Miss Brunette
The same hot summer day my “Miss Shamrock” story took place a side note with another occurred as well with a pearl white skinned brunette in a black bikini whom I’ll call “Miss Brunette.”
I spotted her as my chat with Miss Shamrock grounded like a boat on a reef. Eager to succeed in getting a spontaneous “instant date” that day I casually moved me and my beach gear over after I’d broken off my luckless attempt with the shamrock tattooed ice queen to within easy speaking distance to Miss Brunette, who had decided to set herself up on the grass on the east side of the beach under the shade of a tree.
So I went over, began to set up my stuff close enough to say hello but also out of her personal space … and Miss Brunette saw me and said “Hi.”
She said “hi.” Yay! She must think I’m cute! Was the feeling that flashed across my mind as I said something like “Hey, how’s it going?” in reply.
From there I dove into conversation, asking her questions, making observations about the weather, and in general, working my charm as best I could, and found out in the process she was the same age as me. Yes! Yes! Yes! Cheered the voice of Mr. Optimism inside. Also same as me: she had trouble getting her skin to tan up properly. I think I said something meant to be flirtatious like “That makes two of us” to that, but won no smile. To try to impress her, I even mentioned a web comic strip I wrote for which she looked up on her wireless internet-equipped cell phone; can’t say even that feat caused the conversation to take off, though.
Despite the sluggish pace of the conversation, I hoped to soon “close” the deal by asking her out on an instant date to someplace nearby for …. What, coffee? No, no, too hot out for that. Maybe a soda pop? Yeah, that would work.
Suddenly, she looked at me and said “Excuse me, but what do you want? I have a boyfriend.”
To that I came back with “But you said ‘hi’ to me first and I thought you were interested.” Or words to that effect. “Well, I just saw you sitting there and it came out automatically,” was the gist of how she refuted my argument.
Things went downhill from there, especially when she called her Mr. Wonderful up, engaged a “Hi, where are you?” chat as I sat nearby with a stupid look on my face with yelling Stupid buffoon! Moron! Idiot! At myself while I stewed in my own impotence in the face of crushing competition. Well, well: as she broadcast her life out loud, it turned out her de facto hubby was right across Medicine Lake, which twisted the knife of impotence even more into my vitals.
Dumb as a clueless prize fighter, I set myself up for another punch when I wanly asked her if I could give her a hug before she left. Heck, believe it or not it had worked with other girls I’d spontaneously hung out with at area beaches in the past (stories unto themselves), so why not try it with Miss Brunette, right? Wrong! Nothing doing, you emasculated Lothario, was what lurked between the lines of her polite response which went something like “I don’t think that would be a good idea.” So all I could do was just stand there as she walked away, her bikini-clad pearly white hourglass figure clothed again in shorts and t-shirt.
Moral: do not ever, ever, assume just because a woman says “hi” first means she is attracted. It takes warmth, solid eye contact, a flirtatious undercurrent, and luck, to get a vibe of mutual attraction going with a woman, dude. And also: don’t ever try to go for even chaste physical contact unless you are well-connected via all of what I just listed. I was lucky Miss Brunette and me were alone and not on a crowded beach where punks could take sophomoric pleasure at a tall, handsome guy getting his tail twisted by a woman.