singular prt 2

Well, my romantic antics are few and far between these days as I continue to feel like
a) I don't want to be in a relationship just because everyone thinks it's what you should do
b) I don't want to be in a relationship if I'm not all that into it
c) I don't want to go on painful, insincere or boring dates ("dates" - whatever)
d) I'd like to sort a bit more stuff out in my life before I find myself accidentally in the midst of a long term relationship (stuff like life plans, like old family stuff etc)
e) I'm not going to shop around for a partner like I'm looking for a nice pair of winter boots, with a checklist of features, and a nose for a bargain
f) etc

So, amusingly, despite this (or maybe because of it) here are my most recent brushes with romance.
1. Boy in dark room at party sits himself by me and says 'I like you, you're mysterious' and offers to spend a week or two getting to know me better. Continues to sit himself down next to me at various locations asking me questions and suggesting that we should stop being so polite. -- I feel suspicious, then cautious, then vaguely enticed, but caution wins. After all he's young and likely flighty. Likely that accent alone and that nice rangy frame and youthful enthusiam wont be enough to sustain a meaningful relationship. I feel ever so protective of myself and give very little away. He leaves with someone else, someone who, as it turns out, he'd been seeing previously. Feel relieved at not having inadvertently made myself a social parriah by butting into to someone's recent fling. The next day I note that my caution has receded and interest is piqued, notion of young and flightly and impermanent no longer seems like a problem (too late she cried).
2. Walking home down the dark main road someone walks past me, we make frank but apropriate eye contact and just as he passes me he says 'I love you'. In the particular cadence of someone saying it to someone they've said it to a hundred times before and still mean it, a gentle utterance of a Sunday morning in with face bent down into hair on the way to make a cup of tea, said gently and without wanting a response, not at all like a crazed person yelling at strangers or creepy man trying to make a move. I smiled and kept walking, felt happy, strangely.
3. Taxi driver asks would I ilke to have coffee. I think he says 'have a nice coffee' as it is at the end of the ride, and I have said that I plan to go have coffee (hey, he asked me what I was up to) so I say 'mm, thanks' and he keeps looking expectantly and says 'so would you like to? Go have coffee sometime?' and I get a rush of 'whoops, oh, oh this is happening' and then I think 'hmm, ok, maybe this is ok' and tell him maybe and that he can give me his number, which he does, on a business card, which tells me when I peer at it minutes later, that he is tertiary educated and works in the finance sector. He is older and African and I am in two minds, one that says 'oh my goodness, do we date taxi drivers now, has it come to this?' (which sounds awful and elitist but just that I met him as my taxi driver, and there is something ever so slightly creepy about that mix of business and personal life) and one that says 'and how would having coffee hurt? isn't it about being open minded and anyway, maybe you should just say yes to everyone and you never know when or where you'll meet your soul mate'. And then some more of 'I don't think so'.
4. Random stranger who I chatted to* last year at a party bumps into boy I work with, at coffee shop, through their mutual friend and in chatting begin to talk about their workplaces. Party boy says 'do you work with seagreen?' and work friend says yes, and boy says 'get her to call me! I gave her my card!'. And when this is told to me I have to furrow brow to remember him giving me a card (I have no idea where it ended up but I think I stashed down my top with a flourish at the time - yes, yes of course I did) and then google him on a local university website to find out (he is a postgrad doing a very charmingly techie-nerdy-sciency thing). He is a bit young and possibly terribly earnest, and judging by his CV (oh google you have a lot to answer for) far more proactive and outcomes focused than me. He's done things that get media coverage, raised money for things, that sort of stuff. I feel a bit intimidated plus I don't know that I even liked him that much even when tipsy at party.

So. There you go. Hardly a Meg Ryan movie it it?

*flirted outrageously with, whatever, gosh you're so picky (I wrote that in a Napolean Dynamite knd of voice)