Jagged brain slow refrain
My coworkers are talking about reality programming and I’m telling them how I should be the next bachelor on TV. “You totally should,” my coworker Melissa tells me, “You’re way better than that prince guy.” But I just don’t know: the last person to demonstrate some romantic interest in me, I ran away from, literally. I forget the exact dynamics of that conversation, but I remember specifically jogging away. I’m like some kind of inverse bachelor, with a built-in repellant mechanism, intentionally keeping people away, like mosquitoes. Although, there are always people who just end up misinterpreting the signal, the transmission showing up with some entirely different code. Some girl I see at the gym jumps on the treadmill next to me last night. It’s weird to talk to someone after seeing them around for so long. You end up developing all of these theories about them, tangling them up in all types of unfair preconceptions which they invariably break down, for better or worse. “Hey, what’s up?” I ask her. “Oh, nothing,” she tells me. Right…I trail off. And then, despite my wholehearted attempts at articulating what a horrible human being I am, and how I should be swept off the earth in some great cleansing flood, there is the invitation to, among all things, a hockey game. I stammer, looking for an answer which will absolve me, before coming up with something along the lines of, “I’m not really into sports, is the thing.” An answer which, at best, presents with a whole lot of transparency. But the whole thing is, since I’m already on the treadmill, I can’t run away.