hints he finally decides that they are
going nowhere and that she wouldn't feel too grieved if they parted.
so they don't talk, they see each other and invent a pressing reason
to walk the other way, they finally accidentally run into each other
and share some stilted smalltalk before resuming standard avoidance
behavior.

interval

part two: he gets a "message from blah" signal over email and then...
nothing. just an eof. so he writes back, and lo and behold there's a
devastatingly beautiful woman on the other end of the net. so they
meet, and he does things with her friends, and has that stage feeling
whenever he's around her. but the signs flashing through his head run
along jealousy, fear, uncertainty, more jealousy, some hope, fear,
depression, fun, exhaustion, and so on. and that's just the first
night. so of course he hardly speaks to her, but rather to her
friends. he's peeved but relieved when a rather pushy one yanks him
aside to monopolize his conversation (amazing how conversation seems
to flow when there's no pressure behind it... my physics prof was
*wrong*), and seems to say more to her over email than face to face.
she lives an entire fucking block away, and he talks to her via ibm. 

>of course, i know what's behind it. i'm convinced that any guy, if he
>thought for an instant that i might be interested in getting to know
>him, would run screaming from the room in horror. so if i want to give
>myself a chance with this guy, it's essential that he think i'm
>utterly uninterested in him. god, so twistedly stupid.

heeey... are we harking back to that old "women can't ask men to
dance" deal here? or is it the "i'm not worthy" one? or the "let's see
if he's really interested" one? or the [space deleted] one?

>--
>sine | deb
>maybe i should just run away to guam and join a convent.

but it's so godawful hot 'n' sticky there...

---
straw dog

"well here i am, sir. the most unwanted hair on the face of the
 earth."  -- mark leyner, *my cousin, my gastroenterologist*
Newsgroups: alt.angst