And now a few posts that I came up with on break last night...

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It kind of sucks ... seems like ever since I moved into the middle-of-nowhere Texas my libido seems to have been put on hold. I was pretty actively dating (and even when I wasn't, I was almost always actively seeking) when I was up in Wisconsin, and have barely even lifted a finger in effort since I moved down here. Part of it is simple audience. Up in Wisconsin, I was working in a building that boasted a long-lasting supply of intelligent, professional, successful women that I respected as intellectual equals and often had an interest in seeing socially. Down here, that's not how it works. There is not a single single salaried woman that works in the plant where I spend most of my conscious life nowadays. Not one.

Still, my forays outside of work have been less than impressive. Example: the other night a group of four of us that have been on back shifts all week ducked out of the plant at midnight for "lunch". As it happened, it was four single guys: myself, coworkers Pat and Irvin, and a visiting engineer named Jake. As we were getting ready to get up, this woman comes in looking for take-out that she's ordered in, and it's not ready yet. So she spends a few minutes very consciously leaning over the counter, facing away from us. And she had to have known what the effect of that would be.

So, this girl was easily the hottest thing I've ever seen in this town. Perfectly toned legs that we could see almost every inch of, since she was wearing what may qualify as the shortest shorts I've ever seen; just about qualifying as swim trunk bottoms if they'd have been made of anything but cotton. An ass that popped right out, not enormous ghetto booty, just nice and round and juicy. So nice that it took Pat something like two minutes to realize that the back of her t-shirt had a naked lady silhouette and said "Let's get naked." Yowza.

So, I haven't (yet) lost the ability to appreciate that, and I'm staring as politely as I can manage. She never once looks back, but like I said, she had to have known. We get up to pay just as she is, and a few words are shared. Someone makes a comment about hurrying back to work, and I make a sarcastic, "Oh yes, please, let's get back to work" which earns a laugh from her.

She sees our work uniforms and says that she didn't think we were allowed out of the plant for food, at which point there's a bit of an awkward silence, for a reason that Pat and I later agreed was somewhat subtle: there's no way to tell her at that point that plant floor workers aren't allowed out for lunch but that office workers are, without coming off as a bit of a prick. Still, Pat saves with a joke about us being rebels and sneaking out.

At this point Irvin makes the only thing that could be construed as a move, indicating her food and saying "So, I hope that's not for your boyfriend." She laughed and said "no, it's just me," which seemed to me to be three things: 1) an answer to Irvin's question, 2) an indication ("it's just me") that she doesn't have a boyfriend (if she did, she'd have answered it differently, with something like, "no, he's not hungry" or "no, he's out of town"), and 3) an indication (via the laugh) that she didn't find the question unwelcome and would welcome a follow-up. I felt good for my boy until the follow-up never came. Irvin just kind of froze, unable to come up with a second line. Before long she'd smiled and turned back away. It was kind of painful to watch. Pat put it succinctly and accurately when describing it later: it wasn't so much that Irvin got shot down as he just ran out of gas.

Now, the old me would have swooped in here, filtering and selecting one of the dozen or so lines that could have continued the conversation. I think I would have gone for the direct approach, and said, "Well, that was sort of an incomplete answer." ("It was?") "Yeah, well, I think that by asking that he was kind of trying to figure out if you have a boyfriend, and you didn't really give that information." ("Oh, no. No boyfriend right now.") "Good, in that case, since he's stopped talking, I thought I might try to get your phone number." Odds on that working might have been pretty good. Especially since the fact that I am now driving a 350Z might have found its way into the conversation, had an easy "in" manifested itself :)

Instead, I said nothing, and when Irvin walked outside I followed. He was kicking himself and I tried out a line from my latest script that I've been trying to laugh-test. "Confidence, Irvin-san! Wax on, wax off!" (pause) "Meet girl, no more wax off." It works better if it's two different people saying the lines, as it is in my script, but it still got an appreciable laugh from everyone.

I spent most of the rest of the day trying to figure out why I didn't even think to try some kind of line there, particularly since I'd made her laugh with my sarcasm that had originally broken the ice, but couldn't come up with anything in particular. I determined that there's a line from my latest story that starts to explain it: "Good chess players are bad at casual relationships: we're too busy seeing all the negative shit three moves deep to enjoy the moment." Not that I'm a particularly good chess player, but the metaphor fits: I do tend to look at a girl nowadays and see all the negative shit that would appear in the long term, especially if there doesn't appear to be a particularly high chance of there ever being a long term, as was probably the case with a girl that shows up at Denny's at midnight in ass-shorts and a "let's get naked" t-shirt. But that doesn't mean taking her shirt as a suggestion wouldn't have been a welcome distraction.

Maybe it's just that I can't get my brain out of middle-of-nowhere Texas mode. The way I find to express that mode is to say "I don't think I have much of a chance of starting a relationship down here, seeing as how I'm not into fifteen-year-olds and/or ready-made families." (Yes, it's the "and/or" in that sentence that gets the laugh from the astute listener. The fact that this girl didn't fit that mold is immaterial; I fear I've lost my ability to deal with girls that don't. About a month ago, Kyle (who is married), Irvin and myself were hanging out at the only bar in town, and Kyle was smoking a cigar which this girl used as an "in" to come and sit with us for a little bit (she pretended she came and sat with us because she wanted to know what type of cigar that was, even though she changed the subject immediately after).

She seemed mostly interested in Kyle, and I deflected that right away by finding a way to say to him, "You're only out here because your wife and kid are out of town", which was true, and she didn't shy away. Irvin was barely saying a thing, so it's safe to say she would have probably warmed to me more if I'd been willing. I wouldn't have always been entirely unwilling - she was a little heavyset, but not obese and not someone I'd be embarrassed to be around, she was about my age, and she was intelligent and working on a bachelor's degree in criminal justice.

And yet, from the moment she sat down with us, the primary question in my brain was "how many kids does she have?" And the answer to that question was two.

For me, at the stage in my life that I'm at right now, that's a deal-breaker. I know some people, including my co-worker Shane who was married within a year of moving down here because he found a girl with a two-year-old, but the fact of the matter is that I have absolutely no interest in helping to raise someone else's kid, or in getting caught up in that kind of drama. That just isn't me.

I dunno. Angie's visit in a couple of weeks should be interesting, although I'm not counting on anything happening, and there's a fair chance that my visit out to Vegas where I will meet Sandra will turn into a "what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas" kind of situation, which is all and good, but neither one has much of a chance to really turn into a relationship. And that, even more than the "let's get naked" girl, is what I would be looking for down here if I ever got even a hint that there was that down here to be found, for a guy of my tastes and standards.