Chance

While sitting in a cafe yesterday afternoon, doing some work, a memory popped into my head. The memory was of a certain person, from a certain moment about a year ago.

Recalling it randomly like that gave me a weird chill down my back. I looked over my shoulder, to make sure he wasn't in the room.

Phew, he's wasn't. Awkward moment averted.

How random; thinking about that night, right now.

The person I'm thinking of is an acquaintance from a year ago. We knew each other as mutual friends through Kieran. Our mutual gangs of friends had hung out a few times, so we got to talking a bit. At first meeting, I immediately knew he was gay or bi - wasn't a hard guess, really. Over the few months of being acquaintances, we spoke a little more each meeting. I went to one of his productions - he's an actor. Although theater's not my thing, it was cool to watch.

Come January last year, I felt like going out to the Village. It has been a while since my last time there, since my friendship with my group of my former gay friends had continued down the road to dissolution. After all, none of us had anything in common other than sexuality.

I decided to call up this acquaintance. Maybe he could be a cool gay friend to hang out with, if I got to know him better. He thought it was a great idea, as well, to go to a gay bar and club as friends. I remember accentuating the as friends part, when making the offer. I didn't want him to get the wrong idea.


The night-of, we shared 3 pitchers together, before going to the club. We spoke a lot - or more should I say I spoke with myself a lot. Early into the night it became pretty obvious why Kieran never hung out much with this guy. He wasn't really interesting and had nothing much to say. He was definitely nice, but his personality was rather passive and bland, as opposed to active. Someone else always has to say the first thing, suggest the first idea or act first with this type of person. I pretty much said and did what I wanted, and he went along with it. Still, I did have a great time and so did he, as someone just following me in every sense of the meaning...

As last call approached, when we were later at the club, he started feeding me drinks. He also began grinding up on me a little too much. I do very much like dancing with friends and dancing close with gay friends (hey, who doesn't like touching bodies?), but he was going a little too much on me. In all honesty too, he really wasn't attractive (yes, I'm shallow and I prefer touching good looking friends and strangers. Whatever.).

Anyway, the lights soon came on, we got our jackets and headed out into the snow-swept night/morning.

We caught a taxi. I stayed in briefly, only to get to my nighttime bus stop, thereby saving myself some money. We were heading in completely different directions anyway.

So there I was. Alone on an oddly-quiet downtown street at 3:30 am. Heavy snowfall blanketed everything. You couldn't see much beyond 20 metres in front of you.

Most romantic movies these days always involve one of the characters taking a leap to win over the other person. We're all familiar with it: The person puts himself/herself out there completely, for their potential love to either affectionately accept them or bitterly reject them. It's that chance that makes the moment beautiful and intense, in movies. Of course from my point of view, it's also that chance that makes most romantic movies so corny. I blame Disney for this cultural garbage.


From the white-out, I saw a silhouette approach me from across the streets. Oh God, I thought. It's one of these chances.

I just knew it was him. He had apparently gotten out of the taxi 2 or 3 blocks after me and walked back toward my bus stop.

The silhouette became clearer, as the person approached. As I watched the figure become clearer, the gist of my thoughts were this:
Oh come on. Don't do this! It's going to be so awkward...

The silhouette, now a young man's body, began crossing the street toward me.
Ah jeez, OK Thomas.....Don't be drunk right now...be extra considerate....Hmm, I wish I was eating some pizza right now...

And then he was next to me.
Man, I really want to eat some Al-Taib pizza...

Him: Hey Thomas

Me: Hey [Acquaintance's name]

And he took his chance.

Saving the mushy-gushy stuff, here's the Cliff Notes of his speech as he exposed his drunken heart to me:
Him: I really like talking to you...you're good looking...I really understand what you mean when we spoke about familiarity and affection at the bar...I really like you...I want to go out with you...

The whole time he was telling me this, I was thinking how I really wanted to eat some pizza. Yep, I'm a bastard.

I was very understanding and nice about the circumstance. Exposing one's self like can be damaging. I explained that he was really cool but I wasn't interested in him like that. To make sure he would be OK, I then invited him to come get pizza with me from the 24H pizza place close-by. Catastrophe averted (me for) and a pizza reward - perfect!

We spoke some more at the pizza place - or I mean I spoke with myself some more. He seemed to be coping alright, considering his heart might have felt like it went through a blender after my rejection. He was still kind of drunk too, so everything is extra intense then.

We eventually went our separate ways - again.

The next morning I found a Facebook message from him, apologizing and hoping the intensely awkward moment could be forgotten and we could be friends. I ended up replying it was OK, and to not worry about the situation. I didn't actually want to be friends with him, because his personality was just really uninteresting. I did feel bad though, because he would assume I'd want to avoid him because of the chance he took. It's not like I could correct him and say:

"No, I don't care that you're infatuated with me. I actually don't want to be friends with you because you lack a personality and you're boring."

Since last year I've ran into him once or twice. I have good reasoning for wanting to dive behind a table instead of running into him at a cafe. Let me confirm: aaawwwkkkkwwwaarddddd.