The Art of Flirting
I looked forward to seeing him every Friday night, even though it took us months to talk to each other. A couple of years ago, after a few years of partying, drinking and smoking, I got sick of it all and decided to get healthy again. It wasn’t easy, but looking back it was worth it. As part of my new discipline, I went on these late-night Friday swims at the local community center… to fill the activity void created by not going out anymore, and replace it with getting healthier.
Anyone who has done distance swimming knows that it is a pretty focused activity. Everyone is pretty much in their own world, some timing their laps, some measuring their distances, and some counting the minutes until they are in a hot shower. One night I started casually taking my breath between laps and I saw this guy diagonally across the pool looking back at me. And that was it.
The next week, we looked at each other again a bit between laps. A few weeks later, he came over to my lane and we swam together and at one point I got the courage (I am very shy in these situations) to say "Hi". And that was it.
A week later, we started talking in the pool on breaks and we did that for a while. One Friday, I was walking out of the pool and onto the street and a man came up to me and introduced his name. He said that he admired my swimming and hoped to see me again soon – I didn’t recognize him at first without his goggles, but it was the same guy! Then I moved and never saw him again. I have since started swimming in that pool again, but he doesn’t seem to go there anymore. Too bad!
On the other extreme, the other night I was at the gym and a guy kept looking at me in that hungry, intimidating way with a creepy, unblinking smile. As I went through the circuit of machines, he stared at me the way the Doberman down the hall stares at my cat (which is especially intimidating since my cat is 3/4 the size of normal ones). Of course I felt very uncomfortable with this guy at the gym and wanted nothing to do with him.
I wish that more people would realize that flirting is a back-and-forth. It is like an auction, where you keep bidding up and up. A look turns into a conversation and a conversation turns into a date etc. etc. Like an auction, sometimes it ends at just one bid (a look), sometimes the stakes get very high. But if the other person does not perceive the value in you and you go too far, you intimidate rather than attract.
Men are dogs – but maybe we need to be nicer dogs
. Nice to see the hand-drawings back.
Boy, isn’t that the truth about the ‘auction’ aspect of flirting! The problem is both men and women often don’t know the rules as you mentioned them, or they are so dang shy that they let chances slip by again and again. Funny too, I had the same thing happen at a gym. I went to one for a long time, constantly seeing this one woman on the stairmaster. I was leaving as she was getting off one day and I just casually mentioned ‘that was quite a work out, you were on the whole time I have been here.’ She smiled and said she was ‘tired from it too’. We smiled at each other and waved over the next few months, then I saw her downstairs in the stretching/class area and I was about to do some stretching too. We sat and talked a while, learned a bit more about each other, encouraged each other and went on our way. By the time I moved away we were pretty good pals, not flirting any longer, just enjoying talking and encouraging each other. The auction ended in a good, positive friendship in that case. It happened naturally and without discomfort, but it easily could have gone otherwise if I (or her, however unlikely) focused on the sexual attraction at the expense of the kindness and support for the whole person.
I am glad you told that story and love the drawing!