Crushes

I first moot the idea of meeting up with Tee casually one Saturday evening, between getting a snapshot of her calendar for the next few months - it is chock full with work and travel - and getting tips for scaling back on my coffee drinking, after which it turns out that there are no airports in her corner of the world. That puts the downer on any inclinations to jump on a flight on my part - I famously never travel anywhere I’ll have to sit still for more than 8 hours - until she mentions she might be in London sometime over the next few weeks. It turns out I only get four days notice, and I barely have time to sort out fights and holidays, hop on a flight and appear in London. ...

In differential calculus: the point on a curve where the curvature changes sign from +ve to -ve or vice versa; analogous to a point on a bend where the steering is momentarily straight whilst turning from left to right or vice versa In real life: the precise moment it finally sinks into a bloke’s thick skull that the girl he’s had a crush on for the past month is about to ease him into the friendzone ...

To all accounts, she could have been the right woman, at the right time, in the right place on the relationship continuum, but for the small matter of 3,000 miles making navigating the treacherous waters of getting to know her essentially from scratch that bit more difficult. We did have great conversations (maybe not great, but better than I have with most) with a range of shared interests that we explored. ...

Although a year and some ago I thought I had truly gotten over the pain of the EJ debacle, I still managed to spend Christmas stateside attending a wedding, hanging with mutual friends and kind of hoping I would run into her. Neither happened, and when push came to shove I couldn’t bring myself to take the short hop across town to the city where she now lived. Coming into 2012 then, the targe t was to resolve a number of the other friendzoneships I had somehow gotten sucked in over the years. ...

Thankful for: Progress with Mum’s health. Got sucked into an emergency surgery but by all accounts she’s getting close to the all clear. Progress on two main job chasing fronts - CNRL & Maersk. Fingers crossed! Finally reaching a place where I am slowly weaning myself off my intense fixation on L. Three day work weeks, and options aplenty to pick and choose form. Bring on the harvest dear God!

Delirium, for the We Write Poems prompt Osmosis; You catch her eye on the corner of King's and Guild's, rush of bright pink, blush. Gaze, furtive. A coy smile works its way across her face, before she disappears. A bird, startled as by a twig snapped underneath the lumbering feet of her unwary hunter- Half dream, half mirage, half stolen, garbled- fairy tale. You feel the fever- dry skin, throbbing head. Unrequited memory like the force of a hammer against rock, a blunt axe, Patagonian rosewood, a caged bird, tethered to it's roost. Your siren's sung- her half song, half lure. And like five bowstrings plucked till worn- all you have is the unsated thirst of your delirium.

I think I have a crush. …… And what is perhaps most disconcerting about the waxing and waning of this particular attraction is just how atypical its advent has been. For one she is well and truly outside the +/- 2.5 year band that I once swore to live and die by… And perhaps most importantly, the sum of our interaction over the last one month, one week and six days has been fifteen emails, five phone calls and one handshake; hardly a compelling oeuvre for a bloke whose standard MO - bar the not exactly happily-ever-after spring mis adventure from 2009 - has primarily been based on weighing pros and cons, extensive googling due diligence and incremental engagement rather than a full on pursuit. ...

Day Zero. You meet her on one of those days. Boredom morphs into irritation, topped off with despondency. Your 8-4 (5-9) is especially dull on the day. Madam Bosco, your loud mouthed, over-bearing boss rips into you as usual over the ever yawning chasm between your targets and your deliveries. The heat seems to have major intentions of causing grievous bodily harm in any case. That is when the ‘gods’ of the internet and itchy fingers contrive to send Her your way. ...