I should never say things like "this actually happened last week" as if it’s some sort of pinnacle of ridiculous. Other people could. Other people lead pleasant and normal
lives. I envy the other people, because
when I do something like that, when I dare to dance around any kind of sweeping
blanket statement that implies even the tiniest bit of finality in a given
situation, it’s as if I’ve tempted the universe to top it. And top it, she has.
I hit a patch of terrible timing with IA and thought, well, loon
in my head, there’s three ways you can approach this here. You can go crazy girl on him. You can say that’s not good enough and walk
away from it completely or you can continue seeing other people in an attempt
to keep irrational at bay and see if the tides turn when this young gent has
some actual time on his hands.
Reasonable thoughts and subsequent reasonable actions coming
out of me are about as common as Halley’s Comet, so I’ve gone with door number
three. I mean, does it still bother me
that he had to sit at work through my [fab] birthday party and that our
respective week-long vacations are on different weeks? Sure, but this isn’t a place for whiny, sad
thoughts. If it was, however, I have
some whiny-ass, sad thoughts I’ve been keeping to myself, my chardonnay and my
cat. I digress.
So this guy Mike reaches out to me and he’s kind of a
dick. Being a girl and nothing if not
predictably stereotypical, I’m instantly interested. Mean Mike tells me, among other things, that
he “hates sports and TV in general,” then asks me to tell him 10 random things
about myself. Eye roll. Even though a man’s hatred of sports falls
just under “drives molester van” and “general serial killer vibe” in my ranking
of red flags, I decide I want to pursue this for the story. Also, he told me
his father grows wine grapes, so let’s sprinkle on a little genuine
interest/potential for opposites attract kind of thing for good measure.
I ramble off nine mostly uninteresting and generic things
about myself and then ::bats eyelashes even though it’s over the internets::
say, “10 – I’m concerned you might actually hate me because I’m absolutely
fanatical about sports – football in particular – and about 95% of my job,
which I love, is based around the television industry.” He replies almost immediately
telling me not only that I may be right, but that my answers didn’t exactly help
the situation. Again, eye roll, this is
going to take some finessing to move forward.
By finesse, I mean silent treatment for four days. Why (WHY?!?!) does that work so well? Whatever,
Mean Mike asks me to get together for a drink, making sure to note he’s only
free through Thursday and his – and I quote – “dance card is full this weekend.”
Then, in a move that finally gets the bizarre ball rolling here, he throws in
his real email address for greater ease of communication.
Obviously the first thing I do is Google it. That’s when all the air got sucked out of the
room. The first link spells out for me
in great detail that he happens to work at the exact same small, private
investment bank as IA. It’s a 20-person
team. What. The. What. How does shit
like this always and only happen to me?
Do you know how many banks there are in NY?! Seriously, could he not have worked at a
different one, on a larger team, with the ability to get lost in the
crowd? Even Deutsche Bank midtown vs.
downtown, or something of the like, would be more ideal in comparison.
In the end, I have no idea if this is a setup or more likely
in my case, just a very, very curious coincidence for three people living in ‘Merica’s
most populous city. And I don’t know that I’m going to do anything in the way
of finding out either. I mean, up till
now, my action plan has been to sit here, staring at the Google with my eyes
bugged out, gabbing to any friend who will listen. Like I said earlier, I am trying to stay away
from the outwardly-expressed crazy girl behavior, but this latest development
makes an awfully enticing offer to give in.
I suppose the moral of the story here is maybe don’t put all your eggs
in a Tiny basket. It can get messy.
Until the next, tragic disaster in my personal life,
Vennifer.
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