I’m sorry. I’ve never done this before, (Have I?), but I’m going to have to veer off topic today. I’m not going to talk about food. Hardly at all. I know that this is a bad time for this diversion with the holidays upon us and my recent entries having just barely been about eating- cocktails and jelly and beet greens and such. I’ll get back on topic, I swear, but today I have a story to tell you, a story about the time I forgot to eat dinner. There’s just been that one time. I’m not the sort of girl who forgets to eat dinner. I have stomach butterflies and some giddy little twitches at the corners of my mouth just thinking about it.
It was twelve years ago today. Well let me back up a few months. It was the fall of 1995, and I worked in the student store at UCLA. I was a cashier in the school and art supplies department. Sometimes I got bored standing there at that cash register, and so I decided to take up flirting with someone as a way to pass the time. I looked around and weighed my options, before settling on the vivacious blonde in lecture notes. He wasn’t exactly my type, but there was just something about him that attracted my attention. Perhaps it was his wild hand gestures.
So I looked at him some more, until he felt my gaze, and offered him a shy smile. This went on for sometime. A couple weeks maybe? When we ran out of gazes and shy smiles, we ratcheted it up to other increasingly ridiculous facial expressions. Finally after a couple months of this mute non-sense, Paul made a big production of coming over to buy a dry erase board. He complimented my hat.
I discovered that a class that I was taking offered lecture notes, so, of course, I signed up. This gave me the opportunity to compliment him on his new hair color. I told him it was very distinctive, I think, and then I felt like a big dork. With burning cheeks, I returned to my post and we didn’t talk again for another month or so.
The silly expressions and flirting from afar continued though, until that day, twelve years ago. That’s the day that I had decided I would ask him out. As I lay in bed the night before, I rehearsed what I would say, “Hey, I was just wondering if you wanted to get a cup of coffee after work?...Hey, I was just wondering if you wanted to get a cup of coffee after work...Hey,I...etc.” For a long time. I don’t think that I got a lot of sleep that night.
So the next day, I got myself positioned at the register closest to lecture notes, where I would be all alone and no one would notice if I slipped away for a moment. In my head I continued my coffee query mantra. (On top of this being a particularly nerve-wracking conversation, I’ve never been particularly good at talking to people. As a teenager, I wrote down what I would say before I ordered a pizza.) I looked over at him in lecture notes, and for the first time in months, he wasn’t looking back at me.
I turned and resigned myself to the fact that this flirtation was over. He wasn’t interested anymore. I should have done something sooner. He was bored. He had met someone else.
Did I mention that at some point over the last few months, before we even spoke, I think, I dreamt about him? We were walking all over campus together. We went inside that building down on the science side of things. It’s a building that I didn’t know very well, and it wasn’t my favorite architectural style, but inside I discovered this amazingly lush courtyard filled with all sorts of beautiful plants. We continued on and wound up in the student store where we strolled though, trying on different hats. Are your dreams this obvious? Or is it just because I was an English major at the time and so my subconscious was imbued with the tools of overt symbolism?
So, anyway, all of a sudden, at that moment of resolved loss, Paul was standing in front of me. He said, “Hey, what’s going on?” “Nothing,” I perhaps sourly replied, thinking, “Why do you toy with me now? Is this your attempt to be ‘friends’ after our failed torrid un-affair?”
But he continued, “I was just wondering if you wanted to get a cup of coffee some time?”
“I was just working up the courage to ask you the same thing.”
“So...yes?”
"Yeah."
“When do you..?”
“After work?”
And since that moment, he’s been my oldest friend. As we walked through Westwood to the Cap-T-Go, conversation was easy.
