I met this guy at a party for one of BestGuy’s friends – he’s a friend of a friend of BestGuy, hence the name ThriceRemoved.  At first I did notice that he seemed nice, and was nice to look at, but more importantly, he was there to talk to me when I knew almost no one but BestGuy, and I was tired of tagging along (and some girls were drooling over BestGuy and I was all up in their way).  So Thrice and I began chatting.  And I realized he was quite charming, intelligent, respectful, even funny.  We ended up chatting for most of the evening, and when the party moved to a local bar, he walked along the way with me.  At the end of the evening when BestGuy and I were walking back to the car, Thrice walked with us.  As he turned to go his way he said good night to BestGuy and gave me a hug.  BestGuy even commented on the hug.  I was, to say the least, interested.

The following weekend was another birthday for a friend of BestGuy.  Thrice was there as well.  One of the other party-goers commented on Thrice and me talking so much, asking if there was a thing a’brewin’.  I’m sure I blushed.  There was a bit of drinking and a lot of dancing for this night, and an improptu appearance by Wreckinator (which prompted Thrice to seemingly jump to my side).

At the end of the night BestGuy was taking an overly-drunk girl home, I was helping an overly-drunk friend out of the bar, and Thrice offered a ride to yet another drunk girl – we were like the drunk patrol.  The friend I was helping became enraged, over something that only her drunken stupor understood, but she was yelling rather loudly about Thrice and the drunkie he was walking with.  So I quickly ushered her off and out to the car, without really saying good bye to anyone.

When I finally got home I felt badly for leaving without saying much, worse if Thrice had heard my drunk friend yelling, so I decided to be a little forward and send him a message (via the interwebs, it’s all I had to work with) – apologizing for the way the night had ended, and telling him I’d had fun hanging out and hoping we’d do it again sometime.  A week goes by.  No response.  I can take a hint, obviously he’s not as hopeful we can do it again – but how hard would it have been to write back something like “It was nice to meet you too, I’m sure I’ll see you around.”  It doesn’t commit him to anything, and would at least ease my feelings of being an a-hole.  But, alas.  Nothing.

Until a week later, when there was yet another outing with the same crowd. BestGuy didn’t know about the note I’d sent, I figured with no response there was no need to broadcast it.  But BestGuy was still trying to play wingman.  Thrice was there, and BestGuy kept giving me eyes.  But, he stopped when he realized that Thrice was avoiding me like the plague.  I guess that eased my feelings of being an a-hole, as it turns out he’s not the nice, respectful guy I thought he was.   Byebye ThriceRemoved.

I tried out the site CrazyBlindDate with a friend, we’d heard about it and decided we were the crazy-types.  Really, it’s premise couldn’t be better.  You log on, indicate when you are free, set minimal criteria, and bam – they send you out on a blind date.  There is no prior communication, preventing heightened expectations.  Of course, your chances of landing a dud are high, but if you would be satisfied by a few hours spent out of the house, you’ll always win.  We arrived at a local HoleInTheWall at our designated time, two meet two guys – Snoozer and ArtGeek.  If you can judge people by appearances, Snoozer is a total naive sweetheart, who is likely too icky-drippy to actually entertain me for any length of time.  Everything he said was done with a slight inflection at the end of his sentence.  I couldn’t tell if he was asking me about these stories, or just enjoying the sing-songy quality of his own voice.  This, however, was the most interesting thing coming out of his mouth, and it grew annoying rapidly.  Snoozer should have been full of wonderful stories – he’d been in the PeaceCorp for 2 years, stationed in Africa; he recently bought a house and was doing the home improvements himself; he speaks multiple languages and teaches elemantary school.  However, Snoozer couldn’t come up with one interesting thing about any of these.  The most he said about his time in the PeaceCorps was “There is so much beauty.” BORING.  I almost couldn’t stand to be there any longer.

Luckily, ArtGeek had been granted with the gift of conversation – he was pretty great to talk to.  He wasn’t awful looking, he was a bit too artsy for my tastes, but I bet I could have gotten used to it.  ArtGeek was interested in such a wide variety of things, science, music, film, to name a few.  But, man could he tell a story.  Seemed like he was an adventure-buff, ar at least not afraid to blaze his own trail once in a while just to see what happened.

After the date was over I received a note from both of them.  I couldn’t even come up with a response to Snoozer, so I didn’t.  But ArtGeek, I thought it would be fun to hang out again – even not as a date, just to chat.  It seemed like he agreed, as that was his suggestion.  So I responded, and indicated by agreement.  That was the last communication we had.

Why did he even write to suggest that we get together again if he didn’t mean it?  If he did mean it, why was he scared off by my approval?