I’m a terrible flirt.  No, not like when you say someone is a terrible flirt, as in they flirt a lot.  I literally flirt terribly.  I am seriously about one tic away from asperger’s anyway so I usually miss social cues.  The majority of my relationships have happened because someone I knew well and was friends with had two beers one night and kissed me.  And then “oh, I guess you are my boyfriend”.

My last relationship started pretty much like this, there were gin and tonics after work and he was thumbing through my phone at my iTunes list and looked up and asked me with fake sincerity if all of my music had been purchased from a Grey’s Anatomy soundtrack.  I semi-drunkenly went to hit him and we kissed instead, and there goes the last two years of my life.

At my last job there was a ridiculously cute sales guy in my building.  He was sort of like a cartoon caricature of a handsome man with an alliterative name and I could not put a sentence together if he was in the room.  Once I got on an elevator while talking to a colleague, and then noticed he was there.  I saw him and froze, in my head I was thinking something like “oh.  My god, he is so cute, he looks like that guy on The Good Wife, what’s his name, something Charles, Josh Charles, yeah, he looks like Josh Charles, he is really so cute, I wonder if he has a girlfriend, what are we going to name our kids, I hope he’s okay with raising them catholic”.  He looked up from his phone, smiled, and said “Hi, how are you?” directly to me.  I stood there completely mute until the door opened at his floor and then said “Do you watch The Good Wife?” He backed away slowly looking very concerned, the elevator doors closed, and I thought my friend was going to wet himself laughing.  That is a true story.

I’m just not good at flirting.  I am also very judgmental, which doesn’t help.  I can look at someone and weed him out of contention for almost anything minor (he just said “where are you at”, I heard him call the Beastie Boys “overrated” or drives a Mercedes) or major (he smokes, or too vehemently defends the designated hitter).  People keep telling me to get out there – as an aside… what does that mean?  Put yourself out there?

I’m thinking about this today because I had my first conscious opportunity to flirt recently since my breakup.  I didn’t realize it was even happening until it was over, and I was standing there with pink cheeks laughing too hard at something he said that wasn’t really that funny, but when I did, I immediately panicked and walked away terrified.  I feel like I’m out there enough right now, I can wait.  But probably not forever.