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When The Men Come Out of Hiding

I’ve been saying for the past year that it’s extremely hard to meet people in Sleepytown unless of course, you do online dating. When I lived in Toronto it wasn’t uncommon for a man to approach me and say something like, “I just wanted to let you know you look very nice today” just for the heck of it. However, here on the overly laid back West Coast, this kind of male/female interaction seems virtually non-existent. When guys do to talk to you, the conversations always seem to veer into Twilight Zone territory – kind of like that time I had a conversation about nudism with my local barista.

On Saturday afternoon I was browsing the fiction section at my local bookstore, when a guy literally popped out of nowhere and started talking to me:

“Man oh man, there sure are a lot of books in here!”

To which I replied, “Yep, there sure are” (I MEAN, WE’RE IN A BOOKSTORE.)

“I know right! I never know which one to choose. Like, my list of books to read is super long already and I keep on adding more. I mean, it’s going to take me a long time to finish all the books I have already. Then my friend was like, “You should read the Game of Thrones series” and I was like, whoa, there are a lot of books in that series! It would take me a year to finish. It’s such a conundrum. I mean, on one hand I want to read Game of Thrones, but on the other hand, it’s going to take a year to finish which is a lot of time. What kinds of books do you like?”

To which I replied to him, “All kinds of books really.”

At this point in the interaction I started to wonder, “Do I know this guy?” This isn’t a very large city so there’s a chance that I went to school with this guy or his siblings and for whatever reason, I just didn’t recognize him. Having grown up here, a lot of people look vaguely familiar in this way. However, I didn’t have a chance to ask him whether we knew each other before he started talking again.

“That’s awesome! You know what else is awesome? This weather! Don’t you think? I thought it would be too hot today but it’s actually the perfect temperature. Some people complain about the warm weather here but I like it. Why complain? It rains most of the year here and today it’s sunny. I rode my bike down here today. It was great”

“That’s nice.”

“You look really great, like, totally decked out for summer. You’ve got that black tank top and those leopard print shorts and those sandals on. Wow! So summer-y! Oh, I just love your sunglasses. They look exactly like a pair my Mom has. I find brown tortoise shell frames are really noticeable. I noticed your sunglasses as soon as I observed you. You know, I’m not really into sunglasses. A few years ago I bought a pair of really expensive ones when everyone was shopping at The Sunglass Hut. Now, it’s like no one cares about The Sunglass Hut. It’s a good thing I don’t wear my sunglasses because I’d probably break them anyways.”

(WAIT, HOW LONG HAS THIS GUY BEEN OBSERVING ME?)

“Yep, good thing!”

The exact outfit I was wearing when this interaction occurred - right down to the messy beach hair. If I remind you of your Mom, it is not my fault.

Besides the fact that he had just told me my style reminded him of his Mother, this was also the point where I noticed he had a serious case of the “Eager Crazy-Eyes” – as in, I’m pretty sure he didn’t blink once during our whole conversation.

“My name is John. What’s yours?”

“I’m Simone.”

Looking for a way out, I added, “Well, nice talking to you John. I’m heading over to the “W” section now.”

“What’s the W section?!”

“Um, where they keep the books written by authors with last names starting with the letter W.”

“Oh, is that how they organize this place? By author?!”

“Yep, I think that’s how it works.”

“Great! I’ll follow you.”

At this point I started slowly backing up and away from him. I rounded a corner so that there was now bookshelf separating us.

“Simone, we should really grab a tea sometime.”

“Oh, I don’t think I can. I have a boyfriend.”

(He doesn’t need to know that my “boyfriend” is actually $1200 + worth of sex toys I keep under my bed.)

As soon as I looked away, he had vanished as quickly as he had appeared.

It only took one year and eight months, but someone in this city finally asked me out…in the most bizarre way possible. 

This just goes to show that you should be careful what you ask for.

Being single > Nut-bars approaching you in Chapters.

Hey Universe, how about sending me a Happy Medium?!

On that note, Happy Canada Day!

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