Friday, October 17, 2008

A Mystery

Here’s a mystery for you. Imagine being the guy who does this:

You’re on vacation with some pals. While you’re in a cute little mountain town, you decide to catch a show, and you find out that Indiefolk Magee’s Traveling Solo Act is in town. You decide to check it out.

In the bar, you catch the eye of a cute blonde. She smiles. You smile. Later, you notice her casually standing a few feet away from you, so you start chatting.

It’s going well, she’s a writer, you’re an architect. She has tattoos. You’re from Berlin. You buy her a beer, then another. You’re having such a good time together that you get shushed by a middle-aged twat with his name printed on his tracksuit jacket as she explains an Americanism in the lyrics that you don't understand. You both roll your eyes, and you put your hand on her knee.

At the closing number, she gets misty eyed with emotion. It’s a good song, but really? You tease her a little, she laughs, you hold hands. You decide to go across the street to get a beer.

The teasing continues, the laughter. She meets your friends, they like her. They leave the bar ahead of you. She has to work tomorrow, and you’re on the road. She can’t invite you home; her roommate, she says, is pregnant and grumpy. You have a small hotel room full of buddies. You invite her to join you on the road, tomorrow you’re going to Big Frigging Lake, but she’s on deadline. She has a story to write. She calls a cab.

You walk her outside and kiss on the sidewalk until the cab comes.

The next day, you try to meet her for lunch. It doesn’t work out. A week later, you send her an email, an e-mail filled with adorable non-native English misspellings, and a photo of you waving from a cliff overlooking Big Frigging Lake. You close your email with “Kisses, Helmut.” She replies to your email, the two of you make tentative plans to meet up at a city in the middle, just a couple of hours from each of you. You’ll let her know.

Two weeks later, your time to meet up has passed. You send this:

hey Blondie, sorry for just writing you now. but my week was truly something else: i got really busy with work and then suddenly got layed off by my company! it's funny, after coming back from my trip, I was anyway trying to reconfigure my life a little bit, searching for some new approaches, and now in general i officially have to! Anyway i am still thinking about hitting Midcity in the next few weeks, especially since I could head down there with a buddy of mine, who's thinking about being there the same time you'll be around - the weekend in two weeks from now. of course i have to see how right now everything else develops, but lets keep it in mind. And well in general it looks like i should actually have a whole lot of time to do whatever, right ...no work routine...freedom, hahaha! cheers, Helmut

She replies. She’d love to see you.

Then you fall off the face of the planet.

So, tell me, interwebs, Wha happened?

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Case of cold feet !

S.G.Loughlin said...

Lame Town: Population Him, the Mayor.

Robert Wiesenberg said...

Umm my money is on him having met someone else or encountered something so absorbing that he chased the universe in that direction. It doesn't mean you're forgotten or undervalued but that reality camp pitched may have pitched it's tent on your aching missed hook up.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a really terrible movie in which everyone is hip. I'm thinking Reality Bites or something else that a bunch of self absorbed twenty-somethings would be into.

itinerantwoman said...

two possible scenarios:

1. in the interim, he's been diagnosed with a terminal illness (or been horribly disfigured by a flaming cocktail) and was weeping whilst typing the email.
or
2. he met someone else, but likes blondie enough to keep her on the back burner--just in case things don't work out with the new chica.

i'll go out on a limb here and choose scenario #1. poor fucker. he'll be pining away for blondie--forever.

Serial Monogamist said...

Another mystery! Who is the bitter, bitter anonymous? The professor? Colonel Mustard? Mr. Green? Mrs. Peacock?

We may never know.

busta_gonads said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Anonymous said...

My name's Marc. I'm a Scorpio. I'm an alcoholic and I'm not bitter, I just didn't like your story.

Serial Monogamist said...

Well sorry Marc, you sounded a lot like someone I used to know.

Say, alcoholics usually have really good dating stories, why don't you contribute a better one?

busta_gonads said...

You sound bitter to me marc. Not only about someone writing a story that might depict something similar to an action you've committed, but you seem ultimately bitter about your alcohol abuse problem and perhaps life in general.

Take that bitterness and write a story about it... Its extremely therapeutic

dereconstructed said...

Sounds par for the course for random encounters. Sorry, SM.